16 April 2025 - Lowell - Palm Trees

I've been really bad at updating this blog because I have been consumed with work and, really, the Canadian election that's coming in a couple of week.  So, I figured I'd borrow I post I already had written for March 2025 and post it today. 

And I chose a hell of a Canadian to post about today - Lowell. 

Did you know that Lowell was nominated for a Juno in a non-performer category in 2025? And WON?!

Yep.  She's a songwriter. And a Canadian one at that. 

She was also nominated for a Grammy, by the way.  Song of the Year. For "Texas Hold-Em", which she co-wrote.  

Although it's been a few years, she is a musician in her own right as well, despite her non-performer nomination. Born Elizabeth Lowell Boland and Toronto-based, she was born in Calgary in 1991 and has collaborated with a lot of pop and rock artists we've featured on this blog.  She's also produced - she co-produced the 2023 breakthrough album by The Beaches, Blame My Ex. 

This song, from 2014, from her album We Loved Her Dearly, is dreamy noise experimentation, at once interesting and different.  Lyrically, she's been called "the next Kanye West."  I get it.   Anyway, I encourage your timely listen. 

The song also sounds great stripped down to piano, like in this 2015 performance. 

31 March 2025 - Pixl Girl ft Sophie Powers - STFU

I lied.  But for a good reason. 

I am all about bookends.

We opened this month with Sophie Powers. Great.

I end with Pixl Girl, but really, I'm pretty sure Pixl Girl is Sophie Powers.  I just can't be 100% sure, but really, Ms. Powers has had snippets of this song on her social media for months.   It was only a matter of time before she released it.   

And she - well, whoever - released this portait-mode video in landscape, which is a weird choice, but also, visually interesting.

The song is really about people needing to be told to, well, shut the fuck up.  Listen closely, French people. 

The reality is, Sophie Powers appeared on American Idol this month, performing this song for the judges.  THAT is why this was a MUST-post. 

Luke, shut the fuck up. 

But also, she declares that she's literally Canadian at 1:28. 

31 March 2025 - Nemahsis - You Wore It Better

OK, fine, one more.  But I promise you, I'm not writing anything else for March.  This is the last one until tomorrow.  (Edit: I changed my mind on this but that doesn't mean Nemahsis does not deserve your attention).

Nemahsis is a proud hijab-wearing Palestinian-Canadian woman who is making fantastic music.  She won a couple of Junos last night, including one for Breakthrough Artist of the Year.  

She frequently sings about the hijab and the unique struggles of being Muslim in Canada in the 21st century. That is NOT what this song is about, though.  It's about a girl who liked a shirt she saw her friend wearing and, well, she got her own.   

Anyway, she's young and cool and different and I encourage you to check her out. 

31 March 2025 - bbno$ - check

With literally one day left in #MapleLeafMarch, I just could NOT ignore this guy.  He won a JUNO Award last night - the FAN'S CHOICE award, in a stunning upset.   He also had some things to say.

Fun fact: The Beaches had won an award earlier in the evening and he was the presenter.   So, guess they are trading awards :D

Anyway, besides not being a fan of Elon Musk, bbno$ (pronounced "baby no money") is a pretty accomplished and prolific hip hop musician in his own right.   It was hard picking a song for today, but I felt one of his 2025 singles - this song, which heavily samples "Low Rider" - would be an excellent choice.  It is a fun and energetic single that deserves your attention. 

And yes, he's touring, so there are live versions ALREADY! And they are just as much fun and just as energetic, if not more so. 

31 March 2025 - Once A Tree - Small Town Dreams

It was two weeks ago today that I got all maudlin about how much of a bummer this March had been.  Normally, I am spending the month enjoying Canadian music, but in this month of #ElbowsUp, it's been more difficult.

Also, I was at the point of making some tough decisions about artists to leave out and artists to include this month.  There were some that I had wanted to post that I still hadn't - and a lot of those are coming in 2026.  That's right. I'm not stopping this.  I seriously, TODAY, have enough material to go through at least 2028 without breaking a sweat.  

