2018 in Music, Books, and Comics

As I have done in 2017 and 2016, I’m throwing together another review of some of my favorite and most impactful music and reading. Unlike years of the past, I’m leaving out movies, since I’m honestly not watching too many current movies these days. So here we go with my 2018 in review:

Music

2018 was a phenomenal year in music so this one was a hard category. Here’s a stab at it.

My Top Albums of 2018

I’m listing 5 top albums as my favorites of this year, which are albums that were impactful to me and just really solid music experiences.

5. Snail Mail — Lush

Lush is the shoe-gazy bedroom album of the year I knew I needed, but didn’t know where it would come from. Snail Mail absolutely provided.

4. Noname — Room 25

I feel like a lot of people slept on Room 25, which is a bit genre-bending and full of hits.

3. Mitski — Be the Cowboy

Mitski’s Puberty 2 is one of my favorite albums of all time. That Be the Cowboy is on this list is no surprise, and I only hope she can keep it up from here.

2. Joji — Ballads 1

Full disclosure: I have been waiting on this album since last year. That being said, it lived up to the hype. In Joji’s sad-boy hip-hop/R&B/lo-fi mash-up of an album, almost every song is a hit for me.

1. Rosalía — El Mal Querer

I’ll get more into this later, but Rosalía’s 2018 album is an absolute masterpiece.

Honorable mentions: Janelle Monae, Soccer Mommy, Juice Wrld, Ariana Grande

My favorite performances of 2018:

Ironically (and in many ways, unsurprisingly), my three favorite performances of this year were all opening acts.

3. Mitski — opening for Lorde

2. Lomelda — opening for Frankie Cosmos

1. Black Belt Eagle Scout — opening for Saintseneca

Notable others: Diet Cig, Typhoon, Moonracer(opening for Love Language), Run the Jewels (opening for Lorde)

Favorite Music Videos of 2018

I’m still obsessed with music videos and I so appreciate artists who really take their videos to the next level. Here are some of my favorites, all are worth watching if you haven’t seen them yet:

3. Rosalía— Malamente

As I mentioned with Rosalía’s album above, I’ll cover some of this later. However, this music video fits really well with the tune it exhibits: visuals groove to the beats, tense clips build the song, and the ever-present clap-clap that drives the song is repeated on screen with so much drama.

2. Childish Gambino — This is America

This video hit hard when it came out. It’s clean but raw, a silent scream of a video for one of the hits of the next era of Childish Gambino.

1. Hurray for the Riff-Raff — Pa’lante

This video but was shot mostly in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria’s destruction. It’s an emotional bit of film that covers the passionate core of Hurray for the Riff-Raff’s 2017 album.

Honorable mentions: Vince Staples, Janelle Monae, Half-Life

Artist of the Year: Rosalía

I’ve featured Rosalía in every section but the concert section, so it should come with little doubt that she’s this year’s pick for my artist of the year.

She excels at blending modern and traditional in her new flamenco style, not confined solely to music or video format alone. In the music video for ‘Malamente’ (above), a matador dodges a motorcycle and a Spanish Semana Santa cofradía member skateboards in an empty pool.

El Mal Querer is deeply melodramatic, gorgeous, and drawn from multiple influences: Female-centered R&B, Andalusian flamenco, more-globalized pop overtones, folk-inspired narrative storytelling, reggaeton upbeats, etc. She samples Justin Timberlake, uses a motorcycle rev as a snare drum, and shows us her incredible singing talent throughout the album. El Mal Querer follows a narrative and each song comprises a chapter. The whole album is based on the 13th-century romance called Flamenca, or Romance of Flamenca, which was likely written by a cleric to satirize the ideas of Troubadour love.

I can’t wait to see what Rosalía brings us in 2019 and beyond, and I’m so excited to see new fusions of classical and modern traditions so seamlessly like this.

Reading

Here are the books and comics that I read this year, nicely gathered by Goodreads (the missing book is Magnus Blomström’s Development Theory In Transition):

My favorite fiction was B. Catling’s The Vorrh, my favorite comic book was Saladin Ahmed’s Abbott, and my favorite nonfiction was probably James Cobb’s Globalization and the American South. I would happily recommend any of them, as well as numerous others. However, my average rating on Goodreads this year was a 3.5, so this year’s reading was a much more mixed bag than I usually seem to have.

I read 5194 pages across 31 books. This doesn’t include the piles of maybe 2 dozen more I started but haven’t finished yet. It also doesn’t include the overwhelming majority of my comic book reading, which I do through apps on my phone and computer (and don’t submit to Goodreads).

Articles

A large chunk of my reading during a year actually comes articles I read around the web. Here are some highlights from this year:

5. The Problem with Leftist Myths about Syria by Loubna Mrie

The problem with leftist myths about Syria

4. Una Huracán Llamado Bolsonaro by Raúl Zibechi

Rebelion. Una huracán llamado Bolsonaro

3. Why Millennials Are Making Memes about Wanting to Die by Deidre Olsen

Why millennials are making memes about wanting to die

2. Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism by Pankaj Mishra

Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism

1. Critical Hits in the Classroom by Phil McAndrew

Critical Hits in the Classroom

If you’re interested in some of my own writing, I’ve put some more stuff up on MilitiaWatch this year, but here’s my favorite post of 2018:

“We The People Rally”: ‘Free speech’, a militia connection, and a community foundation

And my most read post of 2018:

Sons of Liberty Illinois: Naming for legacy, community support, and identification cards

And my appearance on Jake Hanrahan’s Popular Front Podcast about American militias is available here:

Thanks for reading and here’s to a great new year!