Hmmm I didn't know July Talk were really successful. That complicates it a bit... Tbh I mix them up with Jully Black, who is also Canadian, right? Now that I remember, I did watch a July Talk video last year though, where Tanya Tagaq was featured. The song was really boring apart from Tanya Tagaq. I was also watching part of the MuchMusic VMAs livestream because Grimes was nominated in several categories (lost all) and it was interesting to watch the Canadian version of such a slick, sanitized and corporate, kid oriented event. And then it was really odd when July Talk showed up as the token rock band to perform. I guess that should've alerted me to how popular they are, that they were given that spotlight at an event where the other performers were Fifth Harmony and Sean Mendes and the host was Gigi Hadid. July Talk was about the worst performer there, including the Jonas brother. But just the fact they apparently sell a lot (more than Grimes I would guess, if they get radio play, which they must get or MMVAs wouldn't have wanted them) and are doing something more blandly digestible according to the expectations of aging, '90s-vintage "alternative rock" institutional forces... ughh... I kind of feel they might win, especially if anyone in the industry feels that they cut corners to nominate Grimes this year when her album was really eligible last year.
It's just really weird to me in a Grammy context that July Talk would share that same category, because the Grammys would consider that kind of hard rock band (with, I'm guessing, more support from commercial radio than Exclaim or the Canadian indie press) to be simply "rock," not alternative. On the plus side, the Grammys (which of course, snubbed Grimes entirely) if they'd been Canadian focused, would probably have put Leonard Cohen in the alternative category together with Grimes, thus giving her no chance. Junos didn't do that, and even if July Black v. Grimes seems like an even weirder matchup in "alternative," the fact is that Grimes conceptualizes her own music around a '90s alternative, hard rock vibe, so it might be cool in her eyes to be up against a band actually in that vein, even if a mediocre one. Depending on the average age and maleness of voters, July Talk can do very well though... sadly... so I'm revising my prediction to them winning. I mean now that I think about it, isn't this award show also known for celebrating Nickelback as alt rock legends? I guess when I said it was a weak year for "alternative" I was defining it in a more hipster way than these awards do.
I'm not too concerned with which Grimes video they nominated. Kill v Maim, besides actually falling within this year's eligibility, is a more popular video than Venus Fly (so far) and the song is also more rock oriented, which should help with the institutional biases of this show. (I'm not sure Janelle Monae is even as well known in Canada as she is in the US, and even now she is mostly becoming more known for her films, and her music isn't quite top 40.) On the other hand any and all Grimes videos are really not suited to what an award show will want, they're far too experimental and non-linear, and the surface look is "too" fashion-y, poppy and "childish" for these shows to consider as Serious Art. Her point in making videos is to violate the type of bland industry standards they would use to select who to award. So if they nominated her at all, it was probably because of their admiration of the idea of someone doing everything herself, rather than anything they liked about the video itself. Both KVM and Venus videos were filmed in Toronto, but I guess maybe you have to be, to get nominated at all! (If she shot in US, Asia or Europe would it count as "Canadian content"?) Assuming this works anything like the Grammys, and Downie is sort of the Dave Grohl equivalent (i.e. '90s alternative rock legend whose best work was ignored by the awards but started to get ecstatic praise once he passed his career peak and became an institution), he'll walk away with it. Imagine if Grohl got terminal cancer, released the final, more-serious-than-usual Foo Fighters album and then launched a final tour, reuniting him with Krist Novoselic and Courtney Love as part of the Foos, only to announce he wasn't done yet, it turns out he'd been working for years on a concept album and animated film about the struggles of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe long before his contemporaries showed up in the protests, and this film told the story of a native child's suffering back in the '60s, and after being broadcast on a major TV network, alerted the wider public to the issue, and the animation was quite good in itself and the first song was spun off into a "video," well... is there any way Dave (and the animator/director) does not win that one? Especially against a video for a song Grimes has described as being about a time traveling (albeit, trans) vampire who is somehow also Al Pacino?! So... ugh.. she's also losing this one.
My question about the TV broadcast was just, when you watch this show do they even include the "alternative" (or video, or album art for that matter) categories as part of the broadcast, or are those "smaller" categories decided in advance of the main show, so they can give Shawn Mendes more airtime and don't have to have, like, Weaves on TV. I feel like this category probably isn't broadcast. Braids still only had around 10k twitter followers when I saw them live last summer, a few months after they won. If that was a televised category, Braids would be way more popular now. So maybe I won't watch this show after all. Before the show Grimes's categories are probably already going to be announced (i.e. lost by her).
I do like a lot of the more mainstream Canadian music tho, but from what I remember, these stars are known to avoid showing up at Canadian award shows anyway (i.e. Drake beat Grimes at the MMVAs but neither he nor Claire was actually present there). If Drake didn't even show up at the Grammys this year, it doesn't seem likely he'd be at the Junos... unless he wants to intentionally shade the Grammys for their ignorance of hip hop and their general racism... but the Junos likely have terrible problems in that area as well. Their worst fuckup last year wasn't even snubbing Grimes (who, after all, was responsible for submitting in the "wrong" category, no matter how dumb the rules were), it was nominating Kaytranada for a well known song that dated back several years and was clearly ineligible, and then when that issue was pointed out to them, simply dropping Kaytranada's nomination altogether, replacing him with another artist (even though he actually released new material in the eligibility period). Kaytranada, like Grimes, noted how wack this award show was on Twitter.
It was cool to see them after that as the two top contenders at the Polaris, and Kaytranada saying he'd been sure Grimes would win and he loved her, and Grimes being happy cause he won and was repping Montreal. A lot of people would say maybe all of that was acting, but they probably never listened to Kaytranada or took a look at how many of the guests on his album are also followed by Grimes, and don't realize how many connections there are between their musical styles and taste. I think she actually was hoping to lose the Polaris. She doesn't invest that much importance in awards and winning a cash prize (while she already has more financial success than many of those nominees, including Kaytranada who lived in his parents' home while making 99.9%) would be used against her, destroying her underdog status. If anyone could deserve it over Art Angels just musically, it would be Kaytranada, and that's without even getting into his back story. But yeah it's a shame that when you do have these artists finally being nominated appropriately at the Junos to make up for lasy year, they are still both stuck in smaller categories rather than Album of the Year.