Toronto rocks!

It also raps, cuts dance tracks, sings reggae, plays the blues and performs a mean raga. So the question is: what songs would make your ultimate Toronto playlist?

That’s what we set out to determine when selecting the top 100 Toronto songs from the city’s long pop history. Toronto prides itself as a music city, and with the success of so many artists, that pride is reflected back in song. It seems that every generation had its scene, from Yorkville to Queen Street to the rise of the independents and the indie rockers to the woozy R&B that’s a hallmark of many young artists right now.

Drake is one musician who wears this city’s pride on his sleeve at all times, but he’s certainly not the only artist nowadays who fills his work with shout-outs and references to his hometown — although that wasn’t always the case.

“There was a time in Canada, where Canadian artists like Neil Young sang about a town in northern Ontario, and Joni Mitchell talked about blue money and the Maple Leafs, and Murray McLauchlan and ‘Down by the Henry Moore’ — people talked about where they were from,” said Denise Donlon, the longtime former MuchMusic and label executive (who is married to McLauchlan). “And while I was at MuchMusic, there was moment where especially the big bands, they eschewed mentioning Canadian place names because they thought it might hinder their success in America. And then we came roaring back, with the Barenaked Ladies, Blue Rodeo, The Tragically Hip and ‘Bobcaygeon,’ Devon and ‘Mr. Metro’ and all that, so as evidenced by our songs, we’ve gone through a self-worth crisis and come back (out) the other side.”

That sense of local pride was always evident in the Barenaked Ladies’ music when they burst onto the scene 30 years ago out of Scarborough. The group famously went from being banned from playing at Nathan Phillips Square because of their name to selling multiplatinum albums. Next week, they will reunite with founding member Steven Page to perform at the Junos and be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

“Our Scarborough roots, initially, was a huge part of our identity. We were suburban kids, and hey man, we wore that proudly,” said Tyler Stewart, BNL’s drummer. “I think that’s another thing, that sense of possibility (about) our music, and Maestro and Dream Warriors, people who are from your block, singing songs about your neighbourhood — that sense of local pride was pretty big.”

That sense of pride has only grown exponentially with the rise of Drake, the self-declared 6ix God, but who are the other local artists whose work belongs in the Toronto pantheon? Everyone we consulted had their own take, and we were surprised by the number of arguments we got into over not only the songs but also how best to determine and define an act’s Toronto-ness.

As a result, here are our guidelines for what made our list:

Groups or artists that were born, formed or based here — or affiliated with a Toronto-based scene. The entire GTA counts.

References to the city in song carry weight and usually pushed us to choose it from an artist’s catalogue. Toronto-shot imagery in music videos also counts.

It helps to be an artist’s breakthrough or a hit, in whatever way that can be measured — on the charts, awards, Spotify plays or YouTube views.

In order to celebrate the diversity of Toronto’s scene and to be inclusive, one entry effectively takes an artist off the board.

Beyond that, well, it’s a listicle, so a lot of this is arbitrary — we could easily have gone to 200 without repeating ourselves. But we tried to come up with a list that paid tribute to the great music that has been, and is still being, created around this city. That said, we already know that as soon as it is published, it is going to be torn apart. That’s part of the fun. Follow along the list with the snippets below, our Spotify playlist here, or our YouTube playlist here.

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So Toronto, what did we miss? Send your thoughts to rmudhar@thestar.ca.

Warning: list and songs contain explicit language.

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