Music

On Tuesday (Sept. 19) evening in Toronto, Debby Friday won the 2023 Polaris Music Prize for her debut album, Good Luck. 

Accepting the award for best Canadian album of the year and an accompanying $50,000 prize, the Toronto-based industrial electronic artist was as pleasantly surprised as anyone in the audience at Toronto’s Massey Hall.

“I’m in shock!” she said through both laughter and tears. “This is something I didn’t even realize was a possibility. I was born in Nigeria in a small village. Now I’m here today, and it just feels like a miracle.”

Now in its 18th year, the award continues to evolve and surprise. Chosen by a panel of music journalists and professionals, it’s the closest thing the country has to a pure critics’ prize – an award that disregards factors like record label, genre and chart position to focus solely on the always slippery concept of “artistic merit.” That makes it harder to predict than any other award in the country, but it makes it a good barometer for the critical conversation in Canadian music. 

Once criticized for awarding only indie rock artists, the Polaris Prize is now a testament to the genre-less diversity of expression within the country’s borders. Debby Friday’s music is uncategorizable – a mix of pulsing beats, adventurous production and brash, swaggering vocals equally influenced by hip-hop and punk. 

On a purely sonic level, it’s distinct from previous winners such as Afrobeats artist Pierre Kwenders, rappers Cadence Weapon and Backxwash and producer Kaytranada, but it fits within the recent trend to reward artists who push at the limits of genre and create new sounds out of deeply personal influences. If Canadian music is defined by anything, it’s easy cultural fluency, an ability to mix different sounds and multicultural traditions almost by second nature. 

Despite her confident and aggressive delivery, Debby Friday’s live performance of “So Hard to Tell” instead stood out with dreamy melodicism. Over electronic production, live guitar and a mini-string section of viola and cello, her vocals sounded yearning and emotional. It stood out as a memorable performance in a night filled with many. 

With lengthy changeovers between performances that seemed to cater more to the CBC Music cameras than the in-person audience, last year’s gala at the Carlu in Toronto dragged on over a tiring four hours. This year, they swung hard in the other direction. Seven out of 10 of the shortlisted artists played live on the famous stage of Massey Hall (Daniel Caesar, Feist and Alvvays were on tour and unable to be there), and it often felt more like a concert than an awards show. It moved briskly over two hours and kept the focus on the music – no livestream, no extended gaps and, notably, no host at all. 

In a way, that approach stayed true to the Polaris ethos, keeping the focus solely on the music. But if the intention is to put the spotlight on Canadian music people might not know, it lacked some important context. There’s a potent story behind The Sadies’ shortlisted album Colder Streams, but it wasn’t told directly. It was the long-running psychedelic country band’s final album with founding guitarist Dallas Good, who tragically passed away during its recording. The Sadies are no stranger to Massey Hall’s stage, collaborating over the years with legendary performers like Neil Young and Gord Downie, so seeing them play as a trio – Dallas’s brother Travis Good taking center stage – felt jarring yet poignant. The late Dallas wasn’t mentioned by name, but an image of him onscreen spoke a thousand words. 

Indigenous songwriter Aysanabee, meanwhile, played a recording of his grandfather talking about his harrowing experience at residential school. (From the time of the first settlements until shockingly recent, Indigenous children were often taken from their families and forcefully assimilated, which is now recognized by Canada as a form of cultural genocide). It added shades of emotion to an already powerful performance, aided by his intense, soulful vocals. 

Indie-folk singer-songwriter Dan Mangan also injected some heaviness, singing songs “for anyone feeling the weight” and playing to the venue’s famous acoustics by gathering his two bandmates to sing three-part harmonies into one mic. 

With no host, it was up to the artists to do the heavy lifting. Or, in the case of the night’s best performance, deconstruct the whole awards show context. Hip-hop duo Snotty Nose Rez Kids, who hail from the Haida nation, built a whole talk show set, with a host named “too tall Paul” who mispronounced their name and interrupted their banter. Then, the recent Sony Music Canada signees got up on stage and brought the house down with the bouncing “Damn Right” from their EP I’m Good, HBU? Their infectious energy and bratty punchlines (maybe the only song played at Massey Hall with the word “dingleberry”) won over a notably low-energy industry crowd and earned the biggest ovation of the night. 

That raised spirits for the announcement of the winner. When last year’s winner Pierre Kwenders revealed Debby Friday’s vinyl record from a Polaris Prize briefcase, the house came down. She thanked anyone who had been with her since her early EP BITCHPUNK and spoke to the power of being different. “I’ve always been a bit strange,” she said. “In retrospect, I see that’s a superpower.”

At a time when the country’s music critics are facing a crisis of disappearing outlets for arts coverage, the Polaris Prize also feels like it’s searching for an identity under executive director Amber Moyle, who took over last year. The best route is to follow Debby Friday’s advice: keep it weird.