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charlene · 07-05-2023, 09:14 AM

30 Bryan Adams
UNSPECIFIED - JANUARY 01: Canadian singer Bryan Adams backstage circa 1985. (Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns)
Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images

Given his standing as an icon of Eighties rock radio, it’s kind of surprising to note that Bryan Adams first entered the charts with a disco record, the minor Canadian hit, “Let Me Take You Dancing.” But Adams was always more a journeyman than a genre purist, and his gritty tenor was as suited to retro rockers like “The Summer of ’69” as to brooding New Wave tracks such as “Run to You,” or sexy-riff rockers like the Tina Turner collaboration “It’s Only Love.” But his biggest hits were unabashedly sentimental power ballads like “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman” and “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You,” songs that exploited his Rod Stewart rasp without pushing beyond anything the average Joe couldn’t sing at karaoke. —J.D.C.

29
Alvvays
LONDON, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 23: (L to R) Alec O'Hanley, Molly Rankin and Kerri MacLellan of Alvvays perform at The Roundhouse on February 23, 2018 in London, England. (Photo by Robin Little/Redferns)
Robin Little/Redferns/Getty Images

When Alvvays busted out into the indie-pop scene with their 2014 self-titled, no-skips debut, the general reaction was “Why is this so good and where did it come from?” Canada, baby. Lead singer Molly Rankin grew up in the Rankin Family folk group, then formed Alvvays in 2011. Their Canadian traces are everywhere, particularly on their recent album Blue Rev, named after an alcoholic beverage Rankin drank as a teenager, which features an old photo of her family on the album cover. “I find it really fun to make these tiny little movies in my mind,” she told Rolling Stone last year. “I’m a pretty sensitive person, so I feel a lot of feelings, and I try and channel that into the little scenarios that I make. But I don’t feel like my life is all that wild or exciting. To me, it’s more entertaining to create a different universe.” —A.M.

28
Buffy Sainte-Marie
Canadian-American folk singer Buffy Sainte-Marie with a sitar, 27th May 1966. (Photo by Reg Burkett/Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Reg Burkett/Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Buffy Sainte-Marie has worn many hats — singer, activist, educator, actor — but it’s as a songwriter that she has made her greatest mark. Born in Saskatchewan but raised by adoptive parents in the U.S., Sainte-Marie gravitated to the New York folk scene in the early Sixties, where an impressed Bob Dylan urged her to play at folkie epicenter the Gaslight. A record deal soon followed, but it took a cover by Donovan to make her anti-war anthem “Universal Soldier” a hit. Because of her activism, Sainte-Marie’s recordings were blacklisted on the U.S. radio, and many of her biggest songs were made famous by other singers, most notably “Up Where You Belong” from the film An Officer and a Gentleman. Nonetheless, she has remained active as a recording artist and won Canada’s Polaris Music Prize for her 2015 album, Power in the Blood. —J.D.C.

27
Shawn Mendes
NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 16: Shawn Mendes performs during the "Illuminate" tour at Barclays Center on August 16, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Photo by Taylor Hill/WireImage)
Taylor Hill/WireImage

Shawn Mendes first caught the world’s attention when he began posting covers to YouTube and Vine (including a clip of him singing fellow Canadian Justin Bieber’s “As Long as You Love Me”). He was soon signed to a record deal and quickly took his following from online to IRL, amassing multiplatinum albums and three Grammy nominations in the years since. Like Bieber, Mendes assumed the “Canadian heartthrob” mantle in his teenage years, but the Pickering, Ontario, native has grown into his musicality in the same way that he’s grown into his looks. As he told Rolling Stone earlier this year, he just needed time to find himself. Now, Mendes has become a well-respected artist, with songs that are at once intimate and anthemic, and introspective lyrics that are as urgent and poignant as anything out there today. Well-liked, well-spoken, and well-accomplished? Well, there’s nothing more Canadian than that. —T.C.

26
The Guess Who
1966: Rock band "The Guess Who" record in the studio in circa 1966. (L-R) Jim Kale, Burton Cummings, Garry Peterson, Randy Bachman. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

The Guess Who declared war on the U.S.A. with their 1970 broadside “American Woman.” Imagine their surprise when it turned out American women loved this song — it hit Number One and ended up as Taylor Swift’s walk-on anthem for the Red tour. These Winnipeg dudes, led by singer Burton Cummings and guitarist Randy Bachman, were blue-collar rockers with hits like “Share the Land,” “Undun,” and the underrated “Hand Me Down World,” as well as their tribute to their homeland, “Runnin’ Back to Saskatoon.” (Note: Damn right we’re counting Bachman-Turner Overdrive as a Guess Who offshoot, since Bachman was flying the same flag in “Takin’ Care of Business” and “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.” When he rejoined his old mates, they proudly played BTO hits as their own.) In the summer of 2003, after Toronto was devastated by the SARS epidemic, they played a star-studded benefit in Downsview Park for 500,000 fans, every damn one of whom was screaming along to “American Woman.” —R.S.

