I’ve waited over a decade to do this one because I knew it would be a huge project. Compiling the best songs by Canada’s own The Tragically Hip.
Apologies for the long, multi-page post. But if you’re a music lover and you have a favorite band, you would have a hard time keeping it short, too. From about 1990 until the early 2000s, The Hip was my favorite band without question, and to this day is still one of my favorites. I have most of their CD’s (until CD’s started becoming irrelevant) and played them to death. Up To Here is still my favorite album of all time, with the ensuing three albums easily cracking my Top 20.
The Hip of the late 80’s and all through the 90’s was the perfect rock band, blending a smooth southern rock sound with some harder rock and blues influence (particularly in Road Apples) and giving it a Canadian spin. Lead singer Gord Downie’s voice melded perfectly with the music of the band (Rob Baker, Paul Langlois, Gord Sinclair and drummer Johnny Fay). Their concerts were legendary in Canadian circles, with Downie’s trademark writhing and jerking to the music, almost in his own little world as the band played to his cues as if the five of them were one being.
In the 2000’s, the quality of their music began to decline, for me it started with their seventh album Music @ Work. More and more, the music became about Downie. His style and voice started to shift from grizzled rock to that of a 50’s crooner. The shift was gradual, as there were still some gems such as It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken, but as the music slowed down and Downie’s voice tried to be more melodious, the quality of albums weakened. You’ll find that reflected here, as many of the later songs are found lower on this list – or left off the list entirely. There’s a reason why Canadian rock stations mainly play songs from the first six albums, and almost completely ignore the last seven. There’s a reason why a track found on the cutting floor from Up To Here is getting heavy play over anything from Man Machine Poem.
The Tragically Hip is a band where all five members are important. As soon as focus shifted to one member, the quality declined. And in the later stuff, all you can focus on is Downie – one of the best rock voices in Canadian history, but not that high on the list of crooners. Maybe the success of Bobcaygeon influenced the band’s direction, as I point to that as the first ‘crooner voice’ song. But that style should have been restricted to occasional use, and not an entire philosophy change.
The legend of the Hip was formed around their first six albums. That’s the music you hear on rock stations today, and most of those songs fill the top half of this list. All nine encore songs in The Hip’s final concert in 2016 were from those six albums, and 23 of the 30 songs they played. The seven songs from beyond those six albums were mostly played in the beginning of the concert, almost as a warm-up.
Gord Downie, rock icon and Canadian icon, passed away on October 17, 2017 from brain cancer. He was 53. This was 29 days after I got out of the hospital after a stem cell transplant treating my own cancer, so his passing really hit me hard. Never to be forgotten, he’s the very definition of “legend”.
Here are songs 100 through 76 in list form. The songs from 2021 were from their Saskadelphia EP, made up of songs from the cutting floor of Road Apples. The rest are made up of a few songs from their later albums, or B-side tracks from Day For Night, Trouble At the Henhouse and even one from their self-titled EP in 1987. “Radio Show” was a bonus track from the 2014 re-release of Fully Completely. “Rain, Hearts and Fire” is from the 2024 box set re-release of Up To Here.
After the chart below, I will begin counting down the rest of the Top 100. To just go directly to that list, click here. This is spread out over four pages so that each page loads faster (multiple YouTube embeds tend to start clogging page loading)
| 100 | Coconut Cream | – | 1996 |
| 99 | Radio Show | – | 2014 |
| 98 | The Lonely End of the Rink | – | 2006 |
| 97 | Speed River | – | 2009 |
| 96 | Morning Moon | – | 2009 |
| 95 | Now the Struggle Has a Name | – | 2009 |
| 94 | Let’s Stay Engaged | – | 1996 |
| 93 | Montreal | – | 2021 |
| 92 | Rain, Hearts and Fire | – | 2024 |
| 91 | Just as Well | – | 2021 |
| 90 | Reformed Baptist Blues | – | 2021 |
| 89 | Thompson Girl | – | 1998 |
| 88 | Cemetery Sideroad | – | 1987 |
| 87 | Sherpa | – | 1996 |
| 86 | Vapour Trails | – | 1998 |
| 85 | Crack My Spine (Like a Whip) | – | 2021 |
| 84 | Wait So Long | – | 2018 |
| 83 | Leave | – | 2002 |
| 82 | Fire in the Hole | – | 1994 |
| 81 | Chagrin Falls | – | 1998 |
| 80 | Love Is a First | – | 2009 |
| 79 | Silver Jet | – | 2002 |
| 78 | Impossibilium | – | 1994 |
| 77 | Apartment Song | – | 1996 |
| 76 | Don’t Wake Daddy | – | 1996 |
And now for my 75 favorite songs by The Hip. There are some controversial rankings in some instances, such as my placement of Get Back Again, Bobcaygeon and Courage, but it’s my opinion, my taste. I do my best to explain along the way. I’m sure many Hip fans would have things completely different!
75 Emergency – 1994
The Hip’s fourth album was Day for Night. It was released in September of 1994, which was pretty much the very moment I moved into my first off-campus place in Guelph. Naturally, seeing this cover and hearing these songs makes me think of those days. A great album from top to bottom, this is the third entry on the list, with more to come. Every song on this album appears in this Top 100.
74 Flamenco – 1997
A nice, soothing sound. Trouble At the Henhouse is another album that reminds me of my days in university.
73 Titanic Terrarium – 1994
72 The Rules – 1998
71 Something On – 1998
70 The Wherewithal – 1993
The first appearance from Fully Completely is here. Every song from this album is in my Top 70.
69 Evelyn – 1987
A little-known song, but a good one. It’s from their initial EP back in 1987. I remember buying this EP at the same time as Fully Completely, the day the latter came out. And I remember those two being my 50th and 51st CD. The sound of this song makes you think of the band playing in a small pub.
68 Butts Wigglin’ – 1996
67 Membership – 1998
I love Gord’s voice in this one. Still peak Gord here.
66 Ouch – 2021
One of the songs picked up off the Road Apples cutting floor and released on 2021’s Saskadelphia EP. The video features Jay Baruchel and Rick Mercer.
On the next page, I count down 65 through 41 of the best Tragically Hip songs of all time…
Dobber's Take 
Leave a comment