Guilty Pleasures: Canadian Music Critics Confess

The confessions

1. "Steal My Sunshine" (Len, 1999) — defended here before (see our feature), confessed again: the sample-driven, sun-drunk, two-brothers-from-Toronto mirage that soundtracked everyone's 1999 summer. The criticism-proof record: analyze it and it dissolves; play it and it's July.
2. "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" (Crash Test Dummies, 1994) — the baritone dirge about childhood trauma that a nation hummed at weddings (see our feature). Confession: we still find the humming irresistible. The humming is the song's genius.
3. "Informer" (Snow, 1993) — the Don Jail to #1 pipeline (see our feature): patois as pure phonetic pleasure, the hook as participation machine. Critics explain it; the world chanted it. The world was right.
4. "Photograph" (Nickelback, 2005) — even the reappraisal debates (see our feature) can admit it: the nostalgia-single is engineered — the frame-by-frame lookback, the arena chorus — and engineering, done at that level, is its own pleasure. We won't say we skip it. We don't skip it.
5. "Maneater" (Hall & Oates)? no — Canadian: "Girlfriend" (Avril Lavigne, 2007) — the chant-along as pop's highest form (see our feature): the "hey hey you you" that every critic sang in 2007 and every critic will deny singing. We sang it. You sang it. The case rests.
6. "Sometimes When We Touch" (Dan Hill, 1977) — the uncomfortable classic (see our feature): confession — the bridge still works, the key change still detonates, and the discomfort is part of the pleasure. Some songs you love and wince at. Those are the honest ones.
7. The novelty shelf — "The Bird Dance," "Mony Mony"? no — Canadian novelty: the Bird Dance (see our feature), "Kung Fu Fighting"? no (British). Confession: "The Bird Dance" at a wedding still works. It worked in 1982. It works forever. Participation is the genre's defense.
8. The soft-rock confession — the 70s–80s AM-radio canon (see our features): the yacht-rock-adjacent Canadian singles — the glossy, over-produced, impossibly smooth records the critics of the day dismissed and the nation memorized. Confession: smooth is a craft. We respect it now. We respected it then; we just couldn't say so.

The defense (such as it is)

Guilty pleasures are the records that remind you taste is physiology before it's argument: the dopamine doesn't read the reviews. And in Canada's case, the guilty-pleasure shelf (see our one-hit-wonder feature) is disproportionately ours — the novelty hits, the soft-rock smoothness, the engineered earworms are the country's secret pop tradition, the one the canon debates can't touch. Confess yours. The tradition is participation. (We're not sorry.)