| I've been approached several times to 'make an NFT.' So far nothing has convinced me that there is anything worth making in that arena. 'Worth making' for me implies bringing something into existence that adds value to the world, not just to a bank account. | | | | |  | Pharoah Sanders (left) and Sam "Floating Points" Shepherd working on their 2021 album "Promises."
(Eric Welles-Nyström/Shore Fire Media) | | | | | "I've been approached several times to 'make an NFT.' So far nothing has convinced me that there is anything worth making in that arena. 'Worth making' for me implies bringing something into existence that adds value to the world, not just to a bank account." | | | | Love It and List It
Depending where you are, today is the shortest or longest day of the year, a fact you can bank on even though there are still 10 days to go in 2021. Nature isn't going to drop a surprise sunset this weekend and mess up the calculations. We can't make any such promises about the shortest, longest, worst, best or least or most interesting album of the year. Anything can happen in those 10 days, and it can continue to happen in the days, months and years to follow. KENDRICK LAMAR could release an album next week. (Here's an insanely long list of metal albums that came out last week or are still to come this week and next. Here are some more.) You could wake up one day in December 2036 and realize MACH-HOMMY and not TYLER, THE CREATOR made the best album of 2021, despite what you thought in 2021. Or that "GOOD 4 U" had more staying power than "DRIVERS LICENSE" and not the other way around. You won't be wrong no matter where you come down. Some songs and albums take longer to sink in. Some will sound different in different contexts. Some you may forget existed. Some you haven't heard yet.
Which is all a way of saying the 200-plus lists we've collected so far in our MusicSET "Best Music of 2021: The Year in Lists" are just lists—incomplete by design, a little early by editorial necessity, extremely subjective, and there are too many of them. They're fun to read and they can be exhausting. Even in a year with no clear critical consensus, the overlap between many of them is considerable, with everybody drawing from the same galaxy of a few thousand albums at most—in a universe in which 60,000 tracks, or the equivalent of 5,000 or 6,000 albums, are uploaded to SPOTIFY every day. Macro agreement and micro distinctions. The 200-pus critics who voted in UPROXX's poll concluded OLIVIA RODRIGO's "good 4 u" was the year's best song and her "drivers license" was #2. PITCHFORK's and NPR MUSIC's voters both loved R&B veteran JAZMINE SULLIVAN's HEAUX TALES. TYLER, THE CREATOR comes up a lot, as do JAPANESE BREAKFAST, DRY CLEANING, SILK SONIC and the electronic/jazz/classical meetup of FLOATING POINTS, PHAROAH SANDERS and the LONDON SYMPHONY. The single most acclaimed album across the board, according to a master Google Doc maintained by freelance critic and data cruncher ROB MITCHUM, is British rapper/singer LITTLE SIMZ's SOMETIMES I MIGHT BE INTROVERT, which, if you're going to have any consensus at all, is a good one to have.
Consider this both warning and invitation. And a reminder that there are plenty of more personal, idiosyncratic lists hanging out on the outskirts, whether it's GRIZZLY BUTTS' deep metal dive (#1: PSYCHIC SECRETIONS by Australian death metal experimentalists STARGAZER), the MARTORIALIST's consensus-ignoring hip-hop song roundup (no order, but starting with Oakland rapper EZALE's "RAISED LIKE THIS") or TEXTURA's roundups of jazz, classical and ambient. If you want to be overwhelmed with new and possibly unfamiliar music, or if you just want a peek into the scope of those 60,000 tracks that get uploaded every day to Spotify (or maybe, in the some of these cases, BANDCAMP), start somewhere in the vicinity of those.
There'll be more to come. The year is hardly over.
(If you want to venture beyond lists into context, Uproxx has accessorized its critics' poll with a collection of essays on Little Simz, Olivia Rodrigo, Japanese Breakfast, the Weather Station and others. Slate has launched its annual Music Club, which is a series of emailed year-end essays from critics to each other, starting with CARL WILSON's notes on how music has soundtracked our collective "great languishing." NPR Music has a special series on The Story of Jazz in 2021.)
Rest in Peace
Morphine drummer BILLY CONWAY... PAUL MITCHELL, co-founder of '70s one-hit wonders the Floaters... TOBY SLATER, singer for '90s Britpop band Catch and one-time co-owner of music news, research and marketing brand Music Ally.
