I wasted an unwise amount of time revising my hundred albums list for no better reason than just the passing recognition that in recent years I tend to listen rather more often to 4-Track Demos and Stop Making Sense than To Bring You My Love and Remain in Light, respectively.
Magistra vitae
This piece for TIME's "Made by History" series, contributed by UBC/University of Copenhagen Professor Jessica Hanser, is thoughtful, valuably informative, and genuinely important. Hanser very convincingly makes the case for the advantages, vis à vis other methodologies, of adopting a 'global history' approach to examine seemingly intractable modern problems. And in so doing, she shows the complexities, nuances, and sometimes deep contradictions that such an approach can help to reveal and better illuminate –– in this case, concerning the geopolitical conundrum of Israel/Palestine. In tracing the entangled global historical roots of that conflict, across different regimes and disparate political climates, Hanser gives readers not yet another polemical screed that just superimposes a one-size-fits-all "settler-colonial" paradigm or more blandly equivocating rhetoric that ultimately says nothing much at all, but instead an eloquent, refreshingly welcome example of careful historical inquiry par excellence. Insofar as practising historians still have some role to play as public intellectuals, this is precisely the kind of serious and measured work we should be doing. In these perilous times, we owe a special debt of gratitude to those stepping up to do it.
Grammys: Will Will, Should Win, Should've Been Nominated
Just the big three categories, all of which are more or less TS vs. OR vs. SZA vs. BE vs. LDR vs. Boygenius, and I'd be more or less happy with any of those, though LDR for "A&W," not the album itself (which is ok but just ok) and please not fucking "Flowers," though it probably will win Record and/or Song –– between which the differences, as ever, remain largely ambiguous if not arbitrary. But for the sake of variety I'll 'vote' (i.e., below) for the more 'writerly' track for Song, the more finished-product music/production-oriented track for Record, and the highly annoying "Flowers" for neither.
ALBUM
Will Win: Midnights – bolstered and nudged across the finish line by Eras Mania.
Will Win: Midnights – bolstered and nudged across the finish line by Eras Mania.
Should Win: Guts – but just by a hair or two over Midnights, SOS, and The Record, all terrific!
Should've Been Nominated: PJ Harvey, I Inside the Old Year Dying – Still Crazy, and entirely marvelous, After All These Years!
RECORD
Will Win: "Flowers" – ugh, I like Miley a lot and I'm glad to hear she's feeling better post-divorce, but this song is just the worst kind of earworm.
Will Win: "Flowers" – ugh, I like Miley a lot and I'm glad to hear she's feeling better post-divorce, but this song is just the worst kind of earworm.
Should Win: "Not Strong Enough" – though ask me yesterday and I might've said "Kill Bill" and tomorrow I might say "Anti-Hero" or "Vampire"; an embarrassment of riches, really.
Should've Been Nominated: Bizarrap & Shakira, "Shakira: Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53" – the best kind of earworm.
SONG
Will Win: "What Was I Made For? – bolstered and nudged across the finish line by Barbie Mania.
Will Win: "What Was I Made For? – bolstered and nudged across the finish line by Barbie Mania.
Should Win: "A&W" – her best and most haunting song since "Video Games."
Should've Been Nominated: Caroline Polachek, "Dang" – "maybe it's forever / maybe it's just shampoo."
They Were the World, They Were the Children
Ranking the vocal solo parts in "We Are the World" in celebration of the terrific new documentary The Greatest Night in Pop:
01. Stevie Wonder Absolutely kills it. Stevie's solo sans Springsteen (on whom see way below...) from 5:07–5:20 is the only transcendently awesome part of this song. The doc's fascinating anecdote about how Stevie also served as Fellow-Genius-Whisperer when Bob Dylan was awkwardly out of his element further enhances the importance of his contribution here.
02. Diana Ross The prettiest solo (with just a bit of MJ backing), and her pointing hand gesture at 1:43 is sweetly endearing, particularly after hearing in the doc about how much the experience meant to her. (Also: look closely behind Ross as she sings, and you'll see Tina Turner knelt down seemingly trying to find something in her purse and for a second glancing up at the camera, lol!)
03. Willie Nelson So much plaintive minor-key beauty packed into nine seconds, and that slight wince at 2:05 really sells it.
