In this format, I clear house: I talk about the things I've recently finished in movies, television, games, and novels. The last time I avoided talking about what I listened to, but no such thing anymore. This post will also include the artist discographies that I go through as well!
Originally this was going to be the post on the best music of 2021 (thus far). But then I compiled 25 songs on my playlist and I realized I'm not writing 25 paragraphs, or even short sentences, on all of that. It's way too hot for that. I'm melting off here! Besides, I'm not that patient and I like variety.
Below The Boyz’ Q, Jacob, Hyunjae, and Sangyeon, find a selection of what I've been finished recently in descending order. Newest first, oldest last.
Best of 2021 in Music
I read album of the year lists - and album of the year so far lists - whenever it's that time in December and June. But try as I might, I don't really... read them all the way through. I read the ones of the albums that I like, probably the ones with a nice cover, and maybe the ones that pop up consistently. Mostly I just want to know who the #1 is. Part of me skipping the majority of them, I feel, has to do with the narrative format of these mini-reviews. Every paragraph has got to start with the short version of the artist's come up. And then by the time we get to the album's highlights, it's already over! A lot of style, and not much substance. It’s fine. I don't mean to be one of these music nerds online that whines about a normal journalistic practice. But that makes things hard to read. Paragraphs are so easy to gloss over.
Hence, I think music should do the talking. Find the playlist of my picks of this year below. You'll predictably find it full of pop, rnb, hip hop, and electronic moments.
Discographies
Whitney Houston
Sometimes it's really a matter of mood than the artist's fault. I think Whitney is an irreplaceable part of rnb, but as I progressed in her discography, I've started to think of her more of a singles artist than an album's artist. I do think that is unfair though, given just about the sheer familiarity I have with almost all her singles. Her debut is amazing, obviously, and Just Whitney, her last record, I considered an outlier of this: a very fun full of obvious 00s rnb moments. It’s one of my favorite decades for this genre, so give me all of that always.
The album I liked best on a first listen was her self-titled debut; as for songs, there's no denying the power and beauty of I Wanna Dance With Somebody or Saving All My Love For You. I might give her another shot at a later point in time, though, when I feel more inclined for rnb.
Michael Jackson (+ Jackson Five)
Jackson Five is firmly planted in Motown, and though it's fun, it breezed past me. Michael Jackson's first three albums follow the same format, but from Forever, Michael on, that amazing matured vocal comes to sing, and that changed my enjoyment greatly. Off The Wall and Thriller are all-time classics, Dangerous is the inferior New Jack Swing record by a Jackson, Blood on the Dancefloor is okay, and I actually enjoyed Invicible okay, which was the last album MJ recorded alive (aside some really… strange songs in the middle section). From the posthumous records, XSCAPE has a bonus section full of original recordings, and I enjoyed those greatly. Overall I thought that compared to his contemporaries of Prince and Madonna (I know), he's got the most inconsistent discography, but — obviously — his singles I consider up to par with Madonna’s. All that said though, just like Prince and Madonna, his legacy lives to this day (not just, but very noticeably so in K-Pop) and it's helped me greatly to see who was inspired by him and how.
If you want to listen to a MJ single that I think is greatly underrated, check out his single featuring The Notorious B.I.G, Unbreakable. Album-wise... well, the hype is true. Off the Wall and Thriller are classics. You should be listening to them.
Mary J. Blige
The Queen of Hip Hop Soul / RnB was so much fun to listen through! Her progression as an artist, the way Blige's voice gets better as she ages, made for some very enjoyable album listens. Her transition from hip hop soul to more conventional rnb is seamless and she really doesn't have a single bad album in my books. Overall, Blige is a true living icon: a major figure in influencing and dictating the needle of rnb album by album. Though well, if you know your way around rnb, you don't need me to tell you that. I'm just catching up here.
My favorite MJB single is Family Affair (of course) and also Real Love. I can't seem to pick a favorite album, though I will say I listened to No More Drama pretty heavily, and the first three tracks on Strength of A Woman, her latest album, is insanely strong.