| | | |  | | The New Statesman |
| | "I didn't want anyone to know it was me": on being Joni Mitchell's "Carey" | | by Kate Mossman | | For 50 years, the "mean old daddy" immortalised in one of Mitchell's best-loved songs has been an enigma. Now he tells his side of the story. | |  | | Bloomberg |
| | Spotify Has a Gen Z Problem. Or Is It an Opportunity? | | by Lucas Shaw | | The streaming service is working on a few tools and features that cater to users younger than 25. | |  | | Complex |
| | Drakeo the Ruler, People's Champion | | by Steven Louis | | The loss of Drakeo the Ruler, South Central's prodigal mudwalker and the undisputed People's Champion of Los Angeles, is incalculable and cosmically cruel. | |  | | The Current |
| | Movies, malls, and Musicland: How Minnesota fueled the '80s soundtrack album boom | | by Michaelangelo Matos | | 'Flashdance.' 'Footloose.' 'Ghostbusters.' Music and movies have always gone together, but the '80s brought popcorn and the pop charts closer than ever before, or since. That was largely the result of Hollywood economics in the MTV era, but also two Minnesota inventions: the indoor shopping mall and the Musicland stores that turned cassettes into impulse buys. | |  | | The Crypto Syllabus |
| | Brian Eno on NFTs & Automatism | | by Evgeny Morozov | | "NFTs seem to me just a way for artists to get a little piece of the action from global capitalism, our own cute little version of financialisation. " | |  | | The New York Times |
| | Britney Spears Felt Trapped. Her Business Manager Benefited. | | by Liz Day, Emily Steel, Rachel Abrams... | | Louise Taylor faces questions about whether she improperly enriched herself as the pop star's business manager. | |  | | Tidal |
| | The Reggaeton Trap? | | by Celia San MIguel | | Today's Latin-trap stars are turning to more pop-friendly reggaeton sounds and achieving new levels of commercial success. So what's the problem? | |  | | Music Ally |
| | The problem with music sharing | | by Marc Brown | | I am going to make a claim most of you will think is very controversial: artists getting paid is not the biggest problem in the music ecosystem today, music sharing is. | |  | | The Daily Beast |
| | How to Make a Perfect Tune for an Acid Trip | | by Dana G. Smith | | Researchers are trying to harness the synergy between music and drugs to improve psychedelic therapy. | |  | | Men's Health |
| | Your Brain on Drums | | by Mike Kessler | | A growing body of scientific evidence reveals that playing a musical instrument is one of the best workouts for your gray matter--even if you suck. | | |  | | Music Business Worldwide |
| | Primary Wave has over $1 billion to spend on music rights… and it's not wasting any time | | by Tim Ingham | | Primary Wave boss Larry Mestel answers MBW's end-of-2021 questions. | |  | | Slate |
| | The Musicians Who Came Back in 2021 With a Bang--or a Whimper | | by Lindsay Zoladz | | Adele, Kanye, Lorde and more came back-with bangs or whimpers. | |  | | Polyphonic |
| | The Christmas Song that Changed Hip Hop Forever | | Outkast's Christmas miracle. | |  | | Dirt |
| | Dog spelled backwards | | by Allegra Hobbs | | As worship music from Circuit Riders goes viral on TikTok, Allegra Hobbs recounts her own history with "spiritual" sounds. | |  | | Billboard |
| | Coachella Wins Restraining Order Against Live Nation Over Copycat Festival | | by Bill Donahue | | A judge says Live Nation is likely infringing trademarks by selling tickets to a "Coachella Day One 22″ concert nearby. | |  | | Texas Monthly |
| | The Texan Who Saved the Beatles | | by Cat Cardenas | | In Peter Jackson's documentary 'The Beatles: Get Back,' Houston-born pianist Billy Preston makes a strong case for himself as the fifth Beatle. | |  | | The Marshall Project |
| | The Prisoner-Run Radio Station That's Reaching Men on Death Row | | by Keri Blakinger | | They can't go to classes or prison jobs, and they don't have tablets or televisions. But they do have radios. | |  | | KQED |
| | How Vicente Fernández Earned Appreciation for Rancheros Like My Dad | | by Bianca Torres | | The superstar singer, who died Sunday, defied classist assumptions with his proudly ranchero style. | |  | | WBGO |
| | A Tale of Two Kenny Gs | | by Nate Chinen and Greg Bryant | | One is a chart-topping juggernaut who has sparked musical controversy for the last 35 years. The other is a master who's spent that same span of time balancing improvisational fire with lyrical soul. Yes, we're talking about saxophonist Kenny G - Gorelick in the first case, and Garrett in the second. As you can imagine, we have some thoughts. | | | | Billboard |
| | Inside Hipgnosis Songs' Mid-Year Report | | by Glenn Peoples | | Hipgnosis raised over $200 million of equity capital in the six months up to Sept. 30. | | | | Music Business Worldwide |
| | 'Copyright-free music is seen as poor quality, cheap and mass market. Our goal is to remove that stigma' | | by Rhian Jones | | The idea of releasing music that has no copyright attached to it would probably seem absurd to most people working in the music industry. NoCopyrightSounds (NCS) would disagree. | | | |  | | | Music of the day | | "Introvert" | | Little Simz | | From "Sometimes I Might Be Introvert," out now on Age 101/AWAL. |  | | YouTube |
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From "Sometimes I Might Be Introvert," out now on Age 101/AWAL. | | | | | Music | Media | Sports | Fashion | Tech | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in
everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" | | |  | | | Jason Hirschhorn | | CEO & Chief Curator | | |  |
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