Blog
February 10th 2009
Junos? No one cares.
The television highlight of last weekend was the Grammys. I didn’t watch them. The Grammys (of course) barely ever feature any Canadian artist - we are especially ignored in the major categories - which is my excuse for ignoring them.
Luckily Canada has its own set of pretentious music awards: the Junos.
The nominations were announced last week and once again were almost totally devoid of talent in any of the major categories. I understand that these awards are based on dollar figures and record sales, so I guess that means someone is buying music from the nominees, but I do seriously wonder who is investing in the latest Simple Plan album - do Canadians really have taste that poor? (Furthermore how is it possible that Simple Plan even has a latest album? Why haven’t they given up yet? But I digress.)
The Juno awards are supposed to showcase the best of Canadian music. “The best” is barely relevant when Celine Dion, Hedley, Nickelback and Michael Buble have swept through all of the major categories, leaving me at a loss to identify who listens to these “artists” outside of Vegas, generically bad radio stations and elevators. The only saving graces amidst these almost laughably bad records are Sam Roberts (who won’t win, but should) and, through some strange and wondrous twist of fate, Tokyo Police Club.
The Juno Awards are out of touch for a number of reasons, perhaps best exemplified in the New Group category which is offering the Stills, a band that has been making music for about nine years. The only place to find a full list of solidly good music this year is, like past years, the Alternative Album categories which give us Kathleen Edwards, Hawksley Workman and some truly great albums by Black Mountain, Chad VanGaalen and Plants and Animals.
For the last ten or so years, Canada has been offering up a healthy, steady stream of fantastic music first set off by super collectives Arcade Fire and The New Pornographers: but for the most part that music is failing to break into mainstream radio. Prizes like the Polaris are recognizing the future of the Canadian independent music scene (based solely on artistic merit, thank goodness), and it’s too bad the Junos are stuck so far behind.
I know it sounds pretentious to suggest that half of Canada has appalling music taste to want to buy the albums of Nickelback, Hedley or Simple Plan but that just seems to be the case. Maybe if we gave the Polaris the opportunity to put on a show that isn’t broadcast only on radio, and gave the arts more funding rather than cutting it (I’m looking at you, Stephen Harper), Canada would find out how much talent it really has within its borders. So listen to something like CBC’s Radio 3, get educated, and save the Junos from themselves.
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