Early 2000s Toronto: a city where fifteen musicians could randomly decide to make a record together and nobody thought that was weird. A city where indie rock bands were fielding what could legitimately be a CFL roster, and somehow it all worked. You Forgot It In People is what that moment sounded like—not a album by a band, but a document of a whole scene deciding to collaborate. Released in October 2002, Broken Social Scene’s breakthrough album wasn’t just a record—it was proof that if you pack enough friends, instruments, and good vibes into a Toronto basement, you might accidentally change indie rock forever.
Twenty-three years later, the album still feels less like a calculated artistic statement and more like someone left the door open during band practice and fifteen ridiculously talented musicians just wandered in. Which, according to basically everyone involved, is pretty much exactly what happened.
The City That Built a Band
While the rest of the continent was still nursing its post-grunge hangover, Canada’s biggest city was quietly assembling what would become the most important indie rock scene of the decade. The Hidden Cameras were bringing queer energy to basement shows. Wavelength’s weekly series at Ted’s Wrecking Yard had turned Sunday nights into mandatory religion for anyone under 30 with a vintage synth and an opinion about Sonic Youth. Stillepost message boards were lighting up with show announcements, and suddenly Montreal bands were making the five-hour drive just to be part of the conversation.
Into this swirling ecosystem walked Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, two guys who’d been kicking around the Toronto scene for years. Canning had done time in Len (yes, that Len, of “Steal My Sunshine” fame—talk about range). Drew was… well, Drew was the kind of guy who thought it would be fun to see what happened if you combined post-rock ambience with actual songs and invited literally everyone you knew to help.
Their first album, Feel Good Lost, dropped in 2001 and was almost entirely instrumental—beautiful, sure, but more background music for late-night drives than the kind of thing that makes you call your friends at 2 AM demanding they listen immediately. It won them respect in the experimental music crowd, but not much else.
Then they decided to try something different.
The Album That Shouldn’t Work (But Does)
On paper, You Forgot It In People is a disaster waiting to happen. Eleven core musicians. Guest vocalists from three different bands. Songs that shift from indie-noise freakouts to bossa nova beats to drone-y atmospherics, sometimes within the same track. Producer David Newfeld recording at his Cameron House studio with a constantly rotating cast of characters, never quite sure who would show up on any given day or what instrument they’d feel like playing.
Kevin Drew later admitted he was “scared to see if people were going to embrace the idea of a whole shitload of sounds on one album.” Turns out? People embraced the hell out of it.
The album opens with “Capture The Flag,” two minutes of ambient guitar-and-trumpet meditation that sounds like sunrise through Toronto’s industrial haze. Then “KC Accidental” kicks in and suddenly you’re in a completely different room—all urgent drums and layered guitars building toward something that feels both nostalgic and thrillingly immediate. By the time Leslie Feist’s voice floats in on “Almost Crimes,” you’ve already accepted that this album plays by its own rules.
And those rules are simple: there are no rules. Just friends making music together.
The Feist and Emily Haines Factor
Let’s talk about the women who made this album soar. Leslie Feist was still a few years away from becoming the indie-pop household name who’d sell iPods with “1234,” but her voice was already unmistakable—that perfect blend of vulnerability and strength that can turn a simple melody into something transcendent. Emily Haines from Metric brought a different energy entirely, all sharp edges and downtown cool.
The contrast between them and the male vocalists (Drew and Canning, mostly) is stark. The guys are fine—serviceable, earnest, occasionally moving in that early-2000s sensitive-dude way. But when Feist or Haines step to the mic, the album suddenly has stakes. “Anthems For a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” builds its entire emotional architecture around Feist’s layered, warped vocals over banjo and violin, creating something that sounds like a memory of youth already fading before you’ve finished living it.
One podcast listener later captured it perfectly: the album “feels like friendship.” Not friendship as some abstract concept, but the actual texture of being young in a city where everyone you know is trying to make art and somehow, against all odds, some of it’s actually working.
The Pitchfork Effect
Here’s where the story gets interesting. You Forgot It In People came out in Canada in October 2002 to breathless local reviews and sold out its initial 1,000-copy run almost immediately. But outside Ontario? Crickets. The album essentially disappeared, just another promising indie record drowned out by the noise.
