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Music

The 50 Best Toronto Albums Ever

Naming the top 50 albums in a city with as much musical talent as Toronto has been a blast. We’re excited about the idea of reflecting NOW’s unique relationship with the local music scene over the past 32 years. The vast majority of these artists have been on our cover at some point. Often, we were the first to write about them.

We wanted to span a wide range of styles and eras. Every decade, every new wave and boom (and New York Times trend piece about Toronto being the new Seattle) has its own unique character – and we’ve aimed to acknowledge them all.

We reached out to musicians and those behind the scenes: promoters, record labels, club owners and other tastemakers. We also tapped the knowledge of NOW’s expert team of writers.

Just figuring out what is a Toronto record had its challenges. Look at the album in our top spot to see what we mean. But our music scenes are full of people who wandered in from other places or were born and raised here but moved away to make their mark on the world.

Because certain genres wound up underrepresented in a list of long-format albums, we assembled top-10 singles lists for hip-hop, dance and punk (see pages 30, 31 and 33).

Our top 50 will ruffle some feathers. We hope our list sparks some conversation and debate, even love and hate. But mostly we think it offers another chance to celebrate the great music that’s been coming out of Toronto for decades.

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