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One life lesson I’ve been reminded of running a bracket to determine the best Tragically Hip song: popularity isn’t everything.
To make it easier on myself, I based the seedings for the tournament on Spotify streams. Gives an easy breakdown of songs, some easy matchups, and takes my opinion out of the equation.
However, it leads to some occasionally janky results. Today for instance, 50th seed The Lonely End of the Rink, a single from the divisive Bob Rock era, takes on #79 seed Thugs, which is arguably a fan favourite.
My guess is that some songs are more popular on streaming is that there’s an interest in them enough to listen, but not to buy the album. And some of the lower seeds in cases like this come from albums people already own, so no need to stream them.
Anyway… onto voting.
Ten years ago, iconic Canadian band The Tragically Hip recaptured the attention of a nation, first with the devastating news that lead singer Gord Downie had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, and secondly, despite the diagnosis the band went out on the road for what would become their final tour.
Their final show, in their hometown Kingston on Aug. 20, 2016, was broadcast by the CBC and watched by more than 11 million people.
The intervening years have seen posthumoussolo projects from Downie, as well as album reissues and archival releases from the band itself. Just last week, the band announced a live album documenting the Man Machine Poem tour.
Reflecting on the events of 10 years ago, which also included the release of Man Machine Poem, the band‘s best reviewed album in a number of years, I got myself thinking. Is there a fun way to look back on the work of Canada‘s most beloved band? And yes, they are Canada’s most beloved band with many apologies to Rush and others.
So taking inspiration from one of my favourite social media accounts , which does voter-based bracket competitions for the best albums of a given year, I thought why the hell not? Let’s dive in let’s look at more than 100 of The Hip’s most popular songs and decide which is the best of them all
But how to set up a tournament like this, how to rank their songs? It seemed the only fair way to do this was to look at which of their songs have the biggest number of streams.
Why does this work for voting? Well just because this song is popular does not mean it’s their best. Sure Bobcaygeon, with more than 50 million streams on Spotify, will probably fare well in this tournament.
But there are other contenders that may prove dark horses in the competition.
Courage, once seen as a standard bearer for the band and also recently featured in a campaign for the Terry Fox Foundation, is only the 10th most popular song they have.
New Orleans Is Sinking is their third most popular song, but is it their best? Is it even their third-best? That will be left up to voters?
But again, why do this? Well, it’s a lot of fun and who doesn’t need a little bit of fun in this world, in this country at this moment?
The tournament started Tuesday, May 19. Matchups will run daily through my social mediaaccounts . So please follow and play along.
The full bracket can be found here .
Have a listen to all the songs:
Also, if you happen to have a song that you’re particularly passionate about and you wanna make the case as to why it’s the best Tragically Hip song, I want you to send it to me dbreakenridge@postmedia.com
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