25
Japandroids
INDIO, CA - APRIL 12: Musicians David Prowse and Brian King of Japandroids perform onstage during day 1 of the 2013 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Club on April 12, 2013 in Indio, California. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

Along with the excellent White Lung and others, the guitar-drums two-piece Japandroids helped bring the underground rock scene in Vancouver to wide attention during the early 2010s. On albums like 2009’s Post-Nothing and 2012’s Celebration Rock, the duo of Brian King and David Prowse mixed big noise and bigger anthems, almost like they were looking for the median point between Hüsker Dü and the Replacements. They wore their patriotism passionately on 2017’s “North East South West,” on which King sang, “And no matter how much I fan the flames/Canada always answers when I call her name.” It’s impossible to imagine an American punk singing about America with anything other than contempt or irony. These dudes celebrated their home and native land the same way they do everything else: with their pure hearts beautifully ablaze —J.D.

24
Sarah McLachlan
NEW YORK, NY - SEPTEMBER, 1994: Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan poses for a portrait circa September, 1994 in New York, New York. (EDITOR'S NOTE: SPECIAL FILTER WAS USED ON LENS TO CREATE THIS IMAGE) (Photo by Bob Berg/Getty Images)
Bob Berg/Getty Images

Halifax-born Sarah McLachlan has blazed multiple trails since debuting with the gauzy Touch at age 19. Songs like the sighing “Adia” and the yearning “Possession” are among the Nineties’ most-cherished singer-songwriter cuts, while her stirring ballad “Angel” is a moving portrait of trying to quiet a whirling mind. Her spearheading of the all-female-acts lollapalooza Lilith Fair in 1997 gave a new dimension to the discussion about “women in rock,” and its legacy still looms large today. In addition to her on-record achievements, McLachlan, who hosted the Juno Awards in 2019, is also dedicated to spreading her wealth of musical knowledge: In 2002, she founded the Sarah McLachlan School of Music, which gives free classes in performing, songwriting, and other musical topics to at-risk youth. —M.J.

23
Destroyer
INDIO, CA - APRIL 14: Musician Dan Bejar of the band Destroyer performs during Day 2 of the 2012 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival held at the Empire Polo Club on April 14, 2012 in Indio, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Coachella)
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Most bands have a sound. Destroyer has a concept. As Dan Bejar, the band’s Vancouver-based frontman and founder, put it, the goal with each Destroyer album is “to start from scratch every time.” It’s never a complete reinvention — Bejar’s self-consciously literary lyrics and half-sung vocals are a constant — but it covers quiet a lot of territory: from the amateurish low-fi of City of Daughters to the semi-polished guitar pop of Streethawk to the mock-jazz of Kaputt to the lush, string-laden arrangements of Poison Season to the groove-heavy sound of Labyrinthitis. Although critical favorites, the public at large has yet to embrace Destroyer’s everchanging sound. —J.D.C.

22
Avril Lavigne
LAS VEGAS, NV - SEPTEMBER 21: Singer Avril Lavigne performs at The Village during the iHeartRadio music festival on September 21, 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Chelsea Lauren/WireImage)
Chelsea Lauren/WireImage

At just 17 years old, Avril Lavigne dominated the poppier side of the early-2000s pop-punk scene with her massive debut, Let Go, the bestselling album of the 21st century by a Canadian artist. Angsty anthems like “Complicated” and “Sk8er Boi” secured the Ontario-born singer’s status as the “pop-punk princess,” and paved the way for young women to claim space in the genre’s reemergence. Throughout all of her mainstream success, Lavigne has embraced her Canadian roots; she even big-upped her home of “small-town Napanee“ on the Let Go track “My World.” Lavigne kept churning pop-rock gems on subsequent records like Under My Skin and The Best Damn Thing, while her 2022 LP, Love Sux, was one of her best-reviewed albums yet. Despite the singer’s global success, she’s still a Canadian at heart. Just last year, Lavigne informed Entertainment Tonight Canada of her plans to immediately hit the Tim Horton’s drive-thru as soon as she began the Canadian leg of her most recent tour. Her TH order? An iced cappuccino and Timbits. —M.G.

