Top 40 CanCon Hits of the 80s

You had to live here to get it

The great Martin Short was once asked to provide the Canadian equivalent of the phrase “as American as apple pie”. How, he was asked, could one best complete the phrase “as Canadian as….”?

Short reflected briefly before answering “As Canadian as possible under the circumstances”.

The notion of a Canadian identity has always been at the heart of our cultural debate. Americans just assert their culture; we endlessly seek ours. Pierre Trudeau used the metaphor of sleeping next to an elephant to explain this Canadian fixation. An elephant may mean well, but it can roll over and crush its neighbour. The desire to carve out space for Canadian voices has always been part of our national identity. Out of this was born the Canadian Content, or “CanCon”, regulations of music and television.

The rule was pretty straightforward — radio stations had to play 30% Canadian Content to keep their access to the airwaves. A song was CanCon if three of four criteria were met — the music or lyrics could be written by a Canadian, the production or performance could happen in Canada, and the artist could be Canadian. Conveniently, this became the “MAPL” rating system.

The result was more airplay for Canadian artists. Even if their initial recording was lower budget and the artist was new, there was an imperative for radio programmers to give those low-budget recordings (and later, videos) air time. And often, we Canadians liked what we heard. Local scenes in the big cities became a pipeline to the Canadian charts. Some artists — Platinum Blonde, Gowan, Bruce Cockburn, Luba, Doug and the Slugs all come to mind — became multi-album, arena-filling stars in Canada despite limited chart success in the U.S. And a host of smaller acts had their 15 minutes of fame with a catchy track or video that lit up Muchmusic.

Some of those songs have been forgotten, but may still make you smile when you hear them. So in this feature starting on Canada Day, we are going to explore those hits and artists that only really charted here in Canada. We will recall which Canadian band’s bassist was your teenage crush, which bands parlayed their hit into a touring gig, and which songs stayed in your head and got played at your high school dance. From Charlottetown’s Haywire to Vancouver’s Headpins to Toronto’s um…Toronto, these are the bands that gave Canada its own sound.

There will be some fun memories here and, remember, you had to live here to get it.