The histories, scenes, and songs behind the map — researched from the same sources that power the station, written for humans rather than algorithms.
Every decade, the music industry crowns a "sound" that belongs to a city — Motown had Detroit, grunge had Seattle, bounce had New Orleans. The 2010s belonged to Toronto. Not as a…
They backed Ronnie Hawkins in Toronto dives when they were teenagers. They barnstormed with Bob Dylan when audiences booed him for going electric. They disappeared into a pink house in…
Ask most English Canadians to name a Quebec song and you'll get "Mon pays" — or possibly nothing at all. That's the gap this article exists to close. Quebec's…
Every profile of Toronto's rap takeover starts in 2009. That's like telling the history of flight beginning with the jumbo jet. Canadian hip-hop is nearly a decade older than…
Between 2001 and 2010, Montreal produced the densest run of consequential indie rock in the world: Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade, The Unicorns, Islands, The Stills, Stars, Malajube, Besnard…
She left Canada in 1965 and spent the height of her fame an hour from the ocean in California. And yet interviewers who tried to place her in Laurel Canyon always got corrected: Joni…
In 2012, Carly Rae Jepsen had the biggest song on earth, and the entire music industry agreed on what she was: a one-hit novelty act with a shelf life of about eighteen months. A decade…
No artist in history has name-checked a city as thoroughly as Drake has name-checked Toronto. Streets, intersections, housing projects, high schools, plazas, freeway exits — his catalog…
In April 2023, a mysterious song called "Heart on My Sleeve" appeared on streaming platforms: a convincingly Drake-like voice trading verses with an equally convincing fake The…
In 1985, a song with a bubbling synth bassline, a four-on-the-floor kick, and a vocal pitched somewhere between passion and circuitry climbed dance charts across Europe. “Your Love” by Lime…
They looked like a band shipped in from London and sounded like the future of Toronto. Platinum Blonde — singer Mark Holmes, guitarist Sergio Galli, bassist Kenny MacLean, and drummer Chris…
Honeymoon Suite's origin story is the classic Canadian rock fairy tale with a twist of luck that now sounds like legend: a band from Niagara Falls enters a Toronto radio station's…
In 1984, a 21-year-old from Belleville, Ontario — born Karen Lynn Greening — released a song that named its own mythology. “Metal Queen” was Lee Aaron's coronation anthem: a…
For one bright moment in the early 90s, Toronto's Queen Street strip had a band that looked and sounded like it had been beamed in from the Sunset Strip — and MuchMusic gave it the…
The Payolas' story has two distinct lives, and “Call It Love” belongs to the stranger second one. The Vancouver band — Paul Hyde and Bob Rock (yes, that Bob Rock) among them — began as…
The first thing you hear is the guitar — a thick, descending riff that sounds like a wall falling slowly — and then Ian Thornley's voice arrives, sandpaper and ache in equal measure.…
By every rule of rock arithmetic, a duo of guitar and drums shouldn't sound like an army. Japandroids — Brian King and David Prowse, from Vancouver — spent the early 2010s proving…
Some songs haunt their own authors. “Weighty Ghost” arrived in 2007 as the first single from Wintersleep's *Welcome to the Night Sky* and immediately did something no one in…
Victoria, British Columbia is known for many things; launching an international dance-punk band is not traditionally one of them. Hot Hot Heat — twitchy, wired, and unfailingly melodic …
Few songs have lived two full lives as different as “Hayloft.” Mother Mother recorded it in 2008 for their album *O My Heart* — a twitchy, harmony-drenched indie-rock track with a sinister…
There is a particular species of Canadian rock song — unhurried, sincere, built for dorm rooms and long drives — and “Stereo” by the Watchmen is one of its purest specimens. Released in…
The Headstones arrived in 1993 like a bar fight set to music: Kingston, Ontario's loudest export, fronted by Hugh Dillon — a singer who delivered every lyric like he'd been…
Treble Charger had already lived one full life before “Red.” The band began in the early 90s as a noisy, fuzz-drenched indie outfit — darlings of campus radio with albums like *nc17* and…
It is statistically probable that someone in Canada is doing the Bird Dance right now — at a wedding, a community hall, a hockey intermission, a family reunion where the DJ knows exactly…
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