Polaris Music Prize

Not to be confused with Polar Music Prize.

Polaris Music Prize
Current: 2025 Polaris Music Prize
Awarded forBest full-length Canadian album based on artistic merit regardless of genre, sales, or record label
CountryCanada
First award2006
Websitepolarismusicprize.ca

The Polaris Music Prize is an annual music award given to the best full-length Canadian album based on artistic merit, regardless of genre, sales, or record label.[1] The award was established in 2006 with a $20,000 cash prize,[2] which was increased to $30,000 in 2011.[3] The prize was increased to $50,000 in May 2015 by Slaight Music. Second-place prizes for the nine other acts on the shortlist also increased from $2,000 to $3,000. Polaris officials announced the Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize, an award that "will annually honour five albums from the five decades before Polaris launched in 2006."[4]

The prize, modeled on the United Kingdom and Ireland's Mercury Prize,[5] inspired the Atlantis and Borealis Music Prizes for Newfoundland and Labrador.[6]

The Polaris committee and SOCAN announced the creation of the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize, honouring individual songs in addition to the albums award, in 2025. It replaced the SOCAN Songwriting Prize.[7]

Jury and selection

There is no submission process or entry fee for the prize,[1] and jurors select what they consider the five best Canadian albums released in the previous year. Ballots are tabulated with each number-one pick awarded five points and a number-two pick awarded four points. A list of 40 titles is released in mid-June and sent back to the jury, which re-submits five top picks.[1]

Ballots are re-tabulated and the top ten titles are the Polaris short list, which is released in early July.[1] A group of 11 jurors (the "Grand Jury") meets in Toronto in late September to choose the winner. The nominated artists (or bands) perform, and the winner is announced by the previous year's winner.[2] Each shortlisted album has one grand juror to advocate for it; ten jurors are selected for naming a shortlisted album as their top pick in the balloting, and the remaining juror did not vote for any shortlisted albums.[8]

The Polaris Music Prize board of directors selects the jurors[1] from a list of over 200 Canadian music journalists, bloggers, and broadcasters. No one with a direct financial relationship with an artist can be a jury member.[1] Enlisting music journalists, broadcasters and bloggers as judges attracts attention to good music in a cluttered commercial landscape and a fractured music scene.[9][10] Former CBC Q host and first Polaris Gala host Jian Ghomeshi was quietly removed from the juror pool on November 3, 2014.[11]

Winners and shortlists

Year Winner Shortlisted nominees and albums Ref.
2006 Final Fantasy – He Poos Clouds [12]
2007 Patrick Watson – Close to Paradise [13]
2008 Caribou – Andorra [14]
2009 Fucked Up – The Chemistry of Common Life [15]
2010 Karkwa – Les Chemins de verre [16]
2011 Arcade Fire – The Suburbs [17]
2012 Feist – Metals [18]
2013 Godspeed You! Black Emperor – 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! [19]
2014 Tanya Tagaq – Animism [20]
2015 Buffy Sainte-Marie – Power in the Blood (rescinded in 2025[21]) [22]
2016 Kaytranada – 99.9% [23]
2017 Lido Pimienta – La Papessa [24]
2018 Jeremy Dutcher – Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa [25]
2019 Haviah Mighty – 13th Floor [26]
2020 Backxwash – God Has Nothing to Do with This Leave Him Out of It [27]
2021 Cadence Weapon – Parallel World [28]
2022 Pierre Kwenders – José Louis and the Paradox of Love Shortlist announced in July.[29][30] [31]
2023 Debby Friday – Good Luck [32]
2024 Jeremy Dutcher – Motewolonuwok [33]
2025 Yves Jarvis – All Cylinders [34]

Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize

The Polaris jury introduced the Polaris Heritage Prize (later known as the Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize),[35] an annual award program to honour classic Canadian albums released before the creation of the Polaris Prize, in 2015.[36]

Heritage Prizes, selected by public vote from a shortlist of five nominees by a Heritage Prize jury, were awarded in their first year in the 1960s–1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000–2005 categories. In the second year, the shortlists were increased to 10, the categories shifted to 1960–75, 1976–85, 1986–1995 and 1996–2005, and a second prize was awarded by a jury with the winner of the public vote.[37] The jury award ensures that albums which were artistically important but not necessarily commercially popular have a fair chance of winning; the jury does not meet to make its choice until after the popular-vote winner has been determined.[37]

