2022 has been a year of musical resurgence and nostalgia cravings. We’ve seen more once-recognizable names make major new waves this year than ever before, and we are honestly living for it. The list is endless but there are a few musicians that we couldn’t ignore that have made 2022 their year.

In no particular order, check out our list of the biggest music comebacks of 2022.

Meghan Trainor

She may have become a household name in 2014 with “All About That Bass,” but Trainor has made sure that 2022 is the year the world recognizes her for the true artist she is today.

The Grammy award winner and first-time mom has been making waves with her album Takin’ It Back. She is bringing back the old-time sound that originally caught her fans’ attention and is bringing in her new-found life experiences to craft the inescapable album.

“We are taking it back to the doo-wop sound from my first album, but also taking back my power, taking back my love for myself, my confidence,” Meghan shared with Etalk this year. 

Speaking of inescapable, we cannot ignore her viral hit song “Made You Look” which has blown up on TikTok.

 

“For the first time ever it's not like, 'oh, Meghan and that one song,' It's like 'Meghan in this album,' which I’ve never had for a long time,” Trainor explained grinning ear-to-ear. “It feels like my birthday every single day.”

 

Nickelback

Nickelback’s legacy has never really faded, but with the release of their album Get Rollin’ and the announcement of their induction into the 2023 Canadian Music Hall of Fame, there was no way we couldn’t include these Canadian rockers onto our list.

“We always thought if we could be like a big band in Canada, that's all we ever wanted,” Chad Kroeger, the lead singer of Nickelback, shared with us. “We would look at like other bands that were just big in Canada and we wanted to be them. We wanted desperately. We're just like, 'Can you imagine getting paid to play your guitar and sing to a microphone?'”

Nickelback wasn’t just going to drop an album on us, they also announced a major international tour planned for 2023.

“We've put two tours on ice the last two years, just to kind of get things ready. So we are we're heading out next summer,” Ryan Peake, the band’s guitarist shared. “Then we are going to go practice. We're going to play our guitars and work and practice.”

 

Shawn Desman

Shawn Desman is back, ladies and gentlemen, and he gives a huge shout-out to Drake for making it happen.

Shawn was personally invited by Drake to perform at the OVO All-Canadian North Stars show in July, and Desman received a lot of love from fans at the show.

“Sometimes you need a little bit of a push. And Drake gave me that,” Shawn shared with Etalk earlier this year.

“He invited me to the OVO Show in July, which I did not think it was going to have the impact on my life and on my career that it did. So, you know, I do the show. He's like, 'Did you hear them? Did you hear them singing your songs? They love you.'

“Drake changed my life that night. He knows it because I know that he changed my life and I'm just so grateful for that night. My life has not been the same ever since.”

Since then, Shawn has come back with new music. He has released his latest track “Maniac” and he is excited for what’s to come in 2023.

“I love performing, I love being on stage and I've only ever done music. So it was hard to step away, but. I'm just so happy. I'm so happy and happier than I've been in a long time. Right now I'm in a good place.”  

Karl Wolf

Karl Wolf has made a splash in 2022. To celebrate the 15^th anniversary of his inescapable cover of “Africa,” the Lebanese-Canadian singer/producer created a fresh new take on the 2000s classic.

“It was global,” Wolf explained to Etalk while reflecting on the initial success of “Africa.” “I mean, we were number one in like ten, 15 countries around the world. I sold a million singles in Japan alone. Canada went four times platinum. I mean, it was just… it's just crazy.”
 

“A lot of people thought, you know, you're ruining a classic. But to get David Page from Toto to give me that co-sign is everything. And I only got it 15 years later. Isn’t that crazy?”

Karl Wolf has also been making a splash on TikTok sharing videos where he covers songs and provides viewers with an inside look into how he produces music. 

With the resurgence of Karl Wolf, now is the perfect time to announce a Canadian tour. He wants to connect his old fans with his newer online fans to create a once-in-a-lifetime show.

“I've got 22 shows across the country from the west coast to the east coast every single day. It's going to be a beautiful show. It's something so different. I'm going to hit all the hits as well. “Africa”, “Carrera”, “Yalla”, “Habibi”, “Getaway”, you name it, all of them. Can't wait to see you guys there.”

 

Macklemore

Macklemore is making sure we don’t just think of “Thrift Shop” when we think of the talented rapper. In 2012, Macklemore's breakthrough hit skyrocketed the star to no. 1, earning the rapper his first chart-topping, Grammy award-winning track.

Before all of his success, the rapper had a life-changing situation take place that led to him rapping about light-hearted and meaningful topics, rather than rapping about substances.