04. Paul Simon Likewise condenses what he does best (as a singer) into less than 10 seconds.
05. Michael Jackson It's hard to know where to rank his vocal contribution here. In a larger sense, this is unmistakably a MJ song, especially in hindsight, as both lyrically and melodically this sounds quite close to his signature ballads from Dangerous onward. His solo part is fine. It fits well, and is maybe most admirable for its relative restraint. Obviously he could've totally outshone everyone else, give or take Stevie Wonder, but he didn't, which ultimately made the(/his, essentially) song better on measure.
06. Tina Turner Also remarkably restrained; she sounds so good down in that subtle low range.
07. Cyndi Lauper The opposite, yet in its way approximately as good, Cyndi sings the absolute hell out of "Let's realize THAT A CHANGE CAN ONLY COME". Apparently she got the nod over Madonna, and her eight seconds of solo time leave no doubt that she was the more expressive, and superior, singer. The doc's anecdote about her noisy jewelry was hilarious.
08. Dionne Warwick Nicely sung and transitions well to Willie Nelson's part while contrasting with it.
09. Ray Charles and 10. Bob Dylan Both of these slightly expanded cameo slots are instantly recognizable and distinctive, but also feel a touch out of place in the flow of the song.
11. Lionel Richie Sets the table for what follows –- and what exists largely due to his Herculean labour, MJ's effortless brilliance, and Quincy Jones' ability to make something super rushed and inherently messy sound cohesive and fairly polished.
12. Al Jarreau I now like Jarreau's (tiny) part 80% more after learning from the doc that he was chugging wine all night, and it was basically a race against time to record him getting through his five-second bit before he could no longer form words. Legendary stuff!
13. James Ingram Hmm... [googles 'James Ingram']...Oh! He sang Fievel's part on "Somewhere Out There" from An American Tail, one of the best animated-movie songs of all-time (later re-purposed in one of the best Community sequences!). To be sure, Ingram's bit here isn't Fievel-level great, but it's totally solid.
14. Huey Lewis Apparently filled in for M-I-A Prince (who insisted on recording a guitar solo in a separate room, and when Richie said it wasn't feasible Prince hung up the phone and never showed at the studio, which is exquisitely on-brand!), and did so pretty serviceably. For posterity's sake, I think it's for the best that we have that excellent Prince story but Lewis' solo –– notwithstanding the glaring fact that the greatness gap between HL and PRN is of Grand Canyon-like dimensions!
15. Kenny Rogers Now getting into just-OK territory. (As a 90s kid, what remains my first mental association for Kenny Rogers isn't musical, but rather the Seinfeld episode involving 'his' fried chicken and neon restaurant sign.)
16. Kim Carnes Poor Kim Carnes had to follow right after Cyndi Lauper blasted off into the stratosphere, a fact that Lauper acknowledged (while also admitting that she didn't actually like the song itself!) on Andy Cohen's show. Watch closely at 3:01 and you'll see that Carnes is only truly solo when singing "when we," though that is exactly two words more than Sheila E. (per the doc, included in the choir specifically to entice Prince, which didn't work), Harry Belafonte, Smokey Robinson, Waylon Jennings, John Oates, and any Jackson not named 'Michael' get to deliver solo.
17. Daryl Hall, 18. Kenny Loggins, and 19. Billy Joel Mehsville, USA. I would've rather seen what Dan Aykroyd (for whatever reason included as part of the larger group for the big chorus parts) could do with a solo spot. Would he have done a Blues Brothers thing? Or just sang as...Dan Aykroyd? This is low-key one of the great pop-culture what-if's! And the deeply unlikely answer to the trivia question "Who is the only person who both sang on 'We Are the World' and acted in a Terence Davies movie?"
20. Steve Perry Exactly as much Steve Perry singing as I can comfortably tolerate.
21. Bruce Springsteen The artistic merit of "We Are the World" lies in the way most of its solo parts encapsulate the quintessence of each singer's particular vocal style/persona, pared down to amuse-bouche-like portions, while somehow mostly still fitting together to form (again, due in large part to the wizardry of Quincy Jones) a long song that hangs together pretty well all things considered. The Boss (who is my favourite among all the artists involved; only Paul Simon and, with more ambivalence, MJ come close) is the only singer here who fatally crosses the line into full-on self-parody, which is really a shame because he can be a very nuanced singer when he wants to, and could've supplied a performance that better fit the song while still "sounding like Bruce Springsteen" – i.e., more Nebraska, less Born in the USA. He had just finished touring in support of the latter album, and was apparently deeply exhausted from that. I wish he had channeled that feeling of exhaustion (think: "Highway Patrolman," "Atlantic City") rather than summoning up a rather cartoonish Bruce Springsteen impression.
