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No, it was about this roster of heroes we’ve come to know, each vibrating at his or her (but mostly his) respective frequency, converging one final time. The result was sad, and thrilling (“On your left!”) and—most importantly—satisfying. — \u003cem>Glen Weldon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Booksmart\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhd3lo_IWJc\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beanie Feldstein is a force of nature as a high school overachiever who, on the eve of her graduation, begins to wonder if she needed to work so hard. Kaitlyn Dever, who had a fantastic 2019 between this and the Netflix series \u003cem>Unbelievable,\u003c/em> is her best pal. The two have a chemistry that’s both intimate and fraught, just like real best friends, and the tensions between them feel earned and important. Billie Lourd turns in a scene-stealing turn as a girl who just keeps showing up everywhere, and the movie builds to one of the most satisfying conclusions a comedy provides this year. — \u003cem>Linda Holmes\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Cave\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaZkwBWuN2A\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Director Feras Fayyad (\u003cem>Last Men in Aleppo\u003c/em>) has built his riveting documentary around Amani Ballour, a heroic female doctor operating a hospital in tunnels under the city of Ghouta during Syria’s civil war. Her struggle to save lives is complicated by all the usual horrors of war—bombing, starvation, insufficient medical supplies—and a few others exclusive to this conflict: the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons on its own people and sexism that leads the people benefiting from the doctor’s work to disparage her for working. — \u003cem>Bob Mondello\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Farewell\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgJT_9IGqsA\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Writer-director Lulu Wang’s film is based on the radio piece she did for \u003cem>This American Life,\u003c/em> which was based on her own life: Her beloved grandmother back in China was dying, but her family refused to tell this news to the elderly woman. In the film, Billi (Awkwafina) flies to China to be with Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen), reluctantly going along with the lie. \u003cem>The Farewell\u003c/em> is the kind of film in which characters spout broad characterizations about the cultural differences between East and West—pronouncements that \u003cem>should\u003c/em> seem ham-fisted, and land with a thud. But Wang’s direction is so intimate and sharply observed, and the performances so natural and unforced, that this warm and gentle film earns every emotion it wrings from you. — \u003cem>Glen Weldon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Fast Color\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tySUZIiXObc\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Marvel movies have been around so long that it’s easy to forget that their big-budget effects, A-list stars and sweeping scope represent just one approach to superhero storytelling. There have been several stripped-down, character-based takes on the genre before (\u003cem>Chronicle,\u003c/em> \u003cem>Super\u003c/em>), but\u003cem> Fast Color \u003c/em>exudes a confidence—and a skill for clever, unshowy world-building—that even the most bloated blockbuster would envy. Julia Hart’s visually gorgeous film about a young black woman with destructive powers (a compelling, grounded Gugu Mbatha-Raw) embraces the metaphor at the heart of the superhero idea and proceeds to unpack it in a host of fun and surprising ways. — \u003cem>Glen Weldon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Gloria Bell\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCwCdQK2Qss\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in late February, as I was grunting my way through a set of barbell squats, my egregiously heterosexual personal trainer asked me if there were any movies coming out soon that he would like to see. I remember thinking to myself: “In the magnificent \u003cem>Gloria Bell,\u003c/em> Julianne Moore plays a well-meaning but basic woman who channels the transformative, redemptive power of disco music and wrap dresses; she ultimately realizes every gay man’s dream of getting rescued from a humiliating experience by the loving embrace of Holland Taylor. The film’s entire emotional arc takes place in close-up, across the porcelain plains of Moore’s perfect face.” I told him he’d like \u003cem>The Beach Bum\u003c/em>. — \u003cem>Glen Weldon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Hustlers\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUG2U-IxPx0\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All hail Jennifer Lopez, who opened a fur coat and welcomed both Constance Wu and an entire moviegoing audience eager to see Lopez in another solid movie role. As Ramona, an experienced stripper who leads a team of scammers, she’s merciless and athletic, drawing the eye as only a movie star can. The story has a surprising heart, and Keke Palmer is particularly funny and likeable as a member of the team. It’s a good time and a good showcase for a number of performances. And that fur coat is already iconic. — \u003cem>Linda Holmes\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>I Lost My Body\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iblGg3Rpub8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first three minutes of this animated French puzzler—in which a severed hand escapes a dissection lab and embarks on a peril-filled odyssey to seek its body—contains more imaginative oomph than all of \u003cem>Frozen II\u003c/em>. And the film gets only quirkier from that bizarre beginning, bobbing and weaving through a romance between a hapless pizza delivery guy and a high-rise-dwelling hipster to contemplate profound questions about fate—and what the future holds. — \u003cem>Bob Mondello\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Irishman\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHXxVmeGQUc\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the first two of the film’s luxuriously rich 3 1/2 hours, Martin Scorsese’s epic offers the sort of raucous, splattery, mob-movie spectacle he has so often trafficked in, with a digitally de-aged Robert De Niro as the titular hit man and Al Pacino as Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. Then the screenplay nudges the actors in sadder directions, and the story gets more invested in loss. For while \u003cem>The Irishman\u003c/em> is, like many mob movies, about violence and betrayal, it’s the work of a filmmaker who has earned the right to sum up this genre. So it’s also about regrets, remorse, reckonings; it’s an elegy. — \u003cem>Bob Mondello\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Knives Out\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi-1NchUqMA\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What a delight to see a film so attentive to detail, so finely and fondly crafted, and so beautifully cast—one that has no higher goal than to entertain. Rian Johnson’s comedic whodunit gives delicious moments to every member of its all-star cast, and it spotlights Ana de Armas, who plays it mostly straight in a film full of hams and stands out anyway. Like or lump Daniel Craig’s goofy Southern accent, you have to admit this family really knows how to fight. — \u003cem>Linda Holmes\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Lighthouse\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42_UHhpq530\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two men—a crusty old salt (Willem Dafoe) and a taciturn young landlubber (Robert Pattinson)—begin a monthlong shift as keepers of a lonely lighthouse. Things proceed to go gorgeously, grotesquely and full-tilt bananapants awry. From its opening frame, a gray ship emerging from a gray mist (the film is shot in stunning black-and-white), Robert Eggers’ film careens from the hilarious to the horrific, from the gritty to the surreal. Dafoe is wonderful, but—surprisingly, perhaps—it’s Pattinson who takes the bigger swing. He goes big, and it pays off hugely. And so, \u003cem>so\u003c/em> goofily. — \u003cem>Glen Weldon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Little Women\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AST2-4db4ic\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Greta Gerwig finds a perfect \u003cem>Lady Bird\u003c/em> follow-up in the story of the March sisters. Faithful to the tone of the book and most of the particulars, Gerwig nevertheless changes the structure and the emphasis in ways that make the tale feel more satisfying and complete. Amy is more than a brat; Beth is more than a saint. Gerwig invests in all the characters, and she emphasizes how Jo (Saoirse Ronan) is a writer not only of passion but also of commerce. — \u003cem>Linda Holmes\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Marriage Story\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHi-a1n8t7M\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Director Noah Baumbach gets excellent work from Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson as a divorcing couple watching their split become more and more acrimonious. As their lawyers, Laura Dern, Ray Liotta and Alan Alda do very good supporting work, and a late piano-bar scene—one of several 2019 salutes to the power of Stephen Sondheim—layers theater history atop the film in an intriguing way. Arguments have brewed over whose side to be on (and whose side the film is on), but more than anything, it’s on the side of divorce being a demoralizing, painful experience even for people who hope it won’t be. — \u003cem>Linda Holmes\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Midsommar\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Vnghdsjmd0\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A young woman (Florence Pugh) reeling from a family tragedy finds herself in a remote Swedish commune under the flat light of a merciless midnight sun. The horrors that proceed to emerge in Ari Aster’s haunting film aren’t cloaked in shadow, and the matter-of-fact clarity with which they occur makes them all the more disturbing. The truly malevolent, unseen forces that drive \u003cem>Midsommar\u003c/em> aren’t supernatural but too unsettlingly human: grief, guilt and our need for community, whatever the emotional cost. — \u003cem>Glen Weldon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELeMaP8EPAA\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The title’s a tipoff: Quentin Tarantino’s love letter to Hollywood takes place inside a fable of Southern California that’s sun blasted by day and neon lit by night. It’s a place and a time rife with a history that, in Tarantino’s hands, gets massaged until it goes a bit feathery at the edges. Fading action star Rick Dalton (an anxious, needy Leonardo DiCaprio) and his faithful stand-in, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt, who here somehow manages to embody a humble swagger), navigate the transition from film to television, from Old Hollywood to New, and from button-down order to Manson Family chaos. — \u003cem>Glen Weldon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Pain and Glory\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVGOsrb1H6E\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Pedro Almodóvar’s quasi-autobiographical opus finds a film director (Antonio Banderas) looking back on the breakage in his life—his health, his family, his loves and, centrally, the decades-long silence between him and an actor he helped put on the map. If you know that in real life, Banderas and Almodóvar had barely spoken since their early films together, that plotline will resonate. But the parallel wouldn’t matter if the film weren’t ravishing on its own. \u003cem>Pain and Glory \u003c/em>revels in art, passion and the origins of desire; it’s Almodóvar’s most affecting, accomplished and personal work in years. — \u003cem>Bob Mondello\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Parasite\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xH0HfJHsaY\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here’s a tale of two Korean families: the wealthy Parks, who live in a designer house on a hill, and the scrappy, working-class Kims, who inhabit a grungy basement apartment across town. When the Parks employ the Kims in their home, the stage is set for writer-director Bong Joon-ho’s caustic social satire. Initially, it plays as a comedy of manners in which the haves aren’t hateful, just insensitive. By the last reel, the film becomes a metaphor for class war, and that comedy of manners has curdled into a furious snarl of rage. — \u003cem>Bob Mondello\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Us\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tzFRIQfwXg\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doppelgangers are an unsettling horror trope, but in Jordan Peele’s film, the red-suited, scissor-wielding doubles of a nice family on vacation are even creepier than usual. Lupita Nyong’o is brilliant as Red, the leader of the group of invaders, and she invents a spidery walk that is somehow almost human but very much not. Peele’s themes of what is seen and what is hidden come through loud and clear, and the ambiguous final moments are intriguing without seeming unfair. — \u003cem>Linda Holmes\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=NPR%27s+Favorite+Movies+Of+2019&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "\u003cem>Parasite, Knives Out, Avengers: Endgame, Little Women \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Marriage Story \u003c/em>are among the year-end list of 20 films that NPR critics loved the most.",
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"description": "Parasite, Knives Out, Avengers: Endgame, Little Women and Marriage Story are among the year-end list of 20 films that NPR critics loved the most.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>NPR’s movie critic and \u003cem>Pop Culture Happy Hour \u003c/em>hosts picked 20 of their favorite films of the year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>1917\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/YqNYrYUiMfg'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/YqNYrYUiMfg'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Working with stories his grandfather told him, \u003cem>Skyfall\u003c/em> director Sam Mendes has crafted a World War I battlefield saga about British soldiers tasked with getting an urgent message to the front. About 1,600 lives are at stake, so there’s urgency aplenty. And with Oscar-winning \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/09/13/760642044/cinematographer-roger-deakins-films-are-artistic-yet-unpretentious\">cinematographer Roger Deakins\u003c/a> on hand, it was bound to have epic sweep. Mendes and Deakins employ all the usual war-movie tricks, with one extra: They’ve told the story in real time, contriving to make the film—from trench explosions to airplane crashes to waterfall slaloming—look like a single continuous shot. — \u003cem>Bob Mondello\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Atlantics\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/u6b4PgKq2dE'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/u6b4PgKq2dE'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Mati Diop’s Cannes award-winning debut feature is a genre exercise in which genres morph at will, with Senegalese history twisting together with magical realism in a narrative pretzel. What begins as a labor-dispute drama becomes, by turns, a romance, a police procedural, a comedy and, finally, a haunting ghost story grounded in woman power, class resistance and the tragedy of mass migration. — \u003cem>Bob Mondello\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Avengers: Endgame\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/TcMBFSGVi1c'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/TcMBFSGVi1c'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Say what you will—you can’t deny that the final chapter of a decade of big-budget Marvel superhero storytelling didn’t feel like the culmination it was. And for all the talk of Thanos, \u003cem>Endgame\u003c/em> was never about the villain. Nor was it about\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2018/04/30/607093337/ok-lets-talk-about-the-ending-of-avengers-infinity-war\"> the Snapture\u003c/a>, which we can all now agree was pretty goofy, as heroic dilemmas go. No, it was about this roster of heroes we’ve come to know, each vibrating at his or her (but mostly his) respective frequency, converging one final time. The result was sad, and thrilling (“On your left!”) and—most importantly—satisfying. — \u003cem>Glen Weldon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Booksmart\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/Uhd3lo_IWJc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/Uhd3lo_IWJc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Beanie Feldstein is a force of nature as a high school overachiever who, on the eve of her graduation, begins to wonder if she needed to work so hard. Kaitlyn Dever, who had a fantastic 2019 between this and the Netflix series \u003cem>Unbelievable,\u003c/em> is her best pal. The two have a chemistry that’s both intimate and fraught, just like real best friends, and the tensions between them feel earned and important. Billie Lourd turns in a scene-stealing turn as a girl who just keeps showing up everywhere, and the movie builds to one of the most satisfying conclusions a comedy provides this year. — \u003cem>Linda Holmes\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Cave\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/TaZkwBWuN2A'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/TaZkwBWuN2A'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Director Feras Fayyad (\u003cem>Last Men in Aleppo\u003c/em>) has built his riveting documentary around Amani Ballour, a heroic female doctor operating a hospital in tunnels under the city of Ghouta during Syria’s civil war. Her struggle to save lives is complicated by all the usual horrors of war—bombing, starvation, insufficient medical supplies—and a few others exclusive to this conflict: the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons on its own people and sexism that leads the people benefiting from the doctor’s work to disparage her for working. — \u003cem>Bob Mondello\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Farewell\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/kgJT_9IGqsA'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/kgJT_9IGqsA'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Writer-director Lulu Wang’s film is based on the radio piece she did for \u003cem>This American Life,\u003c/em> which was based on her own life: Her beloved grandmother back in China was dying, but her family refused to tell this news to the elderly woman. In the film, Billi (Awkwafina) flies to China to be with Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen), reluctantly going along with the lie. \u003cem>The Farewell\u003c/em> is the kind of film in which characters spout broad characterizations about the cultural differences between East and West—pronouncements that \u003cem>should\u003c/em> seem ham-fisted, and land with a thud. But Wang’s direction is so intimate and sharply observed, and the performances so natural and unforced, that this warm and gentle film earns every emotion it wrings from you. — \u003cem>Glen Weldon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Fast Color\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/tySUZIiXObc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/tySUZIiXObc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Marvel movies have been around so long that it’s easy to forget that their big-budget effects, A-list stars and sweeping scope represent just one approach to superhero storytelling. There have been several stripped-down, character-based takes on the genre before (\u003cem>Chronicle,\u003c/em> \u003cem>Super\u003c/em>), but\u003cem> Fast Color \u003c/em>exudes a confidence—and a skill for clever, unshowy world-building—that even the most bloated blockbuster would envy. Julia Hart’s visually gorgeous film about a young black woman with destructive powers (a compelling, grounded Gugu Mbatha-Raw) embraces the metaphor at the heart of the superhero idea and proceeds to unpack it in a host of fun and surprising ways. — \u003cem>Glen Weldon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Gloria Bell\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/YCwCdQK2Qss'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/YCwCdQK2Qss'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Back in late February, as I was grunting my way through a set of barbell squats, my egregiously heterosexual personal trainer asked me if there were any movies coming out soon that he would like to see. I remember thinking to myself: “In the magnificent \u003cem>Gloria Bell,\u003c/em> Julianne Moore plays a well-meaning but basic woman who channels the transformative, redemptive power of disco music and wrap dresses; she ultimately realizes every gay man’s dream of getting rescued from a humiliating experience by the loving embrace of Holland Taylor. The film’s entire emotional arc takes place in close-up, across the porcelain plains of Moore’s perfect face.” I told him he’d like \u003cem>The Beach Bum\u003c/em>. — \u003cem>Glen Weldon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Hustlers\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/LUG2U-IxPx0'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/LUG2U-IxPx0'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>All hail Jennifer Lopez, who opened a fur coat and welcomed both Constance Wu and an entire moviegoing audience eager to see Lopez in another solid movie role. As Ramona, an experienced stripper who leads a team of scammers, she’s merciless and athletic, drawing the eye as only a movie star can. The story has a surprising heart, and Keke Palmer is particularly funny and likeable as a member of the team. It’s a good time and a good showcase for a number of performances. And that fur coat is already iconic. — \u003cem>Linda Holmes\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>I Lost My Body\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/iblGg3Rpub8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/iblGg3Rpub8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>The first three minutes of this animated French puzzler—in which a severed hand escapes a dissection lab and embarks on a peril-filled odyssey to seek its body—contains more imaginative oomph than all of \u003cem>Frozen II\u003c/em>. And the film gets only quirkier from that bizarre beginning, bobbing and weaving through a romance between a hapless pizza delivery guy and a high-rise-dwelling hipster to contemplate profound questions about fate—and what the future holds. — \u003cem>Bob Mondello\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Irishman\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/WHXxVmeGQUc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/WHXxVmeGQUc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>For the first two of the film’s luxuriously rich 3 1/2 hours, Martin Scorsese’s epic offers the sort of raucous, splattery, mob-movie spectacle he has so often trafficked in, with a digitally de-aged Robert De Niro as the titular hit man and Al Pacino as Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. Then the screenplay nudges the actors in sadder directions, and the story gets more invested in loss. For while \u003cem>The Irishman\u003c/em> is, like many mob movies, about violence and betrayal, it’s the work of a filmmaker who has earned the right to sum up this genre. So it’s also about regrets, remorse, reckonings; it’s an elegy. — \u003cem>Bob Mondello\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Knives Out\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/xi-1NchUqMA'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/xi-1NchUqMA'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>What a delight to see a film so attentive to detail, so finely and fondly crafted, and so beautifully cast—one that has no higher goal than to entertain. Rian Johnson’s comedic whodunit gives delicious moments to every member of its all-star cast, and it spotlights Ana de Armas, who plays it mostly straight in a film full of hams and stands out anyway. Like or lump Daniel Craig’s goofy Southern accent, you have to admit this family really knows how to fight. — \u003cem>Linda Holmes\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The Lighthouse\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/42_UHhpq530'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/42_UHhpq530'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Two men—a crusty old salt (Willem Dafoe) and a taciturn young landlubber (Robert Pattinson)—begin a monthlong shift as keepers of a lonely lighthouse. Things proceed to go gorgeously, grotesquely and full-tilt bananapants awry. From its opening frame, a gray ship emerging from a gray mist (the film is shot in stunning black-and-white), Robert Eggers’ film careens from the hilarious to the horrific, from the gritty to the surreal. Dafoe is wonderful, but—surprisingly, perhaps—it’s Pattinson who takes the bigger swing. He goes big, and it pays off hugely. And so, \u003cem>so\u003c/em> goofily. — \u003cem>Glen Weldon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Little Women\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/AST2-4db4ic'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/AST2-4db4ic'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Greta Gerwig finds a perfect \u003cem>Lady Bird\u003c/em> follow-up in the story of the March sisters. Faithful to the tone of the book and most of the particulars, Gerwig nevertheless changes the structure and the emphasis in ways that make the tale feel more satisfying and complete. Amy is more than a brat; Beth is more than a saint. Gerwig invests in all the characters, and she emphasizes how Jo (Saoirse Ronan) is a writer not only of passion but also of commerce. — \u003cem>Linda Holmes\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Marriage Story\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/BHi-a1n8t7M'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/BHi-a1n8t7M'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Director Noah Baumbach gets excellent work from Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson as a divorcing couple watching their split become more and more acrimonious. As their lawyers, Laura Dern, Ray Liotta and Alan Alda do very good supporting work, and a late piano-bar scene—one of several 2019 salutes to the power of Stephen Sondheim—layers theater history atop the film in an intriguing way. Arguments have brewed over whose side to be on (and whose side the film is on), but more than anything, it’s on the side of divorce being a demoralizing, painful experience even for people who hope it won’t be. — \u003cem>Linda Holmes\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Midsommar\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/1Vnghdsjmd0'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/1Vnghdsjmd0'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>A young woman (Florence Pugh) reeling from a family tragedy finds herself in a remote Swedish commune under the flat light of a merciless midnight sun. The horrors that proceed to emerge in Ari Aster’s haunting film aren’t cloaked in shadow, and the matter-of-fact clarity with which they occur makes them all the more disturbing. The truly malevolent, unseen forces that drive \u003cem>Midsommar\u003c/em> aren’t supernatural but too unsettlingly human: grief, guilt and our need for community, whatever the emotional cost. — \u003cem>Glen Weldon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/ELeMaP8EPAA'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/ELeMaP8EPAA'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>The title’s a tipoff: Quentin Tarantino’s love letter to Hollywood takes place inside a fable of Southern California that’s sun blasted by day and neon lit by night. It’s a place and a time rife with a history that, in Tarantino’s hands, gets massaged until it goes a bit feathery at the edges. Fading action star Rick Dalton (an anxious, needy Leonardo DiCaprio) and his faithful stand-in, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt, who here somehow manages to embody a humble swagger), navigate the transition from film to television, from Old Hollywood to New, and from button-down order to Manson Family chaos. — \u003cem>Glen Weldon\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Pain and Glory\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/mVGOsrb1H6E'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/mVGOsrb1H6E'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Pedro Almodóvar’s quasi-autobiographical opus finds a film director (Antonio Banderas) looking back on the breakage in his life—his health, his family, his loves and, centrally, the decades-long silence between him and an actor he helped put on the map. If you know that in real life, Banderas and Almodóvar had barely spoken since their early films together, that plotline will resonate. But the parallel wouldn’t matter if the film weren’t ravishing on its own. \u003cem>Pain and Glory \u003c/em>revels in art, passion and the origins of desire; it’s Almodóvar’s most affecting, accomplished and personal work in years. — \u003cem>Bob Mondello\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Parasite\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/5xH0HfJHsaY'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/5xH0HfJHsaY'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Here’s a tale of two Korean families: the wealthy Parks, who live in a designer house on a hill, and the scrappy, working-class Kims, who inhabit a grungy basement apartment across town. When the Parks employ the Kims in their home, the stage is set for writer-director Bong Joon-ho’s caustic social satire. Initially, it plays as a comedy of manners in which the haves aren’t hateful, just insensitive. By the last reel, the film becomes a metaphor for class war, and that comedy of manners has curdled into a furious snarl of rage. — \u003cem>Bob Mondello\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Us\u003c/strong>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/1tzFRIQfwXg'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/1tzFRIQfwXg'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doppelgangers are an unsettling horror trope, but in Jordan Peele’s film, the red-suited, scissor-wielding doubles of a nice family on vacation are even creepier than usual. Lupita Nyong’o is brilliant as Red, the leader of the group of invaders, and she invents a spidery walk that is somehow almost human but very much not. Peele’s themes of what is seen and what is hidden come through loud and clear, and the ambiguous final moments are intriguing without seeming unfair. — \u003cem>Linda Holmes\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=NPR%27s+Favorite+Movies+Of+2019&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "how-womens-birth-control-burdens-are-exacerbated-by-pop-culture",