Then Spotify delivered me two gifts.  The first, I posted about on Saturday.  The second is this ABSOLUTE gem, which seems to be at least semiautobiographical, by Once a Tree.  Co-written by Hayden and Jayli Wolf (who are Once A Tree), it is a mature and compelling song that is the best new music I've heard this year.

(By the way, they also did this for me - I'd like to think it's for me, anyway - last March)

So, I'll be promoting the hell out of this, the last post of #MapleLeafMarch 2025. PLEASE, share this one.  PLEASE, tell your friends about this amazing song and this incredible duo.

30 March 2025 - Anne Murray - Snowbird

We've giving you a bonus post today, because no one has won more Juno Awards than Anne Murray, with 26.  This Canadian Music Hall of Famer is quite probably the biggest thing musically coming from Canada. 

Tonight, she is being awarded only the second JUNO Lifetime Achievement Award. The first guy who won it was Pierre Juneau, the guy the awards are LITERALLY named after. 

Born in Nova Scotia, I'd love to tell you that she wrote this song, but, as we know from Family Guy and Stewie Griffin's reaction, it was written by Gene MacLellan. 

Yes, she voiced that.

And she sang Gene's beautiful song, which he wrote in twenty minutes on Prince Edward Island.  That's not a joke.   Anyway, she sang it to the top of both the pop and country charts in the US and Canada.  It was the first US gold record awarded to a Canadian female solo artist. 

And really, listen to the lyrics here.   It is a sad song.  It's a lonely song. 

Here she is singing it live on David Frost's show in 1972.  The accompanying music is very light, so it is pretty close to acapella, but she was equal to the task. 

In her day, Anne Murray was an icon.  In 1980 - when she was still making hits that my mother LOVED, she appeared on the Muppet Show performing her huge 1970 hit.

30 March 2025 - Snotty Nose Rez Kids ft. Tia Wood - SHAPESHIFTER

Well, here we are.  Nearing the end of March and we've got the JUNOS tonight.   

I might be the American most excited about this Canadian award show. 

I knew that, for today, I wanted to 1) feature a nominated artist and 2) feature a not-so-well-known artist.

This song accomplished that in spades, because this song features not one, but TWO nominated artists - in the same category! Let's break it down.

Let's start with Snotty Nose Rez Kids.  They are nominated in THREE categories - Rap Album/EP of the Year (RED FUTURE - the album this song is from), Rap Single of the Year ("BBE", not this song), and Contemporary Indigenous Artist or Group of the Year (also for RED FUTURE). 

Big Braid Energy, by the way.  

Members of the Haisla Nation First Nations community in British Columbia (presumably the "Rez" in their name), the duo have been making acclaimed hip hop music for about a decade - with a total of six Juno nominations and two Polaris Award shortlists. This year, they are going to star in a CBC comedy as fictionalized versions of themselves.  

Tia Wood grew up in the Saddle Creek Cree Nation in central Alberta.   An acclaimed artist in her own right, she garnered her first Juno nomination in the Contemporary Indigineous Artist or Group of the Year category, for her EP Pretty Red Bird. 

Together, they made a pretty compelling song. 

29 March 2025 - The Funk Hunters X LÜN - XEROX

Oh, by the way, there was a new LŪN single out last week - a collaboration with British Columbia DJs The Funk Hunters.

When the hell does Lights have time to sleep? 

Anyway, this song was so freaking funky, I wanted to include it. 

29 March 2025 - LŪN - myyyy medssss

I love discovering new artists I have never heard.  

LŪN is not an artist like that. 

You see, I accidentally discovered LŪN last year, when Lights released her new single in September 2024.  As I was reading up on that, I was surprised to hear that Lights would not be touring AS LIGHTS for a while.  Which I thought - well, that seemed strange.  Lights is literally her government name.  Granted, not from birth - I get that - but legally.  

As I read people's comments, they speculated that there would be a LŪN tour, and it was then that I made the connection.

LŪN is Lights.  Lights is LŪN. 

As LŪN, she takes on something of a fox persona - this isn't a joke and this video should make it clear - and she mostly and usually obscures her face (but not consistently - let's just say this isn't a secret).  Also, as much as Lights gravitates towards the poppy electronic spectrum, LŪN is a bit more hard EDM.

