How do you silence a room full of Canadian music journalists and industry flacks? Tell them Nickelback and Simple Plan are going to be performing at the Junos."Come on, you're supposed to be excited!" urged CTV president Susanne Boyce, forcing applause out of a media scrum at the Royal York Hotel, where nominations for the 2009 edition of the awards were announced this morning. The ambivalent reaction could be read as either silent judgment of a band with the chutzpah to write a song called "Something in Your Mouth," or as passive acknowledgment of the CTV's predictable, but successful, Junos formula: nominate all of the biggest-selling artists in Canada (even if they're Nickelback and Simple Plan) to ensure a ratings-grabbing appearance; add some local flavour by enlisting a hometown hero for a performance (Sarah McLahan, representing for host-city Vancouver); get a CanCon dinosaur to reunite for their Canadian Music Hall of Fame induction (Loverboy, who we are told will "take us back to the spirit of the '80s with their high-energy party tunes!"); and for god's sake, make sure Hedley and Celine Dion are nominated for something. Returning Junos host Russell Peters summed up the announcements perhaps a little too accurately when he prefaced them with "Welcome to the 'I Don't Give a Crap Fest!'"But more disconcerting than the expected cavalcade of nominations for NickelHedleyPlan are the inconsistencies: The Stills getting a New Group of the Year nod despite being seven years and three albums into their career; Serena Ryder up for an Artist of the Year nod but her record, is it o.k., gets demoted to the Adult Alternative category; and despite a Best Single nomination for "Dangerous," Kardinal Offishall's big U.S. Top 5 breakthrough is seemingly not enough to elevate him into the Artist of the Year echelons (a notable oversight for an awards show that's obsessed with maximizing the bold face). And the Junos could perhaps be the only awards body generous enough to nominate Guns N Roses' Chinese Democracy for anything (the sales-based International Album of the Year award). But, of course, the Junos are not so much about awarding artist excellence as major-label industry perseverance, with only a small handful of indie-affiliated poking up out of the New Artist/Alternative Album ghetto to the headliner categories: City and Colour (Artist of the Year, Songwriter of the Year) and Tokyo Police Club (Group of the Year), among them. But despite the Stills anomaly, the New Group of the Year category provides a healthy sampling of this year's breakthrough buzz bands (Beast, Cancer Bats, Crystal Castles and Plants and Animals), and the Alternative Album of the Year category (Black Mountain, Chad VanGaalen, Fucked Up, Plants and Animals and, in a more appropriate placement, The Stills) is solid as ever. And if the enthusiastic voice-over on this morning's announcement reel was any indication, CTV won't be bleeping out Fucked Up's name if they win — which, in light of Nickelback's five nominations, I suppose is victory enough. The complete list of 2009 Juno Awards nominees can be read here. The awards ceremony will be held March 29 at Vancouver's General Motors Place.
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