Then, in February 2003, Pitchfork founder Ryan Schreiber did what Ryan Schreiber did best in those days: he dug through the massive pile of promo CDs in the office, pulled out something nobody was talking about, and went absolutely bananas for it. His review gave You Forgot It In People a 9.2 and included this line: “I wish I could convey how they’ve made just exactly the kind of pop record that stands the test of time… You just have to hear it for yourself. Oh my god, you do. You just really, really do.”
Schreiber later said this was the first album that confirmed his “digging through promos” strategy actually worked. Within weeks, Broken Social Scene were selling out shows across North America. A year later, they were international indie darlings. By 2018, the album won Canada’s Polaris Heritage Prize for the 1996-2005 era, cementing its status as one of the defining Canadian albums of the early 21st century.
Not bad for a record that almost nobody outside Toronto initially heard.
What Makes It Work (And What Doesn’t)
Twenty-three years on, You Forgot It In People still sounds remarkably fresh. That dry, live drum sound holds everything together like a heartbeat—organic and human in a way that keeps the experimental production from floating off into the ether. The guitar tones shift constantly—clean, fuzzy, layered, sparse—creating new textures that keep you guessing. When saxophone or trumpet or violin suddenly appear, they don’t feel like showing off; they feel like someone walking into the room at exactly the right moment.
But let’s be honest: the album’s not perfect. The second half drags a bit, getting more mood-driven and atmospheric when you might want another “Stars and Sons”-sized anthem. The lyrics are often impenetrable (seriously, what does “fuck the cause” mean in “Cause = Time”?). And there are moments where you can’t help thinking, “What if this was an instrumental?”
Yet those flaws somehow feel like features. This isn’t an album trying to be perfect. It’s an album trying to capture what it felt like to be young and creative and surrounded by talented friends in early-2000s Toronto, and on that level, it’s pitch-perfect.
The Revolving Door Never Stopped
Broken Social Scene’s lineup would continue shifting throughout the 2000s—an indie rock collective in the truest sense, with members coming and going based on availability and life circumstances. They made more records, some great, some uneven. Kevin Drew eventually worked with Gord Downie on the Tragically Hip’s final album. Feist became a Grammy-nominated solo artist. Metric conquered alt-rock radio. The Arts & Crafts label they co-founded became one of Canada’s most influential indie imprints.
But You Forgot It In People remains the moment—the album where everything aligned. Producer David Newfeld captured lightning in a bottle at Cameron House, and when Broken Social Scene eventually parted ways with him, they struggled to recapture that magic. (Recent reports suggest they’re working with Newfeld again, which should excite anyone who remembers what they accomplished together.)
The band still tours, still draws devoted crowds to venues like Massey Hall, still delivers those sprawling, communal performances that feel less like concerts and more like gatherings. Because that’s what Broken Social Scene always understood better than most: rock music doesn’t have to be about lone genius or carefully controlled image. Sometimes the best albums happen when you trust your friends, leave the door open, and see who walks through.
In an era when indie rock was still finding its footing after grunge’s demise, You Forgot It In People pointed toward a different future—one that was collaborative instead of competitive, warm instead of cool, expansive instead of minimalist. It proved that you could make experimental music that still felt welcoming, that lyrics could be impressionistic without being pretentious, that having fifteen people in your band wasn’t ego; it was generosity.
The album influenced everyone from Animal Collective to Arcade Fire to the entire wave of orchestral indie rock that dominated the mid-to-late 2000s. You can draw a straight line from this record to basically every band that’s ever described themselves as a “collective.” Its DNA is embedded in the collaborative music-making culture that defines indie rock today.
But more than that, You Forgot It In People captured something essential about what it means to be young and making art with your friends—that fleeting moment when everything feels possible and everyone you know is creating something and the city itself seems alive with potential. Two decades later, that feeling hasn’t aged a day.
Put it on sometime. Preferably with friends. Turn it up. And see if you remember why you fell in love with indie rock in the first place. Just don’t be surprised when that banjo hits on “Anthems For a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” and you find yourself calling someone at 2 AM to talk about it.
Some albums demand that kind of thing.
Songs in this Episode
Intro - Stars and Sons
12:15 - KC Accidental
20:29 - Cause = Time
26:03 - Anthems For A Seventeen Year-Old Girl
Outro - Pacific Theme
