It’s that time of year! The Polaris Music Prize long list is here.
It was announced today at 6 p.m. The jury of 200+ musicfolk from across Canada voted on 250+ albums suggested by their peers. There is no qualification criteria other than Canadian citizenship / landed immigrant status, and the album must have been released between April 1, 2023 and May 1, 2024.
Jurors now vote on these 40 albums to compile a shortlist, announced July 11. Winner will be announced at the gala September 17. (I’ll be giving away some tickets in a future post: stay tuned!)
Here’s my annual look at how the long list breaks down, demographically and otherwise. Last year’s was here. I’ve been doing some version of this for the past 18 years.
Mistakes are inevitable, corrections are welcome:
Familiar faces
Previous winners: 3
Jeremy Dutcher (2018), Karkwa (2010), Kaytranada (2016)
Previous shortlisters (not including winners): 4
Dominique Fils-Aimé (shortlisted twice), DijahSB, Tobi, Elisapie
Previous longlisters: 17.
Allie X, Big Brave, Charlotte Cardin, Corridor, Helena Deland, Shane Ghostkeeper, Ken Mode, La Force, Cindy Lee (both as Cindy Lee and with Women), Terra Lightfoot, Loony, Myst Milano, Nyssa, Pelada, Peter Peter (2x), Allison Russell, Super Duty Tough Work
Previous Heritage Prize winners: 1. Beverly Glenn-Copeland
So: 14/40 artists are new to Polaris this year.
Last year: 1.5 previous winners, 11 shortlisters, 9 longlisters, 19 Polaris newbies.
Geography:
Montreal: 15 Big Brave, Corridor, Helena Deland, Elisapie, Annie-Claude Deschênes, Dominque Fils-Aimé, Karkwa, La Force, La Sécurité, Nobro, Pelada, Peter Peter, Population II, Arielle Soucy, Teke::Teke
Toronto: 9 Bambii, Beaches, DijahSB, Ducks Ltd., Sean Leon, Loony, Nyssa, Tobi, Tomb Mold
Calgary: 2 Shane Ghostkeeper, Cindy Lee
Vancouver: 2 Hailey Blais, Devours
Winnipeg: 2 Ken Mode, Super Duty Tough Work
Ottawa: 1 Talk
Hamilton: 1 Terra Lightfoot (the Steeltown queen now lives in Haliburton area, though)
New Brunswick!: 3 Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Jeremy Dutcher, Jon McKiel
Nomad: 5 Allie X (Toronto/L.A.), Charlotte Cardin (Montreal, Paris), Kaytraminé (Montreal, L.A.), Myst Milano (Edmonton, Toronto), Allison Russell (Montreal, Vancouver, Chicago, Nashville). Arguably Russell is the only real nomad, and two others are Montreal and the remaining two are Toronto—so that doesn’t change the fact that Montreal still comes out on top by almost 2:1 this year, in the rivalry between the two historically dominant Polaris cities. The bilingual city does even better if you count Dutcher in his current locale of Montreal.
Last year was 13 Montrealers, 12 Torontonians, 3 Calgarians, 2 Vancouverites, 2 Winnipeggers, and a bunch of others. That’s about normal. This year Toronto definitely takes a hit.
Gender:
23/40 are female or female-fronted (Big Brave, Teke::Teke) or one-half of duo (Pelada) or non-binary (Myst Milano, Beverly Glenn-Copeland), to the best of my knowledge.
That’s the highest that I can recall. Last year it was 18.
New Canada:
To the best of my extremely limited knowledge, large amounts of visual supposition and no DNA tests, there are 14 non-“white” nominees (or bands with prominent members as such), three of which are Indigenous (Jeremy Dutcher, Elisapie, Shane Ghostkeeper)
Last year there were 18.
