Following a 12-year hiatus from Montreal, the Vans Warped Tour returned in full force this past summer as part of a limited run of shows celebrating its 30th anniversary. Founded by music promoter Kevin Lyman, the festival toured nonstop from its inception in 1995 up until 2019, establishing itself as the longest-running travelling music festival in North America and the epicenter for pop-punk, punk rock, and ska culture. To understand how the Warped Tour became a defining fixture of alternative music, we have to look back at the acts, stories, and unique quirks that gave the tour its legendary status.

“A freak show takes the stage”

To look at the Warped Tour through the same lens as other well-established music festivals would be a grave misunderstanding. Tickets are cheap. The tour does not have any official headliners. Lineups are a mix between well-established names within each sub-genre alongside a number of up-and-coming acts, who you can often catch hanging out at their on-site merchandise tents. Set times are announced the day of the show and are posted on an inflatable billboard at the venue.

For those on tour, days were long and sets were short. Bands quickly packed their equipment into cramped vans before rushing off to the next stop as soon as their sets ended. Well-established and mid-sized bands often took smaller paychecks in exchange for the opportunity to stay on tour while some lesser-known bands would cover their own expenses by renting out their unused bus bunks to food an merchandise vendors.

Up-and-coming bands were eager to join in on the action — prompting Lyman, in 1998, to create the longstanding tradition known as the “BBQ Band.” In essence, the BBQ Band was a lesser-known artist or band who, in exchange for a thirty minute set time, would have to buy and cook food for the bands, stage workers, and sponsors.

To put it bluntly: touring was chaotic. Musicians were young, energetic and non-conformist. In its infancy, the Warped Tour may have looked like a travelling musical circus barely scraping by. But in reality, the seeds for an explosion of counterculture had been planted, and no one was more aware of this than the bands who took its stages. The prospect of superstardom was close — and they knew it.

“Maybe it’s not my weekend / But it’s gonna be my year”

The Warped Tour helped launch a number of musical acts into the mainstream consciousness while also benefitting from a time when punk and pop-punk albums were flying off the shelves.

Sublime, who headlined the Tour’s 1995 debut, went from being a club-playing ska-punk band in Long Beach, California to a major international success thanks in part to Warped and their 1996 self-titled album which spent 179 weeks on the Billboard 200 chart. From getting kicked off the tour when the band’s mascot dalmatian, Lou Dog, bit multiple people, to the death of lead singer and guitarist Bradley Nowell just months before the release of their most commercially successful album, the star-crossed icons embodied the madness that was early Warped.

Blink-182 was another band who found themselves at the centre of mainstream success while being a staple of the tour. Having been introduced to Lyman by Pennywise guitarist Fletcher Dragge in 1996, the young, crude and remarkably talented group went from being a lesser-known skate punk band playing in their underwear to pioneers of the pop-punk genre, selling over 50 million records worldwide.

“We’re the somber media darlings”

Ultimately, though, what made Warped such an effective springboard to mainstream success for so many bands wasn’t just the exposure it offered — it was its ability to unite different subcultures into a wave of anti-conformist culture.

We’ve come a long way from shows being overrun by agents of chaos inciting havoc on and off the stage. But the ethos remains the same. Today’s shows bring together young talent, like the Paradox, with renowned veterans, like Sublime, now led by Nowell’s son Jakob. Together, they channel the same angst, rage and, rebellion that made the Warped Tour the celebratory cultural scene it is today.

What makes the Warped Tour so special is not a claim to understand everyone in a world of people longing for acceptance. Instead, the tour’s magic rests in showing concertgoers just how much conformity the mainstream demands — and giving them the freedom to say, “fuck that.”

The post I Couldn’t Wait for the Summer and the Warped Tour appeared first on The McGill Daily.

On December 7, 2025, Crick opened for DeMarco at MTELUS. While such a gig is a remarkable achievement, the significance of this feat seemed to be lost on much of the crowd. Crick noted that while performing his opening set, “the crowd seem[ed] to talk a lot over us,” a distraction which he contrasted with his band’s “very quiet, chill music.”

Crick’s musical language consists of buttery piano licks, introspective lyrics, and measured pacing. He makes music perfect for curling up with a book in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. While he doesn’t exactly make moshing music, one would still expect a greater level of respect from the audience, especially from DeMarco’s fans of lo-fi music. Crick even remarked, “[The crowd talking over us did] make me want to write music that people want to dance to.” Nevertheless, his authenticity ultimately shines through, finally settling on the fact that “[he] still want[s] to write chill music.”

This self-assurance has followed Crick throughout his musical career. Crick grew up in Coledale, a small coastal village in Australia’s New South Wales. “When you grow up in a small town,” Crick muses, “everything seems so much grander… you work hard and dream big.” Eventually, those big dreams became reality for Crick. The singer-songwriter had his first taste of musical success right after graduating high school in 2012, when he toured with Australian pop-rock artist, Kirin J. Callinan, as a backing keyboardist and bassist. While on tour, Crick met DeMarco, and the two eventually became close friends after multiple run-ins at stops in the US and Australia. While Crick would send his recordings to DeMarco expecting nothing in return, DeMarco would offer to mix these recordings in his own studio, polishing them for Crick’s sophomore album, Live… In New York City, released in early 2021.

Crick wrote the cozy pop piano album as an ode to day- to-day life in the city, while he trained as a piano repair apprentice. In fact, he recorded the album using the very piano he dragged off the street and repaired himself. In signature Crick style, he mixed it on an vintage eight-track tape player, not owning a computer at the time. Despite being a major milestone in his career, being that this was his first album released under ‘Mac’s Record Label,’ Crick remained humble when discussing the project. “I hadn’t really ever sung — no one in my family knew I [could]. I kind of just recorded the album to see if I could do it.”

Crick’s stripped-back style followed him into Droplet, his most recent project: a mellow album filled with 27 short, delicate piano grooves and instrumentals. Despite its playfulness and dreamy melodies, audiences weren’t as supportive. The album received a 58/100 rating by audiences on Album of the Year, whereas Live… In New York City received a 77/100. He released it while riding the wave of fame that came with signing with Mac and his successful 2023 complete album release, Sweet Dreamin’, so audiences seemed to have been expecting more. Crick described how “It got some weird reviews because people expected it to be Tex’s new album, but to me, this is a fun little soundtrack I did on the side, all recorded on one keyboard. It’s all very simple and raw.”

Just like any other art piece, music is another form of self-expression. Through deliberate technical choices in instrumentation and structure, the artist is able to communicate what they want to express at that moment — a feeling, a thought, an idea. There are no boundaries to what the right kind of music can or should look like: artists can produce atmospheric vocal albums like Live… in New York City or they can also create fun and playful instrumental projects like Droplet.

Crick’s experimentation with the role music plays as an artistic vehicle has incurred less-than-savoury reactions, via critics and audience reactions on tour alike. Yet, many forget that pieces such as these can serve a purpose outside of just instant gratification. Crick hopes that his music can serve as a source of comfort to listeners above all else: “[When listening to my music,] I hope listeners can relax and forget about the stress in their lives. Just enjoy the music.”

Crick’s work reminds us that an artist’s ability to remain authentic in the face of criticism or apathy is of the utmost importance. His musical quirks are precisely what makes him so charming. It’s this timeless quality that comes about because he’s “really terrible at keeping in touch with new music,” that is actually a strength of his rather than a weakness.

Perhaps the audio clips of the bustle of the streets of Manhattan and the clinking of glasses at a classic New York bar featured in Live… In New York City aren’t designed for a live audience performance, but they immerse you in a moment and feeling that you can’t escape while listening. So while Crick’s stripped-back production may sound unpolished to the general public, its raw flair is precisely what makes his work so fresh in a music scene saturated with ultra-polished production.

The post Tex Crick: Indie Through and Through appeared first on The McGill Daily.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Charley Tamagno for The McGill Daily (MD): In The Concordian, you mentioned that you see yourself as an activist first and artist second. What does this distinction mean to you? Would you consider music a medium for your activism?

NIIVI (N): Definitely. I think music is my number one medium for my activism. The most important thing to me is being on the ground and being hands-on involved with the community, because if you’re an activist and you’re not actually doing anything in the community, then it’s just performative.

My activism is my main job. The biggest way I’m doing that right now is teaching at a pre-collegiate CEGEP Prep Institute … I’m teaching precolonial arts and also language revitalization through arts because we have a lot of terminology for art. I work specifically with youth from Nunavik. I also work with Nunavik Pride – I’m one of the founders. My main thing really is trying to better my community through activism.

MD: Do you spend the majority of your time here in Montreal or in Nunavik?

N: I live in Montreal right now because I’m also a student, and all students from Nunavik have to move to the city to have a higher education. I moved here when I was 16 to start going to CEGEP after graduating high school.

MD: Could you tell me your story ofhow you got started with music?

N: With music, it was never really a decision. Music has always been an inherent part of me; not only me as a person, but in my culture as well, even though we’ve lost a lot of our cultural music practices. My father, Ito Snowball, is also a musician. He goes by Sinuupa. I grew up while he was on tour. And so when I was born, it was a given that I would be in music in some way. I was born with the ability to sing. I never really made the decision to actively pursue music. It was just there.

MD: How much of your time do you split between music and being a student?

N: I think, honestly, music takes up more time than me being a student because I am fully self-managed and independent. I book all my own gigs, and that definitely takes up more time than being a student.

