Beyond The Guess Who: Meryn Cadell- "The Sweater"

Each week on Beyond The Guess Who I cover a lesser known Canadian artist. This week: Meryn Cadell.

Each week on Beyond The Guess Who, I cover a lesser-known Canadian musical artist. This week: Meryn Cadell's 1992 left-field Canadian hit “The Sweater”. If you enjoy this post, please support me by liking, sharing, commenting, or hitting the subscribe button. Thank You!

“The Sweater” is one of those songs that everyone (or at least everyone I know) liked but was so left-field that it vanished from radio play afterwards. I remember hearing it on a car trip as a kid and loving it. My parents loved it. My brother is a fan. It seemed to be a song everyone I knew agreed on. It’s not like this was the only spoken word monologue set to music that was released as a single in the early 90s. There was also “This Is Ponderous” by 2Nu and “Detachable Penis” by King Missle. Later in the decade, there was “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”. Because this is Beyond The Guess Who, I’m focusing on “The Sweater”. The other three ’90s tracks can easily be found on music streaming services.

Meryn Cadell was born in Brooklyn New York, grew up in Waterloo, Ontario and later relocated to Toronto in the mid-1980s, graduating from the Ontario College Of Art And Design.

Becoming known as a performance artist in Toronto’s Queen Street West arts scene, Cadell released at least two independent cassette tapes: 1988’s Mare-In Ka-Dell and 1989’s Talking Like Crazy. Online research also tells me he had a stint opening for a pre-fame Barenaked Ladies at some point.

Cadell’s big thing as a performance artist was performing with a heating duct to add reverb. Footage of Cadell doing this seems nonexistent online, but it’s a pretty interesting tidbit.

The Barenaked Ladies connection went further when Cadell signed with Intrepid Records (Sire handled Cadell’s US releases) and worked with band member Jim Creegan and members of Canadian band the Rheostatics and Bob Wiseman. Cadell is also credited as a backing vocalist on BNL’s overplayed (in Canada at least) 1992 hit “If I Had $1,000,000.

Cadell’s debut album, 1991’s Angel Food For Thought, resulted in these sessions. Quirky “The Sweater” was issued as the lead single and quickly became a Canadian airplay hit. It also crossed over into the Billboard Alternative charts peaking at #24.

The track featured Cadell reciting a humourous monologue about a girl coming into possession of a sweater belonging to the boy she has a crush on during a camping trip and what happens when she wears it to school the following Monday. The monologue is set to a sample of “Walk And Talk” by Syd Dale.

The verses (because it’s not sung I won’t call them lyrics) are pretty funny and include such memorable quips as

“If you get to keep it for a few days you can sleep with it
but don't let your mom see, 'cause she'll say,
"What is that filthy thing, and who does it belong to
besides the trash man?"

“The Sweater” was followed up with a new version of the album track “Barbie”. “Barbie” dates back to Cadell’s performance art days. On the album, the song had been acapella. The new backing track was slightly reminiscent of the “Walk And Talk” sample used on “The Sweater”.

Unfortunately, the track failed to provide Cadell with a follow-up hit on either radio or the Alternative charts.

The following year, a second studio album, Bombazine was released. “Window Of Opportunity” was pulled as the single. Here’s the official video:

And here is a clip of Cadell performing the song on one of 90s Canadian television fixture Ralph Benmergui’s various shows:

US promotional copies of Bombazine on Discogs show stickers stating “Pronounced MARE-in ca-Dell”. I never realized this was a recurring issue in Cadell’s career until writing this piece.

Again, the single wasn’t a hit despite promotion via CBC. Cadell took a four-year hiatus following this album, re-emerging with one final album, 1997’s 6 Blocks.

There is a video for a song called “Round Table” on YouTube:

Cadell retired for good after this. He publicly came out as female-to-male transgender (keeping his professional name) on CBC radio in 2004. Later, he worked as a professor at the University Of British Columbia.

I recalled reading an interview with Cadell from sometime in the mid-2000s which (thankfully) hasn’t been wiped from history via the Wayback Machine. There isn’t much else out there and I can respect him for keeping a low profile.

I’ll close this edition of Beyond The Guess Who off with one more Cadell video. In 2013, Canadian musician Bruce Evans posted a YouTube video of a song he co-wrote with Cadell that the latter sang lead on. The festive track “The Cat Carol” was recorded around 1993 and became popular over the years on CBC radio.

Cadell’s career might have only consisted of a few cassette recordings and studio albums. Still, for a few years in the 90s, he was fairly active and two classic songs are a pretty good legacy a lot of artists would dream of.