"title": "How Women’s Birth Control Burdens are Exacerbated by Pop Culture",
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"content": "\u003cp>Nearly every woman who uses birth control has a story about the worst birth control-related thing that’s ever happened to her. In my friend group alone, there have been contraception-induced blood clots, never-ending periods, severe bouts of depression, and even a stroke and subsequent lawsuit. I too have had several “worsts” over the years, but a brand new personal record was set last month at what was supposed to be a routine OB/GYN appointment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Afterwards at home, emotionally drained, in a significant amount of pain and desperately looking for distraction, I made the mistake of opening Twitter. I was greeted by this:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/bader_diedrich/status/1197600303928922112\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On any other day, it may not have even registered. But this happened to be the day I had attempted, unsuccessfully, to get an IUD implanted. Multiple women had warned me in advance that this would be a very painful procedure, and ultimately the process involved agonizing forced cervical dilation, two injections into my cervix, and bleeding and cramping so awful that it gave me insight into what childbirth might be like. At the end of it all, the process failed for reasons I won’t bore you with. When I apologized for crying, my doctor reassured me that other women often have similar responses—or simply just pass out—during the procedure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then, the “hard pass” tweet above. Needless to say, coming home to the sight of multiple men, including ones that consider themselves feminist allies (both Patton Oswalt and Cameron Kasky “liked” Diedrich Bader’s tweet) gleefully acting as if getting a single, external birth control injection was a preposterous proposition didn’t just feel like a slap in the face. It felt like a metaphor for how birth control is treated across the board in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/the_tevvster/status/1331353778579267586\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since the arrival of the very first FDA-approved birth control pill in 1960, the burden of avoiding unwanted pregnancy has fallen almost entirely on the shoulders of women. In the \u003ca href=\"https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/contraceptive-use-united-states\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">United States in 2014\u003c/a>, over 13 million women were using some form of hormonal birth control, versus 5 million condom users.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The right to access the pill was hard-fought (between 1965 and 1972, only married couples had permission to use it) and sparked a wave of newfound liberation for women once it was available to all. All these years later, there is a leftover sense—exacerbated by increasingly \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/79915/the-frightening-realism-of-the-handmaids-tale-is-inspiring-costumed-protests-and-a-lot-of-freaking-out\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">draconian restrictions\u003c/a> on women’s reproductive healthcare—that women should be grateful to have access to birth control at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And since we’re so busy desperately hanging onto whatever bodily autonomy we can grasp, we rarely stop to ask why the onus of birth control is, outside of condoms and vasectomies, entirely on us. This despite the plethora of side effects (well-documented since the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nwhn.org/pill-hearings/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">1970 Senate hearings about pill safety\u003c/a>) and physical trauma that we suffer in the process of using it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As modern inequality goes, the division of responsibility between men and women when it comes to contraception is woefully under-examined. A trial for injectable birth control for men \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/11/03/500549503/male-birth-control-study-killed-after-men-complain-about-side-effects\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">was halted\u003c/a> in 2016 because subjects complained of side effects like muscle aches, acne and mood changes—all things women routinely abide with all forms of hormonal contraception. The abandonment of the study constituted a major disappointment for millions of women, especially given how long it took to even get a trial for men at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time, one researcher named \u003ca href=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/health-47691567\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Allan Pacey told the BBC\u003c/a> that, “Unfortunately, so far, there has been very little pharmaceutical company interest in bringing a male contraceptive pill to the market, for reasons that I don’t fully understand but I suspect are more down to business than science.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Bader’s tweet proved, many men seem to have no idea of the physical, mental and financial strain that contraception routinely places on women. Just months ago, one male acquaintance even told me that birth control was mostly designed for women because it’s “easier for women’s bodies to deal with.” When I pushed back, he couldn’t explain how or why he believed this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Truthfully, that misconception is not entirely his fault either. Women’s birth control burdens are grossly under-acknowledged, under-discussed and under-depicted in American pop culture. And while we have seen increasingly frank and realistic depictions of abortion on TV in recent years—thanks to shows like \u003cem>Shrill\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Dear White People\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Girls\u003c/em>, \u003cem>GLOW\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Scandal\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Grey’s Anatomy\u003c/em>—women’s contraceptive issues remain pretty much out of the picture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Granted, \u003cem>Master of None\u003c/em>‘s premiere did feature a magnificently awkward first-date Plan B purchase, and \u003cem>Shrill\u003c/em> brilliantly depicted the high cost of morning-after pills (main character Annie always paid for them, not her boyfriend). But emergency contraception is no reflection of what women most regularly put up with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Evaluating passing mentions of women’s birth control on TV, they tend to either remind women how lucky we are to have access to it (like the \u003ca href=\"https://www.vulture.com/2013/06/mad-men-a-history-of-peggy-and-joan.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">episode of \u003cem>Mad Men\u003c/em>\u003c/a> when Joan tells Peggy about a medication with a side effect that acts like the pill), or they gloss over side effects completely. In a \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2510746/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2012 episode\u003c/a> of \u003cem>The Mindy Project\u003c/em>, for example, when a college student tells Dr. Lahiri, “I heard that birth control makes you fat and cranky,” the doc simply quips back, “So does pregnancy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Truth be told, television has been doing a terrible job of reflecting women’s reproductive realities for decades. Teens watching sitcoms from the ’90s, for example, might be left with the impression that women’s contraception of choice back then was the diaphragm. \u003cem>Sex and the City\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Felicity \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Seinfeld\u003c/em> all had diaphragm storylines at a time when \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/NCHS/data/series/sr_23/sr23_029.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">less than 1%\u003c/a> of American women actually used them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while \u003cem>Seinfeld\u003c/em>‘s “sponge-worthy” episode remains one of the series’ funniest, even in 1995 it seemed like an odd choice for the thoroughly modern Elaine Benes. “Each episode, even the \u003cem>Sex and the City\u003c/em> episode,” notes \u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jpg9qd/90s-sitcoms-were-strangely-obsessed-with-this-unpopular-form-of-birth-control\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Vice\u003c/em> \u003c/a>journalist Kaleigh Rogers, “was written by a man who perhaps just didn’t have as keen of an awareness that diaphragms weren’t really a thing any more.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And therein lies the problem. There still aren’t enough female voices in writers’ rooms or on TV, and the ones that are there aren’t, for the most part, concerning themselves with this topic. The fact that \u003cem>Shrill—\u003c/em>an exception to the rule\u003cem>—\u003c/em>managed to cause a full-blown \u003ca href=\"https://www.glamour.com/story/what-shrill-gets-right-and-wrong-about-the-morning-after-pill-weight-limit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">internet panic\u003c/a> with its revelation that emergency contraception is “only dosed for women 175 pounds and under” speaks volumes about TV characters’ need to be having this conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Birth control as the near-exclusive domain of women wasn’t an idea conceived by pop culture, but it’s not an assumption that’s getting any pushback from it, either. And as long as TV continues to ignore daily birth control realities for women, it halts the national conversation, helps stall progress at the pharmaceutical level, and keeps men in the dark.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Nearly every woman who uses birth control has a story about the worst birth control-related thing that’s ever happened to her. In my friend group alone, there have been contraception-induced blood clots, never-ending periods, severe bouts of depression, and even a stroke and subsequent lawsuit. I too have had several “worsts” over the years, but a brand new personal record was set last month at what was supposed to be a routine OB/GYN appointment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Afterwards at home, emotionally drained, in a significant amount of pain and desperately looking for distraction, I made the mistake of opening Twitter. I was greeted by this:\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>On any other day, it may not have even registered. But this happened to be the day I had attempted, unsuccessfully, to get an IUD implanted. Multiple women had warned me in advance that this would be a very painful procedure, and ultimately the process involved agonizing forced cervical dilation, two injections into my cervix, and bleeding and cramping so awful that it gave me insight into what childbirth might be like. At the end of it all, the process failed for reasons I won’t bore you with. When I apologized for crying, my doctor reassured me that other women often have similar responses—or simply just pass out—during the procedure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then, the “hard pass” tweet above. Needless to say, coming home to the sight of multiple men, including ones that consider themselves feminist allies (both Patton Oswalt and Cameron Kasky “liked” Diedrich Bader’s tweet) gleefully acting as if getting a single, external birth control injection was a preposterous proposition didn’t just feel like a slap in the face. It felt like a metaphor for how birth control is treated across the board in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>Since the arrival of the very first FDA-approved birth control pill in 1960, the burden of avoiding unwanted pregnancy has fallen almost entirely on the shoulders of women. In the \u003ca href=\"https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/contraceptive-use-united-states\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">United States in 2014\u003c/a>, over 13 million women were using some form of hormonal birth control, versus 5 million condom users.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The right to access the pill was hard-fought (between 1965 and 1972, only married couples had permission to use it) and sparked a wave of newfound liberation for women once it was available to all. All these years later, there is a leftover sense—exacerbated by increasingly \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/79915/the-frightening-realism-of-the-handmaids-tale-is-inspiring-costumed-protests-and-a-lot-of-freaking-out\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">draconian restrictions\u003c/a> on women’s reproductive healthcare—that women should be grateful to have access to birth control at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And since we’re so busy desperately hanging onto whatever bodily autonomy we can grasp, we rarely stop to ask why the onus of birth control is, outside of condoms and vasectomies, entirely on us. This despite the plethora of side effects (well-documented since the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nwhn.org/pill-hearings/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">1970 Senate hearings about pill safety\u003c/a>) and physical trauma that we suffer in the process of using it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As modern inequality goes, the division of responsibility between men and women when it comes to contraception is woefully under-examined. A trial for injectable birth control for men \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/11/03/500549503/male-birth-control-study-killed-after-men-complain-about-side-effects\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">was halted\u003c/a> in 2016 because subjects complained of side effects like muscle aches, acne and mood changes—all things women routinely abide with all forms of hormonal contraception. The abandonment of the study constituted a major disappointment for millions of women, especially given how long it took to even get a trial for men at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the time, one researcher named \u003ca href=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/health-47691567\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Allan Pacey told the BBC\u003c/a> that, “Unfortunately, so far, there has been very little pharmaceutical company interest in bringing a male contraceptive pill to the market, for reasons that I don’t fully understand but I suspect are more down to business than science.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Bader’s tweet proved, many men seem to have no idea of the physical, mental and financial strain that contraception routinely places on women. Just months ago, one male acquaintance even told me that birth control was mostly designed for women because it’s “easier for women’s bodies to deal with.” When I pushed back, he couldn’t explain how or why he believed this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Truthfully, that misconception is not entirely his fault either. Women’s birth control burdens are grossly under-acknowledged, under-discussed and under-depicted in American pop culture. And while we have seen increasingly frank and realistic depictions of abortion on TV in recent years—thanks to shows like \u003cem>Shrill\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Dear White People\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Girls\u003c/em>, \u003cem>GLOW\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Scandal\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Grey’s Anatomy\u003c/em>—women’s contraceptive issues remain pretty much out of the picture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Granted, \u003cem>Master of None\u003c/em>‘s premiere did feature a magnificently awkward first-date Plan B purchase, and \u003cem>Shrill\u003c/em> brilliantly depicted the high cost of morning-after pills (main character Annie always paid for them, not her boyfriend). But emergency contraception is no reflection of what women most regularly put up with.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Evaluating passing mentions of women’s birth control on TV, they tend to either remind women how lucky we are to have access to it (like the \u003ca href=\"https://www.vulture.com/2013/06/mad-men-a-history-of-peggy-and-joan.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">episode of \u003cem>Mad Men\u003c/em>\u003c/a> when Joan tells Peggy about a medication with a side effect that acts like the pill), or they gloss over side effects completely. In a \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2510746/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2012 episode\u003c/a> of \u003cem>The Mindy Project\u003c/em>, for example, when a college student tells Dr. Lahiri, “I heard that birth control makes you fat and cranky,” the doc simply quips back, “So does pregnancy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Truth be told, television has been doing a terrible job of reflecting women’s reproductive realities for decades. Teens watching sitcoms from the ’90s, for example, might be left with the impression that women’s contraception of choice back then was the diaphragm. \u003cem>Sex and the City\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Friends\u003c/em>, \u003cem>Felicity \u003c/em>and \u003cem>Seinfeld\u003c/em> all had diaphragm storylines at a time when \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/NCHS/data/series/sr_23/sr23_029.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">less than 1%\u003c/a> of American women actually used them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And while \u003cem>Seinfeld\u003c/em>‘s “sponge-worthy” episode remains one of the series’ funniest, even in 1995 it seemed like an odd choice for the thoroughly modern Elaine Benes. “Each episode, even the \u003cem>Sex and the City\u003c/em> episode,” notes \u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jpg9qd/90s-sitcoms-were-strangely-obsessed-with-this-unpopular-form-of-birth-control\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Vice\u003c/em> \u003c/a>journalist Kaleigh Rogers, “was written by a man who perhaps just didn’t have as keen of an awareness that diaphragms weren’t really a thing any more.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And therein lies the problem. There still aren’t enough female voices in writers’ rooms or on TV, and the ones that are there aren’t, for the most part, concerning themselves with this topic. The fact that \u003cem>Shrill—\u003c/em>an exception to the rule\u003cem>—\u003c/em>managed to cause a full-blown \u003ca href=\"https://www.glamour.com/story/what-shrill-gets-right-and-wrong-about-the-morning-after-pill-weight-limit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">internet panic\u003c/a> with its revelation that emergency contraception is “only dosed for women 175 pounds and under” speaks volumes about TV characters’ need to be having this conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "After 25 Years, Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas is You' is No. 1 at Last",
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"content": "\u003cp>It’s no longer uncommon for pop songs to experience a slow rise to the top of the pop charts. Just this year, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/718208340/lil-nas-x\">Lil Nas X\u003c/a>‘s “Old Town Road” followed a long and \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/07/18/743121439/lil-nas-x-old-town-road-billie-eilish-bad-guy-remix-billboard-charts\">remix-strewn\u003c/a> path to 19 weeks at No. 1, while \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/502301111/lizzo\">Lizzo\u003c/a> experienced huge hits with songs originally released in 2017 (“Truth Hurts”) and 2016 (“Good As Hell”). But this is another level altogether: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/15324690/mariah-carey\">Mariah Carey\u003c/a>‘s holiday juggernaut “All I Want for Christmas Is You” \u003cem>just this week\u003c/em> topped the \u003cem>Billboard\u003c/em> Hot 100 for the first time in the song’s 25-year history.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXQViqx6GMY\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in 2013, my colleague and pal \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/706635917/chris-klimek\">Chris Klimek\u003c/a>—as thoroughgoing an expert on Christmas music as you’ll find—\u003ca href=\"https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/12/new-christmas-songs-from-kelly-clarkson-and-mary-j-blige-wont-become-holiday-classics-why.html\">wrote a piece for \u003cem>Slate\u003c/em>\u003c/a> in which he wondered why no new holiday songs had pierced the public consciousness since “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” (As he wrote at the time, “The holiday-song canon is closed.”) Now, at least for this particular week in December 2019, Carey’s classic doesn’t just represent the last word in holiday songs; it’s the last word in \u003cem>songs\u003c/em>, period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The newfound chart dominance of “All I Want for Christmas”—it climbed as high as No. 3 last holiday season—can be chalked up to any number of factors, including nostalgia, the ever-growing influence of streaming services and the fact that “All I Want for Christmas” has aged remarkably well. It’s a deeply durable song; as if you need proof, consider 1) that it’s probably already stuck in your head and 2) Carey’s 2012 performance of the song with Jimmy Fallon, The Roots and an assortment of instruments found in any given elementary-school classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWEfszb9h8Q&feature=emb_logo\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But you also can’t discount the sheer accumulated strength of Carey herself: with “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” the singer is just one No. 1 hit shy of the record—20—set by \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/15229570/the-beatles\">The Beatles\u003c/a>. When she had a mere 18 No. 1 hits, she was mired in a tie for second with some also-ran by the name of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/15624007/elvis-presley\">Elvis Presley\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fortunately for Lil Nas X, the record \u003cem>he\u003c/em> set in 2019—those 19 consecutive weeks at No. 1—is almost certainly safe, given that interest in “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is likely to decline, however temporarily, in just a week and a half.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Merry Christmas (Deluxe Anniversary Edition) \u003cem>is out now via \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://mariahcarey.lnk.to/MerryChristmas25\">\u003cem>Legacy Recordings\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=After+25+Years%2C+Mariah+Carey%27s+%27All+I+Want+For+Christmas+Is+You%27+Is+No.+1+At+Last&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Released in 1994, this modern Christmas classic tapped out at No. 3 last season. This year, the Queen of Christmas claims her No. 1 crown. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>It’s no longer uncommon for pop songs to experience a slow rise to the top of the pop charts. Just this year, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/718208340/lil-nas-x\">Lil Nas X\u003c/a>‘s “Old Town Road” followed a long and \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/07/18/743121439/lil-nas-x-old-town-road-billie-eilish-bad-guy-remix-billboard-charts\">remix-strewn\u003c/a> path to 19 weeks at No. 1, while \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/502301111/lizzo\">Lizzo\u003c/a> experienced huge hits with songs originally released in 2017 (“Truth Hurts”) and 2016 (“Good As Hell”). But this is another level altogether: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/15324690/mariah-carey\">Mariah Carey\u003c/a>‘s holiday juggernaut “All I Want for Christmas Is You” \u003cem>just this week\u003c/em> topped the \u003cem>Billboard\u003c/em> Hot 100 for the first time in the song’s 25-year history.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/yXQViqx6GMY'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/yXQViqx6GMY'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Back in 2013, my colleague and pal \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/people/706635917/chris-klimek\">Chris Klimek\u003c/a>—as thoroughgoing an expert on Christmas music as you’ll find—\u003ca href=\"https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/12/new-christmas-songs-from-kelly-clarkson-and-mary-j-blige-wont-become-holiday-classics-why.html\">wrote a piece for \u003cem>Slate\u003c/em>\u003c/a> in which he wondered why no new holiday songs had pierced the public consciousness since “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” (As he wrote at the time, “The holiday-song canon is closed.”) Now, at least for this particular week in December 2019, Carey’s classic doesn’t just represent the last word in holiday songs; it’s the last word in \u003cem>songs\u003c/em>, period.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The newfound chart dominance of “All I Want for Christmas”—it climbed as high as No. 3 last holiday season—can be chalked up to any number of factors, including nostalgia, the ever-growing influence of streaming services and the fact that “All I Want for Christmas” has aged remarkably well. It’s a deeply durable song; as if you need proof, consider 1) that it’s probably already stuck in your head and 2) Carey’s 2012 performance of the song with Jimmy Fallon, The Roots and an assortment of instruments found in any given elementary-school classroom.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/sWEfszb9h8Q'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/sWEfszb9h8Q'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But you also can’t discount the sheer accumulated strength of Carey herself: with “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” the singer is just one No. 1 hit shy of the record—20—set by \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/15229570/the-beatles\">The Beatles\u003c/a>. When she had a mere 18 No. 1 hits, she was mired in a tie for second with some also-ran by the name of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/15624007/elvis-presley\">Elvis Presley\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fortunately for Lil Nas X, the record \u003cem>he\u003c/em> set in 2019—those 19 consecutive weeks at No. 1—is almost certainly safe, given that interest in “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is likely to decline, however temporarily, in just a week and a half.