MD: I understand that you come from a long line of artists. So who would you say are some of the biggest influences on your music?

N: I would say my father is definitely my number one influence … I listened to a lot of classic rock growing up and punk music. My dad[‘s] own songs sometimes delve into some heavier, even metal genres, and his lyrics have always been political. I think my lyrics reflect that, and I was influenced by that in my own writing style – having a very political storytelling approach. For broader influences, I would definitely say Tanya Tagaq. She is the ultimate alternative artist.. She’s a contemporary throat singer, and she’s super punk, [and] really awesome, and I got to get close to her this last year. She’s been such a big supporting factor to me, and I’ve always just really looked up to her since I was little. I would also say Beatrice Deer. She is another Inuk artist from Nunavik, I grew up with because she’s friends with my dad. I have gotten closer to her since I moved to Montreal because she lives here now. She is an incredible…multidisciplinary artist… and I would love to be her. When it comes to musical influences, I would definitely say … Ribbon Skirt [and] Ethereal Tomb.

MD: How does your experience growing up in Nunavik currently influence your songwriting and performances?

N: I think my experience as Inuk influences every aspect of my music, even when the subject matter isn’t necessarily about being Inuk, I just am Inuk. My experience influences the way that I live my life and [how] I am treated in life as well … Every single part of my music is influenced by my indigeneity. Growing up in Nunavik, my family really highlighted the importance of our history, and not only the history of our colonization … but the pre-colonial history: the art, the culture before we lost it. It really highlighted the importance of language and cultural revitalization … Always the number one priority was … the survival of our culture. And I think that reflects in my music as well.

MD: How would you say that you incorporate your culture into your music?

N: The opening song on our album is … an ancient, traditional song – it’s so old that even the Inuktitut in it is an ancient Inuktitut. I start the show in a drum circle, and I sing the song in this drum circle with the crowd, and then I run up on stage, and we all come in in the middle of the song as a band and continue it. It highlights the importance of tradition and culture, and we can honour [it] by starting every show with that. It’s only something we can do whenever we have the space to do it, because I have to be able to get on the ground and interact with people in the drum circle. Also, it jumps into a more modern aspect with the full band right in the middle of it. So, it’s highlighting the way that we can keep traditions while also being progressive.

And then also my throat singing, that’s an ancient part of our culture. It’s one of the things that has been heavily intertwined with my life because I’ve been throat singing since I was 4 years old. I learned how to throat sing before I even knew how to sing in the usual sense. I really love including throat singing in my songs, and I also think it includes a very unique part to the sound.

MD: Have you found performing in Montreal different than when you’ve been in the north?

N: I think the main difference is being in Montreal, I feel the sense of responsibility to explain. A lot of the people here don’t even know that we [Inuit] exist, even though we’re in the same province. It’s really weird to live in this disconnect because I know so much about Indigenous people and my culture and even other indigenous cultures…. You have to be educated in order to survive as an Indigenous person today. But then you come to the city and then everyone is absolutely clueless about Indigenous people, and there’s even people who don’t know that you exist, who don’t think or don’t even know that Indigenous people still exist. A lot of people think that we’re extinct because of colonization. It’s crazy, the amount of ignorance and unknowingness of the public here. When I’m in Montreal or in any city, I treat my shows as a history lesson where I explain the context of the songs in a brief way just to be able to introduce people to this concept, and maybe open their minds and their curiosity to going and learning about it.

MD: What has been your community’s response to your music?

N: There’s definitely mixed reviews. Nunavik is still extremely Christian, and there is a lot of homophobia and fear of difference – there is even a fear of our culture because we were so indoctrinated into Christianity. A lot of older Inuit still believe that our culture is the mark of Satan. A lot of older Inuit still think that practicing our culture even throat singing, is satanic. And so there are a lot of [people] that are still scared of their own culture. It’s really difficult, and it’s sad to see. Youth are getting out of that idea, but, as a teacher of youth, you can still see this ideology affects them. Shamanism is definitely the number one, most feared thing of our culture because we were taught that it was satanic and that even if you talk about it you’re going to hell. So, even youth, whenever you say the word shaman, they get scared and they freeze up and you have to reassure them: “No, it’s okay, it’s okay to talk about these things.” These things are not scary. This is part of who we are and it’s a beautiful thing. We’re still so affected by colonization [and] Christianity that we have this fear of difference, and almost this fear of ourselves. But whenever I do get support from my community — and I do have a lot of it, I do — it makes me feel as though I’m doing the right thing.

MD: How does being both queer and Indigenous show up in your work and your activism?

N: I’m two-spirit, but in a more feminine way. In my culture, being two-spirit is about carrying two spirits with you. I was given my great grandmother’s name, Jenny Snowball, to carry with me. And then I have my own spirit of Niivi. I don’t know if I’ve talked about it specifically in my music, but I definitely advocate for queer people a lot. I do a lot of activism for queer Inuit specifically because I grew up thinking that there was something wrong with me because there’s absolutely zero Inuk queer representation. The only reason why I felt like it was okay was because there was one other queer person in my community who was trans, my chosen brother … [My chosen brother and his friend] put on the first ever Pride parade in 2020, and I joined them the next year, and we helped create the Nunavik Pride organization. One of the most important things is just having that representation and being a queer Inuk that is visible in the community, because there are so many queer Inuit who think that it’s just not possible. There’s so much misinformation: whenever someone comes out as queer in our community, [people claim] it’s not traditional, and that’s just not true. That’s just Christianity speaking, and Christianity is not our culture. We’ve had Christianity for a while, but it’s not our culture. In our original culture we had space for queer people, they were in fact important members of our society. Even our creation story is one that is extremely queer.

MD: Who is in the band for NIIVI?

N: My bandmates right now: Ollie Capello. She’s the bassist. She’s amazing; she’s also the best visual artist ever. She’s a painter and that’s her main thing – she actually painted the album cover that we’re gonna use, and she’s probably the best visual artist that I know. Kirk Koshkin, our guitarist, he’s also the lead singer and guitarist of his own band called Honey, which is how I found him. Our current drummer right now is Emilio, from a Montreal band called Dollhouse, which is also another incredible band. It’s really nice to be so involved in the Montreal music scene and have this community of musicians. It’s the only way that I felt comfortable living in Montreal. When I first moved to Montreal from my hometown, I really hated it, because it felt so individualistic compared to coming from a very communitarian place.

MD: If someone were looking to delve into the world of artists from Nunavik, who would you recommend?

N: I obviously first have to say my dad, his artist name is Sinuupa. My favorite song by my dad is “Simple Man” off his Arctic Darkness album. It’s so, so 90s. And also “Make Her Happy.” That song is from the same album. It’s a musician song – there’s saxophone, flat bass, background singers – that song is just crazy.

And then I would say Beatrice Deer. My favorite album of hers is her newest one, the Inuit Legends album. I got to open for her release show that she did here in Montreal. I absolutely love it. It’s basically a bunch of songs telling the story of traditional Inuit legends and it’s incredible. Then I would also have to say my cousin, Kathy Aputirajuk – it’s our original last name before the government decided it was going to be Snowball. Those would be my main three from Nunavik that I would recommend.

The post NIIVI: A Queer Indigenous Musician on Representation and Her Experience appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Despite McCamman’s recent success, his path to gaining momentum in the indie world wasn’t straightforward. As recently as 2024, he was feeling increasingly stifled playing guitar in the Philadelphia punk band Blood, despite the group having released a full-length album and built a small fanbase. He took a risk by leaving the band later that year, instead moving to New York to be the frontman of his own project: Victoryland.

The ambition which led him into leaving Blood and starting Victoryland drove him apart from many of his musical peers in Philadelphia. But two years on from that move, it has become apparent that he made the right decision. Following the release of My Heart Is A Room With No Cameras In It, LCD Soundsystem’s frontman James Murphy took a liking to Victoryland, eventually giving them the opportunity to open for the legendary New York band’s North American tour. Their first stop was in Vancouver, where Radio TinTin had the chance to speak to McCamman about what some would call his selfish decision to leave Blood and found Victoryland, pursuing the goal of making “perfect” pop music.

A musician’s decision to leave their band is often characterized as ‘selfish’, and it’s easy to see how an artist could take offense at being described this way. Yet McCamman readily agreed with the label: “I like that you called it selfish, honestly… because it was. I think the inception of this project was me starting to prioritize my own songwriting over songwriting for [Blood], which had been restricting my creative urge to write true hits and accessible [pop] music.”

The abrasive punk sound of his previous band eventually became limiting for McCamman, although it took him a while to realize the appeal of a more “mainstream” outlook. “When I was younger, I really loved experimental music, and I really liked challenging myself [with it],” he recalls. “But when I got older, I think I realized that it takes a real skill to write a simple song that is really infectious.”

“I love music where every part of the song is really satisfying, and you can really do that with music. I think about that a lot — how music can be ‘perfect.’ The appeal of what he calls “perfect” music soon became a fixation for McCamman. “I got really obsessed with how people say they can’t stop listening to a song, and what goes into making [that].”

The notion of “perfection” goes against the grain of most of the independent music realm. Victoryland itself is labeled as an “alternative” band — so how could they be chasing the very “perfection” they’re branded to reject? Their answer is by aligning “perfect” with music that’s accessible, not necessarily mainstream. Making music for the masses doesn’t have to be synonymous with chasing universal appeal or losing creative nuance.

