Here goes the third part of my look back at some of the music from 2021 as we (terrifyingly) have almost reached the halfway point of the year. These are the albums that came out in the past month or two, so I probably don’t have fully formed opinions on all of them. But at the very least, I’ve given them enough spins to know that I like them. Continue reading
So here we are with another installment of me looking back at some of the music I’ve enjoyed from the first half of this year. I guess that means this’ll mostly be music from March or April. I don’t know if you remember much from that period, since I was mostly just sitting around waiting to get vaxxed. But hey, at least I remember some of these albums. Continue reading
We gave up a lot of things in 2020 and that sucked. One thing that maybe actually needed a break was the superhero genre, which has dominated cinemas for more than a decade now. Last year, only DC managed to release anything (Birds of Prey and WW84) unless you count the final season of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, which was probably only watched by me. Well, now it’s 2021 and we’re coming back and we’re all super depressed. Over the next few… however long this takes me, I’m going to review all the sad new superhero shows and movies of 2021 leading up to Black Widow‘s release in July. Come wallow with me!
What does it mean to be “Captain America” after World War II? Outside of war propaganda, it’s pretty weird to cover yourself in the stars and stripes. The comics have been wrestling with this issue since the character was revived during the Vietnam era, sometimes with embarrassing results. In the MCU, Steve Rogers ultimately gave up his alter ego, sidestepping the issue until he made the surprising choice to pass the mantle on to Sam Wilson. Then he disappeared into another timeline(?) and left his two sidekicks to pick up the pieces. Sounds like a funny buddy flick right? But it’s 2021, so let’s make sure to have some real bummer stuff in there too.
My prediction for 2021 was that it would be an off-year for music, not unlike 2020 was for movies. While music is a medium that (especially now) can be produced by one person at home, it typically thrives on collaboration, which we didn’t have much room for in 2020 or early 2021. So it was hard for me to imagine that a lot of artists would be able to go into the studio and record new music while also abiding by covid protocols. While this does seem to somewhat be the case, considering there haven’t been nearly as many hotly anticipated albums as there were last year, 2021’s still been no slouch.
Some of this has been due to the fact that a few high-profile albums that were already gestating for a while got released this year after delays. But also, music is just such a vast, universal art form that there’s always going to be good stuff to discover. I would say this has been the theme for my 2021 listening, as I’ve definitely ended up listening more to artists that I either hadn’t heard of or had somewhat ignored for a while. I’ll admit that Spring/early Summer is usually the time when there seems to be a new great album from an artist I love coming out every week, and that isn’t quite the case this year. But again, there’s still been some good stuff coming out recently in addition to the other discoveries that have made this year worthwhile so far.
Also, since streaming has made it rare that I end up spending much time with albums I don’t like these days, I’ll forgo using star ratings for these albums in exchange for arbitrary “like”-ness ratings. Continue reading
Holy crap, we’ve almost reached the top 10. Though because the rankings of the top 50 best-selling albums in the U.S. has shifted since I started doing this countdown, the math has worked out that less than 39 albums have been written about. To remedy this, I’ll start doing some bonus entries to make sure I round this out to an even 50. I know, that may sound insane to give myself more work for a project that’s taken me years to finish, but we gotta do this right.
Album: Boston
Artist: Boston
Release Date: August 25, 1976
Copies Sold In U.S.: 17 million Continue reading
