Best of the Year: 2021 Album of the Year
Best of the Year:
2021 Album of the Year
Which album of 2021 will be our Album of the Year?
What can you say about the music of 2021? The songs were epic, shifting, exploratory, and raw with artists like Tyler, The Creator giving us something so new that it was almost a challenge. New-comer Olivia Rodrigo plumbed the depths of heartbreak while Japanese Breakfast explored the heights of pure joy. Artists like Arlo Parks and Little Simz dropped albums that were diaries, close and achingly intimate. The albums were experimental and discordant, pleasing and impressive, and everything we needed in year two of whatever this is.
Also, Taylor Swift rereleased an old album but made it a whole heck of a lot longer. You may not have heard, but there is a 10 minute track on this one. Ten! Minutes! We are fans of Swift’s work here. Big fans. However, this is a lot to ask us to swallow. Ultimately, some of the panelists can forgive this album because it helped TayTay gain control over her own songs, but will the rest of us be able to look past the fact that this is still, in its bones, an old-ass album.
When it is all said and done and the shows and movies have had their fun, what really stays? What makes the biggest impression on a year? It has to be the music. Because that is what lives our lives along side us. We don’t watch movies out in the world, but we live with music as our constant companion. All of that, and somehow more, on an all-new Movie of the Year!
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