The “perfect” song à la Victoryland can still be deeply authentic, especially in its lyrical content. Using a catchy, danceable pop beat to propose deeper or more psychological themes is something they share with LCD Soundsystem. While the New York band is firmly “alternative,” it’s hard not to dance to singles like the aptly titled “Dance Yrself Clean,” regardless of your musical background.

McCamman loves this dichotomy: “My real hope is that someone is jumping up and down and singing to [our] music, and then slowly realizing what they’re saying is [actually] really gross or violent. Because that is [the] thing about pop music [that] is really interesting to me — the way people feel it before they really hear what is being said.”

The authenticity of Victoryland’s lyrics has become a core feature of their music. The words allow McCamman, a passionate songwriter, to showcase his more unsavoury tastes in a way that to him feels both confrontational and strangely inviting. “If I was to tell you some of the gnarly thoughts I have regularly, I think people would be like, ‘What the hell is wrong with him?’” McCamman says with a chuckle. “But everybody has those thoughts.”

Through Victoryland, McCamman seeks to amplify the uglier thoughts that come with being human. Singles like “Here I Stand” channel that same candour into a disregard for outside expectations, turning the abstract aversion into something blunt and immediate. In it, McCamman sings: “Here I stand / Whoever said it’s foolish / Fuck you and everyone else.”

Victoryland’s pursuit of perfection is one that not many are willing to take on, and McCamman is intent on pushing back against the indifference toward ambition that has taken hold in younger creative circles. “The poison of nonchalance and people who are ‘too cool for school’ are everywhere, especially on the East Coast,” McCamman explains, “I really hate that shit.” He pauses, then reiterates emphatically: ”I hate that shit.”

He continues: “Because if you fail and you weren’t trying to appease people, then you didn’t really fail, right? And there’s a failsafe, like, it’s like, ‘Oh, I failed? I didn’t try that hard,’” he says with a shrug. “And, well, you should try for something big and fail really hard, you know? An awesome failure is better than a safe layup. You just might as well go big.”

In terms of his creative ambitions, McCamman leaves no space for guesswork. He is continuing to strive towards making ‘perfect’ music, according to his own definition.

The post Victoryland: The Selfish Pursuit of Perfect Music appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Burnside elaborates: “It’s exciting — like with my favourite artists, every time they release a new record, I wanna be like ‘What?’” — his face contorts with a mixture of confusion and disgust — “I want to ask myself, ‘What is this?… They must’ve lost their minds.”

As Burnside alludes to, artists pushing the limits of their musical experimentation can often come at the cost of losing fans. The Strokes are one notable example, having recently altered their sound against the expectations of many of their listeners. Their latest album, Reality Awaits, released in late July, provoked mixed reactions from critics and fans alike. In addition to being touted as the “auto-tune” album, it features a prominent diss to popular music critic Anthony Fantano in the song “Lonely in the Future.” Reality Awaits has achieved an undeniable prominence in the Strokes’ discography — one that can be seen as either a jarring break or a welcome breath of fresh air from the rest of their work depending on the individual listener.

“Every songwriter I know is always trying to challenge and push themselves, some more than others,” says Burnside, “but it’s rare to meet anyone who wants to do the same thing over and over again”.

The reactions of fans, whether positive or negative, can be used as a gauge by artists to test whether they are pushing the boundaries of their own musical landscape to a sufficient extent. While Burnside himself hasn’t been tinkering with the wonders of auto-tune, he has been experimenting with a different emotional palette. His latest record, titled It’s Not Going to be Okay, marks a morbid turn from the more wistful, subdued tone of the rest of his catalogue. Written and recorded in the wake of the death of his best friend, Dean Jendoubi, Burnside used the project to process his grief. Centering an entire record around mortality marked a new direction for Burnside, one he deems significant to
his artistic development.

“You know…you understand how music works after a while, and how melodies and emotions intertwine. Music is like magic, isn’t it? It’s just like trickery. You’re tricking someone’s brain into feeling certain emotions with melodies and chords. But you have to kind of go, ‘Okay, don’t do that. You’ve done that before, or you’ve heard that before. Do try and do something else.’”

Making music that deviates from the norm is a deliberate craft. Commercial success in the music industry can often be crafted from a set of predetermined components that have been shown to work. There are identical melodies in hundreds of songs topping the charts (such as the pervasive “Gen Alpha melody”).

After more than a decade of releasing music, Burnside knows the “formulas” for gaining an audience. “You know all the tricks. You can do all the nice stuff, but you don’t. [In] so much music I listen to, you’re expecting this particular melody, [but] they went the other way even though it’s not as nice. It’s not as ‘done,’” he explains. “They chose to do the sort of grosser thing. And you’re like, ‘ah…I respect it.’ And then you grow to love it.”

In order to be appreciated, music relies on the interaction between the artist and listener, meaning that to some extent artists have to balance taking creative risks with maintaining a universality of appeal to the audience. For Burnside, that conflict is constant in his creative process.

“It’s so hard, when you’re making the music, to choose those paths sometimes. You’re like, ‘if I land on the four [chord] here and do this melody, it’d be really tasty…’ but it’s probably [already] been done. It’s hard to choose the path less taken,” he concedes.

Later, Burnside used the age-old adage “with great power comes great responsibility.” Artists like him maintain the cultural core of our society, wielding their craft to shape people’s everyday emotions. With the current state of our society making it increasingly enticing for people to retreat into the comfort of media and art, artists must continue exercising their creative influence in a meaningful way. Joshua Burnside, for one, keeps us wondering what he’s going to take on next — and how he is going to continue challenging his devoted fanbase, who for now seems to have withstood his attempts to drive them away.

The post The Art of Losing Listeners appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The evening of June 25 saw Fortner perform a solo show at Gesú Concert Hall, near the end of a packed first day of the Montreal International Jazz Festival. Fortner darted quickly onto the stage, phone in one hand and a paper cup of steaming hot tea in the other, smiling at the crowd. “As per usual, I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” he said, and the audience responded with a nervous chuckle. “Bear with me.” 

Seated at a Kawai grand piano, he began with a crowd favourite, “Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing” by Stevie Wonder — an interpretation long-time Fortner fans knew from his 2023 album Solo Game. 

“Don’t You Worry ’Bout A Thing” began with a sparse and fleeting arrangement of the famous verse.  Throughout the tune, different sporadic ideas, bubbling up from the deepest depths and raining down from the highest registers of the piano, began to enter into a clear conversation with the main melody, creating a shimmering veil of harmony. In interviews, Fortner has said that he sees harmony as a “set of simultaneous melodies” — an idea stemming straight from classical counterpoint and Ellingtonian composition. As he broadened his harmonic and rhythmic horizons over the course of the song, it became clear that this was not just a catchphrase: it was a core philosophy of Fortner’s playing. It would be easy to imagine each finger having a mind of its own, constantly in a battle between its own desires and the resolution of the larger harmonic theme. The melody, which is ordinarily relegated to the highest voice of an arrangement, was shifted time and again between hands and across different octaves, much as Ravel or Beethoven would transfer thematic motifs through different sections of a symphony orchestra. All of this was overlaid with a masterful articulation and touch, where different voices would come out of the blue, suddenly taking dynamic precedence at times even over the main melody. While many may think of harmony strictly as a way to embellish melody, the care and attention Fortner gave to every harmonic idea made it clear that he didn’t view things in such a straightforwardly hierarchical way. 

He deconstructed “Don’t Worry ’Bout a Thing” piece by piece, peering at each harmonic and rhythmic idea from a few different angles before returning it to its place to fiddle with a new theme. Throughout this demonstration of mastery, Fortner maintained an air of ease and a playful touch. His tapping foot, a quiet onlooker for most of the tune, gradually became a participating accompanist, matching the instrument’s volume as Fortner entered a dynamic peak before fading again into the background of the simple verse. Fortner ended the tune just as he’d started it: with the simplicity of the Stevie Wonder classic.

Fortner’s trademark harmonic exceptionalism and his favoured use of deconstruction were put on pause for a profoundly simple rendition of Oscar Peterson’s L’Impossible. While interpreted by Peterson in certain instances as a Bossa Nova, Fortner’s performance skewed more towards a genre-ambiguous, sine-like purity. A steady offbeat chordal ostinato sounded for nearly the entire duration of the piece, providing a novel departure from the pianist’s relentless explorative rhythmic and harmonic forays. He kept Peterson’s simple diatonic melody relatively free of ornamentation, allowing the audience space to focus on the sound of the piano, the beauty of the melody, and his precise articulation. The peaceful etude seemed to wind its way through gentle hills and across expansive valleys before ending abruptly to nearly everyone’s surprise. The audience was left almost offended: what happened to the melody?! The steadiness and timelessness? Perhaps that’s just what happens, and it is certainly what Fortner intended. 

In addition to being one of jazz’s most cherished legends, Oscar Peterson grew up in the heart of Montreal, where he is now celebrated as one of the city’s most prolific artistic innovators. Fortner evidently took advantage of the location of this venue to highlight Peterson’s legacy — In addition to L’Impossible, his set included a piece from Peterson’s Canadiana Suite, entitled Place St. Henri in honour of the composer’s childhood neighbourhood in south-west Montreal. 