07-05-2023, 09:14 AM	#3
charlene Moderator Join Date: May 2000 Posts: 16,001	Re: Rolling Stone Magazine-Top 50 Canadian Artists 30 Bryan Adams UNSPECIFIED - JANUARY 01: Canadian singer Bryan Adams backstage circa 1985. (Photo by Fin Costello/Redferns) Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images Given his standing as an icon of Eighties rock radio, it’s kind of surprising to note that Bryan Adams first entered the charts with a disco record, the minor Canadian hit, “Let Me Take You Dancing.” But Adams was always more a journeyman than a genre purist, and his gritty tenor was as suited to retro rockers like “The Summer of ’69” as to brooding New Wave tracks such as “Run to You,” or sexy-riff rockers like the Tina Turner collaboration “It’s Only Love.” But his biggest hits were unabashedly sentimental power ballads like “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman” and “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You,” songs that exploited his Rod Stewart rasp without pushing beyond anything the average Joe couldn’t sing at karaoke. —J.D.C. 29 Alvvays LONDON, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 23: (L to R) Alec O'Hanley, Molly Rankin and Kerri MacLellan of Alvvays perform at The Roundhouse on February 23, 2018 in London, England. (Photo by Robin Little/Redferns) Robin Little/Redferns/Getty Images When Alvvays busted out into the indie-pop scene with their 2014 self-titled, no-skips debut, the general reaction was “Why is this so good and where did it come from?” Canada, baby. Lead singer Molly Rankin grew up in the Rankin Family folk group, then formed Alvvays in 2011. Their Canadian traces are everywhere, particularly on their recent album Blue Rev, named after an alcoholic beverage Rankin drank as a teenager, which features an old photo of her family on the album cover. “I find it really fun to make these tiny little movies in my mind,” she told Rolling Stone last year. “I’m a pretty sensitive person, so I feel a lot of feelings, and I try and channel that into the little scenarios that I make. But I don’t feel like my life is all that wild or exciting. To me, it’s more entertaining to create a different universe.” —A.M. 28 Buffy Sainte-Marie Canadian-American folk singer Buffy Sainte-Marie with a sitar, 27th May 1966. (Photo by Reg Burkett/Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Reg Burkett/Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images Buffy Sainte-Marie has worn many hats — singer, activist, educator, actor — but it’s as a songwriter that she has made her greatest mark. Born in Saskatchewan but raised by adoptive parents in the U.S., Sainte-Marie gravitated to the New York folk scene in the early Sixties, where an impressed Bob Dylan urged her to play at folkie epicenter the Gaslight. A record deal soon followed, but it took a cover by Donovan to make her anti-war anthem “Universal Soldier” a hit. Because of her activism, Sainte-Marie’s recordings were blacklisted on the U.S. radio, and many of her biggest songs were made famous by other singers, most notably “Up Where You Belong” from the film An Officer and a Gentleman. Nonetheless, she has remained active as a recording artist and won Canada’s Polaris Music Prize for her 2015 album, Power in the Blood. —J.D.C. 27 Shawn Mendes NEW YORK, NY - AUGUST 16: Shawn Mendes performs during the "Illuminate" tour at Barclays Center on August 16, 2017 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. (Photo by Taylor Hill/WireImage) Taylor Hill/WireImage Shawn Mendes first caught the world’s attention when he began posting covers to YouTube and Vine (including a clip of him singing fellow Canadian Justin Bieber’s “As Long as You Love Me”). He was soon signed to a record deal and quickly took his following from online to IRL, amassing multiplatinum albums and three Grammy nominations in the years since. Like Bieber, Mendes assumed the “Canadian heartthrob” mantle in his teenage years, but the Pickering, Ontario, native has grown into his musicality in the same way that he’s grown into his looks. As he told Rolling Stone earlier this year, he just needed time to find himself. Now, Mendes has become a well-respected artist, with songs that are at once intimate and anthemic, and introspective lyrics that are as urgent and poignant as anything out there today. Well-liked, well-spoken, and well-accomplished? Well, there’s nothing more Canadian than that. —T.C. 26 The Guess Who 1966: Rock band "The Guess Who" record in the studio in circa 1966. (L-R) Jim Kale, Burton Cummings, Garry Peterson, Randy Bachman. