It’s hard to imagine now - as Winnipeg’s most famous rock musicians seem to have been grizzled veterans forever - but Randy Bachman, Burton Cummings, Jim Kale and Garry Peterson were in their early 20s when they hit upon the riff that became Manitoba’s most memorable rock song. We encourage you all to air your grievances and/or support our choices in the comments below. We’ve all spent the last few weeks writing away, providing context for each of our 150 song selections, so we hope you’ll keep an open mind as you read through our picks for Manitoba’s most important 150 songs and listen to the playlists. Like last time, the Top 10 was compiled using a super-secret email ballot system American Woman by the Guess Who and One Great City! by the Weakerthans tied for first place. We are not so cruel as to cut him out completely.
We know, we know - it’s a controversial decision, but we’re letting you know now so you don’t incredulously scroll through looking for Heart of Gold or Harvest Moon.
We also decided not to include Neil Young. Two hour-long video meetings, countless emails, a handful of vocal disagreements and a few last-minute changes later, we have the finished product.įor this list, we decided each artist could have up to three songs, but as it turned out, only the Guess Who ended up with a trio of tracks. In early May, we gathered together, this time on a Zoom call in order to adhere to social-distancing directives, and got to work narrowing down more than 250 potential songs to our final list of 150. This time, our expert panel consisted of me, writer Jill Wilson, arts reporter Alan Small, copy editor Rob Williams, columnist Jen Zoratti, arts reporter Eva Wasney, books and drinks editor Ben Sigurdson, managing editor for Canstar News John Kendle and writer David Sanderson. He knew it was a big ask, hence the pace of his stride, but the desire to highlight (and find a practical use for our knowledge about) 150 Manitoba-made songs outweighed any hesitation we previously had. Flash-forward to early in 2020, pre-pandemic, when enterprise editor Scott Gibbons did a brisk walk by my desk to suggest we get the team back together and create a similar list for Manitoba’s 150.