Place St. Henri showcased Fortner’s expertise and knowledge of the jazz repertoire in fiery fashion. Jumping into the tune from a tense silence, his hands slid rapidly from the polar ranges of the concert grand towards middle C, before converging and floating into the higher register in synchrony. This synchrony proved to be short-lived, however, when Fortner proceeded to enter into the familiar out-in left-hand stride pattern championed by everyone from James P. Johnson and Art Tatum to Oscar Peterson. While stride piano is well regarded at all tempos, Fortner decided to employ it at a virtuosically fast clip while his right hand flew around the upper keys in a blur evoking the song’s composer. The audience was already in awe, but Fortner took it further up a notch, dialing up the tempo and the intensity with unwavering precision. An audible murmur and dispersed laughter could be heard throughout the audience. 

Even as the fiery rampage of the piano reached an immensity in volume that seemed to overtake the man at its keys, there was no question that he alone still held the reins. Fortner, who had been peering at the audience and swaying back and forth throughout the show, was now 100 per cent focused. Hunched over, he kept his eyes glued to his darting hands. Just as the heat reached peak ferocity, Fortner dialed back to his tempo primo — a masterful demonstration of tension and release. Then, before anyone could even get the idea of relaxing, Fortner gave a bold flourish, halting the momentum completely with a bang on a low note and jumped clean out of his seat, bolting off the stage. Almost instantly, the audience erupted in almost disbelieving applause. Fortner walked back onstage moments later to a standing ovation.

Once the audience had collected themselves, a final ballad resonated through the concert hall, contemplative and lush. Fortner rounded out the soft tune before following it with a sweeping final cadenza, paying homage to the dualities that had characterized the whole show: a blend of fast and slow, complexity mirrored against simplicity, order balancing chaos. These are the ingredients with which Fortner works, and from my experience are highlighted especially during his solo performances. 

After all, Fortner is not simply a pianist. He is, first and foremost, an arranger — an expert at organizing and rearranging complex webs of rhythm and harmony to create something with as much scope as an orchestral composition within the 88 keys of his instrument. Every tune he plays is orchestrated with a distinct texture, evocative of a range of feelings. With a back pocket full of arranging techniques to pull from, built up over a lifetime of training and experience, every set Fortner plays is guaranteed to be completely unique. What unites them is his humour, insight, and musicality, which suffuses every piece he plays with his distinctive musical fingerprint. Fortner frequently tours with acclaimed vocalist Cecile McLorin Salvant, and his piano trio with Tyrone Allen and Kayvon Gordon (releasing an album, Leave That In There, in late August). While these groups are all incredible in their own ways as distinguished faces of modern jazz, an opportunity to see one of Fortner’s rare solo shows should not be missed.

The post Review: Sullivan Fortner Solo at Gesú Concert Hall appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Since 1980, Jazz Fest has attracted world-class musicians and music lovers alike with a dazzling week of free shows and musical exploration. In what has become the largest jazz festival in the world, both established legends and rising stars of jazz and adjacent genres take to public outdoor stages in and around Place Des Arts during the 10-day event. Over the years, the festival has hosted a plethora of household names, including Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson–a jazz pianist and hometown hero raised in Little Burgundy, Ray Charles, Dave Brubeck, and Aretha Franklin. This years’ festival highlights some of the brightest global talents in music from veteran Charles Lloyd to Earth, Wind & Fire to Immanuel Wilkins.

In addition, many local Montreal talents are bringing their own homegrown vibrancy to the stages. In this year’s edition of Jazz Fest, many local jazz groups are scheduled to play major sets, showcasing Montreal’s robust jazz culture to festival attendees. Below, I chose to highlight one official McGill ensemble, one McGill student-led group, and one faculty-led group, all of which are performing sets you definitely will not want to miss:

The McGill Jazz Orchestra 1: June 26, 5:00 pm, Rio Tinto Stage (Free)

The McGill Jazz Orchestra 1 is an ensemble made up of talented students from the Schulich School of Music at McGill University. They will play a large outdoor set at Jazz Fest, free of charge. Incidentally, this is not the orchestra’s first major gig. Every year, the Jazz Orchestra plays an array of shows throughout the city at different venues, with members of the orchestra leading bands that perform regularly at jazz clubs across Montreal. 

The ensemble is directed by acclaimed Canadian pianist and composer Marianne Trudel, who has performed extensively with l’Orchestre National de Jazz de Montréal, and with major names such as Chucho Valdés, Kenny Wheeler, and Ingrid Jensen. Trudel also composes an extensive contemporary repertoire for the McGill Jazz Orchestra 1, giving the 18-piece group a unique sound that will undoubtedly capture listeners’ attention.

Professor Trudel told The Daily that audiences at the Jazz Orchestra’s upcoming Jazz Fest set can expect “a broad spectrum of styles, energies, and colours” spanning “really early on in big band music to nowadays.” Trudel highlighted the importance of audience participation and the vibrant festival atmosphere in bringing out the best in performers. “I’ve been presenting concerts with the McGill Jazz Orchestra 1 at the Montreal Jazz Fest for a few years now, and every time, I can see that the students are really motivated to play in the largest jazz festival in the world . . . it gets them in a mindset where they play super well.”

Najib Fenaoui: July 4, 6:00 pm, Le Studio TD (Free)

Najib Fenaoui is a McGill student and vocalist who will lead his ensemble, Najib and the Alter Egos, in a free set taking place at Le Studio TD. Fenaoui has a diverse range of musical influences, from Ella Fitzgerald to Bobby McFerrin, and this versatility is clearly expressed through his witty, darting, lyrical phrasing, bringing unmistakable personality to jazz standards.

Fenaoui was the recipient of this year’s Oliver-Jones Prize, which rewards university-level musicians of visible minorities who show extensive musical promise and talent. The reward was created in honour of local legend Oliver Jones, a pianist who traversed local clubs in his home neighbourhood of Little Burgundy to major international stages and festivals. Fenaoui’s reception of the prize comes with the opportunity to perform at the renowned Jazz Fest. “I’m honoured,” Fenaoui tells The Daily regarding winning the esteemed prize. “It’s like a stamp of approval from people that have been doing this for much longer than I have. It’s nice to be recognized by my mentors.” 

Fenaoui sees his first performance as a bandleader in the Jazz Fest as a means to introduce himself to a new, broader audience. For this reason, he is seeking to represent a wide variety of artistic themes in his set. 

“People should expect to see a lot of variety in both vocals and styles, but all within the jazz idiom. Bossa Nova, Blues, swing, Ballads, some Soul and R&B. People should expect to hear my voice explore all of these different styles in a comfortable way. I feel at home in these styles of music and try to blend all of them the best I can.” 

Camille Thurman with the Darrell Green Quartet: June 27, 7:00 pm, Upstairs Jazz Bar & Grill (Paid)

Camille Thurman and Darrell Green are perfect examples of the excellence of the Schulich School of Music jazz faculty. Together, they lead the Downbeat Award-winning McGill Jazz Conglomerate, an ensemble featuring McGill vocalists. They also teach several classes at McGill and serve as indispensable mentors to students in the program. Both are widely considered first-call members of both the New York and Montreal jazz scenes. The two star musicians lead the award-winning group, Camille Thurman with the Darrell Green Quartet, which tours regularly both within North America and beyond.

Camille Thurman is not a performer you want to miss. Known for her rich and dark tone, blisteringly accurate phrasing on the saxophone, as well as her virtuosic abilities as a vocalist, Thurman has built a rich career for herself in the jazz scene. She has played extensively with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and was a featured soloist in the ensemble’s 2021 tribute to John Coltrane’s magnum opus, A Love Supreme. She has also performed alongside numerous greats, including George Coleman, Chaka Khan, and Erykah Badu.

Darrell Green is a dynamic and forceful drummer who joined the Schulich School of Music Jazz faculty in 2021 alongside Professor Thurman. Professor Green is known for his deep musicianship, extensive experience, and technical expertise. 

For this performance, Thurman and Green will be joined by bassist Paul Beaudry, pianist Yago Vazquez, and trumpeter Greg Glassman. There is no doubt that this all-star ensemble will be in prime form and ready to swing.

Their quintet set will take place at Upstairs Jazz Club, with a cozy, intimate atmosphere that will highlight the ensemble’s nuance and artistic breadth. While this show costs $40 (and a food/drink purchase is required), listeners will not leave the club disappointed.

The musical endeavours highlighted above are far and away exceptional even by the already high standards of the Jazz Festival. Whether or not they’re from McGill, audiences can expect to have a blast witnessing the talent and musicianship being nurtured in our very own Schulich School of Music.

For a complete list of Jazz Fest sets led by current Schulich School of Music students or faculty:

Mafuba (Opening for The Bad Plus): June 26, 9 pm, Théâtre Jean-Duceppe (Paid)

Jean-Michel Pilc Trio: June 28, 6 pm, Le Studio TD (Free)

Ranee Lee: July 2, 7 and 9:30 pm, Upstairs Jazz Bar & Grill (Paid)

Doxas Brothers: June 25, 6 pm, Le Studio TD (Free)

Lex French “Sketches of Miles” 100 ans: June 25, 9:30 pm, Diese Onze Jazz Club (Paid)

Al McLean Quartet Coltrane 100ans: June 27, 9:30 pm, Diese Onze Jazz Club (Paid)

Marianne Trudel Trio: July 4, 9:30 pm, Diese Onze Jazz Club (Paid)

The post The McGill Community takes on the Montreal International Jazz Festival appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The artist was born and raised in Montreal Nord’s vibrant community, which played a role in developing her narrative voice early on, writing intimate and cinematic songs straight from the heart. Armed with unbreakable determination and a pure love for music, Cinzia has amassed a dedicated following, as well as strong streaming numbers throughout the years. She has performed at major festivals including Festivoix, Ottawa Bluesfest, Festival sur le Canal, and St. Roch X. Most recently, she performed at Cafe Campus on March 3.

