1997 MuchMusic-branded compilation was an historic hit in Canada

By MEGAMIXDOTCOM
Published Thursday, January 23, 2025

Big Shiny Tunes 2 is the biggest selling compilation album in Canadian music history. Released in 1997, by March of the following year it was certified Diamond in Canada, surpassing 1.2 million copies sold. This is the equivalent of a 12x Platinum album in the US, putting it the same rareified air as such classics as Purple Rain and Abbey Road (!).

The 90s were an interesting time in Canadian music. As we have discussed multiple times on the Super Hits Podcast, the latter half of the decade found the RPM Top 100 Singles chart inundated with songs that were featured in heavy rotation on rock radio stations across the country. MuchMusic, Canada’s version of MTV, pushed the alternative/modern rock genre hard, and as such, a slew of Canadian bands managed to grab some serious shine.

So in 1996, the Canadian offices of major labels Universal, EMI and Warner partnered to release the first Big Shiny Tunes, an 18-track collection featuring big time US rock bands coupled with tracks from Canadian artists.

From Jesse Locke’s tremendous oral history of the series:

“For emerging Canadian artists included on the track listing, the compilation placed them on the same level as their higher-profile international contemporaries such as Bush X, No Doubt and Radiohead, making homegrown stars and influencing several other generations in the process.”

The result? Big Shiny Tunes went triple Platinum in Canada. So when the 1997 holiday season rolled around, releasing a follow up compilation was a foregone conclusion.

Big Shiny Tunes 2 doesn’t veer too far from the successful formula of its predecessor. However, it does include a couple of alt-dance tracks (the Prodigy’s “Breathe” and the Chemical Brothers’ “Block Rockin’ Beats”), which bring an energy that lacked on the previous disc.

11 of the tracks charted on the RPM Top 100, including seven that managed to reach the Top 10. By contrast, only two songs – Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life” and Collective Soul’s “Precious Declaration” – had managed to crack the Billboard Hot 100 in the US.

Five Canadian artists are included here, the most interesting being Montréal’s Bran Van 3000, whose standout track “Drinking In L.A.” sounds nothing like anything else on the album. The CD’s tracklist promises a remix of the Tea Party’s wonderful “Temptation,” but this so-called “Tom Lord-Alge Mix” is a disappointing bait and switch. It sounds almost identical to the original.

Gimmicky shit from Smash Mouth and Sugar Ray are lumped together in the first third, which slams the brakes on the album’s early momentum. Successive boring tracks from Matchbox Twenty and Collective Soul bog it down in the middle, but it finishes fairly strongly, even with the confusing inclusion of Stone Temple Pilots’ sleep-inducing single “Lady Picture Show” as the final track.

I did not own Big Shiny Tunes 2 – probably because at the time I had purchased the most recent albums of nine of the artists featured on the compilation already. But the tracklist definitely reflects my general musical tastes from 1997 and 1998. 13 of the tracks showed up on some of my monthly mixes from the time period, and at least a couple of songs on the December 97 cassette were taped directly from a friend’s copy of this landmark compilation.

For me, this is a somewhat uneven collection. The highlights (“Paranoid Android”, “Block Rockin’ Beats”) soar, while the lowlights (“Fly”, “Walkin’ On The Sun”) scrape the absolute bottom of the barrel. That said – as far as straight-up late 90s nostalgia goes, Big Shiny Tunes 2 is still worth a listen. Just keep your finger on the trigger to skip a few duds.

⭐ RATING: 6 out of 10
💖 BEST TRACK: Radiohead – “Paranoid Android”
💀 WORST TRACK: Sugar Ray feat. Super Cat – “Fly”

A full tracklist and link to listen to the album on Apple Music are below. Thanks for reading, friends!

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