“It’s politically correct for me to say that I’m not surprised, because anyone could win. But, um…you know what? Sure, I’m surprised.”

That’s what Steve Jordan, the founder and executive director of the Polaris Music Prize, said minutes after the announcement that the Patrick Watson band had won the second annual Polaris prize for making Canada’s best album. Jordan wasn’t alone. In music’s chattering class, reaction to Watson’s victory has ranged from raised eyebrows to complete “WTF?” Apparently, very few of us saw this coming. I certainly didn’t. Damn you, Miracle Fortress, you lost me twenty bucks.

Pre-ceremony opinion was split between those who thought that the eleven-person gala jury couldn’t fail to recognize the accomplishments of one of the big fish in this year’s pool (Leslie Feist and the Arcade Fire) and those who favoured one of the sexy cult picks (The Besnard Lakes and The Artist That Lost Taste Police A Twenty Dollar Wager). But few people would have laid their money on Watson.

I can understand why. I’ve got nothing against Watson and company’s record, Close To Paradise. I pulled out a copy yesterday for the first time since last autumn to refresh my memory before the gala, and played it again today when I got into the office, in the wake of its anointment as The Best Album of the Year. There are a couple of really striking passages, particularly “The Great Escape.” Frank pretty much nails it when he describes it as being like “Jeff Buckley fronting a jazzier Coldplay.” It’s pleasant. It’s good.

But I don’t think, and never have thought, that it’s a great album. To my ears, it just doesn’t have the same number of really resonant songs that the Feist record does, that the Plaskett or Miracle Fortress records do, or that Junior Boys’ So This Is Goodbye (my favourite of the nominated discs) does. While it’s a coherent enough collection of pretty good music, Close To Paradise’s highs aren’t high enough for me to consider it a truly great album. That’s just one person’s opinion, of course; but judging by the reaction from my fellow journalists and bloggers, I’m not the only one who isn’t feeling the greatness thing.

So what happened? How did Close To Paradise win the Polaris?

Since none of the members of the gala jury who determined the winner backstage during the gala are talking (on the record), we’re left to speculate. There a couple of possibilities.

The first is that the folks who are a little puzzled today simply don’t get it, that we don’t appreciate Close To Paradise’s brilliance. This is possible. But who do you know that loved this record? Who raved about it to you for weeks, until you broke down and listened to it? Who was so evangelical about it they got their whole circle of friends listening to it? Who heard it and, in the aftermath of spinning it a few times, declared it unequivocally to be the best thing they’d heard in ages? I know lots of people who liked it, but only one person who loved it. And most of the folks I talked to last night and today never heard the gospel of Watson’s greatness, either. Great records breed that kind of true believer. Always. So if we were heathens, where were the missionaries?

The second theory is that everybody who did love the Patrick Watson record ended up on that gala jury, and it was a fluke result. I guess it’s possible. But in the same conversation cited above, Steve Jordan said, “It was very close from number one to number four, without revealing the numbers two three four. We had our jury dinner last night [eleven jurors convene for dinner the night before the gala and begin the discussion of who should take home the prize] and I was excited for tonight, because there was no winner from that discussion, so it was interesting to see the votes end up that way.” Doesn’t sound to me like there was a glut of Close To Paradise true believers among the eleven voters.

The third theory is that Patrick Watson is Stéphane Dion.

One of the things that great records—or even most noteworthy records—do is polarize listeners. And while Polaris doesn’t demand that its gala judges come to a unanimous decision in rewarding the prize, the selection process contains an element of consensus-building. The eleven jurors meet the night before to discuss the nominees. Almost as soon as they reconvene at the award ceremony to start making decisions, there’s a ballot, and the bottom half of the shortlist is eliminated from contention. The jurors then spend the next couple of hours debating the merits of the remaining four or five albums, and then a final ballot is cast. The prize goes to the album that wins that final ballot, regardless of how many of the eleven votes it secures.

What that suggests to me is that one juror who’s passionate about a disc and a few others for whom it might be a second or third choice can determine the Best Album of the Year.

Here’s Juror X. He’s the only person who voted for the Julie Doiron record, which is eliminated after the first ballot. His second choice would be the Frog Eyes album, but it didn’t get a nomination. He’s dug his heels in against the Feist and Arcade Fire records and can’t be swayed (because what do music critics love more than hating something you like?), so he tries to figure out where his second ballot vote is going. Patrick Watson’s record is pretty decent. It’s tasteful, it’s inoffensive, he doesn’t hate it. It sold well (about 38,500 units shipped before winning the award) but not so well as to turn him off. Patrick Watson seems like a good compromise choice.

Ladies and gentlemen, your new Liberal Party leader and the next Prime Minister of Canada: Patrick Watson.

Again, I don’t want to rain on Watson’s parade, or on Jordan’s and the Polaris committee’s. Everyone said on the night of the gala that any of the ten finalists would have made a good winner, and there’s some truth to that. And as Watson himself said after his press conference, “I think Arcade Fire [and the other nominees] deserved the award artistically just as much as we do, and I think they’re great, but it’s probably good for the community that the underdogs win. I think that’s probably much better for everybody, and I think they’d agree, too.”

Watson made a good record. Canada needs an award with the imprimatur that Polaris has. Any of Canada’s musicians could use the $20,000 in prize money. And Jordan et al have done a fantastic job getting Polaris off the ground.

There are other challenges for the coming years that the organizers are already working to address—like how to ensure representation of records from outside the indie rock ghetto, for example.

But in the wake of the compromise-style choices of Final Fantasy last year and Close To Paradise this year, I hope Jordan and his colleagues consider whether the Polaris selection process is really rewarding the Best Album of the Year—or the Pretty Good Album of the Year That Nobody Hates.