Recommendations of the Editorial team
Canada has about a tenth the population of the United States, which makes its outsized influence on the history of music all the more incredible (outstanding arts education, eh?). The statistics here are astounding. Three of the five or so greatest songwriters who have ever lived come from Canada, as do the most popular prog rock band, the most important country singer of the ’90s, the greatest hip-hop artist of the last 20 years and the quintessential R&B star of our era. And the best Americana roots rock band of all time? You guessed it: Canadian! (Well, four-fifths of it, at least.)
In honor of Canada Day, here is the CanCon our friends in the Great White North deserve: the definitive ROLLING STONE survey of the greatest Canadian artists in the history of popular music. Are all major Canadian musicians represented here? No. However, the 50 we like the most are. So please allow us to extend our sincere and respectful condolences in advance to the members and fans of Cowboy Junkies, DeadMau5, Bruce Cockburn, Skinny Puppy, Pointed Sticks, Voivod, Bran Van 300, Buck 65, Chilliwack, Weakerthans, Toronto and many other very worthy acts. There’s a lot of Canada out there.
50 Snow
If Snow had done nothing other than being a reggae-influenced Canadian rapper named Snow, it would have been enough to cement his historical legacy. The Irish-Canadian boy from Toronto, who came to reggae through his Jamaican immigrant neighbors, adopted the extraordinarily brilliant stage name Darrin O’Brien and released his debut album, 12 Inches of Snow, in 1992. When the album was released, he was in prison for his involvement in a brawl, but when he was released, his one-hit wonder “Informer” was a massive, if somewhat unlikely, worldwide hit. A fun hip-hop/reggae jam that perfectly fits the laid-back, eclectic vibe of the ’90s and whose cross-cultural legacy remains strong. In 2019, reggaeton king Daddy Yankee released Snow for “Con Calma,” an “Informer”-tinged hit that was nominated for a Latin Grammy. —JD
49 Martha and the Muffins
Martha and the Muffins stormed out of Toronto’s new wave scene with their classic 1980 club hit “Echo Beach.” Martha Johnson sings over frantic guitar/synth sounds in the voice of an office worker bored in her 9-5 job and dreaming of a romantic beach escape. These muffins had other excellent hits with extreme new wave titles: “Women Around the World at Work,” “Several Styles of Blonde Girls Dancing,” and the anthem “Be Blasé.” Their best moment, however, came in 1984, when they changed their name to M+M and launched a prescient attack on ’80s radio segregation with the 12-inch bomb “Black Stations/White Stations,” accompanied by the party slogan: “Black stations, white stations, get on the floor/Stand up and face the music, this is 1984!” They were so far ahead of their time. —RS
48 Terri Clark
Country music’s revered era of the ’90s would not have been the same without the contributions of Terri Clark. The Alberta-born singer began her career in 1987 by performing for tips (and a flat rate of $15) at Nashville’s famed honky-tonk bar Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, reaching the top three just a few years later with her debut single, 1995’s “Better Things to Do.” With a powerful voice and cowgirl charm, Clark was a rougher foil to ’90s vixens like Shania Twain and Faith Hill – brave enough to cover Warren Zevon’s “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” and, like Linda Ronstadt before her, make it a hit. She continued her momentum in the 2000s with radio hits like “I Wanna Do It All” and “Girls Lie Too.” There’s a good reason Reba chose her to open for her recent tour: Clark is great. —JH
47 April Wine
Pioneering arena rockers April Wine moved from Halifax to Montreal in the early ’70s and spent the rest of the decade producing catchy, mid-rock hits that alternated between sentimental, keyboard-sweetened love songs and energetic, guitar-driven love songs. The band scored a number of firsts – their fourth album, Stand Back, was the first Canadian album to sell 100,000 units; They were also the first Canadian band to gross $1 million from a single tour – but of the 10 Juno nominations the band received, there was not a single winner. As singer Myles Goodwyn later admitted, “I’ve written so much ungodly crap it’s ridiculous.” —JDC
46 Daniel Caesar
The covers of Daniel Caesar’s LPs provide a helpful framework for understanding the Torontonian’s music. In 2017, “Freudian” shows Caesar climbing the side of a monument; on 2019’s “Case Study 01” and this year’s “Never Enough,” he’s blurry, moving, but unfazed. His music, when focused, can be captivating, earning Grammy nominations for slow-blooming love songs like “Best Part” and “Get You.” But these moments are resting points for a musician whose music seems to wander from relationship to relationship, place to place, mood to mood. Like these album covers, his music captures him in a state of searching. —CP
45 Barenaked Ladies
Hailing from Scarborough, the same Toronto suburb that gave the world Mike Myers, the Barenaked Ladies emerged in the early ’90s as a catchy, self-deprecating alternative to college rock cool. A cross between Lennon and McCartney and Doug and Bob McKenzie, frontmen Steven Page and Ed Robertson parodied pop song clichés while quietly embracing them. This approach reached its peak with the catchy 1998 tune “One Week.” The two fell out in the 2000s over royalties disputes over “The Big Bang Theory” theme song and Page’s arrest for cocaine possession in 2008. Page left the band in 2009, but returned for a “one-off” reunion at the 2018 Juno Awards. —JDC
44 Death From Above 1979
At the height of the disco-punk renaissance of the early 2000s, Toronto’s Death From Above 1979 burst onto the scene with a particularly loud take on the genre, as the lineup consisted of just a drummer and a bassist-vocalist who used guitar distortion. Their 2004 album You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine featured an illustration of the duo with elephant trunks instead of noses on the cover, and the music felt like an elephant party. They split up a few years later, and bassist-vocalist Jesse F. Keeler formed the electro-oriented band MSTRKRFT. He reunited with drummer Sebastian Grainger in 2011 and now splits duties between MSTRKRFT and DFA79 across three reunion albums. — KG
43 Total 41
Formed during a high school summer vacation in 1996, Sum 41 achieved major success with 2001’s rock-rap earworm “Fat Lip” and continued to enjoy radio and MTV success for a decade. The Ajax, Ontario band, which announced its breakup in May after 27 years, often rejected the punk label and for good reason; on later records, they expanded on punk’s basic building blocks with piano accents and prog-rock ambitions, while their massive riffs were clearly the result of an intensive study of metal’s stadium-shaking soundscape. —MJ
42 Peaches
Blending punk’s attitude and 21st century hard beats with a lecture on gender theory, Toronto’s Peaches has created an ever-evolving art project that’s both confrontational and accessible. “Fuck the Pain Away,” the 2000 single that updated L’Trimm for the electroclash era, remains a head-turning track two decades after its release, thanks to Peaches’ cheeky delivery and constant cheap-synth beat. She’s brought her sex-positive, humorous feminist brand to TV shows like Orphan Black and records by Christina Aguilera and P!nk, pushing pop music forward in her own way. —MJ
41 Metric
While members of Metric have lived in both Canada and the United States, Toronto is their base and part of the band’s DNA. Emily Haines and James Shaw met in this city and formed the band more than two decades ago. Several of their eight studio albums were recorded at Shaw’s Giant Studios in Toronto. They are also part of the musical collective Broken Social Scene (Haines takes the lead on the beloved indie classic “Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl”). Along with Joshua Winstead and Joules Scott-Key, their new wave-influenced music – like the driving “Gold Guns Girls” and “Black Sheep” – has won them Juno Awards and graced soundtracks. At the heart of her sound is Haines’ versatile vocals, which range from ethereal and sensual to powerful, reinforcing the lyrics she has written for Metric, other artists and her own solo work. — AL