Madonna
"The hag" is a hag. Remember when she was a special guest on Eurovision Song Contest 2019 and made two children with the Israel and Palestine flag on their cheeks kiss? ("But you said nothing about MJ, Elif!" - well yes, but MJ didn't make that his musical identity, and also he's dead.) Musically speaking, her entire 2010s is wonky and uneven, with two forgettable albums in that decade. Which, if you're called Madonna, is a grave sin. Because before she was a hag, Madonna's output was - still is - undeniable. Her first bad album is American Life, which is her ninth album, mind you; before that, hit after hit, each of them changing the trajectory of pop culture as we know it. I'm well aware she's fallen out of favor, but listening to her discography has been absolutely illuminating.
My favorite Madonna single is hard. What It Feels Like For A Girl makes me feel like floating, so that shall be my pick. The album is not hard though. Ray of Light. Get on it.
Books
Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro
Following an AF (that's "artificial friend") who has made it her life's duty to protect and help her assigned human friend Josie no matter the cost, Klara reminded me at every turn of another Ishiguro protagonist: Kathy H. of Never Let Me Go, a clone who has to sacrifice herself eventually so her original can live on. In general, Klara and the Sun is in conversation with NLMG quite a bit, in tone and world and themes, which makes it fascinating where the two books diverge and where they come together. NLMG has an insanely well-done conflict, full of sweeping drama like a tidal wave; on the other hand, KATS can be colder, almost bone-chilling in the way Klara is so oblivious to the conflict happening around her, to her, even. NLMG doesn't discuss religion, and faith, in a larger sense, the same way KATS features it: a childlike prayer, for instance, is supposed to save Josie.
Did I like this book? For the reasons above, I did. It engaged with me intellectually. But that said, it didn't engage with me completely emotionally, lacked a character arc (though it did... introduce? a character for an AF, which I suppose was the point) and ultimately that's what I'm looking for when I read a book. I thought we'd see some of the class aspect come to play, since it's mentioned early in the book and there's a character not as "lifted" (this word has a couple meanings here) as Josie and also a rebellious group and dissents on the existence of AFs: it popped up here and there, but since Klara is one of the most oblivious protagonists in the world, it went nowhere. Also, I couldn't get past the artificial tone of the dialogue, especially from Josie's mother. It's like she was the AI and not Klara.
Read this only if you've seen or read Never Let Me Go.
Klara and the Sun is out via Knopf.
Shadow and Bone trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
You Can't Possibly Be This Painfully YA. We follow Alina Starkov in a Russian-inspired fantasy world as she realizes she's not like other girls: she is a Sun Summoner, capable of wielding light. She could be the end of a giant marsh of darkness that is known as the Unsea, a creation by a terrible past Darkling - or will she? For that, she needs to find the three amplifiers ... blah... blah... blah. With a plot so bland, no wonder people all over Goodreads were more focused on the Alinabowl: will the childhood friend Mal end up with her, or is it her mortal enemy Darkling, or is it the pirate prince Nikolai altogether? (Never let anyone tell you weebs and readers are different. Teenagers are teenagers everywhere). Okay. The trilogy wasn't bad, the middle book is surprisingly very good. By focusing on Alina and her progression as she comes into her power and struggles with the ramifications of it I actually got something beyond the shipping. More importantly I got Nikolai Lantsov, perfect charming pirate prince turned-- well. I have a major soft spot for bright, annoying, talkative idiots with a secret. He is the sole reason I'm rereading the Six of Crows duology so I can read the King of Scars duology in summer. But still, this entire series reads like somebody asked me to write a YA from memory. Not only any YA, but I was often reminded of Harry Potter. Alina and Darkling being able to communicate because they were in a fight once? Please. Very YA, and the just-barely-not-mind numbing variant of it. This is not the last that you hear of this series in this column.
I really wish I had treated myself to the Netflix series instead. Actually no. Watching hot people isn't enough.
Shadow and Bone trilogy is out via Macmillan.
Oculus: Poems - Sally Wen Mao
Earlier this year, I read the poetry Soft Science by Franny Choi, a poetry collection focusing on female androids, the disenfranchisement towards yourself, and the connection of technology. While I enjoyed it, I couldn't connect to it much. It was as though I was staring at a stranger, almost. Oculus taps into very similar themes, but the collection is so strongly written, thematically so beautifully tied together, the prose impeccable. Almost every poem hit here. There's several poems reimagining of Chinese American cinema legend Anna May Wong in today's cinema landscape that I really enjoyed reading. There is one on one of my all time favorite female characters, Faye Valentine of Cowboy Bebop! In general, this body of work focuses on identity, bodily agency, marginalization, and the disenfranchisement between body and soul in the age of the Internet. Have a sampler here.