In late 2025, Cinzia released “When I Think About Us,” followed by “Runner” — both tracks included in the newly released EP, The Wax, which was released on March 20, 2026.

“When I Think About Us” kicks off The Wax with an upbeat tune reminiscing on a love that never could be, in spite of its greatness. On the other hand, “Runner” is a slow introspection of the writer’s unhealthy attachment to emotionally unavailable partners. Both singles pave the way for “Thread,” the latest single Cinzia released before sharing her completed EP. The Daily spoke with Cinzia about The Wax, why “Thread” means so much to her, and what the listener should look out for while listening to her work.

This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Youmna El Halabi for The McGill Daily (MD): How did the idea of your new EP come to be? Why “The Wax”?

Cinzia: Most of what I do with Cinzia & The Eclipse is based on the magic of the moon and her cycle. The waxing crescent actually begins this Friday so I thought [it would be] a perfect time to take her beauty and [immortalize] it within the music that we’re sharing.

MD: How did you decide that “Thread” would be the lead single?

Cinza: “Thread” is the song that means [more] to me than anything I’ve ever written for myself. There was something extremely cathartic and therapeutic about writing [about] how I really fell to my knees at one point and would’ve done absolutely anything for the person I love. I know people say that, but in that last relationship I really understood what it meant to love someone unconditionally. I saw every scar, every crack, every ounce of heart, hurt, beauty and ugly of this person, even the parts he thought he was hiding, and I have to admit I loved this person. I would’ve quite honestly walked through fire if it came to it. So when we wrote “Thread,” I didn’t even know I was writing about myself and that relationship. I really thought I was just writing a cute little song until I started to piece the lyrics together and be like, “Ohhh, she was me!!”

MD: What was the people’s response to “Thread,” and what are your thoughts on their reactions?

Cinzia: People locked in, which was really incredible. I had people messaging me in tears because of the chorus, which honestly fills me with gratitude because that chorus is truly a beg. You’re begging for someone to stay, that you’ll become whatever they want. I think the music driving those words and the repetitions really captures the anxious state of mind you end up in when you’re so in love and begging someone to stay.

MD: You’ve put out several EPs throughout the years, and I’m guessing with each one there was a unique process that was followed. What was it like for The Wax during production?

Cinzia: To be honest, I was a pain in the ass with this EP. I’ve become really confident in the sound and elements that I want in my music. These songs have evolved into exactly what I want them to be. In the past, I’ve had a little more of a pop sound, but it never spoke to me as an artist, even though everything [producers] Markybeats and Luca did with those songs is absolutely everything. It’s always a great pleasure to work with friends because they understand me without me having to explain [my vision] too deeply, so I’m really grateful for their talent and friendship.

MD: Describe your writing process from inspiration to creating a song.

Cinzia: I don’t know if I have a process. I think it’s just being real, getting in a room, having real conversations and spinning that into cool lyrics and melodies. That’s the beauty of the arts in my opinion. You’re kind of spinning something out of nothing, something you just pulled out of a subconscious place. I think the more in tune you are with yourself and the universe, the easier it is to tap into songwriting and connect with people. We’re in a hub where all thoughts and experiences cross over. That’s why songs can become so relatable! We’re all living some of the same experiences.

MD: What do you hope people get from the album?

Cinzia: Some closure, maybe some spells they can repeat and chant. I hope people have fun with it and get whatever they need at the time they hear it.

MD: What is your favourite part about performing your new songs versus your old ones?

Cinzia: I’m an impulsive person, so doing anything new will always be where a lot of my excitement lies. I also think these songs are the most real and honest I’ve been, so it’s nice to be able to play music that truly resonates with me as a human.

The Wax is available for listening on all platforms. Cinzia & The Eclipse will resume touring on April 26.

The post The Wax Talk appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The line between performance and identity has become increasingly blurred in music. Be it EsDeeKid’s carefully hidden persona or Gorillaz’s quarter-century of lore, artists now construct themselves as deliberately as they write songs. Every physical action and digital trace carries a magnitude of importance. Optics are king, and a misstep could spell the end of an artist’s career.

Singer-songwriter Phil Elverum, talking to the Daily from his home studio in Anacortes, Washington, USA, has noticed this modern obsession with a carefully crafted image. “I think it’s an expression of what’s happening in the culture at large,” he says, gesturing for emphasis. “Everyone on social media is always performing for their followers, so everyone is used to putting on a face and presenting themselves in an idealized way.”

The goal of “perfect” performance is not restricted to social media or mainstream artists. “I think that it’s even finding expression in independent music,” Elverum adds. 

Performing as The Microphones and Mount Eerie, Elverum leans into lo-fi production, recording many songs with analog tape recorders and sparse acoustic arrangements. From hellish sound collages to delicate love stories, his music exudes vulnerability. The result is an intimate sonic landscape listeners can immerse themselves in.

Having released more than 40 records since the 1990s, with standouts like The Glow Pt. 2 shaping the independent scene, Elverum is no stranger to the pressures of presentation. Like many public figures, he holds his actions in high regard — but rather than chasing flawlessness, he actively avoids it. “People forgot that human touch is so important,” says Elverum, who is known for manning his own merchandise booth when on tour. 

Still, his goal of showcasing imperfection is most evident in his music. “My mind was formed in the era where sloppiness and imperfection were important to feature prominently,” Elverum says. His musical identity is shaped by Seattle’s grunge scene, which he describes as “raw and imperfect.” That era of music was not burdened by today’s technology, a development which tends to eliminate the mistakes and human touch that make recording music so special in the first place. 

Hence, the contrast between Elverum’s sound and the majority of today’s new music is evident. 

“I’m weirded out by how clean everything sounds. Also, people’s singing is so pretty.” He laughs, flashing a wide grin. “What’s up with that?”

Our algorithm-driven world is relentless in its crusade to force individuals into fixed boxes. Whether it’s new technology or the latest viral trends, the pressure to conform to social pressures seems unavoidable. In this day and age, a student showing up to class in skinny jeans would likely face judgement from classmates — even though the opposite might have been true ten years ago. Elverum faces a similar dilemma. Instead of skinny jeans in a room of straight-cut or bootleg denim, he arrives at a technically faultless musical landscape armed with uneven vocals and untamed instrumentals.

How has he resisted the expectations of conformity from the music industry, remaining aligned with his north star of imperfection? “I’ve just been careful to maintain my own weird little corner off to the side [and] to not really participate in the music industry as a whole in a way that feels like it’s beyond me,” Elverum explains.

His independence, facilitated through his own label P.W. Elverum & Sun, allows him to release and sell his work on his own terms. 

“I don’t work with other labels, I’m small, so I’m free and liberated to just do whatever I want. Also, I don’t really follow music very well, so I don’t even know what the expectations would be… I know how to do one thing, and that’s just what I do. If I were to try to do something that would be well-received or cool, it would be embarrassing and it would not work.”

The authenticity with which Elverum pursues his craft is poignant. Despite the talent and influence he has accumulated, he has not abandoned his ethos of imperfection for a path that almost certainly would have brought more commercial and financial success. 

At his essence, Elverum is an artist, and while he may continue to ponder the mysteries of human existence through his music, one thing he does not question is the importance of making art. “My ideal is to be engaged with some kind of art practice. Whatever it is, if it’s music or something else, I don’t know,” Elverum says.

“That’s who I am. That’s who I want to be. That’s the life I want to live, until I die.”

The post Phil Elverum on the Power of Imperfection appeared first on The McGill Daily.

It was a deliberate reframing of what “America” can mean, delivered on one of the few stages left that still pretends to speak for everyone at once. That’s why the “Benito Bowl,” the fan nickname that spread almost as quickly as the clips themselves, became inescapable this past week. People weren’t only reacting to the performance; they were reacting to what it symbolized, and the people who got to be centred on his own terms: linguistically, culturally, and politically.

Bad Bunny’s rise to stardom make that centering feel especially pointed. He didn’t arrive in North America as a “crossover” project. He arrived as a Puerto Rican artist whose work has always proudly uplifted Puerto Rico and its unique culture. Puerto Rico’s political status makes visibility complicated on contact, as the country is not a sovereign state, but a US territory. Puerto Ricans are US citizens, but residents of the island cannot vote for president and do not elect voting members of Congress.

When halftime stopped being background noise

The Super Bowl halftime show usually aims for one thing above all: broad agreement. Even when viewers complain, the show is built to feel familiar and contain recognizable hits, universal cues, and minimal risk. Bad Bunny’s set didn’t play that game. It made Spanish the default language, Puerto Rico the centre, and “America” the hemisphere rather than the brand name. That shift alone explains a lot of the reaction cycle: celebration from viewers who felt seen, and backlash from viewers who felt the centre move without their permission.

One detail made the performance feel less like a medley and more like a statement. During the set, a couple was married on the field, and multiple outlets later confirmed it was a real, legally binding wedding. In a broadcast built around scripted spectacle, that choice landed as intimate and political at the same time: a reminder that legitimacy, belonging, and who gets to be “official” are arguments happening in public life right now, not just in comment sections.

This is what turns a halftime show into a cultural event, not just the fact that “people had opinions,” but the reasons they had them.

