2021 was the year of “Yes, but…” and other qualifiers such as “Although,” and “Well…”  among others. Though it was not a total turnaround from the pandemic related challenges of 2020 the availability of vaccines fostered the reopening of music venues and more opportunities for musicians to connect with their audiences in person alongside virtual opportunities. Broadway turned on the lights again; many movie theaters reopened (cautiously); and the restaurants and bars integral to our social rituals returned to welcoming customers. Streaming services have thrived over the last two years as have book sales. The global supply chain remains a significant material concern for consumers, as does the emergence of new viral variant. The relationship between access, consumption, and production in the culture industries has never seemed more complicated in modern times.

As I write this the awards season in pop music, film, and television is upon us. We need music, film, dance and the visual arts, to exist. Culture remains a staple not merely as respite. Please find my annual insights about the culture that resonated the most with me this year.

Favorite New Albums of 2021:

S.O.U.R (Olivia Rodrigo, Geffen Records)

Don’t let the ubiquity of Olivia Rodrigo’s album S.O.U.R fool you. Her album does not aim to be broadly relatable—and that is its strength. Intentionally one dimensional I’m not sure a more delightfully detailed portrait of adolescent romantic angst exists in the pop music universe. Since young love is myopic by definition there’s something delightfully appropriate about her vacillations between snark (“traitor”), regret (“driver’s license”) and resolve (“hope ur ok”). Like the best power-pop the music itself is crisp, energetic, and to the point. In 34 minutes, she covers an impressive emotional spectrum in the language and tonality of Gen Z.

Remember My Name (Mickey Guyton, Capitol Records Nashville)

Mickey Guyton builds on the promise of 2020’s radical single “Black Like Me” by continuing to tell stories from an outsider’s perspective. As one of the few African-American women recording and performing country music her anthems are hard won. “All American,” “Different,” “Love My Hair,” and “What Am I Gonna Tell Her?” are not apologies or laments; they’re sober, clear-eyed expressions of resistance to cultural conformity and exclusion. Refusing to downplay her “difference” Guyton revels in the plainspoken truth country prides itself in espousing but rarely delivers. In between are love songs and an ode to her love of rosé. Guyton is a much-needed voice in a genre often oblivious to its gender and racial biases. 

Flor (Gretchen Parlato, Edition Records)

In just over a decade Gretchen Parlato has ascended from a promising independent voice in jazz to a leading voice of her generation. Her masterpiece Flor is informed by jazz yet refreshingly unbound in its elasticity and textural diversity. She excels at original uplifting pop (“Wonderful”), daring reinterpretations (Anita Baker’s “Sweet Love”), and classical tone poems (“Magnus,” “Cello Suite No. 1”) among other feats. Beyond technique or eclecticism, she lets you into her soul more freely than ever.  

Time Traveler (Nnenna Freelon, Origin Records)

Since debuting in 1992 Nnenna Freelon had gradually gained prominence in vocal jazz garnering Grammy nominations for several of her efforts and a modicum of critical respect. 2021’s Time Traveler—informed by the death of her late husband Phil—is the first album she’s released that satisfies my ears fully from start to finish. More importantly its one of the most persuasive examples of how rock era songs can coexist with pre-rock standards seamlessly. Blending the pop-soul universe of 1960s and 1970s radio fare with time worn standards, and a few originals, Freelon sings with startling power and clarity. A sense of bittersweetness and loss pervades her interpretations. She interprets “I Say a Little Prayer” as a gospel epic rather than a casual ode. Similarly, she transforms Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle” from wan soft-rock into a profound reflection on the fragility of time thanks adjusting its time signature and drawing out the layers within its familiar lyrics. One gets the sense that the music of Motown and Philly Soul formed an intimate shared bond between the singer and her late husband. Her impassioned “Marvin Medley” and fervent versions of The Stylistics’ “You Make Me Feel Brand New” and “Betcha By Golly Wow” are sung with a deep romanticism. The standards she chooses—“Moon River,” “Come Rain or Shine,” and “Time After Time”—continue the theme. As familiar as they are she captures the eroticism of “Rain,” and the melancholic undercurrent of “Moon and “Time” with remarkable poignancy.  He set ends with voice recordings of her departed husband, in the title track, ending with a reprise that allows the singer and listener to breathe.  

