Editor’s note: An earlier version of this post was emailed to subscribers. Please disregard and refer to this one.
It was around this time last year that “Blame Brett” landed like a bomb.
(This week’s live music listings are here, with a new post tomorrow. The Beaches play the Ontario Place ampitheatre this Thursday August 22, their biggest headlining hometown show to date.)
The lead single from the Beaches’ second full-length album, the similarly titled Blame My Ex, was three minutes of pop perfection, both in melody and execution, staking its claim as one of the finest power-pop songs of the last 50 years.
If you’re under 35, you definitely know all this and can stop reading here. Who am I kidding? You’re not under 35. I know my readership. A friend with teenage daughters mocks the fact that I’m very late to this party.
This here 52-year-old couldn’t stop listening to “Blame Brett.” I couldn’t remember the last time I was that obsessed with a single current pop song. Some of those reasons were personal. These lyrics definitely aren’t age- or gender-specific. If anything, the older—and more divorced—you and your friends are, the more crushing heartbreak and grief you’ve been through, the harder these lyrics hit.
“Blame Brett” was catchy as hell, but it was also astute and self-aware and funny: the opening verse has the narrator claiming she’s “Done being the sad girl / I’m done dating rock stars / from now on, only actors and tall boys in the Raptors”—as if the latter two are going to be any more stable or less vain than rock stars. Extra points for the Toronto reference.
The song makes singer/bassist Jordan Miller and her bandmates/co-writers direct descendants of Liz Phair, even if they sound more like her peers Veruca Salt (when was the last time you revelled in this ridiculously awesome sauce of the mid-’90s?).
In fact, the Beaches could literally be the children of Liz Phair: Exile in Guyville came out in 1993; the oldest Beach is 30. Do the math.
The rest of “Blame Brett” finds the narcissistic narrator well aware of how badly she’s spiralling after a particularly bad breakup:
I'm sorry in advance
I'm only gonna treat you bad
I'm probably gonna let you down
I'm probably gonna sleep around…
So sorry in advance
Before you take off your pants
I wouldn't let me near your friends
I wouldn't let me near your dad
Don't blame me, blame Brett / Blame my ex, blame my ex, blame my ex
But you know this. You’ve heard the song. How could you not? It’s been ubiquitous for the last 12 months.
What was even better: the rest of the album was just as good. Ten songs in just over 30 minutes. Only one song on Blame My Ex is over four minutes long. Half of them are under three. Among many other things, the Beaches know brevity.
They also know their pop history. None of them are older than 30. Earlier material sounded like fans who grew up in the late 2000s, early 2010s: Robyn, Franz Ferdinand, the Killers, Billy Talent. The Beaches’ debut album, 2017’s Late Show, was produced by Emily Haines and James Shaw of Metric, a match that made perfect sense.
Metric once opened for the Rolling Stones; the Beaches have now done so several times, a fate that was probably sealed on this 2017 track, cut when the Beaches were all about 20 years old and still thinking mostly of Sloan:
This time out, there’s more of an ’80s new wave influence: definite shades of the Cure, New Order and, hey, why not: Platinum Blonde. And, yes, the Go-Go’s—a cliché applied to every all-woman band, but in this case it’s true, especially on this record.
(I never noticed how much Jordan Miller’s range and style owes to Robert Smith until her band covered this song.)
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And so these young Toronto ladies leapt immediately from “most promising” to “completely arrived.” Thanks to the virality of “Blame Brett” and the follow-up singles, they’re now conquering the world.
Even grumpy critics (ahem) were impressed: Blame My Ex is shortlisted for the Polaris prize. Not without controversy. I’ll get to that in a bit.
While contemplating my Polaris ballot, I was challenged to explain why, exactly, this record struck such a chord with me. Silly rock critic: don’t just sit there and say something is “awesome” and “is better than most others” and pushes your pleasure points with easy references. What do you actually like about it? What makes this well-executed album stand out in its genre? Why should we take the Beaches seriously?
Well, first of all, why not? They’re excellent at what they do, full stop. I’ll never tell you the Beaches are an innovative band, but I’ll also point out that there’s no artist on the Polaris shortlist that doesn’t have decades of precedents — especially the weirdos’ favourite, Cindy Lee, but also the crunchy pop-punk of NoBro.
I’ll bore you with the Polaris stuff a bit further down, but here’s why exactly I love Blame My Ex.
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The most obvious answer is the songwriting.
Even the band’s detractors will admit “Blame Brett” is an earworm to some degree. Whether or not that’s a good thing is debatable: I can think of lots of earworms from loathsome songs (see: “Baby Shark,” “Hotline Bling”). But I love the Beaches’ melodies: every song on Blame My Ex has a melody I gladly welcome into my head any time. That’s subjective. It made me wonder what it is I like about them.
