Canadian music for Obama
January 16, 2009
Like pretty much the rest of the world, Canadians are excited about the new US president, and apparently they get to convey this excitement by collectively making a mixtape. CBC Radio 2 is soliciting votes for a 49-song playlist, to showcase Canadian music for President-Elect Barack Obama. You can go here and vote for your favourite Canadian song in one of four categories: rock, classical, French-language, and jazz. While they’re calling it ‘Obama’s Mixtape,’ it’s really more in honour of the inauguration. But who knows – Obama has confirmed that his first foreign trip, as is traditional for US presidents, will be to Canada (his predecessor broke with tradition and went to Mexico instead – big surprise there), so maybe they’ll present him with a shiny new red-and-brushed-aluminum iPod preloaded with CanCon. Or something.
As would be expected, Wonkette has a snarky take on it: “This thoughtful gift shall represent the very essence of Canada, distilled into 49 beautiful songs about being polite, speaking passable French, and having depressoid sex under a pile of blankets 10 months of every year.”
If you want to get in on it, hurry – voting closes at 8 pm EST on Friday, January 16th. I don’t think you actually have to be Canadian to vote (I did fine with my IP address 100 miles south of the border), but it probably helps to have some familiarity with the songs. Vote.
(thanks, Tim!)
zed equals zee 
This is a pretty cool idea. I Hope Obama likes The Weakerthans. I have a feeling they’ll get a lot of votes from us bloggers. Not a lot of other good stuff to chose from over there.
Well, they certainly would if I was putting together the list! But the way it’s set up, there’s only one (or very occasionally two) songs by any given artist.
I think it is a great exercise I just wished it had reached farther than the listeners at CBC. You can read my page here. I would love to hear what you think of the playlist.
Brenda
Well, it did make CNN, albeit belatedly, so I think it is going a little further than you think. I thought the list was pretty good, actually, for something that is basically a ‘mixtape by committee.’ If it were my list, I’d probably have included The Rheostatics’ song, “It’s a Bad Time to Be Poor.”
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