Oculus is out via Graywolf Press. Check it out if you have the time and energy, I don't think you'll regret it.
TV & Movies
Good Omens (Amazon Prime)
We follow angel Aziraphale (Michael Sheen) and devil Crowley (David Tennant) be best-friends-maybe-lovers for centuries as signs draw nearer that the Antichrist, and thus Armageddon, will come soon. This is a major problem for the two, as angels and devils will fight their war during the end of the world. Thus Aziraphale and Crowley have to find the Antichrist before the other angels and devils do... So this is definitely a lot of fun, though aimless in a way I didn't expect it. It's as though I was promised a buddy action-comedy and got a slice of life anime. My favorite part by far was this one:
Kingdom (Mnet)
I, Tonya (2017, dir. Craig Gillespie)
I love complicated, nasty women. I especially love complicated, nasty women as a dynamic, women nasty to other women not because of a man (blergh) but due to trauma and other issues. I got this for the first half of I, Tonya, wherein Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) grows up (and hard) under her strict, abusive, cold mother LaVona (Allison Janney) and the ice skating world that never really appreciating her and her low class; this was when the film shined best. It was never treated for laughs or tears, which I appreciated quite a bit. But an hour in, it suddenly changed to "the incident", which had Tonya's ex-husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan) assault Tonya's rival Nancy Kerrigan (Caitlin Carver). We kept hearing the phrase "I just wanted to be loved", which always gets me, but by the end Tonya blames every viewer and the media for making her do this, which fell flat due to the focus going to what’s some of the blandest and most idiotic duo in the world. That being said, at the end of the film, there's real-life footage of the actual Tonya skating her triple axel and seeing her pump her fists to the air that made me tear up.
Akira (1988, dir. Katsuhiro Otomo)
A stone cold classic. I love the world. I love the batshit, breakneck paced plot of government tests and children lost in a violent mega city. Some parts were glossed over, barely making sense, but I think that just added to the overall sense of disorientation that the film was ultimately going for. Both Tetsuo and Kaneda are thoroughly products of the city - briefly I had considered writing the city and unbelonging post with an example of Akira because of that - and that palpable sense of regret and bitterness is something I really like in fictional stories. It was insanely fun to watch this and Tetsuo makes for a really cool Vegeta prototype. The best part was when Tetsuo looks so obviously lost with his power, but when Kaneda comes to save him, Tetsuo just uses the power again because pride > friendship. Horrible decisions are so good when they’re fictional.
Also below, enjoy one of the best songs of the year (Prism by The Boyz) to the insane intro of Akira.
Games
Ghost Trick (DS)
You are a spirit that can manipulate objects. At some point, you can also be a spirit that swaps objects. You have time until dawn to figure out what happened to you, which turns out to be… what, you dying because somebody decided to be a drama queen? A plot trying to thwart the government going nowhere? The game mechanics quickly bored me. Though the characters are colorful and I would die for a certified good doggo Missile, the mystery was flimsy as hell.
Need For Speed Underground 2 (GameCube)
Riders on the storm… My siblings watch Initial D earlier and it hit me again how much I miss this game. I miss Bayview. I miss crashing my car everywhere all the time. I miss making my car tacky as hell for some stars which ends up in a magazine where a girl’s ass is more important than my car. I miss the city. I miss driving around with a GC controller. What I do not miss is the frame rate being inconsistent as hell, and the standard controls were just awkward. R for acceleration, but A for proper handbrake? Please. But I really do miss the game. I’ve been eyeing it since I first saw it on my cousin’s PC a decade and a half ago. I'm very glad I got to play it now. Also, it made me love punk and rock music that much more, so really, I can’t thank it enough.
And that is it for this month's wrap-up! For the second post of July I'm planning a music retrospective of an album very dear to me, and, since it was requested, I will publish one of the short stories I got rejected for (it’s about paper planes… of sorts). Hope you all find a cool spot, good music, and a pleasant corner of the world to watch soccer with (the Euros 2020 are doing a very similar trick that Eurovision does, with a cute nationalist angle that obviously draws the known right-wing hooligans and worse pinkwashing aspect btw since all the brands decided to adapt Pride colors midway through June <3)
If there’s a recommendation you want to drop based on what I check out, feel free to hit me up at @theturkishrug.