Polaris Music Prize - The Buried Gems
The Polaris Music Prize is a boon to obscure Canadian bands who make interesting music. They have a fighting chance to gain attention through participating in the Polaris Music Prize (see below).
Polaris recognizes and markets albums of the highest artistic integrity, without regard to musical genre, professional affiliation, or sales history. it is is adjudicated by selected music journalists, broadcasters and bloggers.
Anyone who listens to the entire long list of nominated albums is going to be a Canadian music expert. In the interests of that brevity thing, I'm only considering the short list nominees.
After looking through the track order vs number of plays on Rdio, I've dug up the buried gems (if any) for each album. These are songs that people have added to their virtual or mental playlists. They can't be the first track of the album or the title track of the album as those are pretty obvious starting points when checking out a band. The buried gems show up as a disruption in the pattern of declining number plays by track order.
Maybe these tunes were played on CBC Radio 3 or CKUA or a campus station somewhere inspiring people to check them out.
The first song on each of these albums always had the most plays. Even title tracks receive fewer plays than the first song of an album.
Polaris recognizes and markets albums of the highest artistic integrity, without regard to musical genre, professional affiliation, or sales history. it is is adjudicated by selected music journalists, broadcasters and bloggers.
Anyone who listens to the entire long list of nominated albums is going to be a Canadian music expert. In the interests of that brevity thing, I'm only considering the short list nominees.
After looking through the track order vs number of plays on Rdio, I've dug up the buried gems (if any) for each album. These are songs that people have added to their virtual or mental playlists. They can't be the first track of the album or the title track of the album as those are pretty obvious starting points when checking out a band. The buried gems show up as a disruption in the pattern of declining number plays by track order.
Maybe these tunes were played on CBC Radio 3 or CKUA or a campus station somewhere inspiring people to check them out.
- Arcade Fire - The Suburbs: Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
- Austra - Feel It Break: Shoot The Water
- Braids - Native Speaker: Native Speaker is track 4 - nothing buried
- Destroyer - Kaputt: Kaputt is track 6 - nothing buried
- Galaxie - Tigre et diesel : (first track, Piste 1 has double the plays of any other song on the album... no buried gems here but very listenable out of the chute)
- Hey Rosetta! - Seeds: Yer Spring, Welcome
- Ron Sexsmith - Long Player Late Bloomer: Love Shines (Late Bloomer is track 6 - clever sequencing again)
- Colin Stetson - New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges: The righteous wrath of an honorable man
- Timber Timbre - Creep On Creepin' On: Woman (Creep On Creepin' On is track 3)
- The Weeknd - House Of Balloons: not listed on Rdio but major YouTube plays
The first song on each of these albums always had the most plays. Even title tracks receive fewer plays than the first song of an album.