January 2026 Retrospective

If you aren't from Canada or watched Heated Rivalry then my January listening data will definitely not speak to you. For all my fellow Canadians who obsessed over Shane and Ilya however, you can hopefully relate to the way the music in Heated Rivalry was so perfect that it infected my listening habits.

The way that the show combined (relatively) unknown Canadian artists with the emotional moments in the plot drove me to add the whole soundtrack to my library and to revisit some of my favourite Canadian artists from growing up.

The vast majority of my top 10s are directly from the Heated Rivalry soundtrack, with "I'll Believe in Anything" by Wolf Parade taking the #1 song by individual plays for the month of January. It is still difficult to hear the first few notes of the song without bursting into happy tears. Several other artists and songs on the list are directly from the show, like Cailin Russo's "Bad Things" and "mangetout" by Wet Leg – but the rest diverge from the soundtrack.

The emotional vibes of the show brought me back to the last heatfelt queer love story I watched, Heartstopper, so there are a few songs from that soundtrack that were on repeat including "Clearest Blue" by CHVRCHES and "Why Am I Like This?" by Orla Gartland.

Beyond these examples we find some of my favourite CANCON from my childhood, which includes the album that got the most collective plays: Ever After from Marianas Trench. Part of this is due to the fact that the album is meant to be listened to in full because each song bleeds into the next, so if I want to listen to any song I usually play the whole album – and with 12 tracks its not overly short. Other albums include Alessia Cara's debut album Know It All and Alyssa Reid's 2015 album Phoenix.

Some of the Canadian content that didn't make my top lists but I still have as much nostalgia for includes Light's debut album The Listening and several of Metric's early albums.

Additional Data

All-Time Statistics

A quick look at how my "all time" statistics look after January 2026. I know its only been 4ish months but the way "I'll Believe In Anything" still takes my top played individual song spot is pretty wild.

I don't expect every month to be so clearly overtaken by a TV show but December and January fully belonged to Heated Rivalry, I don't make the rules.

Until next time!