Only Love Can Break Your Heart
The great, apparently ageless Rob Sheffield ranked all (243!) Taylor Swift songs, which I really wish I could somehow get paid to do. Alas, as a quirky amateur pursuit, I haven't the time to spare.
And yet...in deep-diving Vault tracks and concomitantly rethinking/revising this earlier, off-the-top-of-my-head top ten (now itself lightly tweaked), I (*ahem*) 'accidentally' expanded it to fifty seventy-five (!).
I also arrived at the conclusion that no one since John Lennon –– going back to his early Beatles true co-writes –– has done so much with the ebullient-love-song/bitter-break-up-song/regretful-lingering-heartbreak-song spectrum. Prince was a bona fide master of the first two song types, but more often than not his stabs at the third came off as rather perfunctory ("When U Were Mine," his greatest-ever track, in my view, falls somewhere between types two and three), at least as performed by him. "Sinéad's Version" proved he could write heartbreak brilliantly, but always seemed too...human-adjacent to really get it across himself. (Of course Prince totally tops Lennon, Swift, and everybody else when it comes to the unabashed sex song, an idiom in which only Liz Phair, Madonna, and maybe, at her freakiest, Björk come close – no pun intended.)
Anyway, I digress. At this moment I think these are the best Swift songs, though her ever-expanding Version of the Great American Songbook is such that another weekend workload-soundtracking deep dive could shake it up, especially the lower third or so of these fifty, which, admittedly, I simply may have played more recently than others omitted here that are approximately as good. Her top twenty-five stacks up well against anyone's: Prince, Beatles/Lennon, yes, Moz even!
Put on "I Almost Do" right now. To my tastes, it's her finest deep cut ("Right Where You Left Me" isn't even a deep cut – it's a subsequent bonus track!) and proof positive that she's one of the most preternaturally gifted and eloquent songwriters we've had. And listening to it at, like, 3:45 am, I'm thinking, "Whoa, I can really relate to this song!" But then at 3:47 it occurs to me that almost everyone can really relate to this song –– it's highly specific yet universal, which is her sweet spot and her genius. She catches (sad, wistful, sleepless) lightning in a bottle, and answers for us in the affirmative to the "Is This Anything" test regarding stuff we feel but mostly fail to articulate most of the time.
[updated with Tortured Poets Department/Anthology tracks and expanded to 75]
01. "Right Where You Left Me"02. "Tim McGraw"
03. "Our Song"
04. "I Almost Do"
05. "All Too Well" (10-Minute Version)
05. "All Too Well" (10-Minute Version)
06. "Dear John"
07. "Sparks Fly"
08. "Delicate"
09. "Fifteen"
10. "Peter"
11. "Call It What You Want"
12. "New Year's Day"
13. "Ours"
14. "A Place in This World"
15. "I Know Places"
16. "The 1" (The Long Pond Studio Sessions version)
17. "Fearless" (Live from Clear Channel Stripped 2008 version)
18. "Lover"
19. "Clara Bow"
20. "The Bolter"
21. "Willow"
22. "The Best Day"
23. "Teardrops on My Guitar"
24. "Cardigan"
25. "Back to December"
26. "Should've Said No"
27. "Cruel Summer"
28. "Speak Now"
29. "You Belong with Me"
30. "Love Story"
31. "Enchanted"
32. "Haunted"
33. "You're on Your Own, Kid"
34. "So Long, London"
35. "Style"
36. "Never Grow Up"
37. "I Knew You Were Trouble"
38. "Gorgeous"
38. "Gorgeous"
39. "22"
40. "Blank Space"
41. "The Very First Night"
42. "Labyrinth"
42. "Labyrinth"
43. "Long Live"
44. "Wildest Dreams"
45. "Last Kiss"
46. "White Horse"
47. "Mean"
47. "Mean"
48. "State of Grace" (acoustic version)
49. "I Hate It Here"
50. "How Did It End?"
51. "Don't Blame Me"
52. "I Did Something Bad"
53. "Cassandra"
54. "I Bet You Think About Me"
55. "Champagne Problems"
56. "I'm Only Me When I'm with You"
57. "New Romantics"
58. "Karma"
59. "Now That We Don't Talk"
60. "Getaway Car"
61. "Ready for It?"