“I went to treatment actually in Canada in 2008, and I remember getting out and being like, ‘How do I do this?’ I talk about this now like everyone else and like in hip-hop and in music in general, like, you know, there's this glorification of drugs, much less like anyone that's like trying to be clean, particularly at the moment,” he shared with Etalk.

”We weren't talking about mental health, we weren't talking about the disease of addiction in popular culture. And I chose to tell my truth.”

“I relapsed in the beginning of COVID, and that was another moment where I'm like, ‘okay, what do I do here? Do I talk about it or do I not? And who am I trying to protect?’ Like, this is my truth and I want to be able to share that with the people and know that we're all fallible and that we're all on this journey,” he candidly shared. “It's not this linear path of like, now I'm sober for the rest of my life. It's a struggle.”

Post-pandemic, Macklemore is back and he is touring with Imagine Dragons.

“I appreciate it more now that I it was taken away and there was definitely a time period where I was like, ‘this might be it. Is this how I retire? Is this a forced retirement? What is the universe trying to do and to be back out there in front of thousands of people on this tour?’”

“This is where I belong on stage and I'm super grateful and I was always grateful. I think being an underground rapper for most of my life up until 2012, there was always a sense of gratitude of like, ‘Wow, this is like what I've wanted to do since I was seven’ and here I am. But this is a new, renewed gratitude”

 

Hanson

It’s hard to believe that Hanson has been a band for 30 years, and the brother-act is still going strong.

“It's amazing to kind of be able to bask in the career and bask in all the memories and the relationships and the stories we've shared with people,” Hanson shared with Etalk. “Even some of the cringe-worthy moments. There were definitely were... Some of the pleather from the nineties.”

“So the cool thing about having this much history now is that we, relative to many bands, we still have so much possibility to create into the future. It's just kind of a really fascinating, you know, like, 'Hey, what do we do from here? What's next?'”

What’s next? New music. Hanson released their latest album RED GREEN BLUE which they say perfectly encapsulates their relationship together.

“It was just it was a very cool way to kind of explore what Hanson is. I mean, when you listen to this album, it sounds like us, but you're sort of getting to peek inside the process in a new way,” the band shared. “And I think that was really special.”

Jully Black

Shawn Desman wasn’t the only major act to kill it at Drake’s All-Canadian North Stars OVO night, Jully Black experienced a resurgence too and we are here for it.

“It feels epic. It feels rad. I'm loving the skin that I'm in,” Jully shared with Etalk. “This is 20-plus years for me in the business. And so sometimes you wonder, like, is it going to be the kids of my fans?”

Now’s the perfect time to release new music, and Ms. Black did not disappoint. She released her album Three Rocks and a Slingshot which is an album has been in the works from before 2016.

 

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“Yeah, I've been hinting at it, yeah. A song here. A song there. Then my mom fell ill, so I took the year in 2017 to care for her. And at that point, I hit an intersection. What? 'Who am I without my mom here?'”

“And so I went into theatre and did Caroline Change, which actually helped me to tell these stories. Yeah. Helped me to really go to a place in my songwriting and in my emotions, to use this as a way to, you know, it was cathartic.”

 

Bedouin Soundclash

The Canadian band Bedouin Soundclash has been together for over 20 years. We sat down with the vocalist and guitarist Jay Malinowski and bass player Eon Sinclair to chat about what it’s like to still work to make music together after spending decades together. 

“It's something we don't take for granted,” Jay shared with Etalk. ”It's like being in a family, being in a relationship and also working and music is everything in that sense, right? You're drawing from your life and you're creating a career with it. So it's unique.”

The band initially found their success with their breakout hit “When the Night Feels My Song.” That track skyrocketed the band to number one on the charts and landed them a tour with No Doubt.

“Music is a very difficult kind of business to navigate for a lot of people. And we've been really fortunate to do it the way we have. And to end up in a place where we're able to put out an album like this right now is just really exciting and I feel really fortunate that we still have something that we feel like we want to say.”

“There's this strange sense of gratitude that we got being part of a small thing in this world that brings that kind of reaction to people and that is profound for me.”

Stereos

You may remember Stereos when they became an overnight success on MuchMusic’s series Disband, but over a decade later, the band is making music on their own terms.

“To be able to come back after that and start playing for people again, it's like this band in general wants to be able to get that opportunity that we kind of thought was gone forever. It just feels like we're able to appreciate it,” the band shared with Etalk.

“I'm just like so excited that we can actually get back and do it. And I think fans feel the same way. They seem more excited than ever to go out and see shows."

 

Watch the full Etalk special ‘Etalk Presents: Big Music Comebacks’ on Wednesday December 21 at 7 PM on CTV & stream any time on CTV.ca.