Find out who made the 2019 Polaris Music Prize long list
Shad, Carly Rae Jepsen and Wintersleep are among the return nominees
The 2019 Polaris Music Prize long list was just announced, and now we know which 40 artists will vie for best Canadian album of the year — a title claimed last year by Jeremy Dutcher for his debut release, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa.
The list below was chosen from 233 albums considered by a panel of 199 Canadian jurors (which, full disclosure, includes many CBC Music producers), and those jurors will vote once more to get the list down to 10 shortlist nominees on July 16. Eligible albums must have been released between May 1, 2018, and May 21, 2019. Judging is based solely on artistic merit, with no consideration for genre or record sales.
The 2019 long list has a healthy dose of newcomers to Polaris, as well as plenty of familiar names. Shad, whose last three albums were all shortlisted, is on the list this year for A Short Story About a War. Carly Rae Jepsen returns to the list with Dedicated, her followup to 2015's shortlisted Emotion. Quebec rapper Loud, who was longlisted for his debut album in 2018, is back on the long list for his recently released Tout ça pour ça. Oshawa, Ontario's Dizzy and Toronto rapper Haviah Mighty are each on the long list for the first time, and each for their debut albums. Shawn Mendes, another newcomer to the long list, is nominated for his self-titled 2018 release.
The winner, who will receive the $50,000 grand prize, will be determined by a smaller grand jury at the Polaris Music Prize gala on Sept. 16. You'll be able to live-stream that show directly from cbc.ca/music.
Here are all 40 longlisted albums:
- Tim Baker, Forever Overhead
- Tanika Charles, The Gumption
- Clairmont the Second, Do You Drive?
- Charlotte Cornfield, The Shape of Your Name
- Marie Davidson, Working Class Woman
- Dilly Dally, Heaven
- The Dirty Nil, Master Volume
- Dizzy, Baby Teeth
- Elisapie, The Ballad of the Runaway Girl
- FET.NAT, Le Mal
- Dominique Fils-Aimé, Stay Tuned!
- F--ked Up, Dose Your Dreams
- Yves Jarvis, The Same but by Different Means
- Carly Rae Jepsen, Dedicated
- Kaia Kater, Grenades
- Kimmortal, X Marks the Swirl
- La Force, La Force
- LAL, Dark Beings
- Laurence-Anne, Première apparition
- Salomé Leclerc, Les choses extérieures
- Lee Harvey Osmond, Mohawk
- Jean Leloup, L'étrange pays
- Shay Lia, Dangerous
- Les Louanges, La nuit est une panthère
- Loud, Tout ça pour ça
- Shawn Mendes, Shawn Mendes
- Haviah Mighty, 13th Floor
- Operators, Radiant Dawn
- Orville Peck, Pony
- Sandro Perri, In Another Life
- Pup, Morbid Stuff
- Lee Reed, The Steal City EP
- Jessie Reyez, Being Human in Public
- Shad, A Short Story About a War
- Snotty Nose Rez Kids, Trapline
- Alexandra Stréliski, Inscape
- Sydanie, 999
- Tobi, Still
- Voivod, The Wake
- Wintersleep, In the Land Of