Genre:
Genre is over! But here goes…:
Rock: 11. The Beaches, Corridor, Ducks Ltd., Karkwa, La Sécurité, Terra Lightfoot, Jon McKiel, Nobro, Nyssa, Population II, Teke::Teke
R&B/Hip hop: 8. Bambii, DijahSB, Dominique Fils-Aimé, Kaytraminé, Sean Leon, Myst Milano, Super Duty Tough Work, Tobi
Folk-ish: 6. Hailey Blais, Helena Deland, Elisapie, Shane Ghostkeeper, Allison Russell, Arielle Soucy
Pop: 5. Charlotte Cardin, Devours, La Force, Loony, Talk
Electro: 4. Allie X, Annie-Claude Deschênes, Pelada, Peter Peter
Aggressive/heavy: 3. Big Brave, KEN Mode, Tomb Mold. None of whom really sound anything like each other, other than big guitar sounds. Here’s my fave of those three:
Other: 3. Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Jeremy Dutcher, Cindy Lee
No country music this year. No jazz or even jazz-adjacent. No instrumental artists. And arguably nothing terribly too far “out there.” UPDATE: Shane Ghostkeeper is more than a little bit country. Kind of shocked that record is on here and not Corb Lund’s.
Linguistics:
5 francophones, two of whom sing in English at least half the time, Annie-Claude Deschênes and La Sécurité. Population II, Arielle Soucy and Peter Peter sing in French. Francophone Charlotte Cardin’s album is entirely in English.
2 Indigenous languages: Jeremy Dutcher, Elisapie
1 Spanish: Pelada
Last year: 4 francophones, 3 instrumentalists, 1 Spanish
Popularity Contest:
Polaris is always the domain of artists primarily on the margins.
The Beaches, Charlotte Cardin and Talk are the only three longlisted artists you will hear on mainstream radio. Or at the Junos:
This year international (and Canadian) headlines will focus on eight names (those three and five others) who are recognized around the world, albeit mostly in niche audiences. These are the other faves of global critics:
Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Ducks Ltd., Kaytranada, Allison Russell, Tomb Mold
Talk will never be a household name, no matter how popular he is, because his name is… Talk. Who’s next year’s breakout artist? Eat? Sleep? Breathe?
Last year: 5 (Daniel Caesar, Alvvays, Jessie Reyez, Feist, Andy Shauf)
Age:
To the best of my knowledge, Beverly Glenn-Copeland is 80 years old, making him one of the three oldest longlisters ever (Leonard Cohen and Buffy Sainte-Marie being the others).
But who is the youngest? Is it possible it’s the Beaches, a band that has been around for a decade but who are now still only about 27? Talk is 28. Everyone else is 29 at the youngest (Charlotte Cardin, Loony, Hailey Blais). Even Bambii is 33. Sean Leon is 31. As a geezer, I find all this refreshing: age and experience over the thrill of a new ingenue.
Look who’s 40+! Elisapie (47), Allison Russell (42), Karkwa (mid-40s), La Force (who I first saw on stage 20+ years ago), Jon McKiel (whose first record was 18 years ago), likely Shane Ghostkeeper (who first longlisted 15 years ago), maybe the guys in Tomb Mold.
Last year: about the same, there were seven artists definitely over 40 but no one remotely close to 80. Youngest: 27.
Hall of famers:
This extremely unofficial ongoing exercise of mine awards 3 points for a win, 2 points for a shortlist, and 1 point for long list.
No one this year is remotely close to toppling the existing order, which I outlined last year here. In short: Shad is the all-time champ, despite never having won (he’s shortlisted five times). Tied for 2nd are Arcade Fire, Feist, Cadence Weapon and Caribou. This year, if Kaytranada’s Katryaminé project ends up winning the prize (I find that unlikely), he’d be vaulted onto the 3rd tier (with Drake, Owen Pallett and Snotty Nose Rez Kids). He’s won once before and been on another shortlist once.
Not a big year for the hall of fame, which means: next generation is slowly moving up. That’s healthy.
There are 40 records on the list: about 10 of them I don’t care for at all. The only shocking omission, to me, is Cadence Weapon, a recent winner (2021) who put out an excellent album this past April—an album better than the one he won for, IMO. And yet: no love. This year, anyway: to accommodate slow-burning albums that come out right before voting deadlines, there’s a Polaris loophole that allows April releases that don’t longlist to eligible again next year. So it’s possible—though unlikely—that Cadence Weapon will have such a Rollercoaster of critical opinion that we’ll still be talking about it in 2025.
Below are my predictions for the shortlist, all of which I’m happy to be excited about to some degree (that’s definitely not always the case), and some others I’d actually like to see shortlist:
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