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Merry Christmas (Deluxe Anniversary Edition) \u003cem>is out now via \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://mariahcarey.lnk.to/MerryChristmas25\">\u003cem>Legacy Recordings\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=After+25+Years%2C+Mariah+Carey%27s+%27All+I+Want+For+Christmas+Is+You%27+Is+No.+1+At+Last&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Facing a barrage of criticism for pulling ads featuring a lesbian couple from its airwaves, the Hallmark Channel has reversed course, and says it will now work to “reinstate the commercials.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The ad for the wedding planning site Zola shows a couple at the altar, wishing they had used the service before their big day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Do you think Zola could have made planning your perfect wedding easier?” asks the officiant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We do!” The two women say, before kissing and walking down the aisle as a married couple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pVnnGK6BP4&feature=emb_logo\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hallmark pulled the ad and three others featuring the couple after pressure from One Million Moms, an organization which says the ad promotes homosexuality. The group, a division of the conservative American Family Association, \u003ca href=\"https://onemillionmoms.com/current-campaigns/hallmark-is-now-airing-lgbt-commercials-open-to-lgbt-movies/\">cited\u003c/a> complaints from \u003ca href=\"https://www.complaintboard.com/hallmark-channel-l12907.html\">an online complaint board\u003c/a> about the channel, one which said: “Please Hallmark … we r fed up with having the gay agenda crammed down our throats! You are one of the few channels we thought we would not have to deal with this issue!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Late on Sunday, the Hallmark Channel released \u003ca href=\"https://corporate.hallmark.com/news-article/hallmark-affirms-its-commitment-to-diversity-and-inclusion/?fbclid=IwAR2H2vSNun-yM4fAq7Fyxxj038mXrpZdykCBt0kfP6KXIyBIo8z7N6TWtF8\">a statement\u003c/a> apologizing for the ad’s removal, saying it “has been agonizing over this decision as we’ve seen the hurt it has unintentionally caused.” Taking the ad off the air was “the wrong decision,” the network said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/hallmarkchannel/status/1206422589725433857\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Hallmark will be working with GLAAD to better represent the LGBTQ community across our portfolio of brands. The Hallmark Channel will be reaching out to Zola to reestablish our partnership and reinstate the commercials,” \u003ca href=\"https://corporate.hallmark.com/news-article/hallmark-affirms-its-commitment-to-diversity-and-inclusion/?fbclid=IwAR2H2vSNun-yM4fAq7Fyxxj038mXrpZdykCBt0kfP6KXIyBIo8z7N6TWtF8\">according to the statement\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hallmark originally said that it chose to remove the ads because the controversy was a distraction. “The debate surrounding these commercials on all sides was distracting from the purpose of our network, which is to provide entertainment value,” it said in a statement to the Associated Press by Molly Biwer, senior vice president for public affairs and communications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Hallmark brand is never going to be divisive,” Biwer said in an interview with \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/7926c82c3a646ebe73c13d98d1c43bd7\">the AP\u003c/a>. “We don’t want to generate controversy, we’ve tried very hard to stay out of it … we just felt it was in the best interest of the brand to pull them and not continue to generate controversy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zola submitted six ads to Hallmark, and all had been airing since Dec. 2. The company says Hallmark did not object to an ad in which a heterosexual couple was seen kissing, but flagged the four ads that included the lesbian couple. Zola has since pulled its other ads from the channel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The only difference between the commercials that were flagged and the ones that were approved was that the commercials that did not meet Hallmark’s standards included a lesbian couple kissing,” Zola’s chief marketing officer, Mike Chi, said in a statement. “All kisses, couples and marriages are equal celebrations of love and we will no longer be advertising on Hallmark.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis called the decision hypocritical and discriminatory. “LGBTQ families are part of family programming,” she said in \u003ca href=\"https://deadline.com/2019/12/hallmark-channel-at-center-of-storm-over-ad-featuring-lesbian-brides-kissing-1202809545/\">a statement\u003c/a> to Deadline. “Advertisers on The Hallmark Channel should see this news and question whether they want to be associated with a network that chooses to bow to fringe anti-LGBTQ activist groups, which solely exist to harm LGBTQ families.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Netflix, which has pushed hard into Hallmark’s market as a provider of feel-good holiday movies, threw shade at the company on Saturday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Titles Featuring Lesbians Joyfully Existing And Also It’s Christmas Can We Just Let People Love Who They Love,” it \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1206012403126657024\">wrote \u003c/a>on Twitter, referencing Netflix’s hyper-specific content categories. The tweet was accompanied by a still that trumpeted its own approach to LGBTQ content: a scene of two girls kissing in the high school holiday movie \u003cem>Let It Snow\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1206012403126657024\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Facing+Backlash%2C+Hallmark+Channel+Says+It+Will+%27Reinstate%27+Ad+Of+Lesbian+Brides+&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hallmark pulled the ad and three others featuring the couple after pressure from One Million Moms, an organization which says the ad promotes homosexuality. The group, a division of the conservative American Family Association, \u003ca href=\"https://onemillionmoms.com/current-campaigns/hallmark-is-now-airing-lgbt-commercials-open-to-lgbt-movies/\">cited\u003c/a> complaints from \u003ca href=\"https://www.complaintboard.com/hallmark-channel-l12907.html\">an online complaint board\u003c/a> about the channel, one which said: “Please Hallmark … we r fed up with having the gay agenda crammed down our throats! You are one of the few channels we thought we would not have to deal with this issue!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Late on Sunday, the Hallmark Channel released \u003ca href=\"https://corporate.hallmark.com/news-article/hallmark-affirms-its-commitment-to-diversity-and-inclusion/?fbclid=IwAR2H2vSNun-yM4fAq7Fyxxj038mXrpZdykCBt0kfP6KXIyBIo8z7N6TWtF8\">a statement\u003c/a> apologizing for the ad’s removal, saying it “has been agonizing over this decision as we’ve seen the hurt it has unintentionally caused.” Taking the ad off the air was “the wrong decision,” the network said.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>“Hallmark will be working with GLAAD to better represent the LGBTQ community across our portfolio of brands. The Hallmark Channel will be reaching out to Zola to reestablish our partnership and reinstate the commercials,” \u003ca href=\"https://corporate.hallmark.com/news-article/hallmark-affirms-its-commitment-to-diversity-and-inclusion/?fbclid=IwAR2H2vSNun-yM4fAq7Fyxxj038mXrpZdykCBt0kfP6KXIyBIo8z7N6TWtF8\">according to the statement\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hallmark originally said that it chose to remove the ads because the controversy was a distraction. “The debate surrounding these commercials on all sides was distracting from the purpose of our network, which is to provide entertainment value,” it said in a statement to the Associated Press by Molly Biwer, senior vice president for public affairs and communications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The Hallmark brand is never going to be divisive,” Biwer said in an interview with \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/7926c82c3a646ebe73c13d98d1c43bd7\">the AP\u003c/a>. “We don’t want to generate controversy, we’ve tried very hard to stay out of it … we just felt it was in the best interest of the brand to pull them and not continue to generate controversy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Zola submitted six ads to Hallmark, and all had been airing since Dec. 2. The company says Hallmark did not object to an ad in which a heterosexual couple was seen kissing, but flagged the four ads that included the lesbian couple. Zola has since pulled its other ads from the channel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The only difference between the commercials that were flagged and the ones that were approved was that the commercials that did not meet Hallmark’s standards included a lesbian couple kissing,” Zola’s chief marketing officer, Mike Chi, said in a statement. “All kisses, couples and marriages are equal celebrations of love and we will no longer be advertising on Hallmark.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis called the decision hypocritical and discriminatory. “LGBTQ families are part of family programming,” she said in \u003ca href=\"https://deadline.com/2019/12/hallmark-channel-at-center-of-storm-over-ad-featuring-lesbian-brides-kissing-1202809545/\">a statement\u003c/a> to Deadline. “Advertisers on The Hallmark Channel should see this news and question whether they want to be associated with a network that chooses to bow to fringe anti-LGBTQ activist groups, which solely exist to harm LGBTQ families.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Netflix, which has pushed hard into Hallmark’s market as a provider of feel-good holiday movies, threw shade at the company on Saturday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Titles Featuring Lesbians Joyfully Existing And Also It’s Christmas Can We Just Let People Love Who They Love,” it \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/netflix/status/1206012403126657024\">wrote \u003c/a>on Twitter, referencing Netflix’s hyper-specific content categories. The tweet was accompanied by a still that trumpeted its own approach to LGBTQ content: a scene of two girls kissing in the high school holiday movie \u003cem>Let It Snow\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Charlize Theron Explores the Complexities of #MeToo in 'Bombshell'",
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"content": "\u003cp>In 1994, actor Charlize Theron was just starting out in show business when a famous director invited her to an audition at his home. When she showed up, she found the director drinking and in his pajamas. He touched her leg; she apologized and left in a hurry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Driving away, Theron became angry—with herself: “I just kept hitting the steering wheel,” she says. “I put a lot of blame on myself … that I didn’t say all the right things, and that I didn’t tell him to take a hike, and that I didn’t do all of those things that we so want to believe we’ll do in those situations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t until years later that Theron understood her experience as sexual harassment. It’s a subject that she’s taking on in her latest film, \u003cem>Bombshell\u003c/em>, which follows the women of Fox News who came forward to accuse then-CEO and chairman \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/18/528925119/roger-ailes-former-fox-news-ceo-dies-at-77\">Roger Ailes\u003c/a> of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/21/486938004/roger-ailes-accused-of-sexual-harrassment-out-as-chairman-of-fox-news\">sexual harassment\u003c/a>. Theron is one of the film’s producers and also plays former Fox News host \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2016/12/07/504622630/megyn-kelly-on-trump-and-the-media-were-in-a-dangerous-phase-right-now\">Megyn Kelly\u003c/a>, who wrote about Ailes’ unwanted sexual advances in her 2016 book, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/books/titles/502042223/settle-for-more\">Settle for More\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Theron says she felt conflicted about playing Kelly: “We have different points of view on a lot of issues,” she says. “And she has definitely said things in the past that I took issue with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nevertheless, Theron embraced the opportunity to explore what she calls the “grey area” of sexual harassment: “It’s not always physical assault. It’s not always rape,” she says. “There’s a psychological damage that happens for women in the everyday casualness of language, touch or threat—threat of losing your job. Those are things I’ve definitely encountered.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2G9-KhBek8\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>Interview Highlights\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the movie’s portrayal of the women who worked for Fox News\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of these women have been somewhat hypocritical when it comes to sexual harassment, and have made statements about sexual harassment that have not necessarily been about really bettering the workplace for women or just for women in general. … We weren’t trying to make them heroes. We weren’t trying to whitewash all of the things that they have said in the past. We were going to pepper those things into the film so that we were authentic to them and the story and still feel like, through all of that, that what they did was still incredible. They took down this media mogul, and that has never happened before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On confronting the director who sexually harassed her years later—and it being unsatisfying\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In sexual harassment, you’re always waiting for that moment where there’s full closure, where you feel like you’ve actually … had your moment, where you get to say your piece. And that never really happens. I’ve heard this repeatedly in hearing other women’s stories, and that is the unfortunate thing about sexual harassment. You never get that moment where you feel like the tables are reversed and now he’s finally getting it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The closest we’ve ever gotten to it is seeing people like Roger Ailes or \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/787306873/harvey-weinstein-reaches-tentative-25-million-deal-to-settle-sex-claims\">Harvey Weinstein\u003c/a> seeing some real consequences. I’ve never seen that in my entire career. This is really the first moment in my life where I see that maybe there can be real consequences for people with these actions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On why the name of the director who harassed her hasn’t been made public \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I actually did disclose his name. You don’t know that because every time I disclosed his name, the journalist made the decision to not write his name, and it goes to show just how deeply systemic this problem is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I remember the first time somebody asked me if I ever had a casting couch experience, and I openly shared the experience and named him, and the person decided to not write his name. So the story is out, and strangely, when the Harvey Weinstein story broke, I, for the first time ever, Googled the story and the story came up everywhere. It popped up everywhere, and nowhere could you find this guy’s name. And it was incredibly upsetting to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m conflicted in the sense that I know that, if I said his name again while I’m promoting this film, that it would take over the importance of this story and that would become the story. I think there will be a time and a place where I will definitely share this. … I’ve always been honest about it. I don’t have a desire to protect him, but I also don’t want him to overshadow this film right now. So there will be a right time where I will talk about this again, and I will say his name, yes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On growing up in apartheid-era South Africa and what she was taught in school about race \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On our farm, all of the workers, everybody who worked in the company—and it was a pretty substantial company—all lived on the farm. So my whole childhood, I was raised with Xhosas and Zulus and South Sothos and all different cultures. Their children were raised with me on the property and I consider them my family. … It was only until I was 12 or 13 that I went to an art school in Johannesburg where I really got to witness firsthand absolutely the atrocities of apartheid. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>History was leaning very much into our white history. The heroes of our story, of our founding fathers, were all white. That was really the story that we were all told. … This climate that we’re in right now with our polarizing political views in this country, it was very similar in South Africa. I had friends whose father would be for apartheid and once they found out that black people lived on our farm wouldn’t let me come over for a sleepover. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I always wonder what my life would have been like if I grew up in one of those families—if I was just an innocent child who was born into the family, like one of my friends, who believed that apartheid was the right way of life. I was just incredibly blessed that I was raised … by a mother who was just aghast by all of this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I didn’t really truly understand what any of this really did to me as a young child until I was in my mid-30s and I went to therapy for the first time, because of a relationship that was failing. And what I discovered while in therapy, trying to save my relationship, was that I had a lot of trauma from being a young child growing up in South Africa during the apartheid era. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[It’s] a lot to reconcile with when you realize that you benefited under an administration, a nation, a country, because you had the “right” skin color. I benefited. My life was more comfortable because of the suffering of a lot of people who just by chance were born in the “wrong” skin color. That was a lot for me to carry; it still is. It’s something that I’ll carry for the rest of my life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On her mother killing her father in self-defense \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My father was a very sick man. My father was an alcoholic all my life. I only knew him one way, and that was as an alcoholic. … It was a pretty hopeless situation. Our family was just kind of stuck in it. And the day-to-day unpredictability of living with an addict is the thing that you sit with and have kind of embedded in your body for the rest of your life, more than just this one event of what happened one night. I think our family was an incredibly unhealthy one. And all of it, I think, scarred us in a way. Of course, I wish what happened that night would have never happened. It’s unfortunately what happens when you don’t get to the root of these issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My father was so drunk that he shouldn’t have been able to walk when he came into the house with a gun. My mom and I were in my bedroom leaning against the door, because he was trying to push through the door. So both of us were leaning against the door from the inside to have him not be able to push through. He took a step back and just shot through the door three times. None of those bullets ever hit us, which is just a miracle. But in self-defense, she ended the threat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This family violence, this kind of violence that happens within the family, is something that I share with a lot of people. I’m not ashamed to talk about it, because I do think that the more we talk about these things, the more we realize we are not alone in any of it. I think, for me, it’s just always been that this story really is about growing up with addicts and what that does to a person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On her decision to adopt as a single parent \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I cast a very wide net. I wanted to believe that somehow my child would find me in the way that we were just meant to be. So I wasn’t specific with anything. … In whatever country they would allow me as a single woman to adopt, that’s where I filed. And it just happened to be that both my children ended up being American. They were born in the United States and they both happened to be African American. Everything that I hoped would happen during my adoption process did happen because these two babies were meant to be in my life—and they’re my children. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s definitely something that we still need to work on, this concept of what a family looks like and what constitutes the “right” family or a “strong” family or what we think that should look like. In a lot of places—and I think even for a lot of people and in America—it still feels very traditional in the sense that it should be that every child should have a mother and a father. We’ve kind of wrapped our heads slowly around the idea of two mothers and two fathers, but not so much around the idea of a single parent. It’s just so unfortunate. I know so many people who would be incredible parents. My fight was a little bit easier because of my circumstances, but I would want that for all women who want to share their life and be part of raising another young, small child’s life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Heidi Saman and Joel Wolfram produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Patrick Jarenwattananon adapted it for the Web.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 Fresh Air. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Charlize+Theron+Portrays+The+%27Gray+Area%27+Of+Sexual+Harassment+In+%27Bombshell%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In 1994, actor Charlize Theron was just starting out in show business when a famous director invited her to an audition at his home. When she showed up, she found the director drinking and in his pajamas. He touched her leg; she apologized and left in a hurry.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Driving away, Theron became angry—with herself: “I just kept hitting the steering wheel,” she says. “I put a lot of blame on myself … that I didn’t say all the right things, and that I didn’t tell him to take a hike, and that I didn’t do all of those things that we so want to believe we’ll do in those situations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It wasn’t until years later that Theron understood her experience as sexual harassment. It’s a subject that she’s taking on in her latest film, \u003cem>Bombshell\u003c/em>, which follows the women of Fox News who came forward to accuse then-CEO and chairman \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/18/528925119/roger-ailes-former-fox-news-ceo-dies-at-77\">Roger Ailes\u003c/a> of \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/21/486938004/roger-ailes-accused-of-sexual-harrassment-out-as-chairman-of-fox-news\">sexual harassment\u003c/a>. Theron is one of the film’s producers and also plays former Fox News host \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2016/12/07/504622630/megyn-kelly-on-trump-and-the-media-were-in-a-dangerous-phase-right-now\">Megyn Kelly\u003c/a>, who wrote about Ailes’ unwanted sexual advances in her 2016 book, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/books/titles/502042223/settle-for-more\">Settle for More\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Theron says she felt conflicted about playing Kelly: “We have different points of view on a lot of issues,” she says. “And she has definitely said things in the past that I took issue with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nevertheless, Theron embraced the opportunity to explore what she calls the “grey area” of sexual harassment: “It’s not always physical assault. It’s not always rape,” she says. “There’s a psychological damage that happens for women in the everyday casualness of language, touch or threat—threat of losing your job. Those are things I’ve definitely encountered.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/B2G9-KhBek8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/B2G9-KhBek8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003chr>\n\u003ch3>Interview Highlights\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On the movie’s portrayal of the women who worked for Fox News\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of these women have been somewhat hypocritical when it comes to sexual harassment, and have made statements about sexual harassment that have not necessarily been about really bettering the workplace for women or just for women in general. … We weren’t trying to make them heroes. We weren’t trying to whitewash all of the things that they have said in the past. We were going to pepper those things into the film so that we were authentic to them and the story and still feel like, through all of that, that what they did was still incredible. They took down this media mogul, and that has never happened before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On confronting the director who sexually harassed her years later—and it being unsatisfying\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In sexual harassment, you’re always waiting for that moment where there’s full closure, where you feel like you’ve actually … had your moment, where you get to say your piece. And that never really happens. I’ve heard this repeatedly in hearing other women’s stories, and that is the unfortunate thing about sexual harassment. You never get that moment where you feel like the tables are reversed and now he’s finally getting it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The closest we’ve ever gotten to it is seeing people like Roger Ailes or \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/787306873/harvey-weinstein-reaches-tentative-25-million-deal-to-settle-sex-claims\">Harvey Weinstein\u003c/a> seeing some real consequences. I’ve never seen that in my entire career. This is really the first moment in my life where I see that maybe there can be real consequences for people with these actions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On why the name of the director who harassed her hasn’t been made public \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I actually did disclose his name. You don’t know that because every time I disclosed his name, the journalist made the decision to not write his name, and it goes to show just how deeply systemic this problem is.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I remember the first time somebody asked me if I ever had a casting couch experience, and I openly shared the experience and named him, and the person decided to not write his name. So the story is out, and strangely, when the Harvey Weinstein story broke, I, for the first time ever, Googled the story and the story came up everywhere. It popped up everywhere, and nowhere could you find this guy’s name. And it was incredibly upsetting to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m conflicted in the sense that I know that, if I said his name again while I’m promoting this film, that it would take over the importance of this story and that would become the story. I think there will be a time and a place where I will definitely share this. … I’ve always been honest about it. I don’t have a desire to protect him, but I also don’t want him to overshadow this film right now. So there will be a right time where I will talk about this again, and I will say his name, yes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On growing up in apartheid-era South Africa and what she was taught in school about race \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On our farm, all of the workers, everybody who worked in the company—and it was a pretty substantial company—all lived on the farm. So my whole childhood, I was raised with Xhosas and Zulus and South Sothos and all different cultures. Their children were raised with me on the property and I consider them my family. … It was only until I was 12 or 13 that I went to an art school in Johannesburg where I really got to witness firsthand absolutely the atrocities of apartheid. