Colin Stetson - Nominated for SOCAN Polaris Song Prize

Jun 24

The love it took to leave you - SOCAN Polaris Song Prize

Colin Stetson’s title track The love it took to leave you to 2024’s album of the same name has been nominated as one of the 20 SOCAN Polaris Song Prize 2025 nominees. CBC presents the 2025 Polaris Music Prize has revealed the 20 nominee Long List for its first-ever SOCAN Polaris Song Prize.

Polaris, celebrating its 20th anniversary, and SOCAN, celebrating its 100th anniversary, announced the new Song Prize with the winning song taking home $10,000 split between the song's Canadian performers and the song’s credited Canadian songwriter(s). Similar to the Polaris Album Prize, the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize will honour the Canadian song of the year, based on artistic merit, without regard to musical genre or commercial popularity.

Written some years ago but always intended as the cornerstone of an album, “The love it took to leave you,” pulses into view from a forlorn and alien distance. Voiced through alto saxophone it sets a scene saturated with yearning—ruminating on the conflicted aches and oscillations that arise from love lost, the grasping, the collapse; and the rebuild, the struggle for dignity, self-compassion, and finally liberation. It’s a composition Colin’s been performing for several years, waiting for the right context to bring its full emotional and musical anatomy to life.

LISTEN TO “THE LOVE IT TOOK TO LEAVE YOU

The SOCAN Polaris Song Prize category is Polaris’ first new award since it introduced the hall of fame Heritage Prize in 2015. The Song Prize will feature the 20-nominee Long List followed by a five-nominee Song Short List that will then be unveiled on July 29. The winning Polaris song will be revealed during the Polaris Concert & Award Ceremony, powered by FACTOR, taking place at Toronto’s Massey Hall on Tuesday, September 16.

BUY The love it took to leave you

The love it took to leave you is out via Envision Records in North America, and through Invada for the UK and the rest of the world.