Books

Favorite New Book of 2021:

Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)

Author, playwright, activist, and educator Sarah Schulman synthesizes a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and interview content from the ACT Up Oral History Project she launched with Jim Hubbard to document ACT UP’s origins and impact, as well as its complex innerworkings. By doing so she articulates its historic status as one of the major radical advocacy groups of the twentieth century and rescues it from the whitewashed history commonly told about the group.

ACT UP, which remains active, was founded as a multicultural group in New York that mobilized around the tragedy of the HIV/AIDs crisis. Their collective organizing through direct action, agitprop, and strategic behind the scenes work challenged the collusion of government neglect, homophobia, sexism, racism, and classism that enabled AIDs to morph a crisis. The group’s legendarily well-attended and volatile weekly meetings were a wellspring for a range of advocacy efforts focused on strategies that would draw local and national attention to ineffectual government protocols and harmful social messaging that stifled medical progress and sensitivity to the needs of people with AIDS. Record documents the complex execution of well-known efforts like 1989’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral disruption and includes voices of famous personalities like Larry Kramer.

However, its greatest contribution is its illumination of overlooked voices in the HIV/AIDS movement and their concerns. Her attention to these voices, largely comprised of people of color, women, and the overlaps between these categories, including Ray Navarro, Alan Robinson, Phyllis Sharpe, go far beyond the white male dominated lens spotlighted in David France’s documentary How to Survive a Plague, Kramer’s play The Normal Heart and Jonathan Demme’s film Philadelphia.

Notably, Record highlights how caucuses within ACT UP’s decentralized model expanded the definition of HIV/AIDs symptoms so the health concerns of women were addressed in medical studies; challenged the health insurance industry so PWAs were recognized; and advocated for solutions to issues of housing insecurity and clean needle access, among others. Schulman also documents the erotics of queer activism, the unique artistic productions that emerged from the era, and ideological tensions that arose between activists who immersed themselves in the more scientific aspects of advocacy and those who felt the latter had conflicted relationships with the CDC.

Epic in scope (645 pages before you arrive at the notes) Schulman moves readers through the organization with impressive narrative velocity and has chosen rich, digestible themes illuminated by some of the movements most vibrant, informed, and dependable voices. What could have been sterile, hagiographic, and/or depressing is engrossing and deeply humane. I appreciated Schulman’s willingness to name her own biases and positionalities, and to include conflicting and contradictory accounts. During my time reading the book I was inspired to revisit some key writings about HIV/AIDS by Cathy Cohen, Douglas Crimp, Phillip Brian Harper, and Kevin J. Mumford. Schulman’s account rests comfortably alongside these pivotal works as a central part of discourse about HIV/AIDS activism and human rights struggles.

Best New & Notable Books for 2021

The Final Revival of Opal and Dev (37INK/Simon & Schuster)

Dawnie Walton’s debut novel employs the specter of a reunion between a vaunted interracial rock duo to explore racial tensions, the machinations of the music industry, rock journalism, buried family histories and more. 

Floating in a Most Peculiar Way: A Memoir (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Literary scholar Louis Chude-Sukei gives readers a vivid bird’s eye view of his complex navigations of the Black diaspora inflected by his African, Caribbean, and American experiences.

The Limits of #METOO in Hollywood: Gender and Power in the Entertainment Industry (McFarland)

Veteran media studies scholar Margaret Tally takes a wide-angle lens at the ways the #MeToo movement has impacted the domestic and global television and film industries in front of and behind the camera. Her thorough and thoughtful analysis examines an impressive of texts and inflects them with a credible understanding of industry practices, genre norms, and the looming threat of backlash politics.