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>History was leaning very much into our white history. The heroes of our story, of our founding fathers, were all white. That was really the story that we were all told. … This climate that we’re in right now with our polarizing political views in this country, it was very similar in South Africa. I had friends whose father would be for apartheid and once they found out that black people lived on our farm wouldn’t let me come over for a sleepover. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I always wonder what my life would have been like if I grew up in one of those families—if I was just an innocent child who was born into the family, like one of my friends, who believed that apartheid was the right way of life. I was just incredibly blessed that I was raised … by a mother who was just aghast by all of this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I didn’t really truly understand what any of this really did to me as a young child until I was in my mid-30s and I went to therapy for the first time, because of a relationship that was failing. And what I discovered while in therapy, trying to save my relationship, was that I had a lot of trauma from being a young child growing up in South Africa during the apartheid era. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[It’s] a lot to reconcile with when you realize that you benefited under an administration, a nation, a country, because you had the “right” skin color. I benefited. My life was more comfortable because of the suffering of a lot of people who just by chance were born in the “wrong” skin color. That was a lot for me to carry; it still is. It’s something that I’ll carry for the rest of my life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On her mother killing her father in self-defense \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My father was a very sick man. My father was an alcoholic all my life. I only knew him one way, and that was as an alcoholic. … It was a pretty hopeless situation. Our family was just kind of stuck in it. And the day-to-day unpredictability of living with an addict is the thing that you sit with and have kind of embedded in your body for the rest of your life, more than just this one event of what happened one night. I think our family was an incredibly unhealthy one. And all of it, I think, scarred us in a way. Of course, I wish what happened that night would have never happened. It’s unfortunately what happens when you don’t get to the root of these issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My father was so drunk that he shouldn’t have been able to walk when he came into the house with a gun. My mom and I were in my bedroom leaning against the door, because he was trying to push through the door. So both of us were leaning against the door from the inside to have him not be able to push through. He took a step back and just shot through the door three times. None of those bullets ever hit us, which is just a miracle. But in self-defense, she ended the threat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This family violence, this kind of violence that happens within the family, is something that I share with a lot of people. I’m not ashamed to talk about it, because I do think that the more we talk about these things, the more we realize we are not alone in any of it. I think, for me, it’s just always been that this story really is about growing up with addicts and what that does to a person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>On her decision to adopt as a single parent \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I cast a very wide net. I wanted to believe that somehow my child would find me in the way that we were just meant to be. So I wasn’t specific with anything. … In whatever country they would allow me as a single woman to adopt, that’s where I filed. And it just happened to be that both my children ended up being American. They were born in the United States and they both happened to be African American. Everything that I hoped would happen during my adoption process did happen because these two babies were meant to be in my life—and they’re my children. …\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s definitely something that we still need to work on, this concept of what a family looks like and what constitutes the “right” family or a “strong” family or what we think that should look like. In a lot of places—and I think even for a lot of people and in America—it still feels very traditional in the sense that it should be that every child should have a mother and a father. We’ve kind of wrapped our heads slowly around the idea of two mothers and two fathers, but not so much around the idea of a single parent. It’s just so unfortunate. I know so many people who would be incredible parents. My fight was a little bit easier because of my circumstances, but I would want that for all women who want to share their life and be part of raising another young, small child’s life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Heidi Saman and Joel Wolfram produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Patrick Jarenwattananon adapted it for the Web.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 Fresh Air. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/\">Fresh Air\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Charlize+Theron+Portrays+The+%27Gray+Area%27+Of+Sexual+Harassment+In+%27Bombshell%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "NPR's 25 Best Albums of 2019",
"headTitle": "NPR’s 25 Best Albums of 2019 | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This list was made by writers, editors and producers at NPR Music operating under two rules: Albums had to be released during 2019 and no lead artist was allowed to appear on both this list and our list of the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/778226410/the-25-best-songs-of-2019\">\u003cem>25 Best Songs of 2019\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. You can find the rest of our picks for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/778229970/best-music-of-2019-editors-note\">\u003cem>the best music of 2019 here\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>25.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Tyler, The Creator\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>IGOR\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmAsUQEFYGI\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Generally speaking, breaks-up are trash. But what if you’re not even allowed to call it a break-up?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>IGOR, \u003c/em>the fifth studio album from Tyler, The Creator, mourns a love that was never really allowed to flourish in the first place. Across 40 minutes, \u003cem>IGOR\u003c/em> draws, erases and redraws emotional lines in the sand, smudging up Tyler’s self-esteem with each new boundary crossed. The pining of “EARFQUAKE,” the short-lived euphoria of “I THINK,” the feeble negotiation of “NEW MAGIC WAND,” the obvious lie of “I DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE,” the diluted compromise of “ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?” Think of these tracks as the face muscles that construct the dead-eyed, sanguine smile you flash during that first unexpected run-in with your ex. Even with a supporting chorus of Kanye West, Lil Uzi Vert, La Roux, Solange and more, the true magic of this album is Tyler’s ability to let his guard down just enough to give you symphonic slivers of his heartbreak. —\u003cem>Sidney Madden\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2017/12/11/569203961/tyler-the-creator-tiny-desk-concert\">Watch Tyler Perform At NPR’s Tiny Desk\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>24.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Tanya Tucker\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>While I’m Livin’\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVEd0YUx7X8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In spite of the reverence shown for country music made in the 1970s and the groundswell of nostalgia for ’90s country, Tanya Tucker—an artist whose high-caliber hits spanned both eras—has been perpetually underappreciated. This year she found champions in Shooter Jennings and Brandi Carlile, who took up the task of framing Tucker with a warmly rustic, often rocking vintage sound on \u003cem>While I’m Livin’\u003c/em>. The album cast a more intimate spotlight on her gravelly timbre and the sensuality and gravitas of her phrasing, but more than that, its songs showcased her interpretive gifts and, at long last, placed her at the center of her own enthralling mythology. —\u003cem>Jewly Hight\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/world-cafe/2019/11/12/778265643/hear-tanya-tucker-perform-selections-from-her-first-original-album-in-17-years\">Hear Tanya Tucker In Concert At AmericanaFest\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>23.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Kris Davis\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Diatom Ribbons\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVhEV5RDG4w\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the hands of pianist Kris Davis, a musical phrase can bristle or bloom—sometimes managing both at once, as often happens on this visionary album. Working with two core partners, turntablist Val Jeanty and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, Davis devises a new strain of avant-garde chamber-jazz, volatile yet gleaming. A clutch of blue-chip guests (like Nels Cline and Marc Ribot on guitars, Tony Malaby on tenor saxophone and Esperanza Spalding on spoken word) bring personality as well as fire. This is sound that refuses stasis, insisting on endless renewal from one moment to the next. —\u003cem>Nate Chinen, WBGO\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>22.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Bad Bunny & J Balvin\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>OASIS\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPc3Pe42bGI\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Bad Bunny and J Balvin have both taken up the charge to make urbano a worldwide project without sacrificing the hunger that has made the genre seem abrasive and vulgar to some in their industry. That this album-length collaboration by two of urbano’s most visible artists covered as much genre territory as it did prompted another examination of its often relegated place within “Latin” music, whatever that is. From the knotted bass punto guajiro on “Yo Le Llego” to the rock en español”Un Peso” with Enanitos Verdes’ Marciano Cantero to the two taking a backseat to Afrobeats rising star Mr. Eazi on the closer “Como Un Bebé,” \u003cem>OASIS \u003c/em>stretches across the spectrum of where urbano has been and where it’s going. —\u003cem>Stefanie Fernández\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/altlatino/2018/12/24/679179404/bad-bunny-en-espa-ol-el-nuevo-disco-y-sus-influencias\">Bad Bunny’s Alt.Latino interview\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>21.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>John Luther Adams\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Become Desert\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VN9TBfWAEo\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is, simply put, one of the most stunning recordings of 2019. John Luther Adams’ follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning \u003cem>Become Ocean\u003c/em> is brought to life here by the Seattle Symphony and its conductor emeritus Ludovic Morlot in grand-scale minimalist fashion. The orchestra’s 100 or so musicians and a chorus of singers weave a beatless, beatific drone that draws inspiration from the deceptive monotony of our planet’s deserts, where time only appears to stand still. Like its namesake, \u003cem>Become Desert\u003c/em> feels infinite, stretching out in every direction at once; even after 40 celestial minutes, its ending arrives unexpectedly, lest we forget that sand always runs out. —\u003cem>Otis Hart\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2014/09/28/350911062/an-inviting-apocalypse-john-luther-adams-on-become-ocean\">John Luther Adams on All Things Considered\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>20.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Sault\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>5\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1F0qO7QIR4\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And then, out of thin air, an impossibly polished, balanced and restrained piece of work from a faceless trio—we think it’s a trio, at least—quietly slipped into the world. The surreptitious Sault—is it pronounced “soo” or “salt” or “so,” we wonder—may have connections to the equally mysterious-at-the-outset group Jungle, a rumor that has some heft given the evolved disco/pop/R&B/soul genetics they clearly share. But while mysteries are fun, and can be a slam-dunk marketing approach too, there’s no urgent need to solve this one. First of all, this lovely, wholly consistent album is answer enough. But also, the group will most likely be unavoidable in the new year, so enjoy the unknowing while you still can. —\u003cem>Andrew Flanagan\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>19.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Lana Del Rey\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Norman F****** Rockwell\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qolmz4FlnZ0\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=ten%20year%20challenge&geo=US\">Twice this year\u003c/a> across social media, the so-called ten-year challenge meme made the rounds (and prompted some extremely 2019\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/kateo/status/1084199700427927553\"> cybersecurity concerns\u003c/a>). Consider, then, a side-by-side accounting for a certain pop star who came into full flower over the course of the decade: In 2011, Lana Del Rey’s mere presence was viewed by some as an affront to the ideal of authenticity; in 2019, few albums achieved the critical consensus that greeted \u003cem>Norman F****** Rockwell! \u003c/em>At some point between “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE6wxDqdOV0\">Video Games\u003c/a>” and “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrSX_OcpeJg\">The Greatest\u003c/a>,” Lana Del Rey went from upending accepted norms to voicing our collective unease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Norman F****** Rockwell! \u003c/em>sharpens the singular vision that’s always animated Lana Del Rey’s body of work. As her discography has grown, her imagery has evolved: less shorthand, more self-reference. With callbacks crisscrossing place and time, her music is now made of her own sepia-toned mythology. In collaboration with producer Jack Antonoff, drawing on the Laurel Canyon sound, she achieves both timelessness and timeliness in tone. Wistful, resigned and cutting, it’s a fitting swan song for the decade. —\u003cem>Lyndsey McKenna\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/09/04/757545360/lana-del-rey-lives-in-americas-messy-subconscious\">Ann Powers on Lana Del Rey\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>18.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>iLe\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Almadura\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTzL-G2kIA8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>iLe recorded \u003cem>Almadura\u003c/em> long before the political situation in Puerto Rico came to a historic conclusion this past summer, but the themes she addresses on the album were the same as those raised in the massive protests that eventually drove its governor from power: musical stands against injustice and inequality, passionate statements of cultural pride and a barely contained fury at being at the mercy of U.S. policies for over 100 years. Case in point: “Tu Rumba” comes across as a hypnotic love song that stands as a personal statement of desire, but like the best protest music, the power of the message is in the storytelling. It’s a cleverly-worded plea for social justice set to a masterful pastiche of Afro-Caribbean rhythms. The powerful music on \u003cem>Almadura \u003c/em>will long outlast the injustices iLe and the rest of the island are fighting against. —\u003cem>Felix Contreras\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/altlatino/2019/07/10/740190505/ile-and-making-movies-discuss-music-activism-and-mixing-the-two\">Alt.Latino’s interview with iLe\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>17.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Holly Herndon\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>PROTO\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4sROgbaeOs\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A spirit of collaboration courses through Holly Herndon’s third album, \u003cem>PROTO\u003c/em>. The talk that’s surrounded it has focused on Herndon’s co-creation of an AI that became part of an ensemble she worked with to make the record. While that’s of note, it does a disservice to the music, which is epic on every level. Human voices and machine voices coalesce in double helix formations; trance motifs and mile-wide drums offset the choir’s earnest emoting and lyrics unfurl like folk stories. \u003cem>PROTO \u003c/em>is an album about the human spirit and the future that new kinds of collaboration—or, as Herndon calls it,\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hollyherndon/status/1199455651170263040\"> interdependence\u003c/a>—could bring. —\u003cem>Ruth Saxelby\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/10/07/767904887/the-2010s-a-music-making-evolution-and-revolution\">All Songs Considered interviews Holly Herndon\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>16.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Burna Boy\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>African Giant\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zvDLW5Klo8\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Burna Boy has been a superstar of Nigerian music for years. “I am an AFRICAN GIANT,” he blasted on Instagram after Coachella displayed his name on a festival poster with what he considered a too-small font. Months later, he released his fourth album with the same title. Whether it’s conceit or confidence, Burna Boy deserves to brag. Every one of the album’s 19 tracks is a gem and features his signature Afro-fusion genre blend of dancehall, reggae, R&B and hip-hop. Though fundamental African rhythms are clearly defined, the album’s dance-infused pop sensibility makes it a crossover success. And while its musicality and artfulness are outstanding, the album spans party anthems and themes of love, history and political activism too. It’s no surprise that Burna Boy received his first Grammy nomination for this album. Look for his name in larger fonts in the future. —\u003cem>Suraya Mohamed\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/11/18/779548274/burna-boy-tiny-desk-concert\">Watch Burna Boy perform at NPR’s Tiny Desk\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>15.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Ancestral Recall\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYFFV7exVWs\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New Orleans trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah is one of the most compelling voices working in music today—and his latest “stretch music” album is possibly his most ambitious work to date. With guest artists including musician/poet/rapper/actor Saul Williams, \u003cem>Ancestral Recall\u003c/em> is an intense, keenly felt and richly articulated celebration of many of the musical streams that have nourished generations of the African, Native and Caribbean diasporas—a sonically and texturally spacious project that would feel urgent and necessary at almost any time, but asserts itself especially now. From the exuberant, endlessly intricate West African polyrhythms of “I Own The Night” to the Afro-Latinx groove of “The Shared Stories of Rivals” to the metallic, Afrofuturist clang of “Prophesy,” this project is both firmly rooted in the past and a vision of a dynamic, powerful future. —\u003cem>Anastasia Tsioulcas\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SxzS4mtH9o\">Watch Jazz Night In America’s Christian Scott special\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>14.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Weyes Blood\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Titanic Rising\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFtRq6t3jOo\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A lot of artists made big, ambitious albums in 2019, but few soared as wondrously as Weyes Blood’s \u003cem>Titanic Rising. \u003c/em>Singer Natalie Mering’s meticulously layered harmonies drew comparisons to the celestial sounds of Enya and her winding melodies, crystalline voice and autumnal reflections owe just as much to ’70s folk-pop icons like Joni Mitchell or The Carpenters. It’s a beautiful and potent mix, one Mering deftly subverts with hints of madness. Songs suddenly stagger and devolve into warped or broken electronics while her videos, for songs like “Everyday” or “Mirror Forever,” include graphic scenes of murder, rape and drug use. It’s a beautiful world, but we are not okay. —\u003cem>Robin Hilton\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/786391406/weyes-blood-tiny-desk-concert\">Watch Weyes Blood perform at NPR’s Tiny Desk\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>13.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Our Native Daughters\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Songs Of Our Native Daughters\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeTEgDy7kbQ&list=RDFeTEgDy7kbQ&index=1\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our Native Daughters chose a band name and album title that highlight the kinship ties between the four group members—Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, Allison Russell and Leyla McCalla—and their musical, cultural and spiritual ancestors. It would’ve been a historic event for four women of color who write, reinterpret and perform roots music on banjo to simply come together and make music—their collaboration is, in and of itself, a reminder of the whitewashed African roots of their instruments. But, urged on by Giddens, they shaped a song cycle aimed at reversing the erasure of black women from American historical narratives, at zeroing in on the dehumanizing suffering black women faced under slavery, their strategies of survival and resistance, their sharp, sly critiques of oppressive systems, their creativity. The Daughters’ collaboration is enriched by the distinctness of each of their voices: the dogged Appalachian blues rock of Kiah’s “Black Myself,” the willowy reverence of Russell’s “Quasheba, Quasheba,” the commandingly vivid narration of Giddens’ harrowing call-and-response “Mama’s Cryin’ Long,” the Kreyol liveliness of McCalla’s “Lavi Difisil,” the polyrhythmic communal audacity of “Moon Meets the Sun.” It’s an album that rustles with collective imagination and purpose. —\u003cem>Jewly Hight\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/02/14/693624881/first-listen-our-native-daughters-songs-of-our-native-daughters\">Jewly Hight reviews \u003cem>Songs Of Our Native Daughters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>12.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Ari Lennox\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Shea Butter Baby\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf06109Zivo\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/728737359/ari-lennox\">Ari Lennox\u003c/a> declared her intentions for her debut album right from the title. \u003cem>Shea Butter Baby\u003c/em> speaks to an often misunderstood and underrepresented music lover: The Black woman. The D.C. native sings about universally recognizable ebbs and flows of life on songs like “Broke,” “BMO” and “Speak To Me,” which are sprinkled with euphemisms that will hit women of color first. Producers Elite and Ron Gilmore handle the bulk of production, lacing her words with jazzy and soulful sonics that put her range on display. Awards season has begun and we’ve already seen \u003cem>Shea Butter Baby\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a35mxg/ari-lennoxs-shea-butter-baby-deserves-better-than-its-award-season-soul-train-awards-grammys-2019-snubs\"> obviously snubbed\u003c/a> by the Soul Train Awards and the Grammys. It’s just more confirmation that we need Ari’s voice now more than ever. —\u003cem>Bobby Carter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/09/25/763604571/ari-lennox-tiny-desk-concert\">Watch Ari Lennox perform at NPR’s Tiny Desk\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>11.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Vagabon\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Vagabon\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzFb1z_-Cvw\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The working title for Laetitia Tamko’s second album as Vagabon was \u003cem>All the Women in Me\u003c/em>—a versatile phrase to sum up everything from the roles women play in society to the singer’s own complex identity as a Cameroonian who relocated to New York at 13. But the moniker didn’t stick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After 2017’s \u003cem>Infinite Worlds\u003c/em> pushed past the boundaries of bedroom pop, Tamko’s new record expands her sound still further, most notably landing on synth-smeared electro-pop in masterful, appropriately fluid songs like “Flood” and “Water Me Down.” Singing of her deep ambivalence about love and identity, Tamko ultimately settled on the only album title that could sum up the full measure of her sleek, soulful shape-shifting: \u003cem>Vagabon\u003c/em>. —\u003cem>Stephen Thompson\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/10/15/757514260/stream-laetitia-tamko-on-the-making-of-vagabon\">Laetitia Tamko On The Making Of \u003cem>Vagabon\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>10.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Jenny Hval\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>The Practice Of Love\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wACSfREgJys\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What does it mean to make a family? How do we care for each other? How do we make sense of our relationships with our bodies or the planet—and how do those relationships impact each other? To grapple with these questions, Jenny Hval made her most accessible album yet; the production is delicately beautiful and hypnotic, with lyrics that unspool like poetry. Hval and her collaborators conjure Georgia O’Keefe, ponder childlessness and search for God. Quotidian objects—dried figs, stretch mark cream, a cigarette, a porn magazine—become vessels for meaning both grander and more visceral than expected. This isn’t \u003cem>love\u003c/em> in the strictly romantic sense—nor is it strictly platonic, or familial, or sexual. Instead, as the title promises, the album depicts intimacy as a process: a series of trials and metaphors that draw us closer to each other. —\u003cem>Marissa Lorusso\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>9.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>billy woods & Kenny Segal\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Hiding Places\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXFgjQ9dZ8M\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s said that comedy is tragedy plus time, but what if the tragedy never ends? Does the lengthening onslaught ever become absurd enough to laugh at? billy woods released two great albums in 2019: the jagged \u003cem>Terror Management\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Hiding Places\u003c/em>, a collaboration with L.A. producer Kenny Segal. The latter is an album-length self-excavation that crawls through moldy memories in a brutal poetry that is at times darkly funny but mostly wrestles with personal and societal truths that’ll leave you touched, shook. woods found an inspired partner in Segal, whose beats are built like the condemned house falling apart on the album’s cover. On “Speak Gently,” heavy fuzz guitar suddenly disintegrates as if Thanos had snapped his fingers; it’s disarming, haunting. woods rocks references to authors who distilled drama with forceful wordplay (John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger and Charles Dickens), but he himself knocks at their door with an ability to wrap nostalgic imagery within a crucial moment that never leaves your psyche: “Dollar movie theater, dingy foyer, little kid, not a penny to my name / F*****’ with the joystick, pretendin’ I was really playin’.” —\u003cem>Lars Gotrich\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/778228299/9-rap-albums-as-dark-and-dystopian-as-2019\">billy woods is the rapper of 2019\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>8.