The Juno Awards of 1980, representing Canadian music industry achievements of the previous year, were awarded on 2 April 1980 in Toronto at a ceremony hosted by Burton Cummings at the Harbour Castle Hilton.[1]
CBC Television broadcast the ceremonies throughout Canada from 9pm Eastern Time, and the show was seen by an estimated 1,500,000 viewers .[2]
The show included a number of lip synced performances from Rough Trade with their controversial (at the time) song "High School Confidential", France Joli singing her Disco hit "Come to Me", Burton Cummings singing his hit "Fine State of Affairs", Max Webster with their "Paradise Skies" and pianist Frank Mills playing "Peter Piper".[3] The only live performance of the night was two songs in a row from Gordon Lightfoot, "On the High Seas" and "If You Need Me" (both from his recent Dream Street Rose album), which were quickly added to fill up air time when Paul Anka was unexpectedly absent to receive his "Canadian Music Hall of Fame" award.[4]
The biggest winner of the night was Anne Murray with four awards including the Album and Single of the Year awards. Murray was once again absent from the award show, this time due to the recent death of her father.[4]
The band Trooper received an unusual nomination for two of their songs in the same category for "Composer of the Year", although technically the songs were from two different albums both charting at the time.
The last award of the show was "Male Vocalist of the Year" presented by ambassador Ken Taylor to the winner Burton Cummings.[2]
