What are the hot new sounds in Canada this summer? I have no clue! However, I have been listening repeatedly to a top 100 Canadian songs playlist on Spotify, composed of classic Canadian rock from the 70's through the 90's. Essentially these are the songs I grew up with, and it didn't matter whether you loved or hated them, because they were everywhere and they were the songs you absorbed simply by being near a radio while growing up in Canada during those decades.
Funny how many of these songs sound better than ever, probably because we all eventually revert back to idolizing the stuff we heard when we were young. But on the other hand, my six year old spontaneously breaks into singing BTO's "Taking Care of Business", so perhaps there is an objective case to be made for the indisputable greatness of this music compared to whatever the kids listen to these days.
Amongst the Guess Who and Bryan Adams hits (guess what? I can even tolerate "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" these days), still sleek and edgy new wave classics (Rough Trade's "High School Confidential", Spoons' "Nova Heart"), hearing these songs gives me a reason to revisit The Tragically Hip and their complete lack of success in America. "Fully Completely" was supposed to be the breakthrough, but with "Nevermind" and "Ten" blowing up on alternative radio in 1992, what chance did the Hip have with MOR pub rock and Gord Downie's twisted introspective ramblings? The production is really thin and reedy too, projecting too many remnants of dated 1980's production. The drums are absurdly gated and plastic-sounding, the guitar too clean, the vocals too upfront. There's simply no bite to the music, nothing to grab the attention of the average Soundgarden or Alice In Chains fan. Perhaps the hope was they'd hop on with REM's audience, but REM had been steadily building their US fanbase for a decade to that point. The Tragically Hip had no history there. "Fully Completely" is still a great album once you invite it in, but they needed to blast down the doors to get noticed in America in 1992 and this wasn't the album for it.
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