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Lankum\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>The Livelong Day\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxKx-BBWX8Q\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This stunningly beautiful, trance-inducing album record draws heavily on traditional Irish folk music, but with a deep dark Dublin twist. The sound of drones play a central role in the overall tone of \u003cem>The Livelong Day. \u003c/em>Brothers Ian and Daragh Lynch, Radi Peat and Cormac MacDiarmada create crushing, apocalyptic, layered drones using Uilleann pipes, harmonium, fiddle, voice and more. It has the intensity of electronic music, but this is all acoustic musicin service of songs that are often centuries old. The opening track, “The Wild Rover,” goes back at least to the 16th century and is often thought to be a drinking song, one you might raise your glass to at a pub, singing, “No, nay, never no more / Will I play the wild rover / No, never no more.” But the original intent is that of a temperance song, and that’s how Lankum approach it, with a sustained heaviness to match the story’s consequence and building sense of regret. \u003cem>The Livelong Day\u003c/em> makes the past entirely fresh and present. —\u003cem>Bob Boilen\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/10/21/771982922/lankum-and-the-strange-new-sounds-of-ireland\">Lankum’s All Songs Considered interview\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>7.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Caroline Shaw / Attacca Quartet\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Orange\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQlcyXacUrc\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those who might consider the string quartet little more than a fusty, forgotten genre haven’t heard \u003cem>Orange\u003c/em>. With help from the expressively agile Attacca Quartet, Pulitzer-winning composer Caroline Shaw takes inspiration from the old masters but makes the music shine in her singular way. Shaw gene splices strands of Mozart and Ravel into rigorously assembled pieces such as “Plan & Elevation,” proving that while some tricks of string quartet architecture remain, her buildings emerge with fresh authority. From the album’s compact spaces to its expansive vistas, Shaw excels in the evocative power of the pluck—formally termed, pizzicato—which is the backbone of the ricocheting yet songful “Limestone & Felt.” They say the mark of a great artist is a smart, distinct and identifiable voice. If that’s true, Shaw has arrived, speaking loud and clear. —\u003cem>Tom Huizenga\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2019/04/19/700361912/caroline-shaws-love-letter-to-the-string-quartet\">All Things Considered’s review of \u003cem>Orange\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>6.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Sharon Van Etten\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Remind Me Tomorrow\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7sTHoeH0eA\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Remind Me Tomorrow \u003c/em>opens with six seconds of silence. Then: simple piano chords. It’s a compelling, echoing acoustic introduction to a primarily synth-driven album, which at times resolves into chaotic crescendos. The starkness of those first chords of “I Told You Everything” offer a reprieve; a chance to gather yourself, to take one last breath before dunking deep beneath the surface. Because Sharon Van Etten has no time for superficiality. She pulls you under with her. Like that opening track warns, she tells you everything. \u003cem>Remind Me Tomorrow \u003c/em>is an album of introspection and honesty that never feels navel-gazing. In a time when people deploy terms like “emotional bandwidth” to refer to how much energy they have to support their own friends and family, this album reminds us that vulnerability is not a commodity, but the essence of genuine connection. —\u003cem>Raina Douris, World Cafe\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/10/07/766645155/sharon-van-etten-tiny-desk-concert\">Watch Sharon Van Etten perform at NPR’s Tiny Desk\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>5.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Aldous Harding\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Designer\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTgyJ8jWD3M\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No music I heard this year convinced me I could hear my own cells dividing like \u003cem>Designer\u003c/em>, Aldous Harding’s approachable, enigmatic third album. It’s lovely, but how do you explain it? The New Zealand-born Harding writes songs in familiar, folk-simple forms but appends them with odd angles that sometimes land like jokes and sometimes like warnings. Voices emerge from the depths to thread hints of peril or restlessness into the fabric of gentle melodies. Harding’s lyrics are filled with poetic images that slip away when you try to grasp them—\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2019/02/19/695796657/aldous-harding-talks-about-her-intriguing-new-song-and-video\">she’s spoken\u003c/a> about her desire to resist interpretation. (With her flexible but utterly distinctive voice, she sometimes reminds me of Cat Stevens, if you never had a single clue what Cat Stevens’ songs were about.) The title track stops and starts as if looking over its shoulder to see if you’re still there. “The Barrel” could be a consideration of motherhood, or it could be about creation and destruction, a tale of a minor deity, off in a corner of the universe, a god sinking her fingers into clay, shaping a new world by rules as she imagines them. All that inscrutability could be off-putting, but \u003cem>Designer \u003c/em>is the kind of art that rewards questioning. It only frustrates if you demand answers. —\u003cem>Jacob Ganz\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.kcrw.com/music/shows/morning-becomes-eclectic/aldous-harding\">Aldous Harding performs live for KCRW’s \u003cem>Morning Becomes Eclectic\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>4.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Solange\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>When I Get Home\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6giKIu5jUvA\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back when DJ Screw was plying his chopped-and-screwed mixtape trade heavy in Houston, Solange was living out her wonder years. His time-altering mixes—as otherworldly as Sun Ra’s Afrofuturist musings; as inventive as Kool Herc’s Merry-Go-Round breakbeat technique—were the soundtrack for anybody coming of age in the ’90s in H-Town. They tainted the water. They colored a universe. In the 19 years since DJ Screw’s death, his Screw music escaped Houston and infected the world. It practically became a genre unto itself, with DJs taking up the mantle, younger artists adopting the sound and producers incorporating his slurred, stutter-step technique. Then, Solange messed around and made the hardest Screw tape of the decade in the form of an R&B album: The woozy BPMs. The repetitive phrasing. The freestyle flows. If \u003cem>A Seat At The Table \u003c/em>was all about her giving the world a piece of her mind, \u003cem>When I Get Home\u003c/em> is Solange returning to her interior world for some peace of mind. It flew over some folks’ heads, but only because it so thoroughly resists the white gaze. “These are black-owned things,” as Solange sings on “Almeda.” She’s been around the world, professionally and personally, but there’s a special kind of power in being at home with yourself. —\u003cem>Rodney Carmichael\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/03/06/700256924/solange-at-home-in-space-city\">‘Still Tippin’: Solange At Home In Houston’\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>3.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Raphael Saadiq\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Jimmy Lee\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOrZgRJ88kc\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a producer, an electric bassist and a singer-songwriter, Raphael Saadiq has long been meticulous: about chord voicings and melodic pathways, about the quantum mechanics of rhythm, about his sly evocations of classic soul and the wobble or sheen that brings them up to date. You could always count on him for craft and concision, the way you count on a sports car to roar to life when you turn the ignition key.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Jimmy Lee\u003c/em>, Saadiq’s first studio release in eight years, has all of those musical trademarks in place. But it’s also untidy, uneasy, irresolvable. Drawing from personal history—including the death of his older brother, the album’s namesake, from a heroin overdose — Saadiq delivers an anguished suite of songs about black struggle and surrender, incarceration and redemption. The result is revelatory, not only for the raw emotion in his lyrics and delivery but also for the way that this material pushes his music out of a comfort zone. —\u003cem>Nate Chinen, WBGO\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/12/05/784786360/raphael-saadiq-tiny-desk-concert\">Watch Raphael Saadiq perform at NPR’s Tiny Desk\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>2.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Angel Olsen\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>All Mirrors\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uaN60k0-zY\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I didn’t know that the record was going to sound this way at all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those words, spoken by Angel Olsen \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/11/05/776382293/angel-olsen-and-john-congleton-on-how-they-made-all-mirrors\">during a conversation\u003c/a> we had just after \u003cem>All Mirrors\u003c/em> was released this fall, summed up my sentiments too. This album, Olsen’s fourth, runs screaming from her quiet side, with songs propelled by string arrangements that, along with her dramatic vocal performance, enhance the lyricism of some of Olsen’s most energetic songs. She co-produced this record with John Congleton; those string parts were written by Ben Babbitt and arranged by Jherek Bischoff. Congleton told me that after they first made a solo acoustic version of the album (a version you may get a chance to hear in 2020), they worked to expand its scope, aiming for “early period Scott Walker” as an inspiration, “where it’s fantastic songs, with really cool arrangements and you’re hearing something totally new.” This is an album of deep inner struggles thrust onto a bigger stage, with words—”What about my dreams? What about the heart?”—that matter, magnified magnificently. —\u003cem>Bob Boilen\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/11/05/776382293/angel-olsen-and-john-congleton-on-how-they-made-all-mirrors\">Angel Olsen’s All Songs Considered interview\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>1.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Brittany Howard\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Jaime\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfizQsGWOxI\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Black radicalism, the philosopher Fred Moten has written, cannot be understood outside the context of its origins in oppression; as a force of rebirth, it also always breaks out of that context. The same, Moten says, is true of black music—a broken circle, rooted and free, it demands a new way of listening. The first solo album by Alabama Shakes front woman Brittany Howard inspires such heady thoughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sinking her fingers into the dirt of her own life story as a black biracial queer woman born in the Deep South, now living far West of that beloved, problematic home, Howard wrote a set of songs that invoke Moten’s image of the groove as a broken circle. These are songs that draw the ear into their slow rhythms, only to disrupt and rearrange themselves; that build melodies like vines growing, turning and knotting into loops, getting tangled as they move toward sun. They tell stories of desire with names like “Stay High,” unorthodox faith through declarations like “He Loves Me” and family history by facing painful memories (in “Goat Head,” the stench of racism permeates). Yet following her own perspective, Howard turns confession on its head. To realize her songs’ deceptively plainspoken complexity, Howard and producer Shawn Everett brought together jazz disruptors Nate Smith on drums and Robert Glasper on keys, alongside her old bandmate and musical anchor, bassist Zac Cockrell. They took chances. They got psychedelic, locked into heavy funk, slid into classic R&B and then cleared space for Howard to be lonely, like the blues chanteuse she also can be. This album is a radical act of self-claiming, one that does more than reintroduce a great 21st Century voice. It turns a broken circle into an open road. —\u003cem>Ann Powers\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/10/15/768439696/brittany-howard-tiny-desk-concert\">Watch Brittany Howard perform at NPR’s Tiny Desk\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+25+Best+Albums+Of+2019&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This list was made by writers, editors and producers at NPR Music operating under two rules: Albums had to be released during 2019 and no lead artist was allowed to appear on both this list and our list of the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/778226410/the-25-best-songs-of-2019\">\u003cem>25 Best Songs of 2019\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. You can find the rest of our picks for \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/778229970/best-music-of-2019-editors-note\">\u003cem>the best music of 2019 here\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>25.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Tyler, The Creator\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>IGOR\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/HmAsUQEFYGI'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/HmAsUQEFYGI'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Generally speaking, breaks-up are trash. But what if you’re not even allowed to call it a break-up?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>IGOR, \u003c/em>the fifth studio album from Tyler, The Creator, mourns a love that was never really allowed to flourish in the first place. Across 40 minutes, \u003cem>IGOR\u003c/em> draws, erases and redraws emotional lines in the sand, smudging up Tyler’s self-esteem with each new boundary crossed. The pining of “EARFQUAKE,” the short-lived euphoria of “I THINK,” the feeble negotiation of “NEW MAGIC WAND,” the obvious lie of “I DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE,” the diluted compromise of “ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?” Think of these tracks as the face muscles that construct the dead-eyed, sanguine smile you flash during that first unexpected run-in with your ex. Even with a supporting chorus of Kanye West, Lil Uzi Vert, La Roux, Solange and more, the true magic of this album is Tyler’s ability to let his guard down just enough to give you symphonic slivers of his heartbreak. —\u003cem>Sidney Madden\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2017/12/11/569203961/tyler-the-creator-tiny-desk-concert\">Watch Tyler Perform At NPR’s Tiny Desk\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>24.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Tanya Tucker\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>While I’m Livin’\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/WVEd0YUx7X8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/WVEd0YUx7X8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In spite of the reverence shown for country music made in the 1970s and the groundswell of nostalgia for ’90s country, Tanya Tucker—an artist whose high-caliber hits spanned both eras—has been perpetually underappreciated. This year she found champions in Shooter Jennings and Brandi Carlile, who took up the task of framing Tucker with a warmly rustic, often rocking vintage sound on \u003cem>While I’m Livin’\u003c/em>. The album cast a more intimate spotlight on her gravelly timbre and the sensuality and gravitas of her phrasing, but more than that, its songs showcased her interpretive gifts and, at long last, placed her at the center of her own enthralling mythology. —\u003cem>Jewly Hight\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/world-cafe/2019/11/12/778265643/hear-tanya-tucker-perform-selections-from-her-first-original-album-in-17-years\">Hear Tanya Tucker In Concert At AmericanaFest\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>23.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Kris Davis\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Diatom Ribbons\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/DVhEV5RDG4w'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/DVhEV5RDG4w'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>In the hands of pianist Kris Davis, a musical phrase can bristle or bloom—sometimes managing both at once, as often happens on this visionary album. Working with two core partners, turntablist Val Jeanty and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, Davis devises a new strain of avant-garde chamber-jazz, volatile yet gleaming. A clutch of blue-chip guests (like Nels Cline and Marc Ribot on guitars, Tony Malaby on tenor saxophone and Esperanza Spalding on spoken word) bring personality as well as fire. This is sound that refuses stasis, insisting on endless renewal from one moment to the next. —\u003cem>Nate Chinen, WBGO\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>22.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Bad Bunny & J Balvin\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>OASIS\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/kPc3Pe42bGI'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/kPc3Pe42bGI'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Bad Bunny and J Balvin have both taken up the charge to make urbano a worldwide project without sacrificing the hunger that has made the genre seem abrasive and vulgar to some in their industry. That this album-length collaboration by two of urbano’s most visible artists covered as much genre territory as it did prompted another examination of its often relegated place within “Latin” music, whatever that is. From the knotted bass punto guajiro on “Yo Le Llego” to the rock en español”Un Peso” with Enanitos Verdes’ Marciano Cantero to the two taking a backseat to Afrobeats rising star Mr. Eazi on the closer “Como Un Bebé,” \u003cem>OASIS \u003c/em>stretches across the spectrum of where urbano has been and where it’s going. —\u003cem>Stefanie Fernández\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/altlatino/2018/12/24/679179404/bad-bunny-en-espa-ol-el-nuevo-disco-y-sus-influencias\">Bad Bunny’s Alt.Latino interview\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>21.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>John Luther Adams\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Become Desert\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/1VN9TBfWAEo'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/1VN9TBfWAEo'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>This is, simply put, one of the most stunning recordings of 2019. John Luther Adams’ follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning \u003cem>Become Ocean\u003c/em> is brought to life here by the Seattle Symphony and its conductor emeritus Ludovic Morlot in grand-scale minimalist fashion. The orchestra’s 100 or so musicians and a chorus of singers weave a beatless, beatific drone that draws inspiration from the deceptive monotony of our planet’s deserts, where time only appears to stand still. Like its namesake, \u003cem>Become Desert\u003c/em> feels infinite, stretching out in every direction at once; even after 40 celestial minutes, its ending arrives unexpectedly, lest we forget that sand always runs out. —\u003cem>Otis Hart\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2014/09/28/350911062/an-inviting-apocalypse-john-luther-adams-on-become-ocean\">John Luther Adams on All Things Considered\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>20.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Sault\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>5\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/i1F0qO7QIR4'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/i1F0qO7QIR4'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>And then, out of thin air, an impossibly polished, balanced and restrained piece of work from a faceless trio—we think it’s a trio, at least—quietly slipped into the world. The surreptitious Sault—is it pronounced “soo” or “salt” or “so,” we wonder—may have connections to the equally mysterious-at-the-outset group Jungle, a rumor that has some heft given the evolved disco/pop/R&B/soul genetics they clearly share. But while mysteries are fun, and can be a slam-dunk marketing approach too, there’s no urgent need to solve this one. First of all, this lovely, wholly consistent album is answer enough. But also, the group will most likely be unavoidable in the new year, so enjoy the unknowing while you still can. —\u003cem>Andrew Flanagan\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>19.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Lana Del Rey\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Norman F****** Rockwell\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/qolmz4FlnZ0'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/qolmz4FlnZ0'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=ten%20year%20challenge&geo=US\">Twice this year\u003c/a> across social media, the so-called ten-year challenge meme made the rounds (and prompted some extremely 2019\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/kateo/status/1084199700427927553\"> cybersecurity concerns\u003c/a>). Consider, then, a side-by-side accounting for a certain pop star who came into full flower over the course of the decade: In 2011, Lana Del Rey’s mere presence was viewed by some as an affront to the ideal of authenticity; in 2019, few albums achieved the critical consensus that greeted \u003cem>Norman F****** Rockwell! \u003c/em>At some point between “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE6wxDqdOV0\">Video Games\u003c/a>” and “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrSX_OcpeJg\">The Greatest\u003c/a>,” Lana Del Rey went from upending accepted norms to voicing our collective unease.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Norman F****** Rockwell! \u003c/em>sharpens the singular vision that’s always animated Lana Del Rey’s body of work. As her discography has grown, her imagery has evolved: less shorthand, more self-reference. With callbacks crisscrossing place and time, her music is now made of her own sepia-toned mythology. In collaboration with producer Jack Antonoff, drawing on the Laurel Canyon sound, she achieves both timelessness and timeliness in tone. Wistful, resigned and cutting, it’s a fitting swan song for the decade. —\u003cem>Lyndsey McKenna\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/09/04/757545360/lana-del-rey-lives-in-americas-messy-subconscious\">Ann Powers on Lana Del Rey\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>18.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>iLe\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Almadura\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/RTzL-G2kIA8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/RTzL-G2kIA8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>iLe recorded \u003cem>Almadura\u003c/em> long before the political situation in Puerto Rico came to a historic conclusion this past summer, but the themes she addresses on the album were the same as those raised in the massive protests that eventually drove its governor from power: musical stands against injustice and inequality, passionate statements of cultural pride and a barely contained fury at being at the mercy of U.S. policies for over 100 years. Case in point: “Tu Rumba” comes across as a hypnotic love song that stands as a personal statement of desire, but like the best protest music, the power of the message is in the storytelling. It’s a cleverly-worded plea for social justice set to a masterful pastiche of Afro-Caribbean rhythms. The powerful music on \u003cem>Almadura \u003c/em>will long outlast the injustices iLe and the rest of the island are fighting against. —\u003cem>Felix Contreras\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/altlatino/2019/07/10/740190505/ile-and-making-movies-discuss-music-activism-and-mixing-the-two\">Alt.Latino’s interview with iLe\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>17.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Holly Herndon\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>PROTO\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/r4sROgbaeOs'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/r4sROgbaeOs'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>A spirit of collaboration courses through Holly Herndon’s third album, \u003cem>PROTO\u003c/em>. The talk that’s surrounded it has focused on Herndon’s co-creation of an AI that became part of an ensemble she worked with to make the record. While that’s of note, it does a disservice to the music, which is epic on every level. Human voices and machine voices coalesce in double helix formations; trance motifs and mile-wide drums offset the choir’s earnest emoting and lyrics unfurl like folk stories. \u003cem>PROTO \u003c/em>is an album about the human spirit and the future that new kinds of collaboration—or, as Herndon calls it,\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/hollyherndon/status/1199455651170263040\"> interdependence\u003c/a>—could bring. —\u003cem>Ruth Saxelby\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/10/07/767904887/the-2010s-a-music-making-evolution-and-revolution\">All Songs Considered interviews Holly Herndon\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>16.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Burna Boy\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>African Giant\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/4zvDLW5Klo8'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/4zvDLW5Klo8'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Burna Boy has been a superstar of Nigerian music for years. “I am an AFRICAN GIANT,” he blasted on Instagram after Coachella displayed his name on a festival poster with what he considered a too-small font. Months later, he released his fourth album with the same title. Whether it’s conceit or confidence, Burna Boy deserves to brag. Every one of the album’s 19 tracks is a gem and features his signature Afro-fusion genre blend of dancehall, reggae, R&B and hip-hop. Though fundamental African rhythms are clearly defined, the album’s dance-infused pop sensibility makes it a crossover success. And while its musicality and artfulness are outstanding, the album spans party anthems and themes of love, history and political activism too. It’s no surprise that Burna Boy received his first Grammy nomination for this album. Look for his name in larger fonts in the future. —\u003cem>Suraya Mohamed\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/11/18/779548274/burna-boy-tiny-desk-concert\">Watch Burna Boy perform at NPR’s Tiny Desk\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>15.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Ancestral Recall\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/FYFFV7exVWs'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/FYFFV7exVWs'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>New Orleans trumpeter Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah is one of the most compelling voices working in music today—and his latest “stretch music” album is possibly his most ambitious work to date. With guest artists including musician/poet/rapper/actor Saul Williams, \u003cem>Ancestral Recall\u003c/em> is an intense, keenly felt and richly articulated celebration of many of the musical streams that have nourished generations of the African, Native and Caribbean diasporas—a sonically and texturally spacious project that would feel urgent and necessary at almost any time, but asserts itself especially now. From the exuberant, endlessly intricate West African polyrhythms of “I Own The Night” to the Afro-Latinx groove of “The Shared Stories of Rivals” to the metallic, Afrofuturist clang of “Prophesy,” this project is both firmly rooted in the past and a vision of a dynamic, powerful future. —\u003cem>Anastasia Tsioulcas\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SxzS4mtH9o\">Watch Jazz Night In America’s Christian Scott special\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>14.