Canadian Music

Something has really surprised me over the past two weeks- the amount of Canadian music being played in the US is pervasive. I mean really really pervasive. It's one thing to be cruising down the aisle of our local Canadian grocery chain and hearing muzaked versions of "My heart will go on." You expect that with all our Cancon rules. What you don't expect is to go into three stores in a row and hear kd lang, Gordon Lightfoot and Sarah McLaughlin at least once in each store. This has happened to me now in two different cities- suburbs of Detroit and downtown Buffalo. Now, having spent sometime in Buffalo, I understand that it is pretty much Canada with a NYer drawl, but Detroit is not/not Windsor, my friends. Detroit has created it's own musical sound more than once (Motown and the Eminem, 50 cent vibe). Why am I consistently hearing Canada's openly lesbian country/pop crooner in almost every store I enter into in Conservative America? Why is it that every time I'm in the US and A turns on the radio for the past four years I'm being assaulted by the likes of the boys from Hanna (Nickelback) and the dudes from Default? (there's a story in there about potentially insulting Mohammed Ali's daughter five years ago but we'll save that one for another day.)