YMMV / Great Big Sea

• Covered Up: Several of their more popular songs are often credited to them despite being covers. "Run Runaway" was originally recorded by Slade, "When I'm Up (I Can't Get Down)" was originally by Oysterband, "Beat The Drum" was originally a Runrig song (called Pride of the Summer), and "The Chemical Worker's Song" was originally by the Teesside Fettlers.
• Fridge Brilliance: Their video of "The End of the World as We Know It" has a lot of images of St. John's, Newfoundland, where they got their start. The easternmost place in North America, it really is the "end of the world as we know it," in a geographic, if not temporal, sense.
• Memetic Mutation: "Ordinary Day" became this, because of its use in rapid-fire death montages in games such as Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Bloodborne.
• Misattributed Song: Lots of East Coast music is mistaken for being played by GBS.
• Tear Jerker: "Safe Upon the Shore". When wishing for your true love's return, the sea does not apparently consider 'alive' a necessary condition to be 'safe'.
  • Also "Recruiting Sergeant" and "Yankee Sailor".
  • The live recording of "England" on their XX album. Two days earlier, in Newfoundland, a helicopter had crashed while transporting workers to an offshore oil rig. Of the 18 men on board, only one survived. Sean McCann says, "For over 500 years now, we Newfoundlanders have taken from the sea. And just two days ago, she took back." He dedicates "England" to "the families of the lost 17."