Happy Canada Day: Celebrating Our Northern Neighbors' Contributions To This Country's List Of No. 1 Hits

Happy canada day

Celebrating Our Northern Neighbors' Contributions To This Country's List Of No. 1 Hits

The number of No. 1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 by Canadians who aren't Céline Dion, Bryan Adams, or Nelly Furtado is smaller than you might think, especially since some of the aforementioned artists' songs had such deathless runs on the pop charts. (Those successes even overshadowed their own work; for example, I forgot that Adams' Sting/Rod Stewart collaboration was also a chart-topping hit.) So let's take a second to celebrate chart-topping Canadian content like Alannah Myles' "Black Velvet," which hit the Hot 100's top spot in March 1990 and was followed by, um, nothing else. (Myles' previous single, the Alanis-prototype "Love Is," actually hit No. 36 on the chart. Speaking of the former You Can't Do That On Television star, "You Oughta Know" only peaked at No. 6 on the Hot 100, although it did top the Modern Rock charts from July 22 to Aug. 19, 1995.)

Sheriff's "When I'm With You" hit No. 1 on Feb. 4, 1989. YouTube hasn't turned up much in the way of official videos, and I don't even remember if there was one, but I figured this tribute to Jack Deveraux and Jennifer Horton from Days Of Our Lives would suffice, since I watched Days any day that I stayed home from school during this period. (And I always had something of a crush on Matthew Ashford, who walked the "goofy"/"romantic hero" line very well.)

Surely there are those of you out there who remember the subtitled version of the video for Snow's "Informer," which aired on MTV around the time the lyric-assisted version of the clip for Guns N' Roses' "Garden Of Eden" also graced the channel's playlist? Snow's singalong challenge topped the charts for seven weeks beginning on March 13, 1993, and was followed by the more downbeat "Girl I've Been Hurt, which went top 20.

Guess what? This song was No. 1 for... one week. (Oct. 17-24, 1998, to be exact.) God, I apologize for putting this in your head for the rest of the day.

Like I wasn't going to post the 21st century's favorite piece of pop-song catharsis? Hello, it was only the No. 1 song of all of 2006 after topping the charts from April 8 to May 6.

And now, a song that got nowhere near the top of the charts, but which is near and dear to many peoples' hearts (thanks in part to They Might Be Giants):

List of songs by Canadian artists which reached number one on the Hot 100 (US) [Wikipedia]
Alannah Myles - Black Velvet [YouTube]
Jack And Jennifer/When I'm With You [YouTube]
Informer - Snow [YouTube]
Barenaked Ladies - One Week [YouTube]
Daniel Powter - Bad Day [YouTube]
CUB - New York City [YouTube]

3:45 PM on Tue Jul 1 2008
By Maura Johnston
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4 comments

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by sicksteanein at 04:15 PM on 07/01/08
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Black Velvet is a great song. You're welcome, U.S.A.
by Chris N. at 05:16 PM on 07/01/08
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Do not click on that list if you want to continue liking Canada.
by Chris Molanphy at 05:54 PM on 07/01/08
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Technicalities on Alanis: "Oughta" didn't really, really hit No. 6; that was a live B-side (actually, the famous Grammy performance) attached to the single release of "You Learn," which did hit No. 6 for reals. Her only other U.S. Top 10 hit, and her biggest to date, is "Ironic," which made it to No. 4.

Alanis's U.S. chart achievements are minimal because her peak moment of popularity happened to fall during the era of the massively FUBAR'd mid-'90s charts, wherein Billboard's policy still required a traditional retail single release for Hot 100 placement, and the labels were in the process of decimating the single. You can put "Oughta" alongside "Don't Speak," "Daughter," "Lovefool" and "Killing Me Softly" among massive radio hits from 1994-98 that never made the big chart at all on a technicality. It's safe to assume, if there'd been a commercial single of "Oughta," it would have at least hit the Top Five, if not No. 1.

For whatever reason, Maverick deigned to release commercial singles for "Ironic" and "You Learn," which is why they charted (by that point in '96, Jagged Little Pill was such a blockbuster, they probably had little fear of album cannibalization).

And also for whatever reason, "Oughta" was still scoring enough monitored airplay when "You Learn" charted that Billboard listed the live B-side alongside it on the Hot 100. So for most of the life of the single, it was listed as "You Learn/You Oughta Know."
by owenmeany at 11:53 PM on 07/01/08
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Hosers.