“Until you record it you’re grappling with ‘Why am I doing this?’” he said in Egos & Icons.
The intriguing story of Toronto Maple Leaf’s player Bill Barilko’s 1951 disappearance and the Leaf’s failure to win a Stanley Cup until his body was found lay the foundation for the song 50 Mission Cap.ĭownie said Barilko’s story kept popping into his head, and even though he worried it wouldn’t make sense to an American audience, or that no one would care, the Hip eventually wrote a song about it. When a person, story, or topic keeps nagging at you, there’s probably something there. As my fellow journalist Tory Gillis tells me, Downie was able to appeal to every kind of community, “and he did it with words and songs that simply reflected us all back.” It guides them on a path and trusts them to come to their own conclusions. That is transferable to journalism: good journalism doesn’t tell people what to think or what to do.
“When you actually have to say, ‘Here’s what I look like and this is what I’d like you to think further about the song we’re about to show you,’ then it becomes something that I can’t quite deal with.”īy approaching music in a way that recognized the agency of the audience, the Hip was able to reach a wider audience of people across the country. In Egos & Icons, Downie said that’s what made his group not particularly good at music videos. The band certainly didn’t hit you over the head with their lyrics, instead letting people absorb the meaning of a song for themselves. įor decades, people have puzzled over the elusive meaning behind many of the Hip’s lyrics. “We decided also that a song that we write is not really a song that we write until every guy has put his stamp on it,” Downie said in Egos & Icons. As lifelong friends, the Hip was able to let the song come first. Everyone in the Hip wrote their songs together, and the musical component was treated as a further part of that song’s signature. The Hip’s songwriting methods are a great reminder that collaboration enriches how we bring our ideas to life. And in return, journalists can become over-protective of our ideas and act like we need to take it all on by ourselves. In journalism, a good idea is often held up as sacred. Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene told the New York Times, “he has an incredible way of giving you that spotlight when he’s in front of you.”ĭownie listened intently to people from all walks of life and the songs he wrote were either about other people, or about universally relatable experiences.Īs journalists, it’s hard to get past ego sometimes when our faces are constantly on camera, or our names in a byline, or our voices are on the radio - but Downie and the Hip showed the heights people can reach if they focus more on others and less on themselves. Surprisingly, despite Downie being a Canadian icon who wore bold a sparkly leather suit for his final tour, he was a humble dude. If you want inspiration to see what happens when someone keeps their spark alive throughout their career, look no further than the Hip’s final concert, which was viewed by more than 11 million people. In that vein, I have found a number of guiding lessons from Downie’s life that can help journalists strive to do what he did so well - to tell human stories.
Delivering someone’s often-personal story to a large number of people is a responsibility that Downie understood, and journalists are tasked with doing the same.ĭownie’s family has urged Canadians to harness their grief and create something positive from his death. Songs like 50 Mission Cap and Wheat Kings, and projects like The Secret Path, share true stories of Canadian lives in a near-journalistic way. It was only after his passing that I came to realize the similarities between how Downie approached music and how a journalist approaches a story. Although people had long known his battle with brain cancer was terminal, it was a gut punch to lose a man who constantly forged meaningful connections with complete strangers. 17, there was a ripple effect across Canada. When Tragically Hip frontman Gord Downie died on Oct. Continue Reading What Canadian journalists can learn from the life and career of Gord Downie Gord Downie told stories about Canadian lives in a near-journalistic way.
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