About

The Canadian Music Blog is dedicated to providing information about popular music performed by Canadian recording artists. It seeks to restore balance in the midst of a skewed entertainment media that focuses too much on artists that are male over female, of European and African over Asian descent, Anglophone over Francophone, easterners over westerners, bands over solo artists, indie over popular, successful in the United States over the rest of the world, who perform music that is guitar oriented over keyboard driven, and rootsy over progressive.

The Canadian Music Blog tries to honour the following principles:

• Besides its major stars, priority is given to profiling artists of minority groups populous in Canada, most notably Asian, French, and Aboriginal Canadians.  More…

• Segregation of music based on the language in which it is performed is unacceptable, especially in a country that prides itself on bilingualism and multiculturalism. More…

• Women belong in rock music just as much as the men and their credibility stems from their own talent rather than from the men who discover and assist them.

• We reject the notion that one’s age, gender, and race should determine what artists and style of music s/he should listen to, a current trend that undermines Canadian culture’s commitment to freedom.

• Canadian artists who achieve international success in any country are recognized, not just the United States.

• We recognize that Cancon / MAPL regulations help but fall short of correcting the grave injustice that all U.S. hit singles by American artists get released and added to radio playlists in Canada, while only a few Canadian hits get released and added to radio playlists in the United States.

• While evaluating the direction of the Canadian music industry as a whole is worthwhile, critiquing and rating the works of individual recording artists has no value whatsoever.  Proselytism of personal opinion is unbecoming of those who claim to espouse democracy.

• We draw attention to some of our favourite songs and albums not in a spirit of authority but in contributing to the ongoing discussion about great music which makes life enjoyable. We support all Canadian artists whether we personally like their style or not, because they are our own.

• We will try to keep the blog as clean as possible and will not embed any music videos that include explicit violence, foul language, endorse drunkenness / recreational drug use, embrace mysogyny, etc.  However, external links may lead to websites, song samples, or videos with profanity.

• Being proud of who you are as a Canadian artist does not mean singing with and speaking in an American accent.  We are always hesitant to embed videos in which Canadian artists stoop so low.   More…

Artists We Profile

1.  The Canadian Music Blog focuses mainly on popular artists, i.e. those who fulfill one of the following:

A. Nominated for a JUNO or Félix award.
B. An album appearing in the Top 10 of Billboard’s Canadian albums chart.
C. Gold or higher certification on a record.
D. A single appearing in Billboard’s Canadian Hot 100.
E. A Francophone single appearing in Montréal’s CKOI FM year-end Top 50.
F. A single appearing in the official nation-wide weekly Top 20, or year-end Top 100 of a foreign country.
G. A record certified gold/platinum in a foreign country.

2. Priority is given to the following:

A. Canadian artists of Asian descent, Aboriginal Canadians, French Canadians, women, and teen stars.
B. Artists who perform what we deem to be regular rock and roll, with only the occasional mention of rap music, country, folk, heavy metal, jazz, classical, and other genres.
C. Artists who perform original songs over those who score hits of cover tunes.

3. It goes without saying that we only profile Canadian artists. In the case of a band in which only some members are Canadians, we will decide based on several factors whether or not to count the band as Canadian.

Authors

The Canadian Music Blog is authored by:

• Shawn PT: a Canadian artist born in Ottawa and now living in Vancouver. He has lived, worked, and performed on three continents.

With contributions by:

• Duncan PH: a keyboardist from southern Alberta who has lived and worked in Quebec.

• Tom GH: a guitarist and rock expert from central Alberta.

Copyright

All articles in the blog are owned by the author and are subject to international copyright laws.  Copying in whole or in part is strictly prohibited except with the express permission of the author.  Violation will result in our contacting your webmaster.

Contact

Any questions or suggestions can be sent by email to the Canadian Music Blog at:

CanadianMusicBlog@yahoo.ca.