62. "Hey Stephen"
63. "Maroon"
64. "Mine"
65. "The Story of Us"
66. "Soon You'll Get Better"
67. "The Tortured Poets Department"
68. "Down Bad"
69. "You're Losing Me"
70. "Is It Over Now?"
71. "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?"
72. "But Daddy I Love Him"
73. "Picture to Burn"
74. "Lavender Haze"
75. "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things"
One More List for Good Measure: Top 20 Paul Simon or Simon & Garfunkel Songs
Not the most balanced list, admittedly, as I'm deeply partial to Graceland and, to a lesser extent, the self-titled solo debut.
01. "The Boy in the Bubble" (go to 52:17 here!)
02. "Duncan"
03. "Bleecker Street"
04. "Scarborough Fair/Canticle"
05. "I Know What I Know"
06. "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" (go to 26:00 here!)
07. "Graceland"
02. "Duncan"
03. "Bleecker Street"
04. "Scarborough Fair/Canticle"
05. "I Know What I Know"
06. "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" (go to 26:00 here!)
07. "Graceland"
08. "The Sound of Silence" (remixed version)
09. "Run That Body Down"
10. "The Only Living Boy in New York"
11. "Bridge Over Troubled Water"
09. "Run That Body Down"
10. "The Only Living Boy in New York"
11. "Bridge Over Troubled Water"
12. "Gumboots"
13. "Under African Skies"
13. "Under African Skies"
14. "Peace Like a River"
15. "The Sounds of Silence" (original version)
16. "Mrs. Robinson"
15. "The Sounds of Silence" (original version)
16. "Mrs. Robinson"
17. "Seven Psalms"
18. "You Can Call Me Al"
19. "Everything Put Together Falls Apart"
20. "Still Crazy After All These Years"
18. "You Can Call Me Al"
19. "Everything Put Together Falls Apart"
20. "Still Crazy After All These Years"
Performances, 2023
01. Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers
02. Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
03. Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, You Hurt My Feelings
04. Joaquin Phoenix, Napoleon
05. Vanessa Kirby, Napoleon
06. Jennifer Lawrence, No Hard Feelings
07. Paula Beer, Afire
08. Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall
09. Sandra Hüller, The Zone of Interest
10. Zach Galifianakis, The Beanie Bubble
11. Jay Baruchel, Blackberry
12. Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
13. Helen Mirren, Golda
14. Léonie Dahan-Lamort, Bitten
15. Emma Stone, Poor Things
16. Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers of the Flower Moon
17. Claire Foy, All of Us Strangers
18. Greta Lee, Past Lives
19. Joel Edgerton, Master Gardener
20. Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
21. Natalie Portman, May December
22. Julianne Moore, May December
23. Léa Drucker, Last Summer
24. Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things
03. Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, You Hurt My Feelings
04. Joaquin Phoenix, Napoleon
05. Vanessa Kirby, Napoleon
06. Jennifer Lawrence, No Hard Feelings
07. Paula Beer, Afire
08. Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall
09. Sandra Hüller, The Zone of Interest
10. Zach Galifianakis, The Beanie Bubble
11. Jay Baruchel, Blackberry
12. Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
13. Helen Mirren, Golda
14. Léonie Dahan-Lamort, Bitten
15. Emma Stone, Poor Things
16. Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers of the Flower Moon
17. Claire Foy, All of Us Strangers
18. Greta Lee, Past Lives
19. Joel Edgerton, Master Gardener
20. Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
21. Natalie Portman, May December
22. Julianne Moore, May December
23. Léa Drucker, Last Summer
24. Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things
25. Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction
26. Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
27. Rupert Everett, Napoleon
28. Franz Rogowski, Passages
29. Glen Howerton, Blackberry
30. Ji-Min Park, Return to Seoul
31. Tobias Menzies, You Hurt My Feelings
32. Sunny Sandler, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah
33. Idina Menzel, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah
34. John Magaro, Past Lives
35. Teo Yoo, Past Lives
36. Paolo Pierobon, Kidnapped
37. Paul Dano, Dumb Money
38. Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
39. Cailee Spaeny, Priscilla
40. Michelle Williams, Showing Up
41. Paul Mescal, All of Us Strangers
42. Christian Friedel, The Zone of Interest
43. Ryan Gosling, Barbie
44. Hugh Grant, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
45. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
46. Willem Dafoe, Poor Things
47. Ben Kingsley, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
48. Bradley Cooper, Maestro
49. Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
50. Sydney Sweeney, Anyone But You
26. Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
27. Rupert Everett, Napoleon
28. Franz Rogowski, Passages
29. Glen Howerton, Blackberry
30. Ji-Min Park, Return to Seoul
31. Tobias Menzies, You Hurt My Feelings
32. Sunny Sandler, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah
33. Idina Menzel, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah
34. John Magaro, Past Lives
35. Teo Yoo, Past Lives
36. Paolo Pierobon, Kidnapped
37. Paul Dano, Dumb Money
38. Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
39. Cailee Spaeny, Priscilla
40. Michelle Williams, Showing Up
41. Paul Mescal, All of Us Strangers
42. Christian Friedel, The Zone of Interest
43. Ryan Gosling, Barbie
44. Hugh Grant, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
45. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
46. Willem Dafoe, Poor Things
47. Ben Kingsley, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
48. Bradley Cooper, Maestro
49. Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
50. Sydney Sweeney, Anyone But You
Films, 2023
01. The Zone of Interest (Glazer)
02. Killers of the Flower Moon (Scorsese)
03. Past Lives (Song)
04. Napoleon (Scott)
05. The Boy and the Heron (Miyazaki)
06. Bitten (de Saint-Blanquat)
07. Afire (Petzold)
08. I'm Just Here for the Riot (Jayme/Youngman)
09. A Cooler Climate (Ivory/Gardner)
10. All of Us Strangers (Haigh)
11. Return to Seoul (Chou)
12. You Hurt My Feelings (Holofcener)
13. You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah (Cohen)
14. Poor Things (Lanthimos)
15. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Wrench)
16. Satan Wants You (Adams/Horlor)
17. The Luckiest Guy in the World (James)
18. Kidnapped (Bellocchio)
19. No Hard Feelings (Stupnitsky)
20. Les filles du Roi (Payette)
21. Blackberry (Johnson)
22. Master Gardener (Schrader)
23. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Mangold)
24. Anatomy of a Fall (Triet)
25. Our Body (Simon)
26. Nimona (Bruno/Quane)
27. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Dos Santos/Powers/Thompson)
28. Last Summer (Breillat)
29. Priscilla (Coppola)
30. Barbie (Gerwig)
31. Showing Up (Reichardt)
32. The Holdovers (Payne)
33. Snow in Midsummer (Chong)
34. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (Fell)
35. Dumb Money (Gillespie)
36. American Fiction (Jefferson)
37. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (W. Anderson)
38. Bama Rush (Fleit)
39. Destination NBA: A G League Odyssey (Hughes/Robinson)
40. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Rowe)
41. May December (Haynes)
42. The Killer (Fincher)
43. Monster (Koreeda)
44. Maestro (Cooper)
45. Talk to Me (Philippou/Philippou)
46. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor among Thieves (Daley/Goldstein)
47. The Super Mario Bros. Movie (Horvath/Jelenic)
48. Elemental (Sohn)
49. Golda (Natiiv)
50. The Beanie Bubble (Gore/Kulash)
Requiem for a Raptor
The 2019 playoff run was a golden and uncommonly fortuitous time for the Toronto Raptors and their fans, yet, we should remember, replicating that magic was not immediately out of the question. It wasn't a fluke. It was an historically great team!
Three factors led to the quietly tragic, too-soon demise of that perfectly assembled squad: Kawhi to L.A., of course (but that alone wasn't fatal); the Covid hiatus and Orlando bubble (although it's easy to forget now, the post-Kawhi 2019/20 Raptors were playing really good basketball prior to the pandemic turning everything to shit); and subsequently the terrible, lifeless Tampa period (truly a lost season, and proof that "We the North" wasn't just a branding coup).
From that awesome championship team, the ascendant Spicy P was my favourite player and has remained my favourite Raptor since, as he's developed into a top 15-, at times arguably top 10-level superstar. But the team has since failed again and again to build around his superlative strengths, instead somewhat bafflingly loading up on redundant player-types who bring more or less the same skillsets and similar areas of weakness. In reality, the utopian experiment of "positionless basketball," total switchability, and wingspan for miles meant a team of mostly 6'9–6'11 guys who were high-ceiling athletes but (at best) hot-and-cold shooters, none of them a true center, plus two undersized point guards who were also streaky shooters, especially from three-point range, in a league now defined by high-volume distance shooting and the resurgence of dominant, very-hard-to-guard centers like Jokic and Embiid.