So I sat down at a piano.
“Blame Brett” is, yes, for the most part a three-chord rock song, but not the three chords you think, and the melody is far from paint-by-numbers. The progression only goes to the root chord in briefly in the pre-chorus, otherwise the entire song is IV-V-VI (with a minor III in there immediately before the chorus). The melody often starts on seconds and sixths and sevenths, or suspensions.
When I first started playing piano by ear and learning Beatles, Smiths and Prince songs from sheet music (as a teen in the ’80s), I learned that melodies starting on a suspension — as opposed to a triad note — were often my favourite. The Beaches do that all the time. Like on second single “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes Your Paranoid”: a more conventional three-chord song, although the chorus melody starts on a second harmony and there are lots of major sevenths throughout (not the traditionally bluesy minor sevenths).
Everything about that video is so ’80s (not necessarily in good ways) that I half-expect the Toronto Rocks ID to come on at the end and J.D. Roberts do a backsell from inside his tiny spaceship, or whatever the hell that set was. I digress. I’m old.
More recent single “Edge of the Earth” is a 6/8 shuffle, maybe the greatest Top 40 hit in 6/8 since “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” There’s more than a bit of Fleetwood Mac on this track as well: the vibe, the melody and the vocal harmonies—Stevie Nicks should totally be covering this live. Like “Blame Brett,” the chorus hinges on major seconds and sixth harmonies. This is also the most explicitly queer song on the album. They explain why here.
“Kismet” is what would happen if the Spice Girls fronted Sloan. I mean that in the best possible way. It’s ridiculously fun. It’s interesting that the song on this album most resembling their #1 Canadian rock radio hit “Money,” from seven years ago, is relegated to a deep cut here. It’s just as catchy as the Beaches’ big four singles from Blame My Ex. Hell, this could be an ABBA song circa Voulez Vous—it’s that hooky.
So too, for that matter, is “Everything is Boring,” yet another Beaches earworm, this one answering that eternal question: what would’ve happened if R.E.M. wrote a song for Avril Lavigne?
“Cigarette”: What is it with Canadian bands and terrible cigarette metaphors? Never mind. Lyrics aside, this is a sexier version of the totally tubular “I Melt With You” with drums like the Spoons’ “Nova Heart” being played twice as fast.
Lyrically, Blame My Ex is praised for being a mid-20s breakup album. As noted above, I challenge the idea that it’s specific to young heartbreak. It is most definitely a breakup album. Not one seeped in bitterness, but in the confusing concoction of self-loathing and narcissism that comes with having one’s guts ripped apart. Chastising your inner voices. Feeling paranoid. Craving connection but revelling in solitude (“Me and Me”). Getting numb, doing stupid things like drinking beer in the shower, or pleading, “Doctor, please just pill me.”
Some of the lyrics are quite clever, and often self-aware — not unlike the way one of Joni Mitchell’s greatest songs at one point says, “I love you — when I forget about me.”
I won’t compare Blame My Ex to Blue (my favourite album of all time), but — o wait, I will.
Both are by 27-year-olds, both about heartbreak and self-discovery, both funnier than you think they are, both have plenty of lyrical references rooted very much in a certain time and place, both have at least one song directed at an equally famous lover, both expertly executed in their specific genre, both subject to misogynist dismissal.
The Beaches are way more Joan Jett (or Alanis Morissette) than Joni Mitchell. All that is to say they at least belong in that conversation. And hey, Elton John agrees.
Ah yes, the critics cry, but Blame My Ex is so… juvenile, maybe? I mean, there’s a song called “My Body ft. Your Lips,” after all, with a chorus that goes, “Ooh, I wanna be your bitch / I wanna taste your spit.” At which point I’ll say this is the greatest pop song about saliva swaps since Broken Social Scene’s “Lover’s Spit”—that improbable ballad, a critics’ and fan favourite, which has aged remarkably well. So might the Beaches’. Too early to tell. In the meantime: great melody.
If this overall assessment features excessive name-drops, gross hyperbole and more than a bit of defensiveness, that’s because the Polaris discussion prompted me to think a lot more about Blame My Ex than simply “this rocks.” Which, of course, it absolutely does.
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The Polaris prize is voted on by critics and broadcasters across the country. Pop music and mainstream rock are rarely Polaris territory, although it’s not unheard of. This year, multi-Juno-winner and ruler of pop radio Charlotte Cardin also shortlisted.
Normally, though, Polaris tends more toward the Tanya Tagaqs, the Owen Palletts, the Kaytranadas, the Jeremy Dutchers, the Lido Pimientas and more than a couple of recent winners who have already faded into memory. Polaris claims to be genre-agnostic—an admittedly impossible feat, just ask the fans of jazz, metal, country and classical. Polaris rarely pulls toward straight-up pop.
