A Year in Culture 2011

There is a tendency, or I should say I have a tendency, to frame a year within a typical school year. A new year starts in September (or whenever a new year of classes start) and ends around May or June (or whenever classes end). I realize that a new year starts on January 1st, but when I think about my year I'm thinking between September and June. The summer kind of acts as a stand alone thing that I didn't account when I started this entry. However when one does a year end list, it's generally accepted that one is writing about the time between January 1st and December 31st of X year.

So how was this year culturally for me? Odd. I've discovered that I listen to fewer and fewer actual albums and more and more listen to playlists that are made up of songs from every year of music I have in my collection. This means that I generally associate a song not with its year of release, or even the album it originally appeared on, but with the year I listened to it and the playlist it was a member of. That's how I end up every year marveling at the fact that what I listened to wasn't actually released in the year I associate it with but usually with the previous year or even longer ago. Also, thanks mostly to law school, I haven't read all that much this year. I've probably watched more TV than I've read books which is kind of sad but I've found that as I get older I get even more picky about what I read and with the limited amount of time I now have for just about everything, the last thing I want to do is read some more after reading upwards of a 100 really dense pages of legal jargon. Moving to Boston though has been a boon for my theater going life. I've seen more ballet productions this year than I have in probably my entire life. I got to see Yo-Yo Ma perform with the Boston Symphony and hear Handel's Messiah live after years of listening to it on CD. I also finally got to see "A Doll's House" which is probably one of my favorite plays that I was assigned to read in high school (and just generally one of my favorite plays). And of course there are the hours of television I watched, some live, some on Netflix. This year has been a hodge-podge of low and high art for me some of which is difficult to categorize as "best" or "favorite." "Follies" is not one of my favorite musicals by Stephen Sondheim, but getting to see Bernadette Peters perform live is something that one doesn't forget very soon. Finally getting to go to a comedy gig and having it be one of my favorite British comedians is also a once in a life time experience, even if I can't say it was the best thing I've ever seen. 2011 though has been a year of cultural enrichment for better and worse. So now let's categorize it and par it down, like people like to do.

Albums I Actually Listened to This Year

As I mentioned I tend to listen more to individual songs on playlists as opposed to entire albums. However there were 5 albums I listened to this year. Generally speaking if I listen to an album it means I like it. And if it's on this list it's because I liked it. So here are my top 5 albums of this year:

1. "The Wombats Proudly Present...This Modern Glitch" by the Wombats
2. "The Future is Medieval" by the Kaiser Chiefs
3. "Aim and Ignite" by Fun.*
4. "21" by Adele**
5. "Welcome to Condale" by Summer Camp***

The Songs of 2011

This list, with the exception of the songs by the Kaiser Chiefs, the Wombats, and Adele, was largely aquired within the last 2 months. Up until then I was doing fine just listening to what I had been listening to since 2010. However around late October my current collection began to bore me so I sought out new music. This was done largely by seeing what my friends had been listening to on Spotify and by seeing what had been released recently and was good at least according to Zune Marketplace. And of course there was some music heard during commercials and on TV shows but most of those were not released in 2011, so they don't count. Here are the top 10 songs of 2011 in no particular order:

• "Cousin in the Bronx" by the Kaiser Chiefs
• "Rumour Has It" by Adele
• "Everybody Wants Somebody" by Patrick Stump
• "Raconte-Moi Une Histoire" by M83****
• "Still Life" by the Horrors
• "Ahead of the Wave" by Non-Commissioned Officers
• "We Are Young" by Fun.*****
• "Gangsta" by tUnE-yArDs
• "You and I" by Lady Gaga
• "Anti-D" by the Wombats

I did go see a few movies. Of the handful I saw in theatres the two I liked the best were "Fright Night" and "The Muppets" neither of which were critical darlings, though at least "The Muppets" did really well in the box office. Of the three****** books I read this year the only one I would recommend is How The Beatles Destroyed Rock and Roll the subtitle of which is "An Alternative History of American Popular Music" which goes a long way to explaining what the book is actually about. I couldn't possibly recommend what TV you should watch because much like music (which I feel I can recommend) what you spend your time watching is fairly individualized. Also, I watch the same five shows on repeat so I have a fairly narrow view of what's good and what isn't.

So that's 2011. I hope your year in culture was good and here's to next year being even better.

*Two things. The band is called "Fun." The period is part of the name. Also, this album was actually released in 2010, but since I've been listening to this and Summer Camp nearly non-stop for the past few days, I'm including it. Sue me.

**Adele is probably the only artist within my top music lists that was included by anyone else. As is typical my taste in music largely diverges from what is considered popular by other people.

***I discovered this album because a friend of mine from my time in London was listening to this album quite a lot on Spotify. thanks Jade!

****Everyone loves "Midnight City" so much. I think this song is much, much better. Besides, who wouldn't want to turn into a magical frog?

*****I first heard this song as a cover by the cast of Glee, so that's probably the only song I heard on TV that wasn't released in 2010 or earlier. However, as is typical, the original is better.

******This is a vast exageration. I don't know how many books I read this year, but it wasn't a very large number and far fewer than I would have liked.