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Weyes Blood\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Titanic Rising\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/RFtRq6t3jOo'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/RFtRq6t3jOo'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>A lot of artists made big, ambitious albums in 2019, but few soared as wondrously as Weyes Blood’s \u003cem>Titanic Rising. \u003c/em>Singer Natalie Mering’s meticulously layered harmonies drew comparisons to the celestial sounds of Enya and her winding melodies, crystalline voice and autumnal reflections owe just as much to ’70s folk-pop icons like Joni Mitchell or The Carpenters. It’s a beautiful and potent mix, one Mering deftly subverts with hints of madness. Songs suddenly stagger and devolve into warped or broken electronics while her videos, for songs like “Everyday” or “Mirror Forever,” include graphic scenes of murder, rape and drug use. It’s a beautiful world, but we are not okay. —\u003cem>Robin Hilton\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/786391406/weyes-blood-tiny-desk-concert\">Watch Weyes Blood perform at NPR’s Tiny Desk\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>13.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Our Native Daughters\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Songs Of Our Native Daughters\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/FeTEgDy7kbQ'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/FeTEgDy7kbQ'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Our Native Daughters chose a band name and album title that highlight the kinship ties between the four group members—Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, Allison Russell and Leyla McCalla—and their musical, cultural and spiritual ancestors. It would’ve been a historic event for four women of color who write, reinterpret and perform roots music on banjo to simply come together and make music—their collaboration is, in and of itself, a reminder of the whitewashed African roots of their instruments. But, urged on by Giddens, they shaped a song cycle aimed at reversing the erasure of black women from American historical narratives, at zeroing in on the dehumanizing suffering black women faced under slavery, their strategies of survival and resistance, their sharp, sly critiques of oppressive systems, their creativity. The Daughters’ collaboration is enriched by the distinctness of each of their voices: the dogged Appalachian blues rock of Kiah’s “Black Myself,” the willowy reverence of Russell’s “Quasheba, Quasheba,” the commandingly vivid narration of Giddens’ harrowing call-and-response “Mama’s Cryin’ Long,” the Kreyol liveliness of McCalla’s “Lavi Difisil,” the polyrhythmic communal audacity of “Moon Meets the Sun.” It’s an album that rustles with collective imagination and purpose. —\u003cem>Jewly Hight\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/02/14/693624881/first-listen-our-native-daughters-songs-of-our-native-daughters\">Jewly Hight reviews \u003cem>Songs Of Our Native Daughters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>12.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Ari Lennox\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Shea Butter Baby\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/Qf06109Zivo'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/Qf06109Zivo'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/artists/728737359/ari-lennox\">Ari Lennox\u003c/a> declared her intentions for her debut album right from the title. \u003cem>Shea Butter Baby\u003c/em> speaks to an often misunderstood and underrepresented music lover: The Black woman. The D.C. native sings about universally recognizable ebbs and flows of life on songs like “Broke,” “BMO” and “Speak To Me,” which are sprinkled with euphemisms that will hit women of color first. Producers Elite and Ron Gilmore handle the bulk of production, lacing her words with jazzy and soulful sonics that put her range on display. Awards season has begun and we’ve already seen \u003cem>Shea Butter Baby\u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a35mxg/ari-lennoxs-shea-butter-baby-deserves-better-than-its-award-season-soul-train-awards-grammys-2019-snubs\"> obviously snubbed\u003c/a> by the Soul Train Awards and the Grammys. It’s just more confirmation that we need Ari’s voice now more than ever. —\u003cem>Bobby Carter\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/09/25/763604571/ari-lennox-tiny-desk-concert\">Watch Ari Lennox perform at NPR’s Tiny Desk\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>11.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Vagabon\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Vagabon\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/mzFb1z_-Cvw'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/mzFb1z_-Cvw'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>The working title for Laetitia Tamko’s second album as Vagabon was \u003cem>All the Women in Me\u003c/em>—a versatile phrase to sum up everything from the roles women play in society to the singer’s own complex identity as a Cameroonian who relocated to New York at 13. But the moniker didn’t stick.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After 2017’s \u003cem>Infinite Worlds\u003c/em> pushed past the boundaries of bedroom pop, Tamko’s new record expands her sound still further, most notably landing on synth-smeared electro-pop in masterful, appropriately fluid songs like “Flood” and “Water Me Down.” Singing of her deep ambivalence about love and identity, Tamko ultimately settled on the only album title that could sum up the full measure of her sleek, soulful shape-shifting: \u003cem>Vagabon\u003c/em>. —\u003cem>Stephen Thompson\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/10/15/757514260/stream-laetitia-tamko-on-the-making-of-vagabon\">Laetitia Tamko On The Making Of \u003cem>Vagabon\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>10.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Jenny Hval\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>The Practice Of Love\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/wACSfREgJys'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/wACSfREgJys'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>What does it mean to make a family? How do we care for each other? How do we make sense of our relationships with our bodies or the planet—and how do those relationships impact each other? To grapple with these questions, Jenny Hval made her most accessible album yet; the production is delicately beautiful and hypnotic, with lyrics that unspool like poetry. Hval and her collaborators conjure Georgia O’Keefe, ponder childlessness and search for God. Quotidian objects—dried figs, stretch mark cream, a cigarette, a porn magazine—become vessels for meaning both grander and more visceral than expected. This isn’t \u003cem>love\u003c/em> in the strictly romantic sense—nor is it strictly platonic, or familial, or sexual. Instead, as the title promises, the album depicts intimacy as a process: a series of trials and metaphors that draw us closer to each other. —\u003cem>Marissa Lorusso\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>9.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>billy woods & Kenny Segal\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Hiding Places\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/gXFgjQ9dZ8M'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/gXFgjQ9dZ8M'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>It’s said that comedy is tragedy plus time, but what if the tragedy never ends? Does the lengthening onslaught ever become absurd enough to laugh at? billy woods released two great albums in 2019: the jagged \u003cem>Terror Management\u003c/em> and \u003cem>Hiding Places\u003c/em>, a collaboration with L.A. producer Kenny Segal. The latter is an album-length self-excavation that crawls through moldy memories in a brutal poetry that is at times darkly funny but mostly wrestles with personal and societal truths that’ll leave you touched, shook. woods found an inspired partner in Segal, whose beats are built like the condemned house falling apart on the album’s cover. On “Speak Gently,” heavy fuzz guitar suddenly disintegrates as if Thanos had snapped his fingers; it’s disarming, haunting. woods rocks references to authors who distilled drama with forceful wordplay (John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger and Charles Dickens), but he himself knocks at their door with an ability to wrap nostalgic imagery within a crucial moment that never leaves your psyche: “Dollar movie theater, dingy foyer, little kid, not a penny to my name / F*****’ with the joystick, pretendin’ I was really playin’.” —\u003cem>Lars Gotrich\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/778228299/9-rap-albums-as-dark-and-dystopian-as-2019\">billy woods is the rapper of 2019\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>8.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Lankum\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>The Livelong Day\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/JxKx-BBWX8Q'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/JxKx-BBWX8Q'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>This stunningly beautiful, trance-inducing album record draws heavily on traditional Irish folk music, but with a deep dark Dublin twist. The sound of drones play a central role in the overall tone of \u003cem>The Livelong Day. \u003c/em>Brothers Ian and Daragh Lynch, Radi Peat and Cormac MacDiarmada create crushing, apocalyptic, layered drones using Uilleann pipes, harmonium, fiddle, voice and more. It has the intensity of electronic music, but this is all acoustic musicin service of songs that are often centuries old. The opening track, “The Wild Rover,” goes back at least to the 16th century and is often thought to be a drinking song, one you might raise your glass to at a pub, singing, “No, nay, never no more / Will I play the wild rover / No, never no more.” But the original intent is that of a temperance song, and that’s how Lankum approach it, with a sustained heaviness to match the story’s consequence and building sense of regret. \u003cem>The Livelong Day\u003c/em> makes the past entirely fresh and present. —\u003cem>Bob Boilen\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/10/21/771982922/lankum-and-the-strange-new-sounds-of-ireland\">Lankum’s All Songs Considered interview\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>7.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Caroline Shaw / Attacca Quartet\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Orange\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/eQlcyXacUrc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/eQlcyXacUrc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Those who might consider the string quartet little more than a fusty, forgotten genre haven’t heard \u003cem>Orange\u003c/em>. With help from the expressively agile Attacca Quartet, Pulitzer-winning composer Caroline Shaw takes inspiration from the old masters but makes the music shine in her singular way. Shaw gene splices strands of Mozart and Ravel into rigorously assembled pieces such as “Plan & Elevation,” proving that while some tricks of string quartet architecture remain, her buildings emerge with fresh authority. From the album’s compact spaces to its expansive vistas, Shaw excels in the evocative power of the pluck—formally termed, pizzicato—which is the backbone of the ricocheting yet songful “Limestone & Felt.” They say the mark of a great artist is a smart, distinct and identifiable voice. If that’s true, Shaw has arrived, speaking loud and clear. —\u003cem>Tom Huizenga\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2019/04/19/700361912/caroline-shaws-love-letter-to-the-string-quartet\">All Things Considered’s review of \u003cem>Orange\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>6.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Sharon Van Etten\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Remind Me Tomorrow\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/j7sTHoeH0eA'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/j7sTHoeH0eA'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Remind Me Tomorrow \u003c/em>opens with six seconds of silence. Then: simple piano chords. It’s a compelling, echoing acoustic introduction to a primarily synth-driven album, which at times resolves into chaotic crescendos. The starkness of those first chords of “I Told You Everything” offer a reprieve; a chance to gather yourself, to take one last breath before dunking deep beneath the surface. Because Sharon Van Etten has no time for superficiality. She pulls you under with her. Like that opening track warns, she tells you everything. \u003cem>Remind Me Tomorrow \u003c/em>is an album of introspection and honesty that never feels navel-gazing. In a time when people deploy terms like “emotional bandwidth” to refer to how much energy they have to support their own friends and family, this album reminds us that vulnerability is not a commodity, but the essence of genuine connection. —\u003cem>Raina Douris, World Cafe\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/10/07/766645155/sharon-van-etten-tiny-desk-concert\">Watch Sharon Van Etten perform at NPR’s Tiny Desk\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>5.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Aldous Harding\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Designer\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/pTgyJ8jWD3M'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/pTgyJ8jWD3M'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>No music I heard this year convinced me I could hear my own cells dividing like \u003cem>Designer\u003c/em>, Aldous Harding’s approachable, enigmatic third album. It’s lovely, but how do you explain it? The New Zealand-born Harding writes songs in familiar, folk-simple forms but appends them with odd angles that sometimes land like jokes and sometimes like warnings. Voices emerge from the depths to thread hints of peril or restlessness into the fabric of gentle melodies. Harding’s lyrics are filled with poetic images that slip away when you try to grasp them—\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2019/02/19/695796657/aldous-harding-talks-about-her-intriguing-new-song-and-video\">she’s spoken\u003c/a> about her desire to resist interpretation. (With her flexible but utterly distinctive voice, she sometimes reminds me of Cat Stevens, if you never had a single clue what Cat Stevens’ songs were about.) The title track stops and starts as if looking over its shoulder to see if you’re still there. “The Barrel” could be a consideration of motherhood, or it could be about creation and destruction, a tale of a minor deity, off in a corner of the universe, a god sinking her fingers into clay, shaping a new world by rules as she imagines them. All that inscrutability could be off-putting, but \u003cem>Designer \u003c/em>is the kind of art that rewards questioning. It only frustrates if you demand answers. —\u003cem>Jacob Ganz\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.kcrw.com/music/shows/morning-becomes-eclectic/aldous-harding\">Aldous Harding performs live for KCRW’s \u003cem>Morning Becomes Eclectic\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>4.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Solange\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>When I Get Home\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/6giKIu5jUvA'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/6giKIu5jUvA'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Back when DJ Screw was plying his chopped-and-screwed mixtape trade heavy in Houston, Solange was living out her wonder years. His time-altering mixes—as otherworldly as Sun Ra’s Afrofuturist musings; as inventive as Kool Herc’s Merry-Go-Round breakbeat technique—were the soundtrack for anybody coming of age in the ’90s in H-Town. They tainted the water. They colored a universe. In the 19 years since DJ Screw’s death, his Screw music escaped Houston and infected the world. It practically became a genre unto itself, with DJs taking up the mantle, younger artists adopting the sound and producers incorporating his slurred, stutter-step technique. Then, Solange messed around and made the hardest Screw tape of the decade in the form of an R&B album: The woozy BPMs. The repetitive phrasing. The freestyle flows. If \u003cem>A Seat At The Table \u003c/em>was all about her giving the world a piece of her mind, \u003cem>When I Get Home\u003c/em> is Solange returning to her interior world for some peace of mind. It flew over some folks’ heads, but only because it so thoroughly resists the white gaze. “These are black-owned things,” as Solange sings on “Almeda.” She’s been around the world, professionally and personally, but there’s a special kind of power in being at home with yourself. —\u003cem>Rodney Carmichael\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/03/06/700256924/solange-at-home-in-space-city\">‘Still Tippin’: Solange At Home In Houston’\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>3.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Raphael Saadiq\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Jimmy Lee\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/QOrZgRJ88kc'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/QOrZgRJ88kc'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>As a producer, an electric bassist and a singer-songwriter, Raphael Saadiq has long been meticulous: about chord voicings and melodic pathways, about the quantum mechanics of rhythm, about his sly evocations of classic soul and the wobble or sheen that brings them up to date. You could always count on him for craft and concision, the way you count on a sports car to roar to life when you turn the ignition key.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Jimmy Lee\u003c/em>, Saadiq’s first studio release in eight years, has all of those musical trademarks in place. But it’s also untidy, uneasy, irresolvable. Drawing from personal history—including the death of his older brother, the album’s namesake, from a heroin overdose — Saadiq delivers an anguished suite of songs about black struggle and surrender, incarceration and redemption. The result is revelatory, not only for the raw emotion in his lyrics and delivery but also for the way that this material pushes his music out of a comfort zone. —\u003cem>Nate Chinen, WBGO\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/12/05/784786360/raphael-saadiq-tiny-desk-concert\">Watch Raphael Saadiq perform at NPR’s Tiny Desk\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>2.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Angel Olsen\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>All Mirrors\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/6uaN60k0-zY'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/6uaN60k0-zY'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>“I didn’t know that the record was going to sound this way at all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Those words, spoken by Angel Olsen \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/11/05/776382293/angel-olsen-and-john-congleton-on-how-they-made-all-mirrors\">during a conversation\u003c/a> we had just after \u003cem>All Mirrors\u003c/em> was released this fall, summed up my sentiments too. This album, Olsen’s fourth, runs screaming from her quiet side, with songs propelled by string arrangements that, along with her dramatic vocal performance, enhance the lyricism of some of Olsen’s most energetic songs. She co-produced this record with John Congleton; those string parts were written by Ben Babbitt and arranged by Jherek Bischoff. Congleton told me that after they first made a solo acoustic version of the album (a version you may get a chance to hear in 2020), they worked to expand its scope, aiming for “early period Scott Walker” as an inspiration, “where it’s fantastic songs, with really cool arrangements and you’re hearing something totally new.” This is an album of deep inner struggles thrust onto a bigger stage, with words—”What about my dreams? What about the heart?”—that matter, magnified magnificently. —\u003cem>Bob Boilen\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/11/05/776382293/angel-olsen-and-john-congleton-on-how-they-made-all-mirrors\">Angel Olsen’s All Songs Considered interview\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003ch6>1.\u003c/h6>\n\u003ch3>Brittany Howard\u003c/h3>\n\u003ch3>\u003cem>Jaime\u003c/em>\u003c/h3>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/CfizQsGWOxI'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/CfizQsGWOxI'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Black radicalism, the philosopher Fred Moten has written, cannot be understood outside the context of its origins in oppression; as a force of rebirth, it also always breaks out of that context. The same, Moten says, is true of black music—a broken circle, rooted and free, it demands a new way of listening. The first solo album by Alabama Shakes front woman Brittany Howard inspires such heady thoughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sinking her fingers into the dirt of her own life story as a black biracial queer woman born in the Deep South, now living far West of that beloved, problematic home, Howard wrote a set of songs that invoke Moten’s image of the groove as a broken circle. These are songs that draw the ear into their slow rhythms, only to disrupt and rearrange themselves; that build melodies like vines growing, turning and knotting into loops, getting tangled as they move toward sun. They tell stories of desire with names like “Stay High,” unorthodox faith through declarations like “He Loves Me” and family history by facing painful memories (in “Goat Head,” the stench of racism permeates). Yet following her own perspective, Howard turns confession on its head. To realize her songs’ deceptively plainspoken complexity, Howard and producer Shawn Everett brought together jazz disruptors Nate Smith on drums and Robert Glasper on keys, alongside her old bandmate and musical anchor, bassist Zac Cockrell. They took chances. They got psychedelic, locked into heavy funk, slid into classic R&B and then cleared space for Howard to be lonely, like the blues chanteuse she also can be. This album is a radical act of self-claiming, one that does more than reintroduce a great 21st Century voice. It turns a broken circle into an open road. —\u003cem>Ann Powers\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>■ MORE: \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/10/15/768439696/brittany-howard-tiny-desk-concert\">Watch Brittany Howard perform at NPR’s Tiny Desk\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=The+25+Best+Albums+Of+2019&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Miss Universe 2019 is Gifted, Outspoken and All About 'Black Girl Magic'",
"headTitle": "Miss Universe 2019 is Gifted, Outspoken and All About ‘Black Girl Magic’ | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Yes, the Miss Universe pageant has its share of detractors. There is, for example, that swimsuit competition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then there is this year’s winner to consider: Zozibini Tunzi of South Africa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Tunzi was crowned as the winner of the 2019 Miss Universe competition on Sunday night, she took a moment to speak about the importance of shifting antiquated beauty standards—and finally celebrating “black girl magic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I grew up in a world where a woman who looks like me—with my kind of skin and my kind of hair—was never considered to be beautiful,” the 26-year-old said during her closing statement. “I think it is time that stops today. I want children to look at me and see my face, and I want them to see their faces reflected in mine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tunzi is the pageant’s first black winner in eight years, since Leila Lopes from Angola took home the crown in 2011. In her official Miss Universe \u003ca href=\"https://www.missuniverse.com/titleholder/1000734\">bio\u003c/a>, the 26-year-old is described as a strong proponent of natural beauty who “encourages women to love themselves as they are.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She wore her hair in a natural, short style during the competition, which she \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Official_MissSA/status/1203913238943031296\">said\u003c/a> was “a symbol of my firm belief in fair representation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even her outfit in the national costume segment reflected her beliefs. Tunzi had asked South African men to demonstrate their solidarity with the gender equality campaign #HeforShe by writing letters to honor and celebrate South African women. The letters, written on colorful ribbons, were woven into her costume, which was called “Wave of Love.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her coronation at Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta received a wide amount of social media support and celebration from around the world, with people noting how exciting it is to see that Miss America, Miss Teen USA, Miss USA and now Miss Universe are all black women this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/Essence/status/1204026870301413377\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She was also applauded for her thoughtful answers during the pageant on climate change and leadership.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/zozitunzi/status/1203930667316371457\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the Top 5 question and answer segment, Tunzi stated that individuals, government leaders and corporations should all be taking action toward protecting the planet, noting that it’s time adults listen to young children who have taken part in climate strikes and protests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/MissUniverse/status/1203864288819064833?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1203864288819064833&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2Fsections%2Fgoatsandsoda%2F2019%2F12%2F09%2F786312377%2Fmiss-universe-2019-is-young-gifted-and-an-outspoken-believer-in-black-girl-magic\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Since sixth grade, I’ve been learning that the climate is deteriorating and the planet is dying, and it is up to us to keep our planet safe,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When asked what she thinks is the most important thing young girls should be taught today, Tunzi responded: “I think the most important thing … is leadership.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s something that has been lacking in young women and girls for a very long time, not because we don’t want to but because of what society has labeled women to be,” she added. “I think we are the most powerful beings in the world and that we should be given every opportunity. And that is what we should be teaching these young girls—to take up space.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her response was retweeted by Oprah Winfrey, who agreed with the sentiment and extended an invitation for Tunzi to visit the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/Oprah/status/1203888524107436032\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Additionally, a clip of Tunzi addressing gender-based violence during the Miss South Africa competition began making the rounds on Twitter as people congratulated her on her new title.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/theklmanuel/status/1204001146571878400\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the video, a presenter asked what reason South African women have to keep smiling despite facing challenges like emotional, physical and economic abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have absolutely no reason to keep smiling because South African women are dying everyday and mostly people are doing nothing about it,” Tunzi replied. “I think it’s time that we stop asking women what to do and start asking perpetrators to do better, to be better, to start treating women the way that they deserve to be treated.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Miss+Universe+2019+Is+Young%2C+Gifted+And+An+Outspoken+Believer+In+%27Black+Girl+Magic%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Yes, the Miss Universe pageant has its share of detractors. There is, for example, that swimsuit competition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then there is this year’s winner to consider: Zozibini Tunzi of South Africa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Tunzi was crowned as the winner of the 2019 Miss Universe competition on Sunday night, she took a moment to speak about the importance of shifting antiquated beauty standards—and finally celebrating “black girl magic.