Great Big Sea was fun when it happened - it was considered the first time our pop-trad genre went mainstream outside the province. But Doyle can’t really sing, the songs were mostly old staples or Nickelback-level simplistic. I don’t hurriedly turn it off the way I do for Nickelback if it comes on the radio, sometimes I might even sing along to the end of the first chorus, but you couldn’t pay me enough to sit through a full Great Big Sea song. Their importance here is more tied into the 2000s-2010s change in our reputation and, especially, treatment in mainland Canada. It’s tied up with Danny pulling down the flags (only time the mainlanders I worked with even knew who our Premier was, asked me what he was like, etc.), our award-winning tourism ads (first time anyone on the mainland, ever, even in the most casual sense, expressed to me ANY interest in coming here), etc. that period changed our reputation and we went from being openly mocked and ridiculed, even to our faces, in business meetings (haha), so the band has a sort of special status for people kind of millennial and elder who experienced Canada at its most prejudiced, provincial.
My fave local groups haven’t changed in many years. The Once (can't pick a fave, they all mean something to me, but one I want at my funeral is
Song for Memory), Amelia Curran (fave song is
Bye Bye Montreal). They’re so far ahead of anything else in my heart that it doesn’t really make sense to mention third place (Fine Crowd - especially Poverty’s Arse. Fave song is
Teresa Maria. He’s doing what Doyle thinks he’s doing).
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Great Big Shit is one of my most reviled cancon acts along with Hedley, Simple Plan, Chavril and Sum41. Then there's overrated acts like Matthew Good. Then the classic awful ones like Barenaked Ladies, Kim Mitchell and Colin James. 
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