canadian songs: the inevitable

I don't think all these songs are bad. Hell, I think some of them are damn catchy. But the fact remains that if you were living in Canada around the time these songs came out, you could not freakin' avoid them. Some of them were more ubiquitous than others, but I'd say they all wore out their welcome to some degree.

And some of these songs? Are bad. BAD. You want to know what's worse than manufactured boy bands? Canadian manufactured boy bands. We don't even have Max Martin to help us churn out the pap. Where Americans put pop clichés, catchy hooks and sweet vocal harmonies, we put dirty innuendoes and superfluous synth effects. We hope this will keep people from noticing that, hello, our boy bands suck.

And then there's - heaven help us - Canadian white-boy rap.

I don't know much about rap or hip-hop. I can't tell mediocre rap from good rap, so I don't think I'm the person to guide you to the good stuff. There actually is a lot of good, respectable Canadian rap and hip-hop out there. It just isn't on this CD. No, what's on the CD is the stuff I heard.

Also not on this CD: bad Canadian music you already know. Do I have to explain about Bryan Adams, Céline Dion, Nickelback, Shania Twain, or the schmaltzier efforts of Sarah McLachlan and Alanis Morrissette? Didn't think so, no.

Anyway, here's my sampling, sent to one lucky(?) CD-swap participant in Washington.

Sky - Love Song
Montreal. Sky is notable mainly for inserting really weird lyrics ("we think he's alive but the flies make me wonder why"?!) into their fairly generic boy-band songs. Amy tells me "Some Kinda Wonderful" (about falling in love with the devil) is better and more popular than this song, but this is the one I heard all the time in 1998-99. Warning: this song gets stuck in your head something fierce.

Glass Tiger - Don't Forget Me (When I'm Gone)
Newmarket, Ontario. (It's near Toronto; don't feel bad for not knowing about it - there isn't much there.) Ah, old-school CanCrap. ("Don't forget me when I'm gone...for heaven's sake!") I kind of like this song. You know how you hear some songs so often in your childhood that you develop an affection for them? Yeah. This song played in every drugstore, every dentist's office, every whatever in the late '80s and early '90s. So I like it.

Our Lady Peace - Somewhere Out There
Toronto (I think). This isn't a bad song. I kinda like it, in the same way I kinda like, you know, Vertical Horizon songs or whatever. All OLP's songs kind of sound the same (this was brought home to us at a multi-band concert on Citadel Hill - they played for about five hundred hours), but it's not a bad same. Just an angsty post-grunge same. Teenyboppers love OLP. They go nuts for OLP and its angstily cute lead singer. They mosh, and then they get hurt because they don't know how to mosh, and us old folks (who also don't know how to mosh, but didn't try) laugh at them. "Somewhere Out There" is OLP's latest big-ass single.

Shawn Desman - Get Ready
Toronto (which, I might mention, I have never referred to as "the T-dot"). The video for this song is in heavy rotation on MuchMusic right now. It's not very good.

Boomtang Boys - Squeeze Toy
Toronto. This song is really fun for the first two minutes of the first time you hear it (which for me was in early 1999). Then your ears start to bleed.

B4-4 - Get Down
Toronto. And...I'm sorry. You know what I said about Canadian boy-band music being just like American boy-band music, only dirtier and not as good? Yeah. Also, the bands are uglier. B4-4 has a pair of identical twins in it. Ugly identical twins. I'm just...really, really sorry. You don't deserve this. No one deserves this. But for all of summer 2000, we got this. Got it in spades. I'm sorry.

Bran Van 3000 - Astounded
Montreal. I actually really like this. It's dance, you know? It's catchy, it's fun, and I have no idea what mix is on the CD, but whatever, you get the point.

Len - Steal My Sunshine
Toronto. A lot of people hate this song. I don't. I think it's good. It makes me think of the Toronto beaches in summer, which is nice. And it's sweet and wistful and catchy. And it mentions butter tarts. Butter tarts are delicious.

The New York Times ran a piece about how much they liked this song when it came out (1999, I think). Weird. The video for this song is wicked cute and will probably make you like it better.

Wave - California
Toronto (I think - websites about this group are hard to find). This song, which was unavoidable in the summer of 2001, has the dumbest lyrics ever. Also, the extra-dumb line about "sipping on tequila" got it banned from a lot of "family-friendly" radio stations. Yes, someone was actually offended by this song. The mind boggles. The eyes roll.

Wave is a pop duo featuring one normal-looking guy and one guy who looks like a small blond extraterrestrial. The video for this song was featured in the 2001 edition of Fromage, the annual MuchMusic show where Ed the Sock disses the year's cheesiest videos.

The Moffatts - Misery
Vancouver. The Moffatts are Canada's Hanson. Need I say more? Thanks.

Tal Bachman - She's So High
Vancouver. Tal Bachman owes a fair bit of his (moderate) success to the fact that he's the son of Randy Bachman, he of the Guess Who ("American Woman") and Bachman Turner Overdrive. "She's So High" was unavoidable in the summer of '99 (which, pop-music-wise at least, was a really fun summer).

I kind of like it. It's pretty generic, sure, but it's a very cute catchy teen love song kind of thing. Of course, it was written by a thirtysomething married guy, but whatever. He has a nice falsetto.

Ricky J - No Means No
Montreal. Oh, God. Canadian white boy rap. (This guy actually has an album called "Whiteboy" and...oh, is he ever.) Eeeeewww. Once again, I'm sorry.

Voices In Public - It's Just My Luck
Barrie, Ontario (a little over an hour from Toronto; again, don't feel bad). Another boyband. And...holy shit, are we ever scraping the bottom of the barrel here. I don't know why anyone ever liked this song, but it sure got a lot of play (1999 or 2000, I forget when).

Prozzäk - Sucks To Be You
If I admit to finding Prozzäk amusing, does that make me evil?

Prozzäk doesn't exist as an actual band. It's a pair of cartoon characters, a side project for two members of the Toronto-based Philosopher Kings. And a lot of people hate it. And that's about it.

soulDecision - Ooo It's Kinda Crazy
Vancouver. They've had worse hits than this song, but I decided to take pity and put in the least horrible. Yet another boyband-type thing, headed up by a very, very effeminate young blond man (you know the blond guy from O-Town?). soulDecision (yeah, I know, the capitalization is retarded) have renamed themselves a few times...and taken this song with them...and it's a big gooey boyband mess.

Snow - Joke Thing
Toronto. Yet another Fromage feature. White-boy rap/reggae at its "finest."

Sugar Jones - Days Like That
Ah, Popstars. You got O-Town and Eden's Crush (who?), and we got...these people.

Yeah, I realise most of these bands are from major cities. That's because that's where the build-a-band people are. And without build-a-band people, you can't have build-a-bands, can you? Right. There we are. Tour #1 through Canadian crap concludes right here.