The Best Canadian Artists With The Worst Hit Singles

While these days there seem to be a plethora of great Canadian artists who do what used to be seemingly impossible and cross over into an international audience, for a long time it seemed that great Canadian artists were only known stateside or across the pond when they stumbled upon a stupidly popular hit single that was Top 40 radio fodder. This has led to tons of great Canadian artists being misrepresented as one-hit wonders, or coming to be known solely for that one terrible radio hit that somehow seeped over into U.S. airwaves. But now that it’s 2015, we should stop thinking that all the Guess Who was good for was bringing us "American Woman". Because, as we all know, we have guitarist Randy Bachman to thank for giving birth to Tal Bachman who brought us the wondrous sonic masterpiece “She’s So High.” That song, however, is the exception to this rule, because there’s a reason no one has heard anything from Bachman since the rest of his stuff… well, I’m not even sure he has any other stuff. And on second thought, the Guess Who are actually pretty terrible, and I blame them for letting Lenny Kravitz become popular, which as far as I’m concerned is as close to a musical crime against humanity as you can get. But let’s be honest here, “No Sugar Tonight,” is a jam!

Anyway, more often than not, this means that people only seem to know the most vapid, generic and usually terrible songs by great Canadian artists. The songs that are everywhere in movies, television spots, and terrible coffee house acoustic sets are usually some of the worst songs in that artist’s catalogue, and that’s just not fair. So, in the interest of clearing up some of the terrible assumptions about some of Canada’s more popular musicians, we’ve collected a list of great artists who are known for pretty terrible songs that became radio hits, and trawled through their extensive catalogues to bring you the solid jams that they should be known for.

We might as well start with the most egregious culprit on this list. We get it, you all think "Hallelujah" is a great song but for the love of God, can we have a moratorium on it? Just for a year, even? Even Cohen himself has called for this song to be given a rest already—though that doesn’t stop him from aping Jeff Buckley’s arrangement of it at concerts these days. The man has albums and albums worth of amazing poetic songwriting, and all you fools want to hear is this ridiculously over sentimental garbage? The worst part is, no one even likes the original Leonard Cohen version of this song! With its creepy, plodding structure and weird, amelodic arrangement, it’s much more haunting and bizarre than it is a power ballad. John Cale did a much better arrangement of this, and then Jeff Buckley perfected that with his hauntingly gorgeous pipes of gold—that’s where it should have ended. Instead, we get cover after cover after cover of this song, making it more and more overblown and maudlin every time. Please, just let it go. You want a hauntingly beautiful, spine-tingling ballad from Cohen? Any of the songs on his immaculate first album,

Songs of Leonard Cohen

, make "Hallelujah" look like a joke. The especially frigid and spectral "Winter Lady" is perhaps one of his best songs ever written—elegant, simple and lovelorn, it’s a timeless ode to lost love and the tumults of relationships. "Master Song" is likewise an exercise in brooding, despondency, with Cohen’s lyrical genius soaring atop his mercurial, droning fingerpicking.

I’d love to pave over this song and put up a parking lot. The inspiration behind dreadlock-sporting, neo-hippie coffee shop singers is by far Canadian songwriting legend Joni Mitchell’s most popular song, and my oh my, is it ever a yawn. Joni Mitchell has written some amazing, influential and beautiful songs over the years, but this is the bottom of the barrel as far as her catalog is concerned. For some reason, though, all anyone can ever think of when they hear Mitchell’s name is this vastly overplayed elevator music tune. From the

absolutely god-awful Counting Crows cover that features early 2000s pop siren Vanessa Carlton

, to the bizarre and woefully terrible decision for Mitchell to rearrange and re-release the song on her 2007 album

Shine

, to the open mic at every patchouli-reeking coffee house in Canada, there’s no escape from this little number. Also, I guarantee you if you ask anyone if they know the song “Big Yellow Taxi,” they will undoubtedly say that they don’t think they do. However, as soon as you say, “it’s that ‘pave paradise’ song,” they’ll be all “that’s my jam!” Seriously, the overratedness of this song is so pervasive that nobody even knows what the song is called. Even I had to Google it! It’s a shame, because songs like “River,” are great examples of plaintive, pastoral and just plain mesmerizing Canadiana, and then you have the later stuff like “Raised on Robbery,” where she dabbles in this weird synthesis of big-band and crooner style jazz, and they all get overlooked for this giant glob of undercooked mainstream pop. Hell, the entirety of the album,

Blue

, is absolutely jaw-dropping. Forget you ever heard about parking lots and just throw that on repeat for a while.

Leslie Feist had her finger in a number of pies in the Canadian music scene before she hit it big with the Steve Jobs-endorsed, nursery rhyme styled “1,2,3,4.” From touring with Canadian electronic musician Peaches as “Bitch Lap-Lap,” to lending her soaring, wailing croon to songs like “Almost Crimes,” with indie supergroup Broken Social Scene, Feist did it all before the Apple moguls thought that “1,2,3,4,” could shift a whole lot of units. While the song’s not necessarily bad by any means, the fact that it took until 2007 when Apple decided to use “1,2,3,4” in an iPod Nano commercial for Feist to break out internationally is absolutely crazy. That she gets her dues because of an mp3 player commercial seems more than a bit insulting.