For those who have read Skin & Earth, you know LŪN is a character in there - I guess she's closer to an NPC, a musician that is well-known in that universe. Lights is just occasionally playing the part. And the part is compelling, and I'm here for it.  

Also, as I have previously stated, Lights IS touring, AS Lights, so not sure where that information came from. 

28 March 2025 - Sum 41 – Fatlip

Sum 41 is being inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame this year.

They deserve it.

I have to admit, I've never really been a fan of theirs. 

But the fact is, they've made hard-rocking compelling music for more than thirty years.  

That ends on Sunday, March 30, 2025, when they will be playing their farewell performance at their induction ceremony, at the Juno Awards.  

So, on the occasion of their induction and breakup, I decided it was time to give them a second listen.

This was one of their first singles, and the only one to chart on the US pop charts.  It also topped the US Modern Rock charts - the first of three times they would do so - in 2001.  It was be 22 years before they would do that again. 

So yeah. After going back and listening to them with fresh ears, I'm more of a fan.  I can appreciate the music they made and the time they made it. 

Hey, remember when MTV did Spring Break and Carson Daly hosted TRL?  

So do we.

We're going to guess that Sum 41 are going to close their set with this song on Sunday. This post may end up being updated to reflect that.  

But also, they played it there in 2002, when they were nominated (and won an award, although not for this song).

27 March 2025 - The Beaches - Jocelyn

I told my sister when she saw The Beaches last month that I'd be posting this one so I guess I have to. 

Nah, the song is great.  I was posting it anyway.  

Written by the band after the huge worldwide success of "Blame Brett", it's about the pressure of being thrust into that role of being a role model.  

And yes, there's a real fan named Jocelyn.  And yes, she's a PhD student.  From Iowa.  She's a fan of the band and follows them on Instagram.  The band wanted to tie this song to real life, and so they chose a fan.... named Jocelyn.   

As a gift, my sister actually recorded the song when she saw them live last month, so here's that video.  Yeah, they're looking for any Jocelyn in the crowd.

26 March 2025 - Len - Steal My Sunshine

Yep.

I know what you're saying.

You did this one, jackass.  

Yep, but I did it half-assed. And this song being such a Canadian classic, I felt it was time to revisit it, alone this time. 

Written and produced by Mumble C, aka The Burger Pimp, aka Marc Costanzo, aka the guy singing the song, the song is an ode to slacking off.  Ironically, given the fact that they share a scooter and vocals on this, it was written at a time that Marc and his older sister Sharon were not speaking to each other.  

The dual vocals were due to the fact that Marc really wanted to make a new "Don't You Want Me".  Ultimately, his song was a success in its own right, without the need for so much synth.  

Shockingly, the band directed this video themselves.  It was recorded one afternoon in Daytona Beach, FL at a cost of $100,000.  It was recorded over sevem afternoons because a large portion of that $100,000 was spent on alcohol the band consumed the night before, and they needed the morning to sleep off their hangovers and the evening to get drunk.

Seriously.  They had so much booze they broke an elevator at their hotel - by exceeding greatly the WEIGHT limit. So they shot between 1 and 5pm.

The song was absolutely the greatest song of the summer of any summer.  It was not, however, the official Song of the Summer declared by Billboard in 1999 - "Genie In A Bottle", for the record - but anyone who thinks this song wasn't everywhere in the summer of 1999 doesn't remember the summer of 1999. 

But, then again, Len were probably drunk all summer, too.

Len was never really much of a band - it was just something Marc did in his garage and occassionally dragged his sister and best mates into. 

So, really, any time Marc performs this song, it's a Len performance of this song - like this performance he did last year with Brooklyn-based Charly Bliss (who did a fantastic cover in their own right).

25 March 2025 - Cœur de Pirate ft. Loud - Dans la nuit

I thought about not posting any Cœur de Pirate this year.  

Then I remembered that I LITERALLY OPENED the first Maple Leaf March with three of her songs. 

And one of those posts was quite unusual, and for the rest of this post, I am going to ATTEMPT to replicate what I did in that post.  

