Canadian Music · September 21, 2026

The Songs Behind Canada’s 2026 Songwriters Hall of Fame Class

The Tragically Hip, Feist, Loverboy songwriters Mike Reno and Paul Dean and Roch Voisine will enter the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame on Sept. 26. The four catalogues don’t have much in common sonically, which is exactly what makes this year’s class interesting.

Northern Dial artwork

Canadian songwriting doesn’t have one sound, language or centre of gravity. That’s unusually clear in the 2026 class entering the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.

The Tragically Hip came out of Kingston and spent decades turning Canadian places and characters into rock songs that rarely felt like exercises in Canadiana. Leslie Feist built a catalogue that can move from a three-minute pop song to something far quieter and stranger. Mike Reno and Paul Dean helped Loverboy turn immediacy into an art form, while Roch Voisine built a career that moved between French and English audiences without treating either as a side project.

The Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame’s 2026 induction ceremony takes place Saturday, Sept. 26 at Massey Hall in Toronto. George Stroumboulopoulos and Marie-Mai will host, with performances from artists including FINNEAS, Jeff Tweedy, City and Colour, Our Lady Peace, Amanda Marshall, Allison Russell, Charlotte Cornfield, Ruby Waters, Tia Wood and Sebastian Gaskin. The ceremony will also stream in Canada on Prime Video and globally through Amazon Music and its Twitch channel.

The guest list is big. The songs are the better reason to pay attention.

The Tragically Hip: Writing Canada Without Explaining It

The Tragically Hip didn’t need to write songs about Canada in the conventional sense. They wrote about places, people, memories and pieces of history that happened to be Canadian, then trusted the listener to follow. That distinction is a big part of why their catalogue has aged so well.

“Ahead by a Century” barely needs an introduction anymore, but it’s a useful place to start because it shows how far the Hip could travel without sounding overworked. The song moves through childhood memory, unease, intimacy and imagery that feels completely clear emotionally even when it isn’t being explained literally.

The Tragically Hip, official video.

Elsewhere, “Bobcaygeon” puts a real Ontario town inside a song about distance, work and belonging. “Wheat Kings” reaches into the wrongful conviction of David Milgaard, while “New Orleans Is Sinking” shows how easily the band could move into something looser and more physical. The catalogue keeps shifting, but the point of view remains recognizable.

In its announcement of the 2026 class, the Hall of Fame named Rob Baker, Gord Downie, Johnny Fay, Paul Langlois and Gord Sinclair, recognizing the five members as songwriters across the band’s catalogue. This year also marks a decade since the final tour with Downie.

There’s an understandable tendency to talk about the Hip through what they came to represent nationally. The songwriting is more interesting when you go the other direction. These songs became part of Canadian culture because they were specific enough to belong somewhere before they belonged to everybody.

Feist: The Pop Hit Is Only One Door In

For a huge number of people, Feist still begins with “1234.” That makes sense. The song was the breakout moment from The Reminder, and its brightly choreographed video became nearly inseparable from the recording itself. It’s concise, melodic and immediately legible without sounding like it was built by committee.

Feist, official video.

But stopping there misses most of what makes Feist an interesting Hall of Fame choice. Her catalogue keeps resisting the idea that success should narrow an artist’s choices. Metals, which won the Polaris Music Prize, is darker and more spacious than The Reminder. “Mushaboom,” “My Moon My Man,” “The Bad in Each Other” and the songs on Multitudes occupy noticeably different spaces while still sounding connected to the same writer.

The 2026 ceremony is leaning into that influence rather than simply celebrating the biggest hit. Billboard Canada reports that FINNEAS and Jeff Tweedy are both scheduled to perform Feist songs, with FINNEAS also participating in her induction. Tweedy has been an occasional collaborator, while FINNEAS has publicly named Feist among his favourite guitarists.

That feels appropriate. Feist’s songwriting influence is easier to hear in the artists who absorbed her restraint, arrangements and sense of space than in a wave of obvious imitators.

Mike Reno and Paul Dean: Don’t Underestimate the Obvious Song

“Working for the Weekend” tells you what it is almost immediately. That isn’t a weakness. Mike Reno and Paul Dean built Loverboy’s biggest songs around choruses, riffs and ideas that land quickly.

“Turn Me Loose” and “When It’s Over” work from the same instinct: establish the feeling fast, then make the hook impossible to miss. Their best-known anthem pushed that approach even further, turning one ordinary phrase into something much bigger than the era that produced it.

Loverboy, official video.

The origin is appropriately uncomplicated. In an interview with the National Music Centre, Dean recalled walking near his apartment on a Wednesday and noticing how empty the area was compared with the weekend. The thought that everybody was waiting for the weekend gave him the phrase that eventually became the song.

There’s useful songwriting advice buried in that story. A universal idea doesn’t have to arrive through a grand revelation. Sometimes somebody notices an ordinary thing, recognizes the phrase inside it and knows enough not to complicate it.

Roch Voisine: A Song That Crossed the Language Line

Roch Voisine’s place in this class makes the picture of Canadian songwriting considerably wider.

Born in Edmundston, New Brunswick and raised in Saint-Basile, Voisine broke through in 1989 with “Hélène.” The album and title track became enormous successes in Quebec and France, and his career eventually developed across both French- and English-language recordings. His official biography says the release reached No. 1 in France only three weeks after arrival and remained there for nine consecutive weeks.

The song itself even slips briefly between languages, moving from French verses into English within the refrain. It’s a small detail, but one that feels particularly fitting in retrospect for an artist whose career would continue crossing that line.

Roch Voisine, official video.

Voisine later found success with English-language songs including “I’ll Always Be There,” while continuing to record for francophone audiences. His career is a reminder that English- and French-language Canadian music have never existed in completely separate lanes.

The Sept. 26 ceremony will also recognize ZALE and Marie Céleste, recipients of this year’s Breakthrough Songwriter Awards, putting emerging writers on the same stage as this year’s inductees. That makes the night less about looking backward than tracing how Canadian songwriting keeps moving forward.