Winners
Year Winner Category
2015 Joni Mitchell – Blue 1960-70s
Cowboy Junkies – The Trinity Session 1980s
Sloan – Twice Removed 1990s
Peaches – The Teaches of Peaches 2000–2005
2016 Neil Young – After the Gold Rush 1960–1975 (public vote)
Leonard Cohen – Songs of Leonard Cohen 1960–1975 (jury vote)
Rush – Moving Pictures 1976–1985 (public vote)
Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Kate & Anna McGarrigle 1976–1985 (jury vote)
Blue Rodeo – Five Days in July 1986–1995 (public vote)
Mary Margaret O'Hara – Miss America 1986–1995 (jury vote)
Arcade Fire – Funeral 1996–2005 (public vote)
Lhasa de Sela – La Llorona 1996–2005 (jury vote)
2017 Gordon Lightfoot – Lightfoot! 1960–1975 (public vote)
The Band – The Band 1960–1975 (jury vote)
Harmonium – L'Heptade 1976–1985 (public vote)
Glenn Gould – The Goldberg Variations 1976–1985 (jury vote)
The Tragically Hip – Fully Completely 1986–1995 (public vote)
Eric's Trip – Love Tara 1986–1995 (jury vote)
Feist – Let It Die 1996–2005 (public vote)
k-os – Joyful Rebellion 1996–2005 (jury vote)
2018 Neil Young – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere 1960–1975 (public vote)
Jean-Pierre Ferland – Jaune 1960–1975 (jury vote)
Rush – 2112 1976–1985 (public vote)
Bruce Cockburn – Stealing Fire 1976–1985 (jury vote)
Alanis Morissette – Jagged Little Pill 1986–1995 (public vote)
Dream Warriors – And Now the Legacy Begins 1986–1995 (jury vote)
Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It In People 1996–2005 (public vote)
Kid Koala – Carpal Tunnel Syndrome 1996–2005 (jury vote)
2019 D.O.A. – Hardcore 81 Public vote
Oscar Peterson Trio – Night Train Jury vote
2020 Beverly Glenn-Copeland – Keyboard Fantasies Public vote
Main Source – Breaking Atoms Jury vote (tie)
Buffy Sainte-Marie – It's My Way! (rescinded in 2025[38])
2021 Nomeansno – Wrong Public vote
Faith Nolan – Africville Jury vote
2022 SNFU – ...And No One Else Wanted to Play Public vote
Four the Moment – We're Still Standing Jury vote
2023 Skinny Puppy – Bites Public vote
Maestro Fresh Wes – Symphony in Effect Jury vote
2024 Tegan and Sara – So Jealous Public vote
Jackie Mittoo – Macka Fat Jury vote
2025 The Organ – Grab That Gun Public vote
Jane Siberry – The Speckless Sky Jury vote

Ceremonies

The 2018 Polaris sponsors included the CBC, the Government of Canada, FACTOR, Ontario Media Development Corporation, Slaight Communications, Radio Starmaker Fund, SiriusXM, Stingray Music/Galaxie, The Carlu, Shure Canada, Toronto radio station Indie88, SOCAN, and Re-Sound20.[39] Past sponsors have included Rogers Communications[40] and Scion.[41] The ceremonies are video-streamed live on CBC Music.[42]

Controversies

The prize has been considered too "indie" or too "mainstream".[43] Polaris Salons, with jurors as panellists, are held in a number of cities before the ceremonies.[44]

When Fucked Up won in 2009, mainstream media outlets were uncertain about how they would present the band's name. The Canoe.ca news service used the headline "F***** Up (language alert , language alert below) wins the 2009 Polaris Music Prize on Monday night";[45] The Globe and Mail headline was "Toronto hardcore band wins Polaris Music Prize,"[46] and The New Yorker's was "The Prize That Dare Not Speak Its Name".[47][48]

