Juno Awards of 1984

Updated on Sep 24, 2024

Edit

Comment

Date 5 December 1984		Network CBC
Venue Exhibition Place, Toronto, Ontario Hosted by Joe Flaherty, Andrea Martin

The Juno Awards of 1984, representing Canadian music industry achievements of the previous year, were awarded on 5 December 1984 in Toronto at a ceremony hosted by Joe Flaherty and Andrea Martin of SCTV at Exhibition Place Automotive Building. The ceremonies were broadcast on CBC Television from 8pm Eastern Time.

1984 was a pioneering year for music video in Canada as MuchMusic began broadcasting in September, and a new Juno award for "Best Video" was presented for the first time.

As it had been 20 months since the last Juno show, a number of new artist nominees debuted this year including Corey Hart, Honeymoon Suite, Platinum Blonde, The Parachute Club and Zappacosta.

The Juno Award itself was revised from 18-inches high to a 15-inch statuette, retaining the metronome shape.

Awards ceremony

In October 1983, Juno organizers CARAS decided to move the awards date later in the year, tentatively to 3 December 1984 at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto. A stated reason for this move was to promote Canadian artists during the Christmas shopping season. CARAS also wanted to assume more control over the awards broadcast from CBC. Eventually, it was determined that CBC would continue to televise the Junos, but for 1984 would work with major music promoter Concert Productions International on the broadcast.

In August 1984, it was confirmed that the awards would take place at Exhibition Place two days later than planned. At the same time, a preliminary selection of "semi-finalist" artists and albums was also announced. The final set of nominations were determined in late October.

Bryan Adams was the heavy favorite of the evening with nominations in five categories of which he would take home four awards including "Male Vocalist of the Year" and "Album of the Year" for the hit Cuts Like a Knife album which had sold more than 3 million copies in the U.S. and over 300,000 copies in Canada. When Adams and his co-writing partner Jim Vallance won the "Composer of the Year" award, Adams excitedly accepted it on behalf of the absent Vallance: "This is the one I really wanted to win. Jim and I have been writing for six years together. Jimmy we did it! Right on!"

Performances during the show included the three "Canadian Music Hall of Fame" inductees: The Crew-Cuts, The Four Lads and The Diamonds, and also Jane Siberry.

The ratings for the television broadcast were far down from the previous year with an estimated 1,443,000 viewers.

Nominees and winners

This was the last year that the "Comedy Album of the Year" was awarded.

Bryan Adams was nominated twice in the same category for "Composer of the Year" award for two different songs both from the Cuts Like a Knife album.

The Good Brothers were given their final "Country Group of the Year" award after a record eight years in a row, while Loverboy claimed the "Group of the Year" award for the third year in a row, as did Liona Boyd for the "Instrumental Artist of the Year" award.

Director Rob Quartly received four of the five nominations for the nascent "Best Video" award category, and also took the win for the "Sunglasses at Night" music video.