Canadian Sounds in China

Published on August 1st, 2017 | by Alan Cross

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China Asked for a Playlist of Canadian Music. Here’s What I Gave Them.

A weird thing is happening in China. After decades of refusing to pay for things like CDs (not to mention aiding and abetting rampant copyright infringement by supporting the biggest counterfeit and bootleg market in the world), the country’s music fans seem to be willing to pay for streaming. The ability to conveniently access millions of songs on demand is stomping out piracy in a country known for ripoffs.

Eric de Fontenay runs a project called Canadian Sounds in China which maintains some playlists on a couple of streaming sites. (Here’s an example of the kind of stuff they post.) He asked me to put together a collection of Canadian music for sites like Netease Music and QQMusic.

Easy, I thought. But once I started, I realized how difficult this task was. How do you sum of the musical personality of an entire country in just 40 songs? And how deep should I go? I mean, we gotta consider the audience and their knowledge of us, right? Even after spending a couple of hours on this thing, I still wasn’t sure whether I got it correct.

Turns out it was pretty popular. On Netease, it ended up with 1,800 followers and 250,000 plays. Nice to see Canadian music traveling well, innit?

Here’s my full list:

Here’s my list:

Legends:

1. Neil Young, Old Man
2. Rush, Tom Sawyer
3. Guess Who, American Woman
4. Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Takin’ Care of Business
5. Bryan Adams, Summer of 69
6. Shania Twain, Man! I Feel Like a Woman
7. Tom Cochrane, Life is a Highway
8. Nickeback, Photograph
9. Robbie Robertson, Somewhere Down the Crazy River
10. Gordon Lightfoot, If You Could Read My Mind
11. Joni Mitchell, Free Man in Paris
12. Teenage Head, Let’s Shake
13. Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah
14. Kd lang, Constant Craving
15. Ian and Sylvia, Four Song Winds

Indie Artists:

1. Broken Social Scene, 7/4 (Shoreline)
2. Cowboy Junkies, Misguided Angel
3. City and Colour, The Girl
4. Feist, 1234
5. Metric, Breathing Underwater
6. A Tribe Called Red, Electric Pow Wow Drum
7. Dan Mangan
8. Arcade Fire, Reflektor
9. Karkwa, Marie tu pleures
10. Japandroids, House That Heaven Built

And the rest…

1. Tragically Hip, 50 Mission Cap
2. Sam Roberts, We’re All in This Together
3. Spirit of the West, Home for a Rest
4. The Weeknd, Can’t Feel My Face
5. Justin Bieber, Sorry
6. Drake,
7. Carly Rae Jepson, Call Me Maybe
8. Drake, Hotline Bling
9. Celine Dion, My Heart Will Go On
10. Sarah McLachlan, Into the Fire