HOMECOMING
Singer Scott Helman says sexism a major factor in pop music criticism
Toronto singer-songwriter Scott Helman is set to hit the Budweiser Stage for what promises to be his biggest hometown show yet,
This would play way better if the Budweiser Stage was still called the Molson Amphitheatre and Molson Canadian was still takin’ the flack it did for introducing those 6.0-per-cental-cohol, 250-ml “Cold Shots” into the market one turn-ofthe-millennium ago, but regardless: Scott Helman is about to upgrade on what was previously his most memorable evening at the lakeshore shack Toronto now calls the Budweiser Stage.
The affably boyish, way-more-literate-than-you-think hometown singer-songwriter behind such sneaky, “Who does that song again?” CanCon earworms of recent memory as “Bungalow,” “That Sweater,” “PDA” and “Kinda Complicated” will play the biggest hometown gig of his career to date when he slots between crowd-pleasing Australian singer/songwriter Vance Joy and rising Los Angeles anthem merchant Mondo Cozmo on the Stage this Friday, June 22. But hey, as long as Helman doesn’t get thrown out of the place before he plays, he’s on the right track to redemption. Or revenge. Whatever you want to call it.
“I actually got kicked out of that venue once, so I’m actually pretty excited to go back and play it,” laughs the 22-year-old singer-songwriter from Nashville, where he was “in the thick of writing” for a potential followup to last year’s likeable
Hôtel de Ville album last week. “I was 16 or 17 and I went to a Phish show with my friends and we were tailgating in the parking lot like idiots and — well, do they still have those things called Cold Shots? I had too many of those and I didn’t realize that they had way more alcohol in them and I really had to pee and there were no bathrooms around so I went into the bushes off the path as we were walking onto the lawn and I just, y’know, started to pee and some dude came up to me and said, ‘ You’re gone.’ So my friends got to see a Phish show and I just had to, like, go home drunk.”
Fingers crossed it goes better this time.
It should. Helman’s on his way. A pop prodigy signed to a development deal with Warner Music Canada at the tender age of 15, he was named alongside Halsey, Elle King, Shamir and recent North by Northeast headliner Tinashe five years later as one of “14 singers who are going to dominate in 2016” on the strength of his endlessly tuneful debut EP, Augusta. And, while he hasn’t quite hit the visibility level of the aforementioned peers since dropping that unexpectedly durable nugget of Paul Simon-esque wit and whimsy three years ago, he did return with a fairly sharp, polished and adroitly, unapologetically conceived bid for the same mainstream currently enjoyed by such kindred spirits as Shawn Mendes and Ed Sheeran in May of last year with the totally-for-girls-but-totally-good Hôtel de Ville. With the right across-the-boards radio hit or the right sort of exposure — ie., prime placement on a tour like this six-date, cross-Canada swing with kindred spirit Joy — he could easily be another Mendes or Sheeran.
Helman, who co-wrote a lot of Augusta and Hôtel de Ville with Lights/Walk Off the Earth collaborator Thomas “Tawgs” Salter and endlessly underappreciated CanCon song writinggal-in-the-shadows Simon Wilcox, is not ashamed of the glossy pop direction he pursued to mostly winning effect on the last record. He is, in fact, pretty spot-on in his assessment of why the sort of music he makes tends to get brushed aside by the critical intelligentsia, even if there’s as much T. Rex or Death Cab for Cutie or “Friday, I’m in Love”-era Cure moving through the mix as there is … well … Shawn Mendes or Ed Sheeran.
“I actually think the shame involved with popular culture — not to get too philosophical — has a lot to do with sexism,” he says.
“A lot of the popular music that defines what we call ‘pop music’ is music for women and, for instance, when people say that the early Beatles were terrible and they got better as they went on, I think that is just because 50 per cent of the population are men and they’re having opinions on music that’s not catered to them. That’s something I’ve really realized because I was afraid of that, too. I was, like, ‘I don’t wanna be a pop guy. I don’t wanna sing love songs.’
“But when I started to really understand how the mechanics of sexism work, I was, like, ‘Music for women is important and it needs to be good.’ And I felt, as a person who started to really enjoy writing pop songs and especially love songs, that it was important to write songs that respected the dynamics of what a woman might be feeling. And someone who really taught me that respect is Simon Wilcox, who I write songs with. Having an incredibly strong female presence in the writing room with me is a gift that I really, really appreciate because it really showed me that love songs are much more than ‘I love you/ You love me.’ They’re talking about the inner workings of a person who isn’t your gender, and that’s something I really care about.” Helman’s pumped to be on tour with Joy, whose amphitheatre-level popularity has gradually snuck in behind the backs of most “tastemaking” music critics over the past few years, for much the same reason. This writer, for instance, had no idea how big Joy had become until he witnessed 20,000-odd young fans thronging the second stage for his set at the 2016 WayHome festival.
“Dude, I’m super-excited. I’m a big fan of his,” says Helman, echoing the experience. “I didn’t realize how young and female his demographic is. I thought it was sort of, like, a ‘college’ kind of demo. But there were screaming girls and I was, like, ‘Whoa dude, that’s f---ing awesome.’ He’s a mature singer/songwriter, and that goes back to the thing that I was saying about smart, well thoughtout, emotionally intellectual music that’s still accessible to teenage girls. I think that’s so great. I think that’s where we should head.”
Whatever his direction, Helman has considerable talent to bring to bear; I’d never seen him perform until he walked onstage at an after-hours Warner Music Juno party in Calgary in 2016 at an ungodly hour of the morning looking like a well-scrubbed high-school talentshow contestant and casually knocked out tunes by the Band and Jimi Hendrix as if Jim Cuddy wasn’t close by and the subterranean room wasn’t slowly filling with sewage.
He’s also smart enough to recognize, in the hindsight of maturity, that missing out on a Phish show at the Molson Amphitheatre after a few too many parking-lot “Cold Shots” back in the day wasn’t the worst thing to happen to a sensible human being. “You know what, Ben?” he says. “At this point in my life, I agree with you on that.”
Friends for life.