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I grew up in a world where a woman who looks like me—with my kind of skin and my kind of hair—was never considered to be beautiful,” the 26-year-old said during her closing statement. “I think it is time that stops today. I want children to look at me and see my face, and I want them to see their faces reflected in mine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tunzi is the pageant’s first black winner in eight years, since Leila Lopes from Angola took home the crown in 2011. In her official Miss Universe \u003ca href=\"https://www.missuniverse.com/titleholder/1000734\">bio\u003c/a>, the 26-year-old is described as a strong proponent of natural beauty who “encourages women to love themselves as they are.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She wore her hair in a natural, short style during the competition, which she \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/Official_MissSA/status/1203913238943031296\">said\u003c/a> was “a symbol of my firm belief in fair representation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even her outfit in the national costume segment reflected her beliefs. Tunzi had asked South African men to demonstrate their solidarity with the gender equality campaign #HeforShe by writing letters to honor and celebrate South African women. The letters, written on colorful ribbons, were woven into her costume, which was called “Wave of Love.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her coronation at Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta received a wide amount of social media support and celebration from around the world, with people noting how exciting it is to see that Miss America, Miss Teen USA, Miss USA and now Miss Universe are all black women this year.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>During the Top 5 question and answer segment, Tunzi stated that individuals, government leaders and corporations should all be taking action toward protecting the planet, noting that it’s time adults listen to young children who have taken part in climate strikes and protests.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>“Since sixth grade, I’ve been learning that the climate is deteriorating and the planet is dying, and it is up to us to keep our planet safe,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When asked what she thinks is the most important thing young girls should be taught today, Tunzi responded: “I think the most important thing … is leadership.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s something that has been lacking in young women and girls for a very long time, not because we don’t want to but because of what society has labeled women to be,” she added. “I think we are the most powerful beings in the world and that we should be given every opportunity. And that is what we should be teaching these young girls—to take up space.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her response was retweeted by Oprah Winfrey, who agreed with the sentiment and extended an invitation for Tunzi to visit the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>Additionally, a clip of Tunzi addressing gender-based violence during the Miss South Africa competition began making the rounds on Twitter as people congratulated her on her new title.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>In the video, a presenter asked what reason South African women have to keep smiling despite facing challenges like emotional, physical and economic abuse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have absolutely no reason to keep smiling because South African women are dying everyday and mostly people are doing nothing about it,” Tunzi replied. “I think it’s time that we stop asking women what to do and start asking perpetrators to do better, to be better, to start treating women the way that they deserve to be treated.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Miss+Universe+2019+Is+Young%2C+Gifted+And+An+Outspoken+Believer+In+%27Black+Girl+Magic%27&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "How the 1962 Escape From Alcatraz Set a Precedent For Prison Crafting",
"headTitle": "How the 1962 Escape From Alcatraz Set a Precedent For Prison Crafting | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>For hundreds of years, crafting was considered a primarily feminine pursuit. In the past few decades, though, old stereotypes about women gossiping around sewing circles have been flipped as \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/stitch-stitch-history-knitting-activism\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">feminists embraced knitting and cross-stitching\u003c/a> (not to mention the great \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/57692/dont-know-how-to-knit-make-your-own-pussy-hat-out-of-paper\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pussy hat frenzy\u003c/a> of 2017) as community-building exercises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in recent years, male crafters have also been bucking convention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between 2006 and 2008, half of American households contained a self-identified crafter—and they definitely weren’t all women. “Crafting is so ubiquitous now that it’s hard to put it into one demographic,” Craft & Hobby Association spokesman Victor Domine told the \u003ca href=\"https://www.denverpost.com/2009/06/12/men-take-on-female-dominated-craft-world/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Denver Post\u003c/em>\u003c/a> in 2009. “We’re seeing more men participating with a lot of pride.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A surprising number of those men are in prison. California now has \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/02/arts/design/california-prison-arts.html?_r=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">arts programs\u003c/a> in all 35 of its adult prisons. San Quentin’s \u003ca href=\"https://boingboing.net/2018/12/11/you-can-buy-death-row-inmate.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Handicraft Shop\u003c/a> sells arts and crafts made by prisoners; \u003ca href=\"https://collectivehub.com/2016/08/enter-the-maximum-security-prison-that-encourages-creativity/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Louisiana State Penitentiary\u003c/a> hosts annual public fairs at which all \u003cem>objets d’art\u003c/em> are made by inmates; and at \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/06/most-prisoners-want-to-work-the-shop-where-inmates-crafts-fill-the-shelves\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Maine state prison\u003c/a>, men make birdhouses, model boats, cutting boards and toys that are then sold in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/pg/MSPShowroom/about/?ref=page_internal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">showroom\u003c/a> open to the public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The trend isn’t limited to the United States. In El Salvador, incarcerated gang members from the Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha gangs are currently offered classes in knitting, music and DIY as part of a rehabilitation program called “Yo Cambio” or “I Change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Brazil, designer \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/gustavosilvestrebrasil\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Gustavo Silvestre\u003c/a> teaches crochet to Guarulhos inmates as part of a program called \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/projetopontofirme/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Projeto Ponto Firme\u003c/a>; the resulting clothing is high-end enough to have been shown at São Paulo Fashion Week. And 500 miles away at Arisvaldo de Campos Pires maximum security prison, inmates have \u003ca href=\"https://qz.com/114236/theres-a-maximum-security-prison-in-brazil-where-male-inmates-are-expert-knitters/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">learned to knit and crochet\u003c/a> for local fashion designer \u003ca href=\"https://qz.com/114236/theres-a-maximum-security-prison-in-brazil-where-male-inmates-are-expert-knitters/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Raquel Guimaraes\u003c/a>. In exchange, they earn wages and shorter sentences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the greatest story of prisoners using arts and crafts to facilitate shorter sentences happened in San Francisco, and has been world-famous for half a century. Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin’s daring 1962 Alcatraz escape is usually presented as a tale of anti-hero triumph; men taking charge of their own destinies to escape a seemingly inescapable island. The 1979 film \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079116/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Escape From Alcatraz\u003c/em>\u003c/a> saw Clint Eastwood playing Morris as the manliest of criminal masterminds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSS0fH9zzFY\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In truth, the key to this trio’s brilliantly conceived exit strategy was made less of machismo and more of meticulous artisanal crafting—something that’s been somewhat glossed over in the course of Alcatraz myth-making. These prisoners didn’t just sloppily throw together some props to help them along the way, they spent months sewing, painting and papier-mâché sculpting their way to freedom. It demonstrated a degree of patience, attention to detail and multitasking that defies stereotypes about the kind of men that ended up on The Rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Morris and the Anglin brothers stayed up night after night delicately sculpting their own self-portraits and carefully hand-painting perfect cardboard replicas of their cells’ air vents. Their dummy heads were constructed and molded using an ingenious mixture of concrete, toilet paper and soap, topped off with human hair from the prison barbershop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13870781\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13870781\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/Dummy-heads-800x474.png\" alt=\"Two of the homemade dummy heads used by the escaping prisoners to fool guards.\" width=\"800\" height=\"474\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/Dummy-heads-800x474.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/Dummy-heads-160x95.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/Dummy-heads-768x455.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/Dummy-heads-1020x605.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/Dummy-heads-1200x712.png 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/Dummy-heads.png 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Two of the homemade dummy heads used by the escaping prisoners to fool guards. \u003ccite>(YouTube/@APArchive)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Little attention has also been given to what intricate paint-mixers Morris and the Anglins were. Not only did they have to blend pink and white paints from the prison workshop into a convincing flesh tone for their fake heads, they had to come up with a green for the decoy vents that seamlessly matched their cell walls. There was zero space for Bob Ross happy accidents here, and none were made.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The trio weren’t just teaching themselves art, either. Their life vests and the large triangular raft they escaped on were fashioned from over 50 deconstructed raincoats. They somehow vulcanized the seams of the life vests, and part of the raft left behind on the roof of the cellblock (where the prisoners spent months constructing it) shows strategic gluing and impressively even hand-stitching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13870779\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 327px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13870779\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/stitches-final.png\" alt=\"A discarded piece of the Alcatraz escape raft, left behind by prisoners.\" width=\"327\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/stitches-final.png 327w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/stitches-final-160x122.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 327px) 100vw, 327px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A discarded piece of the Alcatraz escape raft, left behind by prisoners. \u003ccite>('Mythbusters'/Discovery Channel)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In addition, the men had to modify an accordion in order to pump up the raft once they reached Alcatraz’s shoreline, and construct paddles from wood and brass bolts that were light enough to carry across the island, but sturdy enough to guide them through the Bay’s freezing waters. Just look at this scrappy craftmanship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13870780\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 521px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13870780\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/paddle-final.png\" alt=\"This paddle from the escape was found on Angel Island after the fact.\" width=\"521\" height=\"273\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/paddle-final.png 521w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/paddle-final-160x84.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 521px) 100vw, 521px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This paddle from the escape was found on Angel Island after the fact. \u003ccite>('Mythbusters'/Discovery Channel)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Just as Alcatraz sparked a heightened level of resourceful creativity in Morris and the Anglins, the harsh restrictions of prison life continue to prompt boundless inventiveness in prisoners. Even at institutions where art supplies are strictly forbidden, craftiness still finds a way. As Phyllis Kornfeld, author of \u003ca href=\"https://cellblockvisions.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in America\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, told the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/fashion/ingenious-crafts-projects-for-a-stircrazy-day.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em>\u003c/a> in 2004: “They do things with cigarette packs and make purses and carve soap and make sculptures with toilet paper. They’ll paint with broom straw or their own hair.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Research shows that prisoners who explore their artistic sides are better behaved than their non-crafty peers. New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility introduced the \u003ca href=\"https://icpa.org/art-for-change-innovative-rehabilitation-programme-drastically-reduced-recidivism-in-prison/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rehabilitation Through the Arts\u003c/a> (RTA) program over 20 years ago, and has found that participants commit fewer infractions and are more likely to enroll in higher educational courses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Escape From Alcatraz\u003c/em> contains a scene in which an inmate chops off his own fingers with an axe after being denied painting privileges by the warden. The reality isn’t quite so dramatic. But what is real is the ample evidence suggesting that art and crafts are great for people behind bars—something Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers could no doubt have told authorities if they’d ever been seen again.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>For hundreds of years, crafting was considered a primarily feminine pursuit. In the past few decades, though, old stereotypes about women gossiping around sewing circles have been flipped as \u003ca href=\"https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/stitch-stitch-history-knitting-activism\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">feminists embraced knitting and cross-stitching\u003c/a> (not to mention the great \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/pop/57692/dont-know-how-to-knit-make-your-own-pussy-hat-out-of-paper\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pussy hat frenzy\u003c/a> of 2017) as community-building exercises.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And in recent years, male crafters have also been bucking convention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Between 2006 and 2008, half of American households contained a self-identified crafter—and they definitely weren’t all women. “Crafting is so ubiquitous now that it’s hard to put it into one demographic,” Craft & Hobby Association spokesman Victor Domine told the \u003ca href=\"https://www.denverpost.com/2009/06/12/men-take-on-female-dominated-craft-world/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Denver Post\u003c/em>\u003c/a> in 2009. “We’re seeing more men participating with a lot of pride.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A surprising number of those men are in prison. California now has \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/02/arts/design/california-prison-arts.html?_r=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">arts programs\u003c/a> in all 35 of its adult prisons. San Quentin’s \u003ca href=\"https://boingboing.net/2018/12/11/you-can-buy-death-row-inmate.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Handicraft Shop\u003c/a> sells arts and crafts made by prisoners; \u003ca href=\"https://collectivehub.com/2016/08/enter-the-maximum-security-prison-that-encourages-creativity/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Louisiana State Penitentiary\u003c/a> hosts annual public fairs at which all \u003cem>objets d’art\u003c/em> are made by inmates; and at \u003ca href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/06/most-prisoners-want-to-work-the-shop-where-inmates-crafts-fill-the-shelves\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Maine state prison\u003c/a>, men make birdhouses, model boats, cutting boards and toys that are then sold in a \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/pg/MSPShowroom/about/?ref=page_internal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">showroom\u003c/a> open to the public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The trend isn’t limited to the United States. In El Salvador, incarcerated gang members from the Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha gangs are currently offered classes in knitting, music and DIY as part of a rehabilitation program called “Yo Cambio” or “I Change.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Brazil, designer \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/gustavosilvestrebrasil\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Gustavo Silvestre\u003c/a> teaches crochet to Guarulhos inmates as part of a program called \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/projetopontofirme/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Projeto Ponto Firme\u003c/a>; the resulting clothing is high-end enough to have been shown at São Paulo Fashion Week. And 500 miles away at Arisvaldo de Campos Pires maximum security prison, inmates have \u003ca href=\"https://qz.com/114236/theres-a-maximum-security-prison-in-brazil-where-male-inmates-are-expert-knitters/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">learned to knit and crochet\u003c/a> for local fashion designer \u003ca href=\"https://qz.com/114236/theres-a-maximum-security-prison-in-brazil-where-male-inmates-are-expert-knitters/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Raquel Guimaraes\u003c/a>. In exchange, they earn wages and shorter sentences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the greatest story of prisoners using arts and crafts to facilitate shorter sentences happened in San Francisco, and has been world-famous for half a century. Frank Morris, John Anglin and Clarence Anglin’s daring 1962 Alcatraz escape is usually presented as a tale of anti-hero triumph; men taking charge of their own destinies to escape a seemingly inescapable island. The 1979 film \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079116/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Escape From Alcatraz\u003c/em>\u003c/a> saw Clint Eastwood playing Morris as the manliest of criminal masterminds.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/KSS0fH9zzFY'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/KSS0fH9zzFY'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>In truth, the key to this trio’s brilliantly conceived exit strategy was made less of machismo and more of meticulous artisanal crafting—something that’s been somewhat glossed over in the course of Alcatraz myth-making. These prisoners didn’t just sloppily throw together some props to help them along the way, they spent months sewing, painting and papier-mâché sculpting their way to freedom. It demonstrated a degree of patience, attention to detail and multitasking that defies stereotypes about the kind of men that ended up on The Rock.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Morris and the Anglin brothers stayed up night after night delicately sculpting their own self-portraits and carefully hand-painting perfect cardboard replicas of their cells’ air vents. Their dummy heads were constructed and molded using an ingenious mixture of concrete, toilet paper and soap, topped off with human hair from the prison barbershop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13870781\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13870781\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/Dummy-heads-800x474.png\" alt=\"Two of the homemade dummy heads used by the escaping prisoners to fool guards.\" width=\"800\" height=\"474\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/Dummy-heads-800x474.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/Dummy-heads-160x95.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/Dummy-heads-768x455.png 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/Dummy-heads-1020x605.png 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/Dummy-heads-1200x712.png 1200w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/Dummy-heads.png 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Two of the homemade dummy heads used by the escaping prisoners to fool guards. \u003ccite>(YouTube/@APArchive)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Little attention has also been given to what intricate paint-mixers Morris and the Anglins were. Not only did they have to blend pink and white paints from the prison workshop into a convincing flesh tone for their fake heads, they had to come up with a green for the decoy vents that seamlessly matched their cell walls. There was zero space for Bob Ross happy accidents here, and none were made.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The trio weren’t just teaching themselves art, either. Their life vests and the large triangular raft they escaped on were fashioned from over 50 deconstructed raincoats. They somehow vulcanized the seams of the life vests, and part of the raft left behind on the roof of the cellblock (where the prisoners spent months constructing it) shows strategic gluing and impressively even hand-stitching.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13870779\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 327px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13870779\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/stitches-final.png\" alt=\"A discarded piece of the Alcatraz escape raft, left behind by prisoners.\" width=\"327\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/stitches-final.png 327w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/stitches-final-160x122.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 327px) 100vw, 327px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A discarded piece of the Alcatraz escape raft, left behind by prisoners. \u003ccite>('Mythbusters'/Discovery Channel)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In addition, the men had to modify an accordion in order to pump up the raft once they reached Alcatraz’s shoreline, and construct paddles from wood and brass bolts that were light enough to carry across the island, but sturdy enough to guide them through the Bay’s freezing waters. Just look at this scrappy craftmanship.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13870780\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 521px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13870780\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/paddle-final.png\" alt=\"This paddle from the escape was found on Angel Island after the fact.\" width=\"521\" height=\"273\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/paddle-final.png 521w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/paddle-final-160x84.png 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 521px) 100vw, 521px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This paddle from the escape was found on Angel Island after the fact. \u003ccite>('Mythbusters'/Discovery Channel)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Just as Alcatraz sparked a heightened level of resourceful creativity in Morris and the Anglins, the harsh restrictions of prison life continue to prompt boundless inventiveness in prisoners. Even at institutions where art supplies are strictly forbidden, craftiness still finds a way. As Phyllis Kornfeld, author of \u003ca href=\"https://cellblockvisions.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in America\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, told the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/26/fashion/ingenious-crafts-projects-for-a-stircrazy-day.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em>\u003c/a> in 2004: “They do things with cigarette packs and make purses and carve soap and make sculptures with toilet paper. They’ll paint with broom straw or their own hair.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Research shows that prisoners who explore their artistic sides are better behaved than their non-crafty peers. New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility introduced the \u003ca href=\"https://icpa.org/art-for-change-innovative-rehabilitation-programme-drastically-reduced-recidivism-in-prison/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rehabilitation Through the Arts\u003c/a> (RTA) program over 20 years ago, and has found that participants commit fewer infractions and are more likely to enroll in higher educational courses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Escape From Alcatraz\u003c/em> contains a scene in which an inmate chops off his own fingers with an axe after being denied painting privileges by the warden. The reality isn’t quite so dramatic. But what is real is the ample evidence suggesting that art and crafts are great for people behind bars—something Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers could no doubt have told authorities if they’d ever been seen again.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Sony’s animated short film about the beauty of black hair, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNw8V_Fkw28&feature=youtu.be\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Hair Love\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, just got uploaded to YouTube—and it couldn’t be more timely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In late November, \u003ca href=\"https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/americas-got-talent-gabrielle-union-julianne-hough-toxic-culture-ousted-judges-1203417447/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Variety\u003c/em> reported\u003c/a> that Gabriel Union was told her hairstyles were “too black” while judging on \u003cem>America’s Got Talent. \u003c/em>And earlier this week, Senator Cory Booker introduced \u003ca href=\"https://www.thecrownact.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a bill\u003c/a> to ban discrimination against non-white hairstyles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Hair Love\u003c/em>, a seven-minute short by Matthew A. Cherry, tells the story of Zuri, a gorgeous little girl with a big Afro. She needs some styling help from her doting dad for the first time, but he struggles to tame her curls. \u003cem>Hair Love\u003c/em>—also starring Issa Rae as Zuri’s mom—is about beauty, family and being there for the ones we love, no matter the challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can see the heartwarming film, which first hit theaters in August, in full below.