Plongeons dans l'univers envoûtant de "Dans la nuit", une pièce maîtresse de l'album En cas de tempête, ce jardin sera fermé de Cœur de Pirate. Cette chanson, fruit d'une collaboration inattendue avec le rappeur montréalais Loud, nous offre un mélange captivant de pop mélancolique et de rap introspectif.

Les paroles de "Dans la nuit" nous transportent dans un monde de relations complexes, où l'apparence et la réalité s'entrechoquent. Cœur de Pirate explore avec finesse les nuances de l'amour et de la solitude, évoquant ces moments où l'on se sent à la fois utilisé et utilisateur. Cette dualité se reflète dans la musique elle-même, où la mélodie hantée de Cœur de Pirate se marie parfaitement avec le flow incisif de Loud.

Musicalement, la chanson crée une atmosphère réflexive, presque onirique. Les notes de piano caractéristiques de Cœur de Pirate s'entrelacent avec des beats plus urbains, créant un paysage sonore qui oscille entre douceur et tension. Cette fusion des genres souligne parfaitement les thèmes de la chanson, incarnant cette danse constante entre connexion et déconnexion.

"Dans la nuit" marque une évolution dans le style de Cœur de Pirate, tout en restant fidèle à son talent pour capturer les émotions les plus intimes. C'est une invitation à plonger dans les profondeurs de nos relations, à explorer ces moments d'ombre et de lumière qui définissent nos connexions humaines. Une œuvre qui résonne longtemps après la dernière note, nous laissant contempler nos propres expériences dans le miroir de ses paroles poignantes.

Les deux sont montés sur scène lors des Juno Awards 2019 pour interpréter la chanson ensemble.

Au final, c'est SA chanson, et elle peut l'interpréter toute seule. Elle le fait ici, au piano.

Merci beaucoups, Google Translate.

24 March 2025 - Frank Mills - Music Box Dancer

I told you this month was gonna be huge. 

I bet you didn't know this song was Canadian.  But yes, it is. 

This Montreal pianist had a #3 hit in the US in 1979 with his instumental classic.  And it came with a very clear mistake - a few notes are missing in that third repeated introduction.  However, Mills could not afford to rerecord it, so the mistake stayed.

By the way, he recorded it in 1974.  It took that long to get it released. 

The song is recorded in C# Major so it would sound like a music box - specifically, his daughter's broken music box.   

Oh yes, Frank Mills is still with us and still performs this song.  It still sounds like it always did. 

23 March 2025 - Mitsou - Bye bye mon cowboy

This is a woman who did it all.   

Actress.

Cooking show hostess.

And, of course, musician.   This was her debut single, in 1988.  It ended up being a hit ACROSS Canada, which is a rare feat for a francophone song..... probably because it contained a few English words in the title.  

It's a pretty racy song, to be honest - she ends up breaking up witht he cowboy even though he makes love like a god.   This is not my intepretation.  It is literally what she says.   Well, also, he cheats on her, so she says... bye bye to her..... cowboy. 

It's catchy as hell and you should hear it. 

The song got a remix and a US release in 1990, and, well, Canadians love it.  Americans just don't listen to French songs, even great ones. Still, it's a French song that got worldwide exposure, and that's great.  

22 March 2025 - Wave - California

CBC Music has been a great resource for this blog for several years.   Just this week, they released a list of songs that were hits ONLY in Canada.

ONLY in Canada.

Yes, there is a rule in Canada that a certain percentage of radio-broadcasted music has to be by Canadian artists, which makes Canada unique in promoting home-grown artists - and also makes a whole bunch of artists that are known ONLY in Canada.

This 2001 single - the debut by this Niagara Falls, Ontario pop-rock duo - was, indeed, a top 10 hit in Canada.   It did get the song a Juno nomination (losing to Nickelback) and also a nomination for best new group, which it also lost. 

The band broke up in 2003 to pursue other things, but they did reunite once, in 2016, at a Niagara Falls beer festival, and of course they performed their biggest hit. 

