Canada Announces Longlist for This Year’s Polaris Music Prize
Canada has announced the longlist for this year’s Polaris Music Prize, the country’s annual award given for the best full-length Canadian album, regardless of artistic merit, genre, sales, or record label, modeled after the UK and Ireland’s Mercury Prize.
This year’s longlist includes Mac Demarco, the New Pornographers, The Weeknd, BADBADNOTGOOD, Leonard Cohen, Japandroids, Drake, and Feist, though that’s barely one fifth of the list.
The prize for the award has gone through several makeovers since its inaugural year in 2006. As of 2015, the first prize is $50,000 and an additional $20,000 given by major sponsor Slaight Music, an organization founded upon the mandate to support and develop Canadian talent. Polaris also rewards nine second prize winners with a $3,000 prize.
Also in 2015, Slaight and Polaris announced the Slaight Polaris Heritage Prize, which annually honors five albums from the five decades of Canadian music created before the Polaris Prize’s conception.
The 10 album shortlist will be announced on July 13th, and the winner will be determined at the Polaris Gala on September 18th in Toronto.
Rolling Stones Muse Anita Pallenberg Dies at 73
Anita Pallenberg, model, actress, and former Rolling Stones muse has passed away at the age of 73. The cause of death, as of 9:30 this morning, is unknown.
Pallenberg was born in German-occupied Rome in January 1944. After being expelled from her German boarding school at 16, Pallenberg began her career in modeling, first in Italy, then in New York spending time in Andy Warhol’s Factory.
Pallenberg first met the Rolling Stones backstage at one of their shows in 1965, soon staring a relationship with Guitarist Brian Jones that quickly turned violent, spurring her leaving Jones for Keith Richards. The couple settled in London, where they lived together, had three children together, and struggled through drug abuse together until their separation in 1980.
But it’s all that happened in the time in between that makes Anita Pallenberg a paragon of a rock and roll muse. She provided backing vocals on “Sympathy for the Devil,” gave Mick Jagger the feedback that led to the remixed tracks on 1968’s Beggars Banquet and starred alongside Jagger in the Nicholas Roeg’s 1970 crime drama Performance. It’s also worth noting her portrayal of the Black Queen in 1968’s Barbarella.
When approached by several publishing houses in the aughts about writing a memoir, Pallenberg shut down the idea for two reasons: she didn’t want to write the salacious expose the publishing houses were hounding for, and “…everybody is writing autobiographies and that’s one reason why I’m not going to do it. If young Posh Spice can write her autobiography, then I don’t want to write one!”
-Taylor Wallace