Unlike a lot of entries on this list, the success of “1,2,3,4” didn’t really lead to Feist changing a whole lot about her solo career. In fact, she took a few years off after that because she became a bit disillusioned with the whole “price of fame” thing. When she reappeared on the scene, it was with the criminally gorgeous, wonderfully understated album Metals in 2011.

Even though Plaskett mostly spends his days writing fluff-pop that could act as the theme song to a really middle-of-the-road CBC show that your parents rave about, he did have some pretty raucous tunes back in the day. That a guy responsible for an incredible, jaw-dropping solo record like La De Da—probably one of the best records by a Canadian singer-songwriter ever—or a slew of seminal Canadian alternative rock albums in the 90s with his band Thrush Hermit could come to be most well known for the jingly-jangly piece of radio fodder that is “Nowhere With You,” is just kind of… silly. Considering there are so many more catchier, and way better written tunes in the dude’s oeuvre that you could chuck a rock and hit a handful, it’s a bit depressing to have this severely overwrought and unforgivingly maudlin love-letter to Halifax serve as the musical banner for the guy’s entire career. Add to the fact that it’s gone on to inform the musical direction of everything he’s done since doesn’t net him any points, either. To think that someone could gloss over an upbeat, catchy and witty tune like “Happen Now”—which could have served as an amazing radio hit that retained some serious emotional depth—or the explosive, anthemic choruses of “Natural Disaster” in favour of a pop ballad that people only like because of its quaint Atlantic Canada references just kind of sucks. This song is Juno bait, through and through.

Isn’t it great when a band gets popular and well-known on the basis of a song that sounds absolutely nothing like any of their other songs? Wintersleep take the cake in this department, having blown up coast to coast thanks to the success of the insipid little ditty "Weighty Ghost," which is more of a Great Big Sea-aping sea shanty than a real Wintersleep song. Compare that song with anything on their fantastic third album,

Welcome to the Night Sky

, and it’s not even like it’s the same band. Unfortunately, much like Plaskett’s brush with radio success, this single set the tone for the band’s next album, where they totally jumped the shark and essentially made an album of "Weighty Ghosts." Compared to the blistering alt rock savageness of “Miasmal Smoke and the Yellow Bellied Freaks” or the wiry insanity of “Oblivion,” “Weighty Ghost” is like a song you sing around the fire at summer camp when you’re like nine. That it’s remembered only because “it’s the one with that “seen my ghost” song on it,” is nothing short of a travesty. Actually, no, the travesty is that even after complaining about this song, the damn thing is stuck in my head right now.

Gob? Aren’t they that Canadian pop-punk band that wrote a bunch of garbage that sounded like low-rent

Blink 182

that set the stage for bands like Sum 41 and Treble Charger to be household names? Yes. But actually, their first two albums are seriously great, straight-ahead trashy pop-punk in the vein of the Descendents and early Fat Wreck Chords bands like No Use For A Name or Lagwagon. Then, of course, they fell into that comical trap that all pop-punk bands of that era seemed to get ensnared by. They sign to a major, end up making terrible songs to try and please the masses, and then fade into obscurity when the trend finally dies, and people realize that pop-punk isn’t cool anymore. So, the band disappears into the shadows, only to potentially rise again when we’re all at a loss for early 2000s nostalgia and need a reunion tour to wet our whistles. Except apparently these guys still make music.

Anyway, the point is that these guys had two albums of solid, searing punk rock and catchy, upbeat numbers like “Asshole TV,” “Fido Dildo,” and “Censorshit,” and yet all they’re known for is this monstrosity that sounds like a cross between Maroon 5 and the Gin Blossoms. I remember when I first heard this song on MuchMusic in like 2001, I screamed “Gob is shit, now!” at the television, I was so enraged. I was 12 at the time. That’s some perspective for you.

I know what you’re thinking. “Really? That cartoon band? They can’t possibly have any actually good songs, the only reason they’re popular is because “Sucks To Be You,” is such an infectious ear worm and it’s silly as hell.” Well you’d be dead wrong, because as it’s been stated before,

Jay Levine and James McCollum are bonafide pop geniuses

who wrote three albums chock full of masterful Canadian pop hits that took all the best parts of flamenco, techno, house and EDM and blended them all together in an incredibly entertaining, and criminally catchy way. While “Sucks To Be You” is a great tune, it doesn’t even come close to the compositional genius of album tracks like “Infatuation,” “Tsunami,” or the absolute brilliance of “Introduction to a Broken Heart.” Prozzak’s first album,

Hot Show

, was an insanely well produced exploration of European electronic music made by two guys who hated each other while created under the guise of two smarmy British cartoon characters searching for true love. If that alone isn’t enough to pique your interest, you may not have a soul. Songs like “Anna Lisa,” and “Sleep With Myself,” on Hot Show are heart wrenching exhumations of the frailty of love and pining, while tracks on their sophomore album,

Saturday People

like the aforementioned “Infatuation,” are like four-on-the-floor club bangers with a heart of gold.

So, while all of these Canadian artists certainly deserve the notoriety they eventually achieved, it’s kind of a bummer that it had to come from songs that don’t do their catalogue the justice it deserves. Never be afraid to dig a bit deeper than the hits, because chances are there’s a whole bunch of deep album cuts that you’re gonna love a whole lot more.

Nick Laugher liked you better on vinyl - @largiantribune