The Polaris Music Prize Short List 2021 was revealed on Thursday, July 15 and you can find it on Polaris’s website. The playlist today has a couple tracks from each of the 10 albums that are on the short list. I was 1/5 on my ballot for the Long List this year with only TEKE::TEKE’s Shirushi making it. I am disappointed that The Garry’s Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages Original Soundtrack, Bell Orchestre’s House Music, Speaker Face’s Crescent, and C. Diab’s White Whale didn’t make it on the Long List.

I had a lot of listening to do to narrow the 40 albums on the long list to my 5 votes for the short list. I ended up with 3/5 making it to the short list but sadly TEKE::TEKE didn’t make it this time. Shabason, Krgovich & Harris’s Philadelphia was the other one of my votes that didn’t make it to the short list. The three that did make it were Zoon’s Bleached Wavves, Cadence Weapon’s Parallel World, and Klô Pelgag’s Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs.

There were many more albums I considered voting for that didn’t make it to the short list, such as the ones by Yves Jarvis, Julien Sagot, LAL, NYSSA, Kathleen Edwards, and Thanya Iyer. Below is the playlist with a couple tracks each from the short list nominated albums on Spotify and YouTube.

And this is my Short List playlist on Spotify and YouTube. I have only narrowed it down to 15 albums that I was considering to vote for. Who is on your short list and who do you wish had made it but didn’t?