Barenaked Ladies to be inducted into Canadian Hall of Fame at 2018 Junos
(Now) it’s all been done.
It's been nearly 30 years since Barenaked Ladies piled into CityTV's Speakers' Corner booth to sing "Be my Yoko Ono," launching a career that would add lines like "If I had $1,000,000" and "It's all been done" into the colloquial Canadian canon.
This year, after plenty of Juno wins, Grammy nominations, 15 million albums sold and a whole lot of history, Barenaked Ladies will be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame during a one-time special appearance with former member Steven Page at the 2018 Juno Awards.
"We are honoured to be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame," said Ed Robertson via press release. "For almost 30 years we've worked hard to write the best songs we can, make the best records we can make, and do the best shows possible. We've travelled the world with our music, but Canada has always been home. This is very special for us."
Barenaked Ladies will join 50 other past inductees, including Sarah McLachlan, Alanis Morissette, Anne Murray, k.d. lang and Leonard Cohen.
Formed in Scarborough, Ont., in 1988, Barenaked Ladies were founded by current frontman Ed Robertson and former co-frontman Steven Page. The two released the band's first cassette, Buck Naked, in 1989, and another in 1990 called Barenaked Lunch (also called The Pink Tape). One year later, they recorded their first video using Speakers' Corner.
"You guys are the first ones to use this as a blatant marketing device," a floor manager from CityTV told them at the time. They followed it quickly with The Yellow Tapes, which included the soon-to-be hits "Brian Wilson" and "If I had $1,000,000."
That same year, Barenaked Ladies covered "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" for a Bruce Cockburn tribute album. "I was aware of him but I didn't really know his material, so I chose that song just because I knew it," Robertson told CBC Music in 2013, about the single that became their first Top 40 hit in Canada.
In 1993, Barenaked Ladies got their first Juno nominations — four in total, for entertainer of the year, album of the year (for Gordon), single of the year (for "Enid") and group of the year — and they grabbed their first Grammy nomination in 1999 for "One Week."
The band's discography counts 15 studio albums, one collaborative release (2017's Barenaked Ladies and the Persuasions) and multiple band-member changes; Page left the band in 2009 — a "mutual agreement" — and current members include Robertson, Jim Creeggan, Tyler Stewart and Kevin Hearn, the latter of which joined the band in the '90s after Andy Creeggan's departure.
The 47th annual Juno Awards and Juno Week 2018 will be hosted in Vancouver from March 19 through March 25, 2018, culminating in the Juno Awards broadcast on CBC on Sunday, March 25. For more information on how to buy tickets, go to JunoAwards.ca.
For full Juno Awards coverage, head to CBCMusic.ca/junos.