Con­cert Atmosphere

Wel­come to my new series, the “Cana­dian List of Ten”! Ten weeks, ten posts, ten lists and one hun­dred new Cana­dian things for you, from food to lan­guage, from city to weather.

Today, we will start with music, some­thing I really enjoy (and you may have noticed it given the num­ber of con­certs we went to!). Yes, singer Céline Dion is not the only Cana­dian in the indus­try. Sure, some Canadian-born artists moved to the U.S.A and became famous there. But Canada still have some great artists and bands.

Of course, this list is some­how biased: I’m more into rock music and I’m sure I’m for­get­ting many greats bands and artists — this is just a sam­ple of what Cana­di­ans bring to music! The list doesn’t fol­low any par­tic­u­lar order.

1. Bryan Adams: Bryan Adams was born in Kingston, Ontario and he is one of the most famous Cana­dian rock-singer. He is most famous for his sin­gles “Sum­mer of 69″, “When You’re Gone”, “(Every­thing I Do) I Do It for You”. I bought the On A Day Like Today Album in 2000 in China and brought it back with me in France. My friends and I loved the cheesy love songs lyrics back then and we even saw him live!
2. Neil Young: he was born in Toronto, Ontario and grew up in Win­nipeg, Man­i­toba. His style is between folk-esque accoustic rock and hard rock. His most famous songs include “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)”, “Sugar Moun­tain”, “South­ern Man” and “The Nee­dle and the Dam­age Done”.
3. Crash Test Dum­mies: The Crash Test Dum­mies are a Cana­dian folk rock band from Win­nipeg, Man­i­toba. They are best known for their song “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” and the hilar­i­ous “Superman’s Song”, the com­plaint of the super­hero.
   
4. The Guess Who: this is another 1970s rock band from Win­nipeg, Man­i­toba. While you may have never heard of them, I’m sure you are famil­iar with the song “Amer­i­can Woman”, which was cov­ered later by Lenny Kravitz.
5. Ala­nis Moris­sette: Ala­nis is from Ottawa, Ontario and is a pop rock singer and song­writer. She became famous with her album “Jagged Lit­tle Pill inter­na­tion­ally” in 1995, with sin­gles like “Hand in My Pocket”, “Ironic” and “You Learn”.
   
6. Rush: Rush is a heavy metal band from Toronto, Ontario. They made a come back in the mid 1990s and “One Lit­tle Vic­tory” was the hit sin­gle.
   
7. The Bare­naked Ladies: this is an alter­na­tive rock band from Toronto, Ontario. One of their famous song is the funny “If I Had $1000000″ hit.
8. Nick­el­back: I’m going be hon­est, I don’t know why I’m list­ing this band that I can’t stand. Oh yeah, right, so that I can say bad things about it…! Nick­el­back is a band from Alberta and prob­a­bly one of the the most com­mer­cially suc­cess­ful Cana­dian groups recently. To me, each song of this band sounds the same, and appar­ently I’m not the only one since the Rolling Stone mag­a­zine stated that the album was “is so depress­ing, you’re almost glad Kurt’s [Cobain, Nirvana’s lead singer who killed him­self in 1994] not around to hear it”.
9. Billy Tal­ent: this is a punk rock band from Mis­sis­sauga, Ontario. The band was formed in the 1990s but gained main­stream suc­cess only fairly recently. The band is famous for its songs “Fallen Leaves” and “Rusted from the Rain”.
10. The Trag­i­cally Hip: the Hips are prob­a­bly the most pop­u­lar Cana­dian band in Canada and their con­certs are invari­ably sold out. The band from Kingston is great live and lead singer Gor­don Downie is famous for his rants and mono­logues in between songs. They usu­ally sing about life in Canada and gen­eral Cana­di­ana, such as in “Blow at High Dough”, “Courage (for Hugh MacLen­nan)”, “Fifty Mis­sion Cap” and “The Lonely End of the Rink”.

Related posts:

1. Five Great Songs About Canada
2. 5 Con­cert Pho­tog­ra­phy Tips (III)
3. The Trag­i­cally Hip, Live
4. Stuffs Cana­di­ans Like (Part 2)
5. 10 Cana­dian Restaurants