Puerto Rico isn’t an aesthetic, it’s the context

Bad Bunny’s Puerto Rican upbringing isn’t a footnote, it’s the core of his public identity. References in the halftime show weren’t random decorations; they were modes of insisting Puerto Rico’s belonging at the centre of the story, not on the margins.

What looked like set dressing was actually a kind of geography lesson, not the textbook kind, but the kind you feel. The show unfolded like a moving “tour” through Puerto Rican life: from a sugar cane field to a casita, then into the streets of San Juan, with domino players, block-party energy, and even a piragua (shaved ice) vendor stitched into the visuals.

That choice matters right now because it insists on ordinary Puerto Rican life; not Puerto Rico as a vacation backdrop, a headline, or an American afterthought. Sugar cane hints at the island’s extractive histories and the economic story behind “paradise”; the casita reads as continuity and home in an era shaped by debt crises, austerity politics, and displacement pressures; and the street scenes refuse the idea that Latin identity has to arrive on US television in a simplified, export-ready form.

Even the smaller gestures were calibrated. The light-blue Puerto Rican flag signalled a political lineage many viewers recognized immediately, and “seguimos aquí” (“we’re still here”) landed like a compact slogan of survival. When he spiked a football stamped “Together, We Are America,” the Super Bowl’s most patriotic object became an argument about what “America” includes and who gets to claim it. It was capped off by a billboard that read, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love,” alongside an “Easter egg” cameo that quietly nodded to diaspora memory.

That insistence carries weight because Puerto Rico’s relationship to the United States continues to be politically unresolved. As a US territory, Puerto Rico is tied to US power while lacking equal federal political representation. So when Puerto Rico is centred on the most symbolic US stage, a broadcast typically soaked in national mythology, it can’t help but read as political. Representation becomes less
“visibility” and more “reckoning”: a reminder of who is included, how, and at what cost.

In other words, the controversy isn’t that Bad Bunny “made it political.” It’s that Puerto Rico’s position already is, and has always been, and the Super Bowl simply doesn’t usually invite viewers to sit with that.

A halftime show built to be read

You don’t have to treat the halftime show like a puzzle to recognize it was built to be read. It’s a choice about audience: who is assumed to understand without effort, and who is expected to lean in.

Taken together, these choices make the halftime show feel like something greater than entertainment. They render it a cultural message delivered in the language of Bad Bunny’s characteristic effusive Latin trap: spectacle, symbolism, and the kind of visibility that becomes disruptive simply by refusing to shrink.

Resistance, in plain sight

The temptation with any “art as resistance” story is to hunt for one definitive political message and call it a day. However, Bad Bunny’s version of resistance is often quieter, and, in some ways, harder for a mainstream audience to dismiss. It’s not only what he says, it’s what he refuses to dilute. He made that refusal explicit at another high-profile event before the Super Bowl. At the 2026 Grammys, Bad Bunny used his acceptance speech for Best Música Urbana Album (for Debí Tirar Más Fotos) to denounce ICE and call for an end to what one report described as an “ongoing immigration crackdown,” punctuating it with the slogan “ICE out.”

That’s not symbolism, but a clear alignment with migrants and immigrant communities at a moment when immigration enforcement has become a flashpoint in US public life. And it sits alongside a different kind of milestone from the same night: Debí Tirar Más Fotos also won Album of the Year, marking the first time a Spanish-language album took the Grammys’ top prize.

The resistance here isn’t just “a pop star being political.” It’s a global superstar insisting that Spanish, Puerto Rico (and Latin America at large), and immigrant life aren’t side stories, even in the most mainstream room.

Backlash, then the rumour mill

Backlash was predictable. A Spanish-heavy halftime show on the Super Bowl stage, and a Puerto Rican artist refusing to soften his message, was always going to trigger the usual reactions: “keep politics out of it,” “speak English,” “this isn’t for you,” and the more familiar accusation hiding under all of that: you don’t belong here.

But the backlash didn’t stay in the realm of taste. It moved into the realm of narrative-making, constructed through the spreading of misinformation. In early February, social media users claimed Bad Bunny wore a bulletproof vest to the Grammys because of threats tied to xenophobic hostility. The rumour was investigated and no evidence was found for the “bulletproof vest” claim, explaining that his sharply tailored outfit (and altered silhouette) fuelled speculation.

The point isn’t just that “people online lie.” The rumour frames Latino visibility as inherently dangerous and controversial, transforming a historic career moment into a security conspiracy. This converts prejudice into something resembling concern. It also shifts the conversation away from the actual stakes of Bad Bunny’s work, language, belonging and power, toward whether he’s “too political” to be safe.

In that sense, the rumour becomes part of the cultural reaction: a way of policing what kinds of artists are allowed to be visible, and on what terms.

Why this lands in Montreal too

From Montreal, it’s easy to treat US culture battles as exported noise: loud, constant, and somehow always trending. But the themes that surfaced around Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl and Grammys moments are not uniquely American. They travel and translate because they interrogate fundamental questions: who gets treated as “normal,” what language gets to be default, and who has to translate themselves to be heard.

Those questions land differently in Quebec, where language is never just language, but identity, law, power, and a recurring public argument. This is a city shaped by diaspora, where belonging is lived rather than theoretical.

Bad Bunny’s journey, from a Puerto Rican artist building momentum on his own terms to winning the prestigious Album of the Year at the Grammys and headlining a Spanish-forward Super Bowl halftime show, matters because it shows what art can do when it refuses to stay in its lane. It may not be able to rewrite policy or put an end to structural abuses. But it can shift the centre of the frame, force a mainstream audience to notice what it usually treats as peripheral, and remind people that “unity” without inclusion is just branding.

And maybe that’s the most useful way to read the “Benito Bowl”: not as a victory lap, not as a controversy, but as a moment where pop culture briefly stopped pretending that belonging is uncomplicated.

The post Bad Bunny: Resistance Through Art appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Directed by the recently-deceased Rob Reiner (also known for rom-com royalty When Harry Met Sally), The Princess Bride is a family-friendly classic filled with adventure, romance, and iconic quotes. Following a fairytale told by a grandfather to his grandson, the film, starring Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, and Robin Wright, portrays the treacherous journey a swash-buckling pirate undertakes to reunite with his one true love, who had been taken captive. If he wanted to, he would, am I right?

In addition to memorable characters and complex storylines, music has been a key part of film since the dawn of sound cinema. After all, we can’t all claim to have watched the Harry Potter or Star Wars franchises in their entirety, but I’m sure most of us can recognize their musical leitmotifs once played. Unsurprisingly, this public consciousness and instant recognition of cinematic soundtracks has led to a soaring popularity of the film-in-concert format over the past few years. All over Canada and the world, films like La La Land and Jurassic Park (among many others) and their legendary soundtracks have been adapted into this performance format. 

“It takes the best elements of the theatrical experience and adds live elements through the orchestra,” says Evan Mitchell in an interview with the Daily. Mitchell is the musical director of the Kingston Symphony, a professional orchestra. Humans, he muses, are hard-wired for connection and shared experiences. Live performance and music thus heighten the usual cinema-going experience by connecting attendees via their common multi-sensory immersion into a fantasy world through film and music. “It’s the most exciting format for a popular orchestra that I’ve ever encountered in my career.”

The process of putting together the film-in-concert experience as a symphony’s musical director is complex. “It takes several dozen viewings of the musical parts of the film [for me] to become familiar with it, and I have a monitor so I can see what the audience sees,” recounts Michell. “It requires a lot of coordination because the orchestra has to be in perfect sync with the film. With a concerto or opera, the artists can react to changes, but movies will continue playing with or without you. It doesn’t matter how good [the music] sounds if it isn’t in time with the movie.” 

Nevertheless, according to Mitchell, the orchestra, made up of local, Montreal-based musicians, will only be conducting one singular rehearsal for the showings of The Princess Bride In Concert, which speaks volumes about the mastery and brilliance of its members.

The Princess Bride In Concert is set to be a treat for the eyes and the ears. Originally, the score was played on a synthesizer known as the Synclavier, an early digital synthesizer and music workstation produced in various forms from the late 1970s into the early 1990s. However, transposed into a live orchestral score, Mitchell declares that the musical experience of the film in concert will be “an improvement” from the original. “Artistry is incredibly important. You will be more connected to the music than ever before, so much so that you might forget the orchestra is even there.”

So, what are you waiting for? Sharpen your swords, hold onto your hats, and book tickets for you and your knight/jester/princess (or even just yourself) for The Princess Bride In Concert today. Tickets start at $54.98. Missing out would be… inconceivable!

The post The Princess Bride Swings into Concert this Valentines’ Day appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The open-air winter music festival, held at Place Jacques-Cartier in quite literally freezing weather, has been anticipated with ever-increasing fervour every January and February for almost two decades. Premiering in Montreal this year on January 15, the 19th edition of Igloofest promises to bring heat and adrenaline to the deep Montreal freeze. 

According to numbers provided to the Daily by the Igloofest team, Igloofest attendance is on an exponentially upward trend, with ballpark numbers leaping from 85,000 attendees in 2023 to over 118,000 in 2024. Evidently, the novelty of the festival’s trademark outdoor format, especially in the winter season, lends itself to great interest of both locals and tourists alike. But why would one, or thousands, subject themselves to a night out in temperatures akin to those of Antarctica? 

