Sarah McLachlan sings the national anthem at the 113th Grey Cup today at McMahon Stadium in Calgary, where the Montreal Alouettes meet the Edmonton Elks for the CFL championship. Kickoff is set for 6 p.m. ET, live on TSN, CTV, RDS and Crave, and the Grey Cup halftime show belongs to country star Riley Green.
The full entertainment lineup, confirmed by the CFL in its official announcement, stacks Canadian music through the whole game day: McLachlan on the anthem, Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor in a special pre-game performance, James Barker Band hosting the SiriusXM Grey Cup Kickoff Show, and Green headlining the Bud Light Grey Cup Halftime Show.
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The 113th Grey Cup will deliver an unforgettable celebration of Canadian pride, sport and music, featuring some of the country’s most beloved artists alongside world-class action and entertainment. (CFL)
An anthem singer with the catalogue for the moment
McLachlan is a Halifax born singer and songwriter with 12 Juno Awards and three Grammy Awards, and one of the defining Canadian voices of the 1990s through albums like Surfacing. Grey Cup anthem duties rotate through the country’s best known performers, and her booking gives the championship a singer whose voice is woven into Canadian households well beyond sports. The Canadian Forces Snowbirds return for the flypast as well, in what the league bills as their final flight, marking the end of the CT-114 Tutor era.
Riley Green takes the halftime stage
Green, a multi-platinum ACM and CMA award winning country singer and songwriter, headlines what the CFL calls Canada’s most-watched musical performance. The halftime slot at a Grey Cup reaches a national television audience that few Canadian concert stages can match, and the league has leaned into country for it, with the game hosted in Calgary at the close of a five day Grey Cup Festival at Stampede Park that has been running since November 11.
Canadian music holds the whole day
The pre-game layer is where the lineup turns distinctly Canadian. Cuddy and Keelor carry five decades of Blue Rodeo songs into McMahon, and James Barker Band, an Ontario country act, runs the kickoff show. Add McLachlan’s anthem and the Snowbirds overhead, and the football final doubles as a survey of Canadian popular music in one stadium, before a down of the championship game is played. iimiTV’s Grey Cup coverage continues with the game itself, Montreal chasing a ninth title and Edmonton a fifteenth in the twelfth championship meeting between the two franchises.