The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twentieth Century (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux)

In her first book scholar Amia Srinivasan examines some of the thorniest subjects in gender studies, asking how do we ensure that intersectionality does not just protect the most privileged within a marginal group; what is an ethics of sexual responsibility beyond consent; what is the role of pornography—if any—in adolescent sexual development; how can feminism demand accountability without relying on state sanctioned carceral solutions among other questions. She flexes her intellectual nuance with the critical flair these topics deserve.

The Secret to Super Human Strength (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Alison Bechdel fully mobilizes her distinct humor, tonality, and visual style in Secret which is an intimate exploration of her evolving sense of being as a partner, family members, community member, and artist.

Best (Not New) Books I read in 2021:

The Golden Girls (Kate Browne, 2020)

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations (Mira Jacob, 2018)

Interior Chinatown: A Novel (Charles Yu, 2020)

Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics (Douglas Crimp, 2002)

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (Cathy Park Hong, 2020)

Missed Translation: Meeting the Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me (Sopan Deb, 2020)

Not Straight, Not White: Black Gay Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis (Kevin J. Mumford, 2016)

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies (Deesha Philyaw, 2020)

Shrill (Lindy West, 2016)

The Sound of Soul (Phyl Garland, 1969)

Word is Out: A Queer Film Classic (Greg Youmans, 2011)

Television:

We’re Gonna Miss You

On My Block (Netflix)

POSE (FXX)

Shrill (Hulu)

You’re Still the One

Big Mouth (Netflix; Season Five)

Insecure (HBO; Season Five)

Sex Education (Season Three)

This is Us (NBC; Season Five)

New and Noteworthy

Harlem (Amazon Prime)

Love Life (Season Two; HBO)

The Wonder Years (ABC)

The White Lotus (HBO)

Best Music on Film and TV:

Bo Burnham: Inside (Directed by Bo Burnham; Netflix): Through brilliant songs and creative staging comedian Burnham employs the pandemic’s social isolation to comment on the random, terrifying, and endearingly trivial aspects of life.

Fanny: The Right to Rock (Directed by Bobbi Jo Krals; Adobe Productions International): Filmmaker Krals shines a much-deserved spotlight on the first all women (and all Filipina!) rock band signed to a major record label.

Genius: Aretha (National Geographic): In this ambitious multi-part look at the life and career of American vocalist, songwriter, and pianist Aretha Franklin actress and singer Cynthia Erivo delivers a nuanced and full-bodied performance which captures Franklin’s maturation as a woman, her growth as an artist, and the ways she connected with the sociopolitical climate of her time.

Listening to Kenny G (Directed by Penny Lane; HBO Max): Through interviews with G, his audience, and a range of critics and industry personnel Castle explores the persona behind the music and larger questions about art, taste, and cultural history.

Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (Directed by Questlove; Hulu): Perhaps the most joyful and surprising film of the year is the documentary Summer of Soul the inaugural broadcast of performances from 1969’s Harlem Cultural Festival. Carefully curated by musician-turned-director Questlove it showcases a spectrum of Black and Latino music traditions featuring sterling performances by Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, the Staple Singers, Sly and the Family Stone, B.B. King, the Fifth Dimension, and Nina Simone, among others, and insightful interviews with attendees who look back with joy.

Best Film performances (so far):

I have seen a limited selection of theatrically released and/or streamed major motion pictures this calendar year. Based on what I have seen here are a few noteworthy performances include the following:

The entire cast of The Power of the Dog

Olga Merediz as Abuela Claudia in In the Heights

Robin de Jesús as Michael in Tick, Tick…BOOM!

Aunjanue Ellis in King Richard

I look forward to offering a fuller take on top tier films in 2022. Stay tuned!

******************************************************************************

Notable musicians who have died in 2021:

Chick Corea

Sarah Dash

DMX

Don Everly

Dave Frishberg

Biz Markie

Mike Nesmith

Lloyd Price

Stephen Sondheim

BJ Thomas

Charlie Watts

Mary Wilson

COPYRIGHT © 2021 VINCENT L. STEPHENS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.