The answer to this, besides the promise of being able to drink copious amounts of alcohol with the excuse of keeping oneself warm, lies in the line-up of artists that Igloofest promises. Each artist promises a night of music that leaves no person stiff and awkward on the dance floor. This year is no different: opening with Disco Lines (of “No Broke Boys” notoriety), peppered with global household names including DJ Snake (2016 summer, anyone?), Sofi Tukker and Hamza, then closing with Max Styler, there is truly something for everybody.

Constance told the Daily that Igloofest contacts performers anywhere from a year to a few months in advance. While artists’ availability and schedules are constantly in flux, one indisputable element among them is their interest in performing at Igloofest. “One of the big pluses of organizing Igloofest is that it’s so unique,” notes Constance. “When we approach artists, they’re mesmerized by the fact that anybody is producing this kind of event, and generally really intrigued in participating.”

That being said, Igloofest is all about bringing in the most exciting names in dance and electronic music. This includes not just big international names, but also up-and-coming artists who are breaking into the industry. As live dance music genres have seen a surge in popularity in the last few years, Constance emphasizes the importance of appealing to as many generational and music demographics as possible to keep festivals like Igloofest relevant.“Being able to foster the new generation of Montreal talent and give them an opportunity to play at an event of this scale has been one of Igloofest’s primary objectives since the beginning.” 

At the forefront of this is No Police, a techno and trance DJ who is also part of T.I.T.S. Collective, a rising all-female DJ collective based here in Montreal. No Police performed on Igloofest’s Videotron stage on January 16 alongside her fellow collective member Cori. Igloofest, she writes in correspondence with the Daily, is her “favourite festival ever” and one that she has attended regularly over the last 12 years. Hence, the opportunity to attend from the other side of the stage was exhilarating. “I love being able to experiment and play new sub-genres of music that I’ve never played before,” she writes. “Having that platform is extremely important as a female artist, and I’m really grateful.”

While I wouldn’t call myself a rave or techno expert, I can say with conviction that No Police’s Igloofest set was absolutely electrifying. The Videotron stage, accessible through a side entrance, is not one to be underestimated. While smaller than the Sapporo stage and bereft of its SFX screens and psychedelic visuals, it provided the perfect platform for a distraction-free immersion into No Police’s set, which featured strong basslines and hard-hitting kicks that brought an infectious dynamism to the dancefloor. Accompanied by flashing blue lights and complete with songs dedicated to her family, who were also on the dance floor, No Police’s three-deck performance was certainly not something to be missed. The energy only continued as she passed the decks along to Cori, who played her own effusive, entrancing set into the wee hours of the morning.

Amid concerns of Montreal’s dying nightlife despite an ever-growing demand for new configurations of live performance and music by way of experiential formats, Igloofest’s large-scale occupies a limbo-like position. While the noise restrictions specific to Igloofest are confidential, Constance remarks that they are nonetheless a concern, and stresses the need for open dialogue and discourse between all involved actors, and not just those with the loudest voices. “With venues closing and certain laws changing or not changing, the city is definitely hitting a turning point,” he voices. “I think that the key is to be able to listen, and dedicate certain spaces to things that will be tolerated or allowed.” 

The Montreal nightlife crowd, evidently, is not one to be dismissed or stifled. No Police describes this demographic  as “very open minded [and] receptive,” with their vocal feedback after impactful moments in the set being one of most special contributions to shows. Given how the attendees continue to show up year after year in larger groups in spite of Canada’s frigid winter, Igloofest is a testament to the durability and enthusiasm of Montreal’s thriving nightlife community. Constance believes that anyone who attends, no matter their age, familiarity with the artists, or experience with music festivals, can discover something new. 

“It’s really important to come and to leave with the most open mind possible,” he states, “whether that’s musically, because you don’t know what you’re getting into; or just discovering new relationships with new people and new music…
I think that’s probably [how you have] the most fun that you can have at these kinds of events. When we go back to the history of clubbing culture, that’s where [the fun] comes from, so being able to continue and respect that [is crucial].” 


Igloofest is a cultural fixture that is undoubtedly here to stay. Since its initial conception in Montreal, Igloofest has expanded into Quebec City, Gatineau, and this year, marking its first foray into Western Canada: Edmonton. Anecdotally, I saw far too many people I knew on the nights I was there, and know for a fact that more of them will be in attendance at upcoming sets, which I will also be present at. At minus twenty degrees Celsius (let’s not even talk about the “feels like” figures), it seems that the heat is only just starting to build.

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Antics performs across McGill’s arts and bar scenes, sharing work shaped by their Chinese heritage and creating community around the love of Chinese rock. The band’s five members represent McGill’s various academic faculties, ranging from computer science to nursing. Meeting through mutual friends, the band members bonded over their shared love of grunge and rock genres, selecting the name Antics for their playful and lighthearted approach to music. According to the band, not being associated with the Faculty of Music can pose a challenge due to the limited access that non–Music students have to resources such as practice rooms and artist networks. This inaccessibility can make finding like-minded musicians difficult. Still, Antics’ members crossed paths and came together to form a rock band built on mutual connection and passion.

When Zhou introduce Chinese rock into their musical repertoire in September 2024, they quickly embraced the genre and incorporated it into their sets. Unlike the rebellious intent of rock in China, which often contests the government. For Antics’ members, Chinese rock is about the enjoyment of performing and the community it creates.

“For me, it’s [for] my girlfriend,” Moola says, while Zhou adds that it’s about “making our friends happy.”

The band’s energy has caused listeners to fall in love with their music, although they often have to play genres that cater to specific venues, rather than their own choices. The music scene at McGill can be fragmented due to the disparate nature of the university’s bar scene, which pulls focus away from artists and their music, instead highlighting the specific atmosphere of individual bars or events. At BdA, the riveted crowd displayed enthusiastic reactions to the Chinese songs, despite the language barrier separating most of them from the lyrics. Just as they announced that the next song would be Chinese instead of English, a member of the crowd yelled, “Let’s go!”

Zhou is proud of the way that Antics brings a piece of the Chinese diaspora to the mainstream McGill party scene. “[I’m] sharing the joy I felt when I first listened to [Chinese rock],” he says. Antics’ primary objective isn’t to “make it” like much of the Montreal music scene. Rather, it is to create music in a fun, informal manner, not just for their own satisfaction but also for their loved ones, thereby spreading their passion and unique fusion sound to the McGill community.

As Zhou puts it, “We should [remember] that university is not just about homework, coding, finding a job … but is [also] a place to be with friends.”

Antics can be found on Instagram @anticstheband.

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With the subsequent release of the star’s twelve-track record on October 3rd, the toll of the death knell disappeared any lingering hopes of a return to the tantalizing pop-perfection that was Swift’s 1989. Labelled by the singer herself as “catching lightning in a bottle,” this recent release fell devastatingly short of such a claim, lacking a clear connection between the record’s title and its lackluster lyrical content.

An egregious example comes in the form of Showgirl’s fifth track, which is a placement canonically reserved for Swift’s most devastating lyrical confessions. Titled “Eldest Daughter,” the track struggles to find any type of sensical narrative, swaying between “I’m never gonna let you down” and “Every eldest daughter / Was the first lamb to the slaughter … and we looked fire.” While the star seems to be addressing her athletic beau, the song collapses into numerous tirades surrounding a childhood reality check, Swift’s inability to act “punk,” and finding one’s twin flame in a “youngest child.” Not only does the song lack direction, the writing itself is also some of Swift’s worst. When compared to her earth-shattering ballad from just one year earlier, “I Hate It Here”: “I hate it here so I will go to lunar valleys in my mind / When they found a better planet, only the gentle survived”the singer’s facile delivery of, “I’m not a bad bitch, and this isn’t savage” sounds like an embarrassing outtake from a Bo Burnham special.

In addition to Swift seemingly losing her lyrical prowess, the eventual out-of-touch fate of every billionaire has also wrapped around her work like a vice. The tenth track, “CANCELLED!” is a particularly visceral example of this, as she proudly announces, “Good thing I like my friends cancelled / I liked ‘em cloaked in Gucci and in scandal.” While a good-faith interpretation of the song may give Swift the benefit of the doubt (her intention being to clear up any misconceptions surrounding her
scrutinized friendship with Blake Lively), the singer still chose to release a one-dimensional and smug diatribe against “the haters.” One can see she is clearly neglecting to take accountability for the very valid criticism she’s received about her carbon footprint, her silence surrounding the genocide in Gaza and lack of commentary about one of the most turbulent presidential reigns in recent American history.

Although many listeners share this viewpoint, countless self-proclaimed “Swifties” are defending the track and the album, claiming that it’s not so different from other rage-filled songs such as the star’s 2017 single “Look What You Made Me Do.” While not one of Swift’s best lyrical showcases, this Reputation track far outweighs our current example’s trite reference to the star’s 2016 cancellation. The biting electropop banger signaled a sharp and cutting shift in Swift’s direction at the time, watching her lean into the performance of pop culture’s villainous beauty queen: “And then the world
moves on, but one thing’s for sure / Maybe I got mine, but you’ll all get yours.” Meanwhile, “CANCELLED!” is a superficial, politically tone-deaf drag that harps on about an eight-year-old wound that is the least of the listener’s worries: “Did you girl-boss too close to the sun? … Come with me, when they see us, they’ll run.”

