How Big Shiny Tunes became a cultural cornerstone.

How Big Shiny Tunes became an unlikely Canadian cultural cornerstone – and even bigger than Nirvana’s Nevermind

‘Big Shiny Tunes left a massive cultural imprint on Canada,’ claims Mark Teo in his new book, SHINE: How a MuchMusic Compilation Came to Define Canadian Alternative Music and Sell a Zillion Copies. While Teo provides extensive interviews, examples and criticism to prove this point, all any Canadian of a certain age need do to confirm his assertion is reflect back on the period of time when the ‘90s were ‘the ‘90s,’ and the 2000s were, too. In this excerpt from the book, Teo writes about the alternative-music compilation’s success, not just in terms of sales, but in the strange sentimentality Canadians feel for the first record in the series, today. He suggests that the album’s centrality to a very specific audience has helped make it an unlikely Canadian cultural cornerstone.

When most of us think about Big Shiny Tunes — if we do at all — it’s through the dual lens of sepia-toned nostalgia and bashful Canadiana. Like Modrobes flood pants, Prözzak, or Rick the Temp, the series belongs to the postgrunge ’90s (never mind the fact that the 14th, and final, iteration of Big Shiny Tunes landed in 2009). Like Due South-era Paul Gross, the bits of Kids in the Hall that hold up terribly and pre-scandal Jian Ghomeshi, it’s a cultural cornerstone countless Canadians have partaken in, if somewhat sheepishly. And the combination of these factors has led to a cheese-curd-and-gravy-slathered nostalgia bomb.

Buzzfeed Canada, the de-facto hawkers of misty-eyed, maple-scented viralism, have written two pieces about the compilation, both released in 2015 (“How Well Do You Remember Big Shiny Tunes 2?” and the aforementioned “It’s Time to Decide Which Big Shiny Tunes Album is Best”). Prior to that, Vice released a track-by-track review called “Does Big Shiny Tunes 2 Hold Up in 2013?” CBC Canada also wrote a so-called definitive ranking of the entire series in 2014.

And that’s only the media. Musicians, too, have gotten in on the act. In Ontario, the Big Shiny Tunes Squad is a cover band whose mandate, according to their Facebook page, is to play “your favourite hits from the golden years, 1995-2005.” And in Calgary, the Sled Island Music Festival teamed up with CJSW-FM to create the aforementioned Big Shiny Tunes-themed Halloween event featuring, among others, Pakistani R&B duo Shaani Cage covering Matchbox 20 and Kris Ellestad taking on “Paranoid Android.” Everyone, of course, knew the words.

So, why has Big Shiny Tunes captured our collective imaginations in a way that, say, its rug-cutting predecessor — MuchMusic’s Dance series, duh — hasn’t? Why, exactly, does a part-Canadian, mostly American