Chantal Kreviazuk

Chantal Kreviazuk first drew notice from major record companies through her skills as a vocalist and composer after already establishing herself as a competition-winning classical pianist. Sony released her opening adult-pop set, Under These Rocks and Stones, in 1997. Strong sales followed, and she captured two Juno Awards with the next project, Colour Moving and Still, which arrived in 2000. Ghost Stories, her fourth studio album from 2006, rose to her strongest chart placement yet at number two on the Billboard Canadian Albums survey. A 2011 duet with Drake came afterward, and the live recording In This Life appeared the following year. The 2019 documentary I’m Going to Break Your Heart centered on Kreviazuk and her husband, Our Lady Peace’s Raine Maida, while the couple issued a joint soundtrack under the name Moon Vs. Sun.

Born in Manitoba, Kreviazuk displayed early piano talent, claiming competition victories and pursuing formal instruction on both piano and voice. Like numerous accomplished pop artists who distance themselves from classical roots during teenage years, she turned to writing pop material, particularly after a 1994 motorcycle crash in Italy left her unable to move for several months. Those compositions secured a Sony contract before she had ever sung in public. At age 22 she began sessions with producers Peter Asher and Matt Wallace for Under These Rocks and Stones. The 1997 album attained double-platinum status largely because of the singles “God Made Me” and “Surrounded.” Additional exposure beyond Canada arrived in 1998 via soundtrack contributions that included her interpretations of John Denver’s “Leaving on a Jet Plane” for Armageddon and Randy Newman’s “Feels Like Home” for Dawson’s Creek.

Issued in 2000, the sophomore album Colour Moving and Still earned Kreviazuk Juno Awards for Best Female Artist and Best Pop/Adult Album. Her third album, What If It All Means Something from 2002, included several songwriting partnerships with Maida. For the subsequent project she elected to work at home with Maida serving as producer, yielding Ghost Stories in 2006, which reached number two on Canada’s primary album chart and also registered on the Independent and Heatseekers Albums charts in the United States. Ahead of her fifth studio album she released the 2008 compilation Since We Met: The Best of 1996-2006. Plain Jane appeared the next year on Maple Music Recordings and climbed to number 16 in Canada. Over the ensuing period she divided her time between California and Toronto while contributing a guest spot to Drake’s 2011 album Take Care. The live album In This Life followed in 2012. In 2014 she joined rapper Jay Rock on the track “Pay for It,” which the pair performed with Kendrick Lamar during a Saturday Night Live episode.

Kreviazuk made her Warner Music Canada debut in late 2015 with “Into Me,” her first solo single in five years. The song featured on Hard Sail, which reached number 65 on the Canadian album chart in 2016. May 2019 brought the documentary I’m Going to Break Your Heart, which explored the occasionally strained creative partnership between Kreviazuk and Maida as they wrote material for a new record; the accompanying soundtrack appeared under the Moon Vs. Sun moniker. That same year she issued the holiday album Christmas Is a Way of Life, My Dear on Hummingbird Recordings. She returned to Warner Music Canada for Get to You in 2020, her eighth studio album.