Swift does manage one major success on Showgirl: a catchy and picturesque four track run that opens the album with a bang. “The Fate of Ophelia” is a complete earworm, despite the lyricism being somewhat overwrought with extensive use of trivial expressions; while track three’s “Opalite” is an infectious pop ray of light, detailing how the singer managed to make her own happiness in spite of “life [beating her] up.”

A standout productional moment finds itself on “Elizabeth Taylor,” a brooding and sensual electropop heavyweight reminiscent of Swift’s 2017 track, “Don’t Blame Me.” The infamous production duo, Max Martin and Shellback, have managed to measure up to their historically proven pop perfection with Swift injecting the song with some of the album’s most interesting narrative moments: “All the right guys / Promised they’d stay / Under bright lights / They withered away.”

Track four, “Father Figure,” is, in my opinion, the record’s magnum opus, as Swift manages to take on the role of both naïve ingenue and calculating overlord. Rather than fighting off allegations of fake niceties, the star touts that her “dick’s bigger” than those of the men who used her (a nod to her disillusionment with her relationship with former manager and American music executive Scott Borchetta), while claiming her spot on the throne of pop music’s kingdom. Still, many listeners may read the menacing track as power-hungry, a possible stab at newer artists looking to the singer for
guidance. Swift’s befuddling relationship with 22-year-old pop sensation Olivia Rodrigo might re-enter
fan discourse; however, the song is strong enough to withstand any character-related criticism directed at Swift. If only she could have made the album’s other tracks clever enough to outweigh the inevitable resentful accusations thrown her way.

The Life of a Showgirl is one of Swift’s most confusing and, let’s face it, bad pieces of work. From stumbling lyricism to practically offensive levels of reality detachment, the star has finally proved to listeners that she’s reached that unfortunate peak of elitist societal withdrawal. “They want that yacht life, under chopper blades / They want those bright lights and Balenci’ shades” she croons on track eight’s “Wi$h Li$t.” Frankly, most listeners simply want a disposable income, but the star may not be aware of such meager goals when she was recently spotted wearing a 26 thousand dollar necklace to dinner in Kansas City.

Regrettably for Swift, money cannot buy her most important asset: relatability. Known and beloved by fans for her unpretentious lack of cool-girl status, the singer has built much of her career on being the popstar-next-door who prefers “t-shirts” over “short skirts.” The Life of a Showgirl blatantly turns this carefully constructed legacy on its head, proudly promoting that Swift herself now knows “the life of a
showgirl” and she’ll “never know another.” Sadly, this closing remark highlights the worrying questions left behind by Swift’s lackluster release: where did the independent, emotionally sprawling singer go, and will we ever get her back?

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Over coffee and eggs Benedict, Stephen-Ong, currently running for the position of Borough Councilor of the Jeanne-Mance District (spanning from McGill campus to Parc La Fontaine) in Montreal’s municipal elections, to be held on November 2, speaks to the Daily about his hopes for the vitality and future of the Plateau-Mont-Royal.

His party, Transition Montreal (hereafter, Transition), announced its emergence in a press conference in mid-July 2025, along with an ambitious progressive agenda spanning social housing and Metro construction to safe streets and police reform. Since then, the party has gained significant momentum in the municipal polling, catapulted by their strong stance on key issues such as a steep wealth tax, divestment from genocide, and cost of living. According to Stephen-Ong, many of the party’s candidates are first-time political hopefuls, but provide a compelling story, and have experience in various vital sectors. Polling at eight per cent in early October, Transition still falls behind many other parties in popularity, but with 41 per cent of the voter base undecided, a run for the majority is not impossible.

Stephen-Ong didn’t start out with political ambitions. Growing up in Montreal, he followed the desires of his parents to McGill University, where he studied computer science. After university, he entered the job market in the late 1990s in the fervor of the early stages of the internet, finding work in the developing tech industry. However, the allure of large tech companies in the United States couldn’t pull him away from his city, and Stephen-Ong quickly fell in love with the Montreal music scene. Although he had played the saxophone since high school, witnessing a few “transformative” shows convinced Stephen-Ong to change courses, enrolling once again at McGill, this time in the Faculty of Music (now Schulich School of Music). He began playing gigs around the city, and eventually dropped out of McGill to pursue his professional saxophone career full-time. Stephen-Ong quickly made a name for himself in the Montreal scene both as a band leader and sideman, playing at myriad venues throughout the city. His turn towards politics in recent months comes, in part, from his desire to protect a music scene under threat.

While rising housing prices, and cost of living are central issues in municipal elections throughout Canada, there is another policy point that has risen to the surface in this election as a part of Transition’s campaign: nightlife. Much of the Transition team, in fact, are musicians with strong ties to the local nightlife sector. Stephen-Ong described how Craig Sauvé, the party’s mayoral nominee, is a heavy metal guitarist, and Sergio Da Silva, running for Borough Councilor of the Saint-Jacques district, is a musician and owner of the popular local venue Turbo Haus. This strong musical affiliation is not a coincidence. These figures have decided to join forces to take on the persistent deterioration of cultural fixtures throughout the city. 

“I have played at every venue that has closed in the past 12 years,” says Stephen-Ong. In fact, he explains that these experiences are what led him to politics in the first place. 

At around 11 pm one night in 2013, police interrupted a weekly performance Stephen-Ong was playing with his regular band, Kalmunity, at Les Bobards. A noise complaint had been called on the then-popular Saint-Laurent Boulevard bar, causing the police to arrive. The bar was faced with a $1,250 fine, an enormous and unsustainable amount for a small venue to pay. Even worse, they were told that the infractions would compound, making future police encounters exponentially more costly. After investing heavily in soundproofing in the following few years, Les Bobards, unable to reckon with the inevitable noise produced by live music, ended up closing its doors for good in 2015.

In recent years this has become all too common among Montreal’s cultural hubs. As CBC found at the time of Les Bobards’ closure, Stephen-Ong provided a similar autopsy after speaking with me in October of this year, highlighting the unwavering severity of this issue. He believes that the root causes of nightlife venue closures in Montreal are the gentrification of the Plateau, and the suffocating noise complaint laws throughout Montreal. 

Currently, when police respond to a noise complaint call, they are allowed to present the venue with a fine if they hear any noise whatsoever from the street, regardless of the volume. Closing their front doors on the night of a show for risk of noise complaints can rob these venues of valuable revenue and attention, which is often enabled by the curiosity of passers-by drawn in by the music. 

Stephen-Ong argues that gentrification of the Plateau neighbourhood exacerbates these issues, “If you rent an apartment and there’s a noisy bar next door and you’re [only] paying three hundred dollars in rent, who cares?” 

 However, as expensive condominiums pop up on these corridors known for nightlife, people begin to believe that the steep price tag should entitle them to silence at night, despite expecting the same vibrancy from the city that attracted them to it in the first place.

 “[When] people think ‘music venue,’ that’s like Place-des-Arts, the Bell Center,” says Stephen-Ong. “Yes, those are music venues, but so is Barfly, so is Grumpy’s, so is Turbo Haus.” It is these latter establishments that act as incubators for the local music scene.

After this police encounter in 2013, having had no prior experience or interest in politics, Stephen-Ong took to social media to voice his concerns about the state of the Plateau and the vitality of its night life. He didn’t realize the municipal election was the following week. This political climate helped his post go viral, and Stephen-Ong found himself doing interviews with major news networks such as CBC and CTV to draw attention to these issues, which had so far gone without notice in the media and public consciousness. Realizing the necessity and public support for legislative change, he began working with local policymakers, advocating for venues and cultural institutions, and slowly finding himself emerging into the political realm. Talking to venue owners across the city provided Stephen-Ong the resources and connections to kickstart his largest initiative which continues to this day: Le Cypher X. 

Le Cypher X is a weekly improvised music experience that incorporates some of the best musicians and rappers in the Montreal scene. Held every Thursday night in the live music venue O Patro Vys, with the comforting smell of weekly home-cooked catering, it is truly a one-of-a-kind event. Musicians of all kinds provide sonic support for a rotating cast of freestyle rappers — your favorite backing tracks brought to life. There, Stephen-Ong is front and center, giving cues to the band, outlining ornaments on his saxophone, and calling up visitors to the stage. The attitude of the event can be seen throughout Stephen-Ong’s political messaging: Politics, like Le Cypher X, is supposed to be an open and collaborative space; he wants to help make it that way.

Despite trusting his party’s mission, Stephen-Ong doesn’t believe in voting along party lines. “Do your own research,” he says. He believes that his policies, if heard for what they are rather than through reductive labels and buzzwords like ‘socialist’ and ‘communist,’ have the power to swing many self-proclaimed conservatives. Once in power, Stephen-Ong believes he will “100 per cent” be able to solve the nightlife crisis by establishing a night mayor and night council (in the case of Sauvé, Stephen-Ong’s fellow Transition party member winning the mayorship), bringing light to nightlife and safety issues that frequently go overlooked. Stephen-Ong intends to put forward Agent of Change legislation, where “planning policies and decisions should require new development to take into consideration existing businesses and community facilities, that will also be a priority for the party in managing the changing city fabric. Transition also aims to lower rent prices by building more social housing and establish electoral reform using ranked choice voting to ensure that the candidate that wins is a better reflection of the constituency. 

“I’m coming in with a lot of raw, unfiltered ideas of what’s wrong and how to fix it,” says Stephen-Ong, when asked about the strengths of being an outsider in politics. “This is a problem, we need to fix it, and this is how.”

Polling day for the Montreal municipal elections will be held on November 2. Don’t forget to vote!

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