Polaris | No French Album to Win the Prize

Journal d’un loup-garou (Lou Adriane Cassidy), Oiseau de nuit (Antoine Corriveau), Dogue (Ariane Roy), Feu de garde (Bibi Club), III (Choses sauvages), Abracadabra (Klô Pelgag), Nouveau langage (N Nao) and Maintenant jamais (Population II) are the French-language albums selected for the long list of the Polaris Prize, Canada’s most prestigious award for the “best Canadian album” of any style.

Having been a juror myself since the Polaris almost began, I won’t tell you who I voted for. But I pledge my shirt that none of these French-language albums will win the famous prize. Don’t get me wrong, I have no intention here based on some narrow, uptight nationalism. Rather, I propose a realistic observation, a pragmatic analysis.

For several years now, anything from white, French-speaking Quebecers – in other words, all the albums mentioned at the outset – has had little or no appeal to Canadian journalists speaking English or any language other than French.

Need we remind you that Anglo-Canadian music reviewers, unilingual with a few exceptions in the Rest of Canada (ROC), see NO coolness in these very good albums, because they don’t understand a word of these songs, which is more or less half the artistic quality of the work accomplished. What’s more, the image of French Quebec in the rest of Canada may not be at its best with the English-speaking ROC music-lovers inclined to the Polaris corpus for reasons we all know, especially since this community doesn’t know the nuances and doesn’t speak the language to tell the difference. So what’s going on? Only Population II and Antoine Corriveau could seduce some, because their musical proposals stand out.. To the point of making them an ultimate winner? Highly unlikely.

Now, everyone in indie franco Quebec knows that the hottest albums of the moment in Quebec are those by Lou-Adriane Cassidy and Ariane Roy. But… if you don’t understand the quality of the lyrics because you don’t speak the language, these albums become much less singular than they really are. Imagine a Richard Desjardins album in another language with exactly the same music… would we be seduced?

And that’s why French-language albums won’t win in 2025, once again, even though some of them will be on the short Polaris list soon to be made public.

So what’s the big deal? Every year since 2006, when the first Polaris Prize was awarded, Kebs journalists have been highlighting the Francophone selection on the Polaris long and short lists. To be more precise: in 19 years, only one Franco band has won, and that’s a long time ago: Karkwa, in 2010, which raised a few eyebrows here and there in the ROC.

Since then, NOTHING. Yes, of course, some excellent non-French Quebec albums have made it to the top, such as those by Pierre Kwenders, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Backxwash.

As for native Kebs speaking French, NOTHING.

Nevertheless, the French-speaking world represents between a quarter and a fifth of Canada’s population – 11 million, or just over 25%. The Kebs francos won just over 5% of the Polaris Awards. Of course, we can’t claim to be exactly representative of Canada’s French-speaking population, but just one Franco winner in 19 years makes an impression on the imagination. Do you really think that’s going to change any time soon? Let’s not be naive. That said, it’s possible that Marie Davidson, a French-speaking Quebecer whose superb album City of Clown, expressed exclusively in English and an international award-winner since its fall release, will win the prize next September. For French, we’ll have to wait and see, barring a miracle.

TO LISTEN TO THE 40 ALBUMS ON THE LONG LIST, CLICK HERE