Kaia Kater Covers Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl” For SiriusXM Polaris Cover Sessions

Kaia Kater

The Polaris Music Prize has released the video for its second SiriusXM Polaris Cover Session for 2020 featuring Kaia Kater covering “Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl” from Broken Social Scene’s Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize-winning album, You Forgot It In People.

The Cover Sessions series is also supported by Re:Sound.

A performance video of the song is now available via the Polaris YouTube and Facebook channels. Additionally, an audio stream of it can be found on the Polaris Soundcloud channel.

This version of “Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl” was produced by Kater and Andrew Ryan and mixed by Darren McGill at Union Sound Company. Kater provided vocals, banjo, synths and background vocals, while Ryan provided upright bass, electric bass, drum programming, keys and background vocals.

“It was an interesting challenge to adapt Broken Social Scene’s ‘Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl.’ I chose that track because I loved it when I was 17,” said Kater. “It touches on the isolation and internal chaos of being a teenage girl. Now, at 27, I see the song in the framework of pandemic solitude. To reflect this, we kept some of the original instrumentation — banjo, electric bass — and added modern elements of synths, vocoder, bowed bass and programmed drums. The result is a different type of isolation lament, 10 years later.”

The Kater cover is the second and final session planned for 2020 that feature past Polaris nominees interpreting songs from albums that have received Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize designation. Kater’s Grenades album was nominated for the 2019 Polaris Music Prize Long List. Broken Social Scene’s You Forgot It In People album received its Heritage Prize designation in 2018.

Kater’s version of “Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl” will be partnered with Corb Lund’s cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s “Oh, Linda” to be pressed on to a limited edition vinyl record that will be given as gifts to 2020 Polaris Short List nominees.

This is the 17th cover song commissioned by Polaris. Other acts who’ve contributed to the series include Lund, Partner, Faith Healer, Pierre Kwenders, Jean-Michel Blais, Lindi Ortega, Weaves, Little Scream, Hannah Georgas, Les soeurs Boulay, Joel Plaskett, Zaki Ibrahim, Whitehorse, Sarah Harmer, Great Lake Swimmers and Arkells. These performances are available on the Polaris YouTube and Soundcloud channels.