Watch Broken Social Scene answer questions from friends about You Forgot it in People
Cillian Murphy, July Talk and others help the Toronto band look back on the 20th anniversary of their album
"Indie rock shines."
This is what Brendan Canning responded with when asked to describe Toronto's music scene in the early 2000s in just three words. At the turn of the millennium, Canadian musicians like Avril Lavigne, Celine Dion and Simple Plan were dominating the Billboard charts, but Canada itself lacked a distinct identity or city-specific hubs. That all changed with indie-rock.
While Montreal was building its own reputation as the next Seattle, serving as one of the "pivot points, churning out bands and defining the sound of the moment," as the New York Times described, Toronto wasn't far behind thanks to the band that Canning co-founded: Broken Social Scene.
On Oct. 15, 2002, Broken Social Scene released its sophomore album, You Forgot it in People. The album fared well locally at first, but soon received an unexpected boost thanks to a 9.2 review on the online blog, Pitchfork. Praised by its editor-in-chief at the time, Ryan Schreiber, as "perfect pop," Broken Social Scene experienced what was later dubbed "The Pitchfork Effect" — a band whose profile skyrocketed as a result of a glowing review from what eventually became one of the biggest tastemakers of the 2000s. "I didn't know what Pitchfork was," Canning admits now. His bandmate and co-founder Kevin Drew echoed his thoughts: "I wasn't online yet, I wasn't really on the internet."
The album itself was revolutionary: '90s indie-rock sounds molded into the shape of anthemic pop songs, created by an arsenal of musicians that acted more as a collective of friends and collaborators than a straight-up band at times. The internet, in this case, just guaranteed a larger audience beyond Toronto's borders. Its influence all these years later can be felt in the works of bands still carrying the indie-rock flag, but also in artists like Lorde, Tinashe and filmmakers like Edgar Wright and Ryan Fleck, who are all notable fans of You Forgot it in People.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of this album, CBC Music enlisted some of Broken Social Scenes friends — musicians and in one case an A-list Hollywood actor — to ask Canning and Drew some questions about the band and its seminal album. To watch, hit play on the video above.