Godspeed You! Black Emperor refused to attend the 2013 Polaris ceremonies. When the band won for their album, Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!, representatives of their label (Constellation Records) accepted the prize on their behalf. Constellation's Don Wilkie said, "Godspeed will use the prize money to purchase musical instruments for, and support organizations providing music lessons to, people incarcerated within the Quebec prison system."[49] The next day, the band said that "holding a gala during a time of austerity and normalized decline is a weird thing to do" and "maybe the next celebration should happen in a cruddier hall, without the corporate banners and culture overlords."[50]

Tanya Tagaq said "Fuck PETA" in her 2014 victory speech,[51] using her performance and subsequent interviews as a platform to draw attention to missing and murdered Aboriginal women across Canada.[52] Lido Pimienta's 2017 acceptance speech ended with an obscenity-spiked outburst. "All of my fucking monitors were off," Pimienta shouted into the microphone at the end of the show, which was webcast by the CBC. She had performed two songs live: "I could not hear myself when I was up here. I'm fucking pissed off. Thank you though, motherfucker."[53]

After the 2023 revelation of questions about the Indigenous Canadian status of singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie, calls were made to revoke her main- and heritage-prize awards.[54] The committee rescinded the awards in 2025 after the revocation of her membership in the Order of Canada because she could no longer provide satisfactory proof of Canadian citizenship.[55]

Music releases

In 2006 and 2007, compilation CDs and souvenir program guides with one song from each shortlisted artist (except Arcade Fire in 2007) were given out at the Polaris ceremony. From 2008 to 2011, the program guides instead download cards for the songs.

Polaris has sponsored a series of promotional singles by nominees or winners. The "Polaris Cover Sessions"[56] series has past nominees recording a cover of a song by another nominee or Heritage Prize winner, and the "Polaris Collaboration Sessions" series has two past nominees collaborating on new songs.

Collaboration sessions

Polaris, the Banff Centre and Scion Sessions teamed up for a collaborative residency project with past shortlisted artists Shad and Holy Fuck. The result was the Scion Sessions-sponsored Holy Shad "Legend of Cy Borg Parts I and II" seven-inch single and a documentary video produced by AUX TV.[72]

In 2017, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Tanya Tagaq collaborated on "You Got to Run (Spirit of the Wind)".[73] Two Years later, the Weather Station and Jennifer Castle recorded a two-song split single. The Weather Station's song was "I Tried To Wear The World (featuring Jennifer Castle)", and Castle's was "Midas Touch (featuring The Weather Station)."[74]

See also

References

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  2. ^ a b Molotkow, Alexandra (October 1, 2010). "The Indie Rock Swindle". The Walrus. Archived from the original on December 1, 2010. Retrieved October 1, 2010.
  3. ^ "2011 Polaris Music Prize Long List announced" Archived October 2, 2015, at the Wayback Machine. aux.tv, June 16, 2011.
  4. ^ "Polaris Music Prize Increased To $50,000 In 2015 – Polaris Music Prize". May 9, 2015. Retrieved September 25, 2016.
  5. ^ "Polaris Music Prize: An Oral History as told by its founders, jurors, and winners". AUX.TV. Archived from the original on July 7, 2013. Retrieved November 25, 2014.
  6. ^ McLean, Steve (June 2, 2006). "The Polaris Music Prize Will Go To Canada's Best Album". Chart. Archived from the original on June 7, 2011. Retrieved July 25, 2009.
  7. ^ Howard Druckman, "Polaris Music Prize announces 2025 Long List". Words & Music, June 11, 2025.
  8. ^ Here and Now, September 22, 2014.
  9. ^ Finn, Brad (September 1, 2010). "Should it be called the Polaris 'Indie' Music Prize?". The Globe and Mail. Toronto.
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  70. ^ "Partner Covers Rush's "Limelight" For SiriusXM Polaris Cover Sessions". polarismusicprize.ca. August 28, 2019. Retrieved December 10, 2019.
  71. ^ "Pierre Kwenders Covers Jean-Pierre Ferland's "It Ain't Fair" For SiriusXM Polaris Cover Sessions". polarismusicprize.ca. June 12, 2019. Retrieved December 10, 2019.
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