21 March 2025 - Great Big Sea - Ordinary Day

This folk group from Newfoundland and Labrador had a few hits in the 1990s - hits that you wouldn't know if you didn't live in Canada.   

Some of them were covers, to be sure, but they did original music, too.  This song, from 1997, was among their biggest hits and it was written by members of the group.   According to co-author Alan Doyle, it was inspired by a Vancouver street musician who had gotten beaten up and robbed, and then went right back to performing in the same place.  

That musician?  Jann Arden.  

The song was co-opted by Conservative Party politicians in the 2000s, but the band filed a copyright claim to stop that.  Because they don't need their song politicized.

It may not be so clear from the official video that they were a folk group, but this live performance should make that clear. 

Also, the audience knows the words. 

20 March 2025 - Maestro Fresh Wes - Let Your Backbone Slide

Let's talk a little about Wesley Williams.  

In 1989, he released his debut album, Symphony In Effect.  He would release this classic as his first single, ever.   

It hit the US top 40 chart and was a top 15 US rap hit.  It is the first time a Canadian rap artist ever did either of those things.  

In Canada, he sold more than 50,000 copies of this - which is their gold certification.  He was the Canadian rap artist to do this. 

But also, the song kicks some old-school ass.  It's a great song, and even though he proudly declares he's not American, at the end of the day, that doesn't matter.  

It is, of course his biggest hit, so it makes sense that he's still performing it all these years later.  Here is the Canadian Music Hall of Famer performing the song last year as part of the coast-to-coast Canada Day celebrations. 

He's still got the mad rhymes.

I mentioned he was a member of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, and that's great.   He was inducted in 2024 at the Juno Award ceremony and, yes, of course he closed with this song. 

19 March 2025 - Barenaked Ladies - If I Had $1000000

THIS might be the biggest oversight of this page so far.  This song, when I first heard it on CFNY in the early 1990s, changed my life.  It was lighthearted, fun, and lyrically clever.  And you KNOW this post is going to be a doozy!!!

It also changed the way I looked at green dresses.  

Written by Steven Page and Ed Robertson - the two vocalists - which should suprise no one - it takes a call-and response style and adds a lot of eccentric romantic purchases, many of them references to REAL purchases that Michael Jackson made.   You never connected that set of dots, did you?  But yeah, he bought Joseph Merrick's remains and a monkey.  Haven't you always wanted a monkey?

The dialog pieces are different in every live performance because, no joke, they're made up as they go along. It's just banter.

The song was never released as a single, but became a HUGE HUGE hit anyway.   

I can't even justify a studio version of this song for this post.  I start with this 1996 live performance, where they react to the rides around them.  

In 2000, the band performed the song at Farm Aid and were complementary to fine organic foods. 

Then there's this Page/Robertson performance where they pick on the TV host in a stripped-down manner.

Then there is this 2008 performance where they have a special guest star on accordion.

Of course, Steven Page left the group and it's never been the same, but there's still a lot of banter. The whole band gets into it now.  This show happened to be in Cincinatti, Ohio.  If this concert happened today, it would probably cost 25% more. 

But really, it was their reunion at the 2018 Juno Awards that got me.  The shoutout to Maestro Fresh-Wes was a nice touch. 

18 March 2025 - Evelyne Brochu - Paris

When I first saw this pop up on my Spotify last year, I had to do a double take.  You see, I recognized the artist's name.... but not from music.  

One of my favorite TV series of all time is a show from the 2010s called Orphan Black. Seek it out - I highly recommend it.  Evelyne Brochu was the name of an actress on the show (for those who know the show, she played Delphine). And yes, it's the same Evelyne Brochu, I found out in my research.  The even wilder thing I found out?  She's Canadian - growing up outside of Montreal and a native speaker of French in Quebec (although also learning English at a very young age). I always thought she was French.  

She did reprise her role of Delphine in Orphan Black: Echoes, which was also good but not quite matching the original.

But let's talk about "Paris".  A sincere love letter to the city, Brochu sings the song with a sincerity and a brightness.  It also seems like she recorded the video on her cell phone - because she did.  She was the cinematographer.   

Her performance is just as genuine and sweet live as it is recorded.