Broken Social Scene have announced a new covers album that celebrates their 2003 breakout full-length, You Forgot It in People. Out June 6, via Arts & Crafts, Anthems: A Celebration of Broken Social Scene’s You Forgot It in People invites over a dozen artists—including Toro y Moi, Mdou Moctar, the Weather Station, and more—to reimagine a song from the LP. First up is Maggie Rogers and Sylvan Esso’s joint take on “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl,” which you can listen to below.
“‘Anthems’ is one of those songs that fundamentally changed my life,” Rogers said in a statement. “There’s something about the lyrical repetition that functions as a sort of mantra within the song and it made me understand at a very early point in my creative life that music could be a form of meditation. Broken Social Scene has long been one of my all-time favorite bands and covering it with my dear friends Nick and Amelia from Sylvan Esso was an absolute joy beam dream.”
Sylvan Esso added, “It was a joy to cover this beautiful song with Maggie—we all grew up loving this record—to be asked to cover ’Anthems…’ together was an honor and led to a truly lovely time.”
On the 20th anniversary of You Forgot It in People, Broken Social Scene once again performed the album in full on a North American tour. During one of those shows, the long list of people who’ve covered “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” expanded to include Meryl Streep and Tracey Ullman, who joined the Toronto indie-rock band onstage in New York to sing along.
Last year, the new documentary It’s All Gonna Break, directed by Stephen Chung, premiered at Woodstock Film Festival. Drawing its title from the closing track on their self-titled album, the film documents the early years of Broken Social Scene and the creation of their first three albums.
Revisit Ryan Dombal’s interview “Broken Social Scene Are (Somehow) Still Friends After All These Years.”
