18 March 2022 - Jayli Wolf - Child Of The Government

In the US, we gloss over Native American issues.  

In Canada, they make relatively popular songs about them.

Jayli Wolf grew up thinking she was half-Mexican - but found out she was half First Nations at the age of eight and has reconnected with those roots as an adult.  And, with this, her breakthrough single, she took First Nations issues head on, detailing for a broad audience the atrocity known as the Sixties Scoop, when a lot of native Canadians were removed from their communities by the Canadian government, with Catholic Church assistance.

For those who can't read the text at 3:13 fast enough:

"From the 1950s into the 1990s the Canadian Government & the Catholic Church were responsible for taking, or “scooping” more than 20,000 First Nation, Métis, and Inuit children from their families and communities; known as The Sixties Scoop. They were placed in foster homes or adopted (accounts of children even being sold) into non-Indigenous families across Canada, the United States, & beyond.

Along with the loss of cultural identity, the government went so far as to change some children’s true ethnicity on file. Many experienced severe sexual, physical, and emotional abuse.

Jayli’s father was one of these children."

The song is delivered in a somewhat detached style, but is important enough for the CBC to call it one of the top ten Canadian songs of 2021.  

17 March 2022 - The Tragically Hip - Bobcaygeon

How the hell can I do a Maple Leaf March without the Canadian treasure that was the Tragically Hip?

This may be their best known song in Canada.  It is considered one of their greatest. Like almost every Hip song, it went nowhere in the States.  In this case, it might be a good thing.  Let me explain.

In the early 1990s, there were a series of antisemitic riots in Toronto, when members of the Neo-Nazi group the Heritage Front engaged in a street fight with a group calling themselves Anti-Racist Action.  A lot of Americans would never associate such violent antisemitism with Canada - and yet, it really happened, and this was the second time (there were similar outbursts in 1933).  

These riots didn't happen in Bobcaygeon - which was chosen just because it rhymed with "constellation" - but the video makes clear reference to them, and the themes of the song reference them so directly.

At any rate, Bobcaygeon relished the reference in the song, hosting a large viewing party for the Hip's farewell concert.

This was not Bobcaygeon.  This was Kingston.  But trust me - Bobcaygeon was watching.

16 March 2021 - Maisy Stella & Lennon Stella - While You Sleep

In November 2020, Lennon Stella posted a video on Instagram of a lullaby she had written and performed with her sister Maisy.

This song ended up being fully fleshed out on the soundtrack for the 2021 critically acclaimed film The Fallout.  Maisy got top billing on the album, so she gets it here, too.

16 March 2022 - Lennon Stella - Kissing Other People

I tend to write my posts in advance.  And, for March 16th, I had a pair of posts planned and written.

Then, I got busy and, well, I had to move one of the posts to February 1st when I didn't get it posted in time.  Well, since they went together, I had to move the OTHER post to February 2nd.  

That turned out to be the best thing I could have done for this month of Canadian music.  You see, I didn't want this year to be a complete repeat of last year - I wanted new artists.  And, so, as I told you a few days ago, I went hunting through the Juno nominees list.  

Well, I wrote up the whole month of posts, and here I sit, reviewing my posts.

I had forgotten March 16th. 

Not wanting to just have music from the last year, I decided to go back a year to the 2021 Juno nominees.

And right there, under the "Single of the Year" nominees, was none other than Nashville star and Stella sister Lennon Stella.

This was the nominated song.  It's a pop gem from an artist I didn't expect to post this month.  But how could I not?

The song also works in a more countrified acoustic version. Shot at Hutton Hotel in Nashville, it's a sublime performance.

15 March 2022 - The Stellas - In This House

The Stellas are a husband and wife country duo from Whitby, Ontario. Brad and MaryLynne Stella.  

This song was a 2013 Canadian Country Music Association winner for the duo, who harmonize so well. It's a beautiful love song about making room for the one you love. 

Brad and MaryLynne have two daughters.  Their names are Lennon and Maisy.  

Yeah.  I'm doing a thing.

14 March 2022 - Bedouin Soundclash ft. Cœur de Pirate - Brutal Hearts

Knowing that I planned to post THIS song and NOT do what I did last week again, I did check.  No.  Bedouin Soundclash has not collaborated with Lights on anything that I could find. But they DO have an album called Light The Horizon, and today's song is from that album.

Anyway, they are a band - a Canadian band, from Toronto.  Their lead vocalist, Jay Malinowski, along with the rest of the band members, co-wrote the song, as well as all the songs from their 2010 album Light The Horizon. So, why single out this one guy?  

Oh, I think you know why. 

Anyway, the song is cool and smoky and ska-infused and audibly interesting.  

By the way, yes, they have performed it live.  And it's spectacular.

13 March 2022 - MONOWHALES - All or Nothing

I know I said this #MapleLeafMarch was not as much fun as last year.

Then I found the Juno nominees list. Americans - Juno Awards - they're like the Grammys but they give out bowls of poutine instead of little gramophones.  

Geez, people, I was kidding.  It's not poutine.

Meet 2022 Breakthrough Group of the Year nominee MONOWHALES.  From Toronto, Ontario, Canada, they've had some success on alternative radio in a country where they are required to play a certain percentage of Canadian artists on the radio.

That's true, by the way.  15%-35%, depending on the station's content.  Wanna know why we can fill a month every year with just Canadian music?  That's a large part of the reason why.

However, it doesn't hurt that a lot of the music is really really good.  You don't get nominated for awards as an independent artist if you are making crap.  And this song, full of emotion delivered by vocalist Sally Shaar, is anything but crap.  

MONOWHALES have a habit of performing an acoustic version of this song, and here is that.

If you saw my social posts, you saw that there was a little Canadian surprise at the end.  Here it is.  It's too short for Totally Covered, but I couldn't not share it.