Music

The story behind the addictive 'Canadaland' podcast theme song

by Mark Teo

In the past year, journalist Jesse Brown’s Canadaland has grown from a cult favourite into a full-blown media outlet. Built around Brown’s no-bullshit interviewing (and evident disdain of Canuck-bred politeness), Canadaland managed to make Canadian media criticism a genuinely interesting topic: Yes, Brown earned heaps of attention for breaking the Jian Ghomeshi scandal. But his podcast has featured everything from Emma Teitel troll-singing a tribute to the National Post‘s Barbara Kay to reports that CBC star Peter Mansbridge has accepted oil industry money. Best of all? It made those topics, once fodder for j-school ethics lectures, gleefully entertaining.

But while Canadaland trades in media criticism, the show also has an understated musical streak—the podcast’s t-shirts were created by Famines member Raymond Biesinger; the show has hosted music critic Carl Wilson; and most memorably, Canadaland might have the best theme song in the podcast world. (Sorry, Nick Thorburn. Serial‘s theme’s alright, too.)

Part glitchy hip-hop beat, part hummable ditty, the Canadaland theme is used to stitch the show together. And, according to Brown, it’s received favourable comparisons to the yodel-riffic song from The Price is Right‘s alpine game. “People love it,” says Brown via email. “Everyone asks me who made it. I never tell them.”

Which is too bad, because there’s a bromance lurking behind Canadaland‘s theme. Namely, between Brown and Socalled, a.k.a. Montreal producer-rapper Josh Dolgin, whose friendship dates back their time at McGill University. It’s not the first time both men have collaborated; after graduating, they collaborated on a bizarre animated film called 500 Pound Planet. Still, even to casual observers, their relationship is clearly adversarial—when we asked Brown why he chose Socalled to write the theme, he responded with “I had no money to hire a professional”—and thankfully, it’s hilarious, too.

“I told him that even though the show is called Canadaland, I didn’t want any loon sounds or hokey wilderness shit. I wanted something energetic and aggressive but lighthearted,” he says. “I said it shouldn’t have any kind of ‘breaking news’ vibe to it… What he sent sounded like the theme to a Ron Burgundy newscast.

“I despised it, but I was in a tough spot, as it came in weeks after deadline and right before I was launching. But then I caught a little break/interlude at the end of the song that really popped out at me. I isolated that part and used it alone as the theme. So in a sense, I composed it.”

Socalled, we surmised, might dispute that claim. So, we decided to get his side of the story.

 

AUX: I understand that you and Jesse went to McGill together. What was your friendship like?

Socalled: Our friendship was pretty solid. We were very different people with different backgrounds but found interests and things in common that kept drawing us together. It was our working collaboration that was always a little, um, charged. We were both highly motivated and really excited by the rather limited creative outlets in our program—a film festival, a comic that was published, the daily newspaper—so we were often working together, and, well we had different priorities and ways of working. We drove each other batty.

When we graduated McGill, we celebrated by driving to Louisiana together for some reason… We were fighting at the time so I don’t think we spoke the whole drive there. It was that kind of high tension, it made us miserable but somehow we thrived on it. We embarked on a film project together right after McGill that took way too long to complete… the technological infrastructure at the time was really limited so the whole process was incredibly frustrating and we drove each other insane.

That was 500 Pound Planet, which took three years to make. Have you revisited that project recently, and what do you think of it now?

We could have made 500 Pound Planet in six months with today’s digital cameras, computers and hard-drives. When I look at it now I’m still proud. It was ahead of its time, so like anything on the cutting edge, it looks dated fast.

A few blog posts you wrote around that time—on the Gorilla Cartoon archives—offered a peek into your dynamic, both as friends and collaborators. Those posts are adversarial, but they’re also hilarious. Do you guys still have that love-hate relationship?

For many years after the 500 Pound Planet debacle, we really were not in contact. We basically 100 per cent hated each other and it was a relief to “never have to speak to that asshole again” or whatever. We would bump into each other periodically and as the years passed and that burning resentment on both sides abated as we grew up and found our own paths and settled down a little. When I heard about what he was up to and we would hang out a little it started to be fun again… after all, we were sort of kindred spirits in a way, we actually respected each other’s minds somehow. So now, is it love-hate? I’m not sure, it’s more just like meeting an old frie-nemy after time has managed to heal some of the wounds.

Even before I began regularly listening to Canadaland, I always loved the theme. How did that song come together? 

When Jesse asked me for a theme for his podcast—still hasn’t paid me, by the way—I immediately had a sound in mind that reminded me of another theme song I’d done for him, the kind of groove and vibe that I knew he’d like. [Brown’s interjection: “Josh may have told you I never paid him for the theme. This is true. But he never sent me an invoice. He’s too ashamed, I think.”]

I mixed that with this very “news broadcast” loop I’d had kicking around and made a goofy loping little thing I thought might work… he didn’t like it, it wasn’t what he had in mind. But it was the deadline so he used it anyway and started getting used to it. Now I think he likes it.

So what do you think of Canadaland?

I’m proud of Jesse’s work at Canadaland but I don’t really listen to it or any podcasts, if you want the truth. It’s nothing personal. The episodes I hear of his are really impressive and he talks about super interesting things… if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

You’re in Paris now. What are you doing there? What kind of plans do you have for the year?

I was in Paris to mix my upcoming new record, Peoplewatching, with this amazing engineer Renaud Letang. This year coming up, hm, lots of plans, who knows what will pan out… productions of my original musicals, a new book or two, a re-issue CD in honour of Irving Fields’ 100th birthday, the debut of a new Yiddish Harmony quartet, and, well, who knows, maybe a music and culture podcast with Team Jesse?