Juno Award for Contemporary Christian/Gospel Album of the Year
The Juno Awards ceremony, more commonly known as the Junos, is Canada’s premiere Music Awards ceremony and the showpiece event of the Canadian Music Industry. The awards recognise the outstanding talent in Christian and Gospel Music through its award for Contemporary Christian/Gospel Album of the Year.
The Juno Awards themselves started in 1964 as the RPM Gold Leaf Awards, and were the brainchild of RPM editor Walt Grealis and record label executive Stan Klees. Following a rebranding in 1971, The Juno Award ceremony was launched and evolved into the festival it has become today.
In 2002, The Juno Awards hit the road to take the music to the fans and expanded its scope to include a series of public and private events outside of the Awards broadcast. Each host city has embraced their opportunity to support the Juno Awards and used the exposure to build an enduring legacy of music programs in their market.
Now, more than a simple awards ceremony from a bygone era, the Juno awards have grown from an industry awards event to a weeklong festival that travels from city to city, coast to coast. It encompasses both public-facing fan events and industry/networking opportunities and features a diverse array of Canadian artists and emerging talent. In recent times, a large number of subsidiary events have been added to foster an association with the Junos brand.
Then Juno Award for Contemporary Christian/Gospel Album of the Year was introduced in 1998 in order to recognize the outstanding talent that was producing albums in the Christian music space. Since then, the Juno Award for Contemporary Christian/Gospel Album of the Year has been awarded every year, and has quickly become a fan favourite for lovers of Christian music within Canada.
The Juno Award for Contemporary Christian/Gospel Album of the Year has a friendly rival in GMA Canada’s Covenant Awards. This awards ceremony is solely dedicated to awarding and recognising Christian and Gospel musicians in their respective subgenres. However, both award ceremonies share the same vision and complement each other well. The Covenant Awards are able to celebrate Christian music as a whole, whilst the Juno Award for Contemporary Christian/Gospel Album of the Year provides the chance to establish and celebrate Christian and Gospel music as a genre alongside the whole of the Canadian music industry.
The most recent winners of the Juno Award for Contemporary Christian/Gospel Album of the Year have included the talented Shawna Cain in 2021 for her album The Way and nine-time Grammy nominee Matt Maher in 2020 for his album The Advent of Christmas. In 2019, the exhilarating LoveCollide saluted for their album Tired of Basic, and the much-loved band The Colour won in 2018 for their album First Day of My Life.
Canadian musicians, producers, and artists who produce content in the Christian and Gospel music sphere eagerly await the announcement of the nominees for the next Juno Award for Contemporary Christian/Gospel Album of the Year. Who will be the next recipient at the 2022 award ceremony to be held in Toronto towards the end of the year? Watch this space…