Seasons Change, but Good Music Lives Forever: A Roundup for Fall
New tunes and timeless classics.
There’s nothing like the warmth of familiarity. Featuring new tunes and timeless classics from favourites of all kinds having a particular moment right now, this roundup will keep you cozy as the days get shorter and the weather gets colder.
Elisapie, “Quviasukkuvit (If It Makes You Happy)”
Elisapie’s critically acclaimed and Juno Award-winning album Inuktitut is a collection of covers reimagining the songs that defined her adolescence as they are translated into her mother tongue. Now, a year later, the artist has shared “Quviasukkuvit,” her interpretation of Sheryl Crow’s “If It Makes You Happy.” While it doesn’t appear on the album itself, “Quviasukkuvit,” like all the tracks on Inuktitut, draws from Elisapie’s memories of growing up in Salluit in the Nunavik region of northern Quebec. Her voice soars over a rhythmic soundscape produced by her collaborator Joe Grass.
“‘If It Makes You Happy’ was so popular in the North, and it reminds me so much of when I was teenager,” Elisapie says. “It played on TV and radio, and we listened to it at home. Those lines made us want to scream along with Sheryl. Her song liberates my people in the North, giving them the words to shout about being sad without feeling ashamed. When I perform this song, it has Sheryl Crow’s enthusiasm, but my Inuit sensibility slows it down, echoing the rhythm of the land.”
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Nelly Furtado, 7
Whether it’s folk-pop, hip-hop collaborations with Timbaland and Swollen Members, or sweeping ballads, Nelly Furtado’s oeuvre has always been versatile and refreshingly unique, a reflection of her playful approach to her multidimensional talent. In 2023, after some time away from the spotlight, Victoria-born Furtado released the house track “Eat Your Man” with Australia’s Dom Dolla, signalling the long-awaited return of a beloved artist and winking at her own legacy (the song references her classic “Maneater” in the title).
That return is here, and Furtado’s new album, 7, is her seventh collection of new music in seven years. There are plenty of shining collaborations: lead single “Love Bites,” featuring Tove Lo and DJ SG Lewis; “Corazón,” with Colombian psychedelic cumbia band Bomba Estéreo; “All Comes Back,” a piano ballad with Charlotte Day Wilson. And then there’s the ones where it’s all Furtado: she sparkles on “Honesty,” yodels on “Take Me Down,” and showcases powerful vocals on the confessional ballad “Better Than Ever.” With 7, Furtado is as avant-garde as ever, and it’s great to have her back.
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Oasis, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?
It’s happening. Liam and Noel have made up, and Oasis is reuniting after 15 years. The Gallagher brothers, famous for their fighting almost as much as their seminal contributions to ’90s alternative rock, announced 2025 reunion shows across the U.K. and Ireland back in September, and they have now added international dates to the run, including in Canada.
Both era-defining and timeless, Oasis was an important part of Britpop and is an important influence on rock music in general. The band is responsible for some of the best songs ever, and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory features a lot of them. Released in 1995, Oasis’s sophomore effort refines the raucous bravado that made the Mancunian lads rock and roll stars with 1994’s Definitely Maybe and goes all in with ballads featuring massive singalong choruses. Hello, “Wonderwall.”
Everything on this album is big—big guitars, big hooks, big string arrangements—but the magic is all the details. Noel’s poignant songwriting, the happy borrowing from The Beatles, Liam’s sublime vocals on “Champagne Supernova.” And then everything about “Don’t Look Back in Anger”: the “Imagine” riff, its wistful message, the orchestra, the way it all moves, the way it stays with you. It’s Oasis at its best, and one of the greatest songs (except for, you know, “Live Forever”) of all time.
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The Cure, “Alone”
Replete with bleak images of ghosts, wine sediment, and ashed-out fire, in “Dregs,” poet Ernest Dowson lamented the impermanence of life. The poem, published posthumously in 1902, subconsciously inspired “Alone,” The Cure’s first new song in 16 years, released ahead of the iconic goth rock band’s forthcoming album, Songs of a Lost World.
“This is the end of every song man sings!” Dowson wrote in Verses (1896).
“This is the end of every song that we sing,” Robert Smith rings out in the first verse of “Alone,” then “The fire burned out to ash and the stars grown dim with tears.”
Smith says, “I had been struggling to find the right opening line for the right opening song for a while, working with the simple idea of ‘being alone,’ always in the back of my mind this nagging feeling that I already knew what the opening line should be. As soon as we finished recording, I remembered the poem ‘Dregs’ by the English poet Ernest Dowson… and that was the moment when I knew the song—and the album—were real.”
“Alone” is nearly seven minutes long, most of it a devastatingly beautiful instrumental with hammering drums and ethereal piano. When the frontman’s voice penetrates through the atmospherics—and Smith sounds fantastic—he is passionate and desperate as he grasps at the grim realities of mortality. It’s a gorgeous epic that fits perfectly as an essential listening entry in The Cure’s catalogue.
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The Tragically Hip, “Get Back Again”
A new documentary has put Canada’s Band back in the forefront of our hearts, minds, and playlists (not like it ever really left, anyway). The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal, directed by Mike Downie, brother of the beloved late frontman Gord Downie, takes an intimate look at the group, its fans, and its enduring legacy. Now streaming on Prime, it won the People’s Choice Documentary Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film’s title takes its name from a line from one of the Hip’s classic songs, “Ahead by a Century,” off their 1996 album Trouble at the Henhouse. “With illusions of someday / Cast in a golden light,” Gord sings. “No dress rehearsal / This is our life.”
The year 2024 has marked many milestones for the Hip. Along with the documentary, it’s the 40th anniversary of the band’s inception and the 35th anniversary of its 1989 debut album, Up to Here. In celebration of it all, the Hip shared an outtake, “Get Back Again,” as part of a forthcoming box set reissue of Up to Here. Though previously unreleased, “Get Back Again” is a longtime fan-favourite that has been included in the band’s live setlist since the late ’80s. It’s classic Hip—the acoustics, the buildup, the storytelling, the emotion in Gord’s voice—and a real gift for the band’s devotees.