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images The Guess Who declared war on the U.S.A. with their 1970 broadside “American Woman.” Imagine their surprise when it turned out American women loved this song — it hit Number One and ended up as Taylor Swift’s walk-on anthem for the Red tour. These Winnipeg dudes, led by singer Burton Cummings and guitarist Randy Bachman, were blue-collar rockers with hits like “Share the Land,” “Undun,” and the underrated “Hand Me Down World,” as well as their tribute to their homeland, “Runnin’ Back to Saskatoon.” (Note: Damn right we’re counting Bachman-Turner Overdrive as a Guess Who offshoot, since Bachman was flying the same flag in “Takin’ Care of Business” and “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.” When he rejoined his old mates, they proudly played BTO hits as their own.) In the summer of 2003, after Toronto was devastated by the SARS epidemic, they played a star-studded benefit in Downsview Park for 500,000 fans, every damn one of whom was screaming along to “American Woman.” —R.S. 25 Japandroids INDIO, CA - APRIL 12: Musicians David Prowse and Brian King of Japandroids perform onstage during day 1 of the 2013 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Club on April 12, 2013 in Indio, California. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic) Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic Along with the excellent White Lung and others, the guitar-drums two-piece Japandroids helped bring the underground rock scene in Vancouver to wide attention during the early 2010s. On albums like 2009’s Post-Nothing and 2012’s Celebration Rock, the duo of Brian King and David Prowse mixed big noise and bigger anthems, almost like they were looking for the median point between Hüsker Dü and the Replacements. They wore their patriotism passionately on 2017’s “North East South West,” on which King sang, “And no matter how much I fan the flames/Canada always answers when I call her name.” It’s impossible to imagine an American punk singing about America with anything other than contempt or irony. These dudes celebrated their home and native land the same way they do everything else: with their pure hearts beautifully ablaze —J.D. 24 Sarah McLachlan NEW YORK, NY - SEPTEMBER, 1994: Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan poses for a portrait circa September, 1994 in New York, New York. (EDITOR'S NOTE: SPECIAL FILTER WAS USED ON LENS TO CREATE THIS IMAGE) (Photo by Bob Berg/Getty Images) Bob Berg/Getty Images Halifax-born Sarah McLachlan has blazed multiple trails since debuting with the gauzy Touch at age 19. Songs like the sighing “Adia” and the yearning “Possession” are among the Nineties’ most-cherished singer-songwriter cuts, while her stirring ballad “Angel” is a moving portrait of trying to quiet a whirling mind. Her spearheading of the all-female-acts lollapalooza Lilith Fair in 1997 gave a new dimension to the discussion about “women in rock,” and its legacy still looms large today. In addition to her on-record achievements, McLachlan, who hosted the Juno Awards in 2019, is also dedicated to spreading her wealth of musical knowledge: In 2002, she founded the Sarah McLachlan School of Music, which gives free classes in performing, songwriting, and other musical topics to at-risk youth. —M.J. 23 Destroyer INDIO, CA - APRIL 14: Musician Dan Bejar of the band Destroyer performs during Day 2 of the 2012 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival held at the Empire Polo Club on April 14, 2012 in Indio, California. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Coachella) Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Most bands have a sound. Destroyer has a concept. As Dan Bejar, the band’s Vancouver-based frontman and founder, put it, the goal with each Destroyer album is “to start from scratch every time.” It’s never a complete reinvention — Bejar’s self-consciously literary lyrics and half-sung vocals are a constant — but it covers quiet a lot of territory: from the amateurish low-fi of City of Daughters to the semi-polished guitar pop of Streethawk to the mock-jazz of Kaputt to the lush, string-laden arrangements of Poison Season to the groove-heavy sound of Labyrinthitis. Although critical favorites, the public at large has yet to embrace Destroyer’s everchanging sound. —J.D.C. 22 Avril Lavigne LAS VEGAS, NV - SEPTEMBER 21: Singer Avril Lavigne performs at The Village during the iHeartRadio music festival on September 21, 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Chelsea Lauren/WireImage) Chelsea Lauren/WireImage At just 17 years old, Avril Lavigne dominated the poppier side of the early-2000s pop-punk scene with her massive debut, Let Go, the bestselling album of the 21st century by a Canadian artist. Angsty anthems like “Complicated” and “Sk8er Boi” secured the Ontario-born singer’s status as the “pop-punk princess,” and paved the way for young women to claim space in the genre’s reemergence. Throughout all of her mainstream success, Lavigne has embraced her Canadian roots; she even big-upped her home of “small-town Napanee“ on the Let Go track “My World.” Lavigne kept churning pop-rock gems on subsequent records like Under My Skin and The Best Damn Thing, while her 2022 LP, Love Sux, was one of her best-reviewed albums yet. Despite the singer’s global success, she’s still a Canadian at heart. Just last year, Lavigne informed Entertainment Tonight Canada of her plans to immediately hit the Tim Horton’s drive-thru as soon as she began the Canadian leg of her most recent tour. Her TH order? An iced cappuccino and Timbits. —M.G.