17 September 2025 - Yves Jarvis - The Knife in Me

Last night, the Polaris Music Prize was awarded.   It's a Canadian prize, loosely based on the UK's Mercury Prize, honoring the best in Canadian music over the last year.   Traditionally, they've awarded a prize (occasionally 2) to the best Canadian album of the past year.   This year, they also awarded a single prize.

The album prize this year went to the Yves Jarvis album All Cylinders.  It's very reminiscent of CSNY, and yes, I made sure I added Neil Young for the Canadian artist, with a hint of disco. This single from the album is one of my favorites. 

I think watching him perform it live and seeing how he builds the song in front of the audience is a sight to see, and you should see it too.

16 September 2025 - The Cardigans - Carnival

This early single by the Cardigans was the first thing I ever heard by the band.  I knew there were great things to come, but no one could have predicted how great. 

It is a sweet and basic love song.   That's all you need to know.   

Except there's a lot more to say.  

This very sweet song begging for love is practically a prequel to "Lovefool".  Basically, it's about a girl who wants to go to a carnival with a boy but doesn't because the boy does not ask her.  The first single from their second album, Life, it was their first UK hit.  Which is why I chose a live performance from the UK.  

15 September 2025 - Isabela Merced - PAPI

Is Peruvian-Ohian Isabela Merced an actress - who was recently featured as Hawkgirl in the new Superman movie and who also made an appearance in a Marvel-adjacent movie we shall not mention (ok, it was Madame Web) - or is she a musician?

Why not both?   This is her debut single, from 2019, and it is a Latin-tingled pop masterpiece, a modern Spanglish classic.  

But also, she was the first live action Dora the Explorer.  

But also, this is a great song.  

This song was from 2019, just before the pandemic, and so, when trying to promote the song, quarantine got in the way.  

So she did an at-home concert which was, no lie, pretty cool.  

She did manage to sneak in a few performances pre-lockdown, including this one in San Francisco on March 5, 2020.  

She has a soulful presence.  

12 September 2025 - Ultra Vivid Scene ft. Kim Deal - Special One

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the 4AD label roster was a tight-knit group.  

Kurt Ralske was a New York City-based guitarist who started a band that made compelling alt-pop music.  That band was mostly him, and called Ultra Vivid Scene.  

Kim Deal was a Dayton, Ohio-based bassist who started a band with a bunch of people from Massachusetts called the Pixies and then another band with someone from Rhode Island called the Breeders and then moved back to Dayton to do the band with her sister. 

All of these bands were signed to 4AD Records (including the former AND future bands of the someone from Rhode Island) and, well, it was natural that they'd work together.  From the Ultra Vivid Scene album Joy 1967-1990, reflecting Ralske's birth year and the year the album was released, the song is just a sweet pop love ditty, simply constructed, with Deal contributing vocals.

UVS wouldn't be around much longer, but this flash in the sun is a song that should be remembered fondly. 

11 September 2025 - The Hooters - All You Zombies

In 1985, a group from Philadelphia called The Hooters had a song they wrote called "All You Zombies" become a pretty minor hit.  It was a great pop-rock song with a video tailor-made for MTV. 

Of course, they originally recorded it in 1981 and performed it live an awful lot before they were a national hit.  Here they are on Delaware television.

It's a little different, but you can tell - it's the same song. 

They're still performing the song together - and Eric Bazillian and Rob Hyman are still the core of this band.  Here they are in 2023, in Germany, sounding as strong as ever.

10 September 2025 - Cyndi Lauper - Girls Just Want To Have Fun

Cyndi Lauper rose to fame in the 1980s with this energetic song that's all about girl power.... that was written and originally performed by a man, Robert Hazard, who wrote and performed the song from the male perspective.

Lauper flipped the script, upped the poppiness, recruited The Hooters for her backing band, and a classic was born. 

Oh, and that's really her mom.

A decade later, when it was time for that greatest hits albums, Lauper rerecorded the song with a reggae flair.  Was it as good?  No.  Was it different?  Yep.

Yep, this is part of Dawn's concert series.  She sure did see Cyndi Lauper in Toronto.  And this is probably Lauper's last tour, so this is one of her last live performances of the song.  

9 September 2025 - Mitski - Washing Machine Heart

Mitski was born in Japan to an American father and a Japanese mother and is really a citizen of the world.  

She lives in Nashville now.   But I don't know that I'd call her Tenneseean.

Anyway, this 2018 song, from her album Be The Cowboy, is one of her best known - never released as a single but charted overseas anyway.  It's kind of a weird ballad about.... well, a washing machine?  Domestic bliss?  The exact opposite of domestic bliss?   At any rate, the throbbing keyboard and steady, hard beat are somewhat jarring up against the lyrics.  

And yet it works.  And you're going to be humming this song all day long. 

Somehow, the live performance at the 2022 Glastonbury music festival in the UK is even more jarring.  SHE DOES NOT BLINK.  Also, the audience knows the words because, well, it was a hit. 

Her fans know the song so well, she doesn't even need to sing it, and often, she doesn't.

Now THAT'S iconic.