“New Girl Now”: The Radio Contest That Launched a Working Band

The contest

In 1983, Toronto rock station Q107 ran its “Homegrown” contest, inviting Ontario bands to submit original songs. Honeymoon Suite — fronted by Johnny Dee and Derry Grehan, built on the Niagara Falls club circuit — entered “New Girl Now.” The prize: a proper recording and rotation on the station. The song, with its rubbery riff and radio-perfect chorus, did what radio-perfect songs do when given oxygen: it connected. Stations across Canada picked it up, Warner signed the band, and the self-titled debut (1984) went gold on the strength of a single that had effectively test-marketed itself.

The run

Honeymoon Suite turned out to be far more than a contest fluke. The Big Prize (1985) delivered “Feel It Again” — a Canadian top-ten and their biggest international record, with a video in heavy MuchMusic rotation — and “What Does It Take,” while the band toured relentlessly through Canada and the US, opening for the era's biggest acts. Racing After Midnight (1988) kept the wheels on. They were never critics' darlings; they were a working band in the best Canadian tradition — blue-collar rock played at full commitment, hooks first, and it worked.

The endurance

“New Girl Now” never really left. It survives on classic-rock playlists, in the band's own shows (where it functions as a singalong invocation), and as a case study in the era when a single radio station could still mint a career. The Homegrown contest itself became part of Toronto radio lore — proof, in the pre-algorithm age, that a good song placed in the right hands was still the whole business plan. Honeymoon Suite still tours the circuit that made them, and the song still lands the same way it did in 1983: instantly.