By Darlene Barss

The Polaris Music Prize is a not-for-profit organization that annually honours and rewards artists who produce Canadian music albums of distinction. A select panel of music critics judge and award the Prize without regard to musical genre or commercial popularity.

Polaris Music Prize has accepted me as juror this year. Yes I was surprised as well but I am very excited about the opportunity. There are a lot of good albums that have been released or will be released in the eligible time period of June 1, 2016 to May 31, 2017. It will be very difficult to narrow it down to 40 for the long list. The way we get that long list is the jurors recommend albums and then we will each vote for 5 albums from those recommendations. Those votes will make up the long list that comes out June 13. We will again give our 5 votes from that list to make up the short list that comes out on July 13. A Grand Jury of 11 members will be selected and they will decide on the winner while at the gala on Sept 18.

Deciding on which 5 albums I will vote for is a bit of a daunting task. The playlist this week is my long list at this point. The list may change as more albums come out and I listen to more of the eligible albums. There are 40 songs representing an artist on the playlist and I need to find 5 to vote for. There are some artists that will probably be on the official long list but aren’t on mine. The Weeknd for instance will probably not get a vote from me. What 5 albums would you vote for and why? Who did I miss that you think should be on there? Tell me why you think an album should be on the list and I just may consider it.

Find out more about Polaris Music Prize on their website.