Chappell Roan, Our Lady Peace and others who’ve given a shoutout to Canada

From prairie ballads to stadium anthems, music has always been the heartbeat of culture. Few thrills hit as hard as a well-worded lyric that echoes the sound of your internal world - especially when an artist calls out a city or street that you know! 

In a country as vast and varied as Canada, these musical shoutouts to diverse locales carry weight. They knit together vast geographies and diverse experiences, turning local references into cultural touchstones shared across Canada and beyond.  

Whether it’s Drake putting Toronto slang on the map, Stan Rogers imagining 18th-century maritime life or Chappell Roan throwing an off-handed reference that turns Saskatchewan into a social media trend - Canada’s musical presence looms large. Here are some legendary artists who’ve put Canadian geography at centre stage.   

Chappell Roan 

Soaring high as one of pop’s hottest rising stars, Missouri-native Chappell Roan has made some unexpected waves recently with a call out to the sparsely populated province of Saskatchewan. In her new hit The Subway, an ode to urban heartbreak, Roan sings, “I’m moving to Saskatchewan.” 

The lyrics, playing on Saskatchewan’s image as a far-flung place (perfect for escaping messy romances), have nonetheless delighted Saskatchewanians, sparking provincial pride and online celebration of their often overlooked home. Roan herself has joined in on the buzz, promising to perform in the prairie province as soon as she gets the chance. 

Colter Wall 

Keeping close to these Saskatchewan roots, rising Canadian country darling Colter Wall is another proud representative of the prairie. Son of former Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall, Colter has carved out a name for himself with his gruff vocals and mournful cowboy ballads.  

While Colter’s music often drifts across the American West, he paid tribute to his native Saskatchewan with the 2018 album Songs of the Prairie, led by the single Saskatchewan in 1881, in which Colter sings with full prairie pride, “Mr. Toronto Man, go away from my door, got my wheat and Canola seed, you’re asking me for more.” 

Drake 

No list of Canadian musical mentions would be complete without Drake. Across his vast catalogue, there is no lack for references to Toronto hangouts, from Weston Road Flow of references to Toronto hangouts, from Weston Road Flows to 6 p.m. in New York and The Ride.  

The most popular Toronto moment remains 2016’s Know Yourself, with Drake’s bittersweet chant “I was running through the six with my woes!” still echoing in cars and clubs nearly a decade on.  

Jean Leloup 

With such a strong sense of identity, it should come as no surprise that Francophone music is rich in tributes to Canadian and Quebecois locales; from Robert Charlebois’ tear-stained nostalgia in Je reviendrai à Montréal to Les Trois Accords’ tongue-in-cheek Saskatchewan.  

However, few references evoke a feeling as enchanting as Jean Leloup’s 1996 hit, "I Lost My Baby." Recounting a painful pan-provincial love, Leloup’s hook “I lost my baby, I lost my darling, I lost my friends, I lost my mind, pour une fille d’Ottawa” cemented not only a French-language classic, but one of the great ‘Franglais’ anthems. 

The Tragically Hip 

There’s no band out there as quintessentially Canadian as The Tragically Hip, and no song as evocative of Ontarian life as Bobcaygeon. While their catalogue is packed to the brim with loose Canadiana, their chart-topping ode to the Kawartha Lakes community captures something deeper about the magical beauty of rural Canadian life.  

Dreaming of simplicity in nature, legendary Gord Downie sings, “It was in Bobcaygeon, I saw the constellations,” capturing a cottage experience and putting the small town on national maps all in the same breath.  

Stan Rogers

East Coast legend Stan Rogers pursued his art with a purpose, not just to sell records, but to capture the sound of the salt-soaked life and culture of Maritime Canada. In his signature folk-shanty style, he wove historical narratives into song.  

Barrett’s Privateers recounts a disastrous Canadian privateering mission during the Revolutionary War, its refrain lamenting “I was told we’d cruise the seas for American gold, we’d fire no guns, shed no tears, now I’m a broken man on the Halifax pier, the last of Barrett’s privateers.”  

In his acclaimed Northwest Passage, Rogers looks north, retracing the doomed search for a warm water trade route through the Arctic, invoking the ‘hand of Franklin’, ‘Beaufort Sea’, ‘Davis Strait’ and other navigational touchstones etched deep in Canada’s Northern history.  

Our Lady Peace

A pillar of Canada’s ‘90s music mosaic, Toronto’s Our Lady Peace are best remembered for radio staples like Clumsy and Superman’s Dead. While explicit nods to Canadian geography are rare in their work, the video for one of their biggest hits, Somewhere Out There, was filmed in Montreal - a city close to frontman Raine Maida’s heart.  

Reflecting on those days, Maida told CAA Magazine: “I’ve spent a lot of time in Montreal over the years… everything beautiful usually has a dark side, and Montreal’s is the weather. When Our Lady Peace was first starting, we’d play these incredible hot and sweaty club shows… then we’d have to load our gear into the van, and the cold would absolutely wreck us. It was almost as if the winters made you earn your ability to tour there.”  

Cadence Weapon 

Rising Canadian rap icon Cadence Weapon may hail from Edmonton, but his lyrics strike from coast to coast. Winner of the 2021 Polaris Prize, he has consistently spotlighted Canadian issues and stories in his music, from his shoutout to the slickest Montreal neighbourhoods in the Kaytranada-produced My Crew, to his protest against Toronto’s condo boom and gentrification in High Rise and his gritty Edmonton hometown homage in Oliver Square.  

His most powerful statement of Canadiana comes in 2022’s  Africville’s Revenge, a fierce and defiant celebration of Black Canadian identity and history, with specific shoutouts to black communities spanning Vancouver to Halifax in the rallying opening lines “Africville is back, Amber Valley back, Hogan’s Alley back, back in black, back in black.” 

Feeling the music 

While our list might reach coast to coast, the full compendium of Canadian musical mentions reaches much further. From Johnny Cash’s ode to a girl in Saskatoon to Gordon Lightfoot’s odes to Canadian rail or Joni Mitchell’s poetic calls Northwards, these lyrics give us a connection to the country’s vast landscape and may even inspire trips to its diverse locales. 

Planning to hit some of those lyric-laden spots? CAA Members save three cents per litre on fuel and ten per cent on drinks and snacks at participating Shell locations.