With all due respect to Chris Boucher (who I like a lot and hope retires a Raptor some day!), this is clearly the sad end of an era, and this one really hurts the most, particularly because Siakam, by all accounts, wanted to stay in Toronto, not depart for the sunnier climes and more glamorous environs of L.A. or Miami. I wish O.G. well, but he seemed to want out; and, due to an ill-timed emergency appendectomy, his association with the championship run will always be kind of tangential. Obviously, losing Kawhi after just one (amazing) season was devastating in its way, though not sentimentally. Lowry to Miami was a bummer, but made sense for him. Fred bet on himself and got eye-poppingly paid by Houston; good for him! Firing Nick Nurse wasn't a prudent move, but it may well have been more a matter of saving face as things turned rather acrimonious. Only the trade of all-around great dude Norman Powell to Portland hit nearly as hard. And still, Powell – while wonderful and wholly superior to Gary Trent Jr. – is not an all-world talent on the level of Siakam.
I am long-term cautiously optimistic for the Barnes–Barrett–Quickley era, and hope the Raptors draft wisely with these picks coming their way. And, to be frank, this current season has, on the whole, sucked. (Thank goodness for the surprisingly excellent Canucks, or else I'd be far more sports-depressed this winter!) But right now, I'm mostly just sad to see the team I support lose a player as dynamic and inspiring and exceptionally entertaining to watch as Pascal Siakam, for whom I wish nothing but success in Indiana and wherever he decides to sign after that. Real Ones Knows he was the most Fun of Guys.
Albums & Singles, 2023
01. Olivia Rodrigo, Guts
02. PJ Harvey, I Inside the Old Year Dying
03. Black Belt Eagle Scout, The Land, The Water, The Sky
04. Boygenius, The Record
05. Paul Simon, Seven Psalms
06. Blondshell [s/t]
07. Caroline Polachek, Desire, I Want to Turn into You
08. Mitski, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
09. Carly Rae Jepsen, The Loveliest Time
10. Nili Hadida, Love Life Death Despair and Anohni, My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross [tie]
01. Caroline Polachek, "Dang"
02. Lana Del Rey, "A&W"
03. Bizarrap and Shakira, "Shakira: Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53"
04. Olivia Rodrigo, "Vampire"
05. Olivia Rodrigo, "Get Him Back"
06. Tate McRae, "Greedy"
07. Tate McRae, "Exes"
08. SZA*, "Kill Bill"
09. Kylie Minogue, "Padam Padam"
10. Jessie Ware, "Begin Again"
*note: SOS was on my 2022 list.
You know, the greatest films of all time were never made
The "Extended Version" of the Eras Tour film (for Taylor Swift is nothing if not the savvy master of collect-'em-all "versions" of any and everything) benefits both from the (re-)inclusion of "The Archer," "Long Live," and "Wildest Dreams" (where is "Cardigan," though??!) and also from one's ability on VOD to fast-forward past "The Man," "The Last Great American Dynasty," and "Bad Blood," their considerable, respective aural cringe levels cranked intolerably to 11 with cornball Broadway musical-style staging.
But definitely not past the between-songs banter, which – however generically standard across concerts it may well be – shows why the first artist in any medium to be named TIME's "Person of the Year" for their art (i.e., Bono's philanthropy aside) is somehow still more than "just" one of the most prolific, accomplished, and talented singer-songwriters of her generation. She is also the most charismatic and deeply likeable Very Famous Person on the planet, in a cultural moment when overexposure via warts-and-all social media has yielded unflattering if not off-putting "versions" of many if not most Very Famous People.
Anyone who still scoffs at the flaky tastes of the masses should listen closely to (or watch, as the Eras show centrepiece) all ten breathless minutes of the extended "All Too Well" and marvel at how a subtle literary genius of limitless sensitivities has willed herself into being the biggest one-person global brand this side of Elon Musk. If he represents something close to the worst of our age, Swift represents the best – 2023 from the glass-half-full view. And, goddamn, she just turned 34!
(It is named in honour of the meteorological phenomenon that is happening here right now.)
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