When Blame My Ex first landed on the long list—well, I can’t talk about that. But I will say it put me on the defensive.
Polaris picks are always polarized. That’s certainly true every time the jury picks a winner that’s way off the mainstream radar – which is most years. It’s also true every time a commercially successful superstar lands on a shortlist. That was true when Drake was shortlisted three times or when Arcade Fire won, or when Justin Bieber longlisted. Maybe a little bit for shortlisters Tegan & Sara, who were always more indie rock than anyone gave them credit for. But not for Carly Rae Jepsen or Daniel Caesar, by which point “poptimism” became the lingua franca.
No one ever argued that Alvvays didn’t belong at Polaris—Alvvays being a band not dissimilar to the Beaches, but who, because they play Belle & Sebastian festivals while the Beaches open for Greta Van Fleet, don’t attract the same vitriol. Even though Alvvays is just as pop as the Beaches. I’m sure there’s a large crossover in fan base between the two bands, if not from critics still using the word poptimism (ahem).
I mean, couldn’t Alvvays just as easily have written this song? I mean that as a compliment to both bands. I’d argue this could even be the Weakerthans (musically, not lyrically):
This year the Montreal band NoBro also landed on the shortlist. They’re another young all-female rock band, with punkier roots than the Beaches’ alt-rock radio influences. They’re an amazing band, but to me their album is not as strong. To each their own.
I don’t recall seeing any pushback to NoBro – a musically conservative mix of punk and AC/DC – being on the Polaris shortlist. But I did see reactions, privately and publicly, not dissimilar to this one:
whats the deal with the beaches (band). not to give outsized importance to the polaris music prize shortlist but. theyre not good? why they on there
any time a mediocre band of white people end up on the polaris prize shortlist i gauge how funny it would be for them specifically to break the streak of non-white winners
At the risk of extreme conjecture, I’ll posit that the reason there’s a hate-on for the Beaches is because “Blame Brett” blew up on TikTok, therefore bypassing critical approval. It’s true, the band actively tried different ways to make the track go viral—and they failed, until they posted just a simple clip of the band in the studio.
Try too hard and fail; barely try at all and authenticity pays off—that’s the lesson here. That should be commended no? Seems pretty indie rock to me—in a good way.
To say nothing of the fact this band has put in a decade of work already. They’re an overnight success 10 years in the making. The Cinderella story gets even better: this song and album were made after the Beaches got dumped by a major label and their manager. They were their own support. They made this record in Toronto with a Canadian producer (Gus Van Go), not in L.A. with a global name (Jacknife Lee, who did the previous two EPs while they were on Universal).
They didn’t hit a home run with bases loaded: they were back at the top of an inning. The Beaches were underdogs. This was a make-or-break moment for them, and they won.
Looking at this year’s shortlist, it’s not hard to argue that it’s one of the most mainstream ones in years, and therefore also one of the most musically conservative. Make of that what you will. The one outlier on the list is Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee, a favourite of contrarians everywhere, for a whole bunch of reasons I get into here.
Diamond Jubilee appeals the most to people still arguing about “selling out” like it’s a 1994 campus radio show all over again. I like that record a lot; I voted for it as well as Blame My Ex (and three others on my final ballot). Both albums are pop music—opposite ends of that spectrum, but still, pop music. One is Brave New Waves, the other is Indie88. One is WFMU, the other is KROQ.
When the shortlist was revealed one album at a time, one juror wrote this underneath the Cindy Lee announcement on Instagram:
[Cindy Lee’s is] literally the only album that deserves to be on the @polarismusicprize short list. Polaris should really consider who they have made up their jury pool with if albums like the Beaches’ are getting short listed. Polaris is not cool anymore, they are just the kid sibling to the Junos. So embarrassed to be a member of the jury.
The juror who wrote that is no longer listed on the Polaris jury page. I guess the Beaches broke him. Such power they wield!
I totally understand the territorialism. I was a campus radio snob in the ’90s when I refused to believe Jagged Little Pill was worth a second of anyone’s time in the era of riot grrrl. I’ve been proven wrong by one generation after another. I still don’t like that album, but who cares? Alanis Morissette won. The album even got a Polaris Heritage Award — from critics.
The other silly reason why there would be a Beaches backlash is that they clearly want success. They have since day one, like this 2017 hit:
Ambition: so un-Canadian! Screw that.
These women are winning. Let the streak continue.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this post was emailed to subscribers. Please disregard and refer to this one.
Blame My Ex was my favourite record of 2023. As for the Polaris Prize, I’ve always considered it a worthy but flawed exercise (as are all such exercises), and I defend it every year when the long list is published and regionalists note the artists’ cities of origin and cry foul. I withdrew from the jury when Uptown ceased standalone publication in 2013 but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, even if some jurors should learn to enjoy every sandwich.