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNw8V_Fkw28&feature=youtu.be\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Sony’s animated short film about the beauty of black hair, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNw8V_Fkw28&feature=youtu.be\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Hair Love\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, just got uploaded to YouTube—and it couldn’t be more timely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In late November, \u003ca href=\"https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/americas-got-talent-gabrielle-union-julianne-hough-toxic-culture-ousted-judges-1203417447/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Variety\u003c/em> reported\u003c/a> that Gabriel Union was told her hairstyles were “too black” while judging on \u003cem>America’s Got Talent. \u003c/em>And earlier this week, Senator Cory Booker introduced \u003ca href=\"https://www.thecrownact.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a bill\u003c/a> to ban discrimination against non-white hairstyles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Hair Love\u003c/em>, a seven-minute short by Matthew A. Cherry, tells the story of Zuri, a gorgeous little girl with a big Afro. She needs some styling help from her doting dad for the first time, but he struggles to tame her curls. \u003cem>Hair Love\u003c/em>—also starring Issa Rae as Zuri’s mom—is about beauty, family and being there for the ones we love, no matter the challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can see the heartwarming film, which first hit theaters in August, in full below.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/kNw8V_Fkw28'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/kNw8V_Fkw28'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Greta Thunberg did not sail across the Atlantic Ocean\u003ca href=\"https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/08/1045161\"> for two weeks\u003c/a> to become a lead singer. But, just days after the 16-year-old proselytizer\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763452863/transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-u-n-climate-action-summit\"> censured\u003c/a> a room of world leaders many times her age for their shared “fairy tales of eternal economic growth,” the internet made her one, anyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most impassioned moments of Thunberg’s September sermon at the United Nations quickly sprouted musical memes. In New York, a drummer \u003ca href=\"https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/greta-thunberg-swedish-death-metal-892000/\">growled\u003c/a> her words above relentless Swedish death metal, a nod to her homeland that doubled as a fundraising blunderbuss for Greenpeace. Two producers turned the speech into bombastic electronica, with roaring choirs and stomping boots\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GOoajKDIME\"> set to scenes\u003c/a> of forests burning and children marching. And another\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABIbH-LtpFs\"> mashed\u003c/a> the day’s \u003cem>cri de cœur\u003c/em>—”Right here, right now is where we draw the line.”—with the Fatboy Slim hit “Right Here, Right Now.” Just days later, Slim himself slipped it into a live set, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWvFcR7UtAI\">sending \u003c/a>his audience into a tizzy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpWftLOWXLY\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Environmentalism in music is nothing new, of course. A full quarter-century before James Hansen \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/24/us/global-warming-has-begun-expert-tells-senate.html\">told Congress\u003c/a> that humans were changing their climate, Peter La Farge, an indigenous songwriter from the Southwest, repeatedly warned of environmental devastation on 1963’s\u003ca href=\"https://folkways.si.edu/peter-la-farge/as-long-as-the-grass-shall-grow-sings-of-the-indians/american-folk-american-indian/music/album/smithsonian\"> \u003cem>As Long as the Grass Shall\u003c/em> \u003cem>Grow\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, a remarkable album of Native American laments about the various plagues of pioneers. From Joni Mitchell \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94bdMSCdw20\">singing\u003c/a> of the birds, bees and DDT to Neil Young\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33N8M6tQ4e0\"> rhapsodizing\u003c/a> of “Mother Earth / and her healing ways” in 1990 (or\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaaJCJvFP9M\"> grousing\u003c/a> about “old white guys trying to kill mother nature” in 2019), the stars of the ’60s and ’70s have often stepped into a\u003ca href=\"https://www.nrdc.org/stories/story-silent-spring\"> post-\u003cem>Silent Spring\u003c/em>\u003c/a> fray.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s never stopped, really: Depeche Mode\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwS5WexDVHI\"> sang\u003c/a> of forests dying and streams putrefying in 1983, presciently alluding to climate-science deniers. One of Dave Matthews’ earliest songs, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdLj0c9iaEA\">One Sweet World\u003c/a>,” inspired a Ben & Jerry’s flavor that has raised tens of thousands of dollars for an\u003ca href=\"http://saveourenvironment.org/\"> environmental coalition\u003c/a>. There are\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3skR9wQL8s\"> entire milieus\u003c/a> of metal and punk devoted to socioecological unsustainability, realms where\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uiADLX1ZXc\"> nuclear weapons\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QjXtrQKf88\"> animal agriculture\u003c/a> share culpability. On her second album, Miley Cyrus wrote a\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNEZp8BWGEU\"> rock song\u003c/a> about “going green,” while Anohni sardonically\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi0q0O4V5Qs\"> longed\u003c/a> for it all to burn—”dogs crying for water… fish go belly-up in the sea”—above demonic horns and militant drums on “4 Degrees.” Mos Def has\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N5Bk8FMw9Y\"> rapped\u003c/a> about the money-hungry ruining the water supply. And even Smash Mouth tried to alarm us about the corroding ozone layer and melting ice shelf during “All Star,” that song from\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo2SNtFofWI\"> \u003cem>Shrek\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thunberg’s unlikely ascendance as a source of inspiring samples highlights something that’s missing: a song that helps us sort through our globally mounting anxiety about climate change and our role in our own potential doom, an actual anthem that propels people towards action. Despite its news-cycle ubiquity and increasing threat of globe-altering impacts, songs touching on climate change have rarely crossed the threshold of the mainstream, existing instead as a distant flicker on the radar of our collective awareness. “Big Yellow Taxi,” perhaps as close as we’ve gotten to a unifying environmental ode, turns 50 next year; it’s been so ubiquitous for so long it feels as pat as an advertising jingle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94bdMSCdw20\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the last few years, however, global warming and the intense feelings it fosters have begun to creep subtly into lyrics where you may overlook them, a quiet corollary to a movement \u003ca href=\"https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/how-experimental-musicians-are-soundtracking-the-end-of-the-world/\">spider-webbing\u003c/a> through electronic music. Songwriters are increasingly treating climate unease like the very air we breathe or the technology we use—a part of life with which we must reckon and reconcile, like love or lust or loss.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These new tunes aren’t protest songs as we think of them, and they don’t shoehorn motivational slogans into their choruses; they are reflections of a reality lived under the specter of global collapse, the evidence of our personal adjustments to an anxiously indeterminate present and future. And their writers, unlike Thunberg, aren’t looking to proselytize to world leaders or to synthesize scientific research into an empowering single—they’re not the experts, after all. They’re just people offering others a way to sort through what’s happening, even to mourn what’s already been lost. It’s the difference between a command and a confession, a lecture and a conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“We’re afraid of darkness. We’re afraid of endings. We’re afraid of death,”\u003c/strong> says Tamara Lindeman, a Canadian singer whose work as The Weather Station has started \u003ca href=\"https://theweatherstation.bandcamp.com/track/the-most-dangerous-thing-about-you\">to integrate\u003c/a> snippets of impending disaster into her songs. Her next album, due in 2020, commits to the subject. “To look at something so profoundly devastating is so scary, but it’s powerful if you can allow yourself to feel those feelings. You can stop hiding from it. Having that experience through art is healthy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcPDgWMkEiM\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of these newer songs confront global warming like a mammoth sparring partner, squaring up to the subject wielding rhetoric like fists. Andrew Bird’s “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv68Kivrl5g\">Manifest\u003c/a>” sounds as breezy as a Sunday stroll through the Laurel Canyon, with licks of whistling and gliding strings. But in the first verse, he renounces the United States’ westward sprawl, condemning a country of unfaithful stewards. He gazes at the ocean with anxiety and ponders the way we burn ancient organisms—the fossils in our fossil fuels—just to drive to the grocery store. During 2016’s “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_UKDPR7k_E\">Generation Why\u003c/a>,” Weyes Blood offers her fearful vision like she’s reading the evening news: “It’s not the past that scares me / Now what a great future this is gonna be.” She spells out “YOLO” during the hook, her mind caught in the evermore-tight vice between modern indulgence and future existence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Others, though, are almost subliminal in their climate change invocations. Justin Vernon hides his worry in plain sight during Bon Iver’s “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIzFg4eEvbQ\">Holyfields\u003c/a>.” With his clutched falsetto, he renders “The dawn is rising / the land ain’t rising” almost as an aside, as if the circumstances of\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/kidspost/high-tides-flood-venice-for-third-time-in-one-week/2019/11/18/ad73a1f8-0701-11ea-ac12-3325d49eacaa_story.html\"> modern Venice\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/climate/coastal-cities-underwater.html\"> future\u003c/a> Mumbai, Bangkok and Miami are so obvious they’re best left coded. Lana Del Rey slips her own stark observations into the final verse of “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrSX_OcpeJg\">The Greatest\u003c/a>,” calmly inserting a note about wildfires and eternal heat waves between lines about Kanye West’s blond hair and Hawaii’s bomb scare. On a song where “the culture is lit,” it’s a lyrical detail that’s easy to miss—just as it’s possible to overlook that, on the album’s \u003ca href=\"https://images.app.goo.gl/NyMxNWrxnBe1idkz5\">cover\u003c/a>, California is burning.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Blake Mills knows that coastline in flames well.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Born in Santa Monica and raised in Malibu, the songwriter and star producer, once\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/arts/music/blake-mills-releases-his-second-album-heigh-ho.html\"> called\u003c/a> “the last guitarist I heard that I thought was phenomenal” by Eric Clapton, is conditioned to months of perpetually balmy days, interrupted with occasional downpours as fall slides into winter. But a few years ago that rain was slow to come, and the landscape around Los Angeles felt like a tinderbox. When, at last, storms arrived, a friend joked to Mills that maybe it would be the last rain ever for Los Angeles. The storm’s petrichor, Mills remembers, smelled of nostalgia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mills sat down at his piano and began to ponder what that might mean. The result—a sobering, tender ballad called “Summer All Over”—teeters at the threshold of hope and despair. With his sigh caked on the keys like mud at the bottom of some drought-devastated lake, Mills tempers his quiet horror by “looking for laughter, looking for kindness,” for any human quality that aims to right our colossal wrongs. Mills captures that seesaw of feelings musically with a pervasive flicker of melodic dissonance. Electronics drift in the background, like smog hovering above a troubled valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Writing about the season of summer inherently evokes a Beach Boys vibe, maybe because I’m in Los Angeles,” says Mills, who penned the song with Cass McCombs and hopes to release it on his third album. “But the implication of the warmest season happening all over the world at the same time is an ‘endless summer.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He notes the sad irony of a term that, less than 50 years ago, belonged to\u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/album/05J8PFXdYKeYNb8YjqqJYr\"> a relatively carefree\u003c/a> Beach Boys collection. But “Summer All Over,” an enticing title that suggests burnished bodies on a California shoreline, is tragically beautiful, a warm hug from an old ghost. Rock and roll can’t be all good times on the bleeding edge of environmental ruin.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>While touring for the last several years,\u003c/strong> Kentucky songwriter Joan Shelley came to similar epiphanies along the California coast. Not long ago, she was driving north from Los Angeles to Seattle between shows, marveling at the scenery along California’s fabled Highway 1. She remembers the cliffs and the sunlight glittering on the Pacific, a fantasy come to life. That image is captured by “\u003ca href=\"https://joanshelley.bandcamp.com/track/stay-all-night\">Stay All Night\u003c/a>,” a seaside reflection from her quietly uneasy 2019 album,\u003ca href=\"https://joanshelley.bandcamp.com/album/like-the-river-loves-the-sea\"> \u003cem>Like the River Loves the Sea\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. She marvels at the vista but, in the final verse of her reverie, wonders how temporary it may be, hoping that “the waves don’t rise this high.” Actually, it was the opposite: On a recent return visit, that road was closed, nearby cliffs washed into the water by landslides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=3u4Pe2YHH-Y&feature=emb_logo\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the album’s arresting centerpiece, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u4Pe2YHH-Y\">The Fading\u003c/a>,” Shelley retreats to Kentucky, the place Mark Twain (\u003ca href=\"https://oregonscribbler.com/mark-twain-i-want-to-be-in-kentucky-when-the-end-of-the-world-comes-because-they-are-always-20-years-behind/\">allegedly\u003c/a>) joked he’d like to be when the world ended, because it’s always years behind everywhere else. Shelley keys on that idea as she reclines to witness the natural world overrun the order we’ve imposed upon it. “I cheered the flood / when the water hit the wall and won,” she lilts, her cotton-soft voice temporarily stiffening. It’s a love song at, and for, the end of time, an exercise in appreciating what you’ve had the chance to cherish, whether it’s a drink of gin or a gentle lover or a lovely day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes, Shelley admits, she turns off the news, because the devastation is too much to hear. As a songwriter, then, it was paramount to create a new way of approaching that helplessness, of facing those truths. These songs don’t protest reality—they simply acknowledge it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With the small rooms I play for, I’m hoping to give people tools for feeling where we may want to be numb. There’s a grief that is hard to admit to,” she says. “But through art, people can express those low-humming anxieties in a way that isn’t so hard to face.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sweetly wizened voice trailing Shelley’s during “The Fading” belongs to fellow Kentucky native Will Oldham. She, in turn, adds harmonies across \u003cem>I Made a Place\u003c/em>, Oldham’s first record as Bonnie “Prince” Billy in eight years. Moments of intense worry and woe linger in the record’s quiet corners, absorbing the light of these seemingly incandescent songs. During the album’s jaunty first verse, a home burns, part of a personal conflagration that Oldham suggests is spreading. And during the hypnotic “Nothing Is Busted,” a wounded woman and an oblivious man capture the dynamic between our ecosystem and our social order, a relationship hamstrung by the need for new things to sell, buy and discard. “This particular assemblage of molecules and memories someday soon may just run out of gas,” Oldham sings in one song’s closing verse without pausing to take so much as a breath, as if racing against the apocalypse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For most of \u003cem>I Made a Place\u003c/em>, Oldham dances around or with these end times. But during “This Is Far From Over,” an acoustic stunner near the album’s center, he faces them with softness and resolve. Presumably written for his newborn daughter, the song conjures a world where rising tides force her to take to the sea as an adult, a continental refugee who will do her best to persevere. It is a tragic lullaby, a preemptive apology for the mess she will inherit. Despite the title, Oldham is neither blithe nor disingenuous, using the last verse to confront the possibility that new kinds of life will thrive in humanity’s absence. “The whole world’s far from over,” he sings in the final line at the edge of his falsetto, just where his voice might crack into tears.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“Our kids are being handed a rotten deal, everyone’s children,”\u003c/strong> says The National’s Matt Berninger, father to a 10-year-old daughter, Isla. “The Industrial Revolution gave the Earth a gaping wound not that long ago in the grand scheme, and it’s bleeding out fast. But a tipping point is happening, I think, in understanding how rigged that system is.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The National have rarely been an overtly political band—Berninger has instead spent two decades mapping the darkest and most dangerous corners of his psyche. He’s worried out loud about\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPp-3QSXf1g\"> handing down\u003c/a> his worst habits to Isla, about\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsZmE95t2Yw\"> taking love too hard\u003c/a> for his own health, and about\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxL_xRM0Wug\"> losing himself\u003c/a> in the\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCfWAVRR794\"> strange alchemy\u003c/a> of lust and blood and booze. But now the peril of climate change has entered that matrix of considerations, part of “the soup of everyone’s minds and hearts all the time,” as he puts it, alongside sex and drugs and comedy and general dread.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In December 2018, Berninger was at a wedding just north of Los Angeles when a song sketch from The National’s Aaron Dessner arrived. Berninger woke up one morning before sunset and, while wandering the streets, unspooled 17 verses to the loop, a sort of living chronicle of his consciousness. There were headline anxieties about the alt-right and immigration, opinions about R.E.M. and The Bible, an interest in the seemingly infinite minimalism of artist\u003ca href=\"http://www.artnet.com/artists/hanne-darboven/evolution-leibniz-a-bSB3naI0qNnejm9Es8cqXw2\"> Hanne Darboven\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po61rjjdUPs\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When he sent the epic to Dessner and filmmaker and producer Mike Mills, they trimmed his diarist sprawl and added an unexpected twist: the dire verses of “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvFrSG37idM\">Noble Experiment\u003c/a>,” a waltz for the end of humanity, released by indie-rock eccentrics Thinking Fellers Union 282 in 1994. During the finished version, “\u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/track/50DAgICmMnWaUVXQiLGlLx\">Not in Kansas\u003c/a>” from this year’s \u003cem>I Am Easy to Find\u003c/em>, a small choir intones those doomed words—”Be a fish or a weed or a sparrow / For the Earth has grown tired and all of your time has expired”—between Berninger’s own verses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The National effectively nest the end of the world inside a laundry list of mundane thoughts; it’s like finding your own death certificate in the day’s otherwise ordinary mail. The world teems with distractions, “Not in Kansas” implies, to keep us from the crisis at the door.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know how any artist isn’t talking about all of this stuff—sexism, racism, global warming, corporate corruption. I can’t spend time on a song now unless it’s somehow \u003cem>aware\u003c/em> of that stuff,” Berninger says. “Art has the responsibility to try to enlighten, instead of \u003cem>just\u003c/em> entertain. Pop music is still afraid to get into it, but not everyone.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps the closest that recent pop has come to the subject is “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W9VYY5QpLg\">PARAD(w/m)E\u003c/a>,” a slyly sparkling 2018 single from the North Carolina duo Sylvan Esso. The tune is ebullient, with a chorus that sounds like a mechanized schoolyard chant and verses that shimmer like sunshine on the distant desert horizon. It’s possible to hear and even sing along without ever reflecting on its apocalyptic scenes—the gasless gas stations, the flora-less forests, the reprieve-less heat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W9VYY5QpLg\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Singer Amelia Meath laughs ruefully about fans who show up to shows wearing homemade shirts reading “How’s that for manifesting our destiny,” having misinterpreted the song’s linchpin indictment as a self-help mantra fit for yogis. About halfway in, Nick Sanborn’s keyboards wobble from their glistening perch, slinking briefly into a morass beneath taunting handclaps. In the refrain, Meath’s proclamation of liberation—”We finally got free”—comes only after she reveals the cause: We’ve already ruined everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While “PARAD(w/m)E” never landed on \u003cem>Billboard\u003c/em>‘s charts, it suggests a clear framework for some future global-warming protest anthem, much like Billie Eilish’s subtly hypnotic “all the good girls go to hell”: lyrics so sharp listeners might not feel the knife, surrounded by music that celebrates whatever it is we’ve salvaged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No one likes the guy at the party who is just talking about horrible stuff all the time. But that’s me,” says Meath, smiling. She’s worked to weave such concerns into Sylvan Esso’s third LP, likely arriving in 2020, without being didactic. “That song is cloaked, very specifically, to be easy to swallow. That is the dream: Make the funnest music about the heaviest shit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>In Iceland, mourners \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/08/19/okjokull-glacier-funeral-iceland-activists-establish-plaque/2049194001/\">\u003cstrong>hold\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong> funerals for dead glaciers.\u003c/strong> In Washington state, a pioneering three-credit \u003ca href=\"https://www.uwb.edu/news/february-2018/environmental-grief\">course\u003c/a> called “Environmental Grief & Climate Anxiety: Coping in the Age of Consequences” teaches students how to sort through their despair and identify its sources. (The class subsequently became a\u003ca href=\"https://www.foxnews.com/us/global-warming-bringing-you-down-washington-state-offers-course-on-eco-anxiety-climate-grief.amp\"> Fox News punchline\u003c/a>.) And in magazines from\u003ca href=\"https://www.vogue.com/article/eco-anxiety-grief-mental-health-climate-change\"> \u003cem>Vogue\u003c/em>\u003c/a> to\u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/amp/en_uk/article/gy48d4/environmental-grief-climate-change-anxiety\"> \u003cem>Vice\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, recent articles about “eco-grief” signal the drift of these fears into the mainstream.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Songs about climate change are an inevitable, essential, and overdue component of that movement, a necessary response and tool for people “to process the truth and the existential dread,” as Berninger puts it. And while these songs have slowly started to accumulate during the last several years, it seems that we’re just at the edge of a new tide of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next year, alongside new records from Sylvan Esso and The Weather Station, Grimes—a fringe pop star who has delighted in dancing at the edge of accessibility for a decade—will release\u003ca href=\"https://pitchfork.com/news/grimes-announces-new-album-miss-anthropocene/\"> \u003cem>Miss Anthropocene\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. “Each song will be a different embodiment of human extinction,” she has written. So far, its singles have mined the power dynamics of abusive relationships and the burden of despondency, topics that get to the nuance of the overarching issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a presidential election year, when the United States is officially able \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/climate/trump-paris-agreement-climate.html\">to exit\u003c/a> the Paris Climate Agreement, Grimes likely won’t be alone, either in commiserating peers or coping listeners. The British singer-songwriter Bill Fay, now in his late 70s, touches on the topic for \u003ca href=\"https://pitchfork.com/news/bill-fay-announces-new-album-countless-branches-shares-new-song-listen/\">\u003cem>Countless Branches\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, due in January, while buzzy LA producer \u003ca href=\"http://shallou.com\">Shallou\u003c/a> cloaks concerns about environmental collapse in breakup imagery on an album due next summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of these songwriters work under the illusion that these tunes, however poppy or plainspoken, will literally \u003cem>fix\u003c/em> anything, from reversing President Donald Trump’s confusing climate-change \u003ca href=\"https://time.com/5622374/donald-trump-climate-change-hoax-event/\">denial\u003c/a> to adjusting people’s disposable plastic habits. As working musicians, they have practical issues of their own to navigate, anyway, as the mechanisms of distribution for their work—be it a server churning through electricity or\u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en_uk/article/9kz3y5/this-is-how-bad-your-vinyl-obsession-is-for-the-world\"> an LP made with petroleum\u003c/a> or a tour bus burning gas—inextricably entail a carbon footprint for now. Coldplay \u003ca href=\"https://news.yahoo.com/coldplay-postpones-future-global-tours-climate-change-fears-135905727.html\">won’t tour\u003c/a> behind their recent \u003cem>Everyday Life\u003c/em> until they can do so in a carbon-neutral way, a powerful stand from one of the world’s biggest bands but a strategy that’s not yet sustainable for small acts working merely for their living. It’s the essential friction of making and selling art that questions capitalist foundations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for now, these songs simply exist for the people who need them, their writers included. They’re not expressions of what they know or what they want you to do but only how they feel—and implicit permission slips for you to feel that way, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not hoping to shine a light on something for anybody. Everything that needs to be said is being said really clearly,” says Mills, referring to scientists and policy experts who know and can articulate what he cannot. “But my song is about how we’re reacting to that information. And despair in music can help soak up the despair of the people listening.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Music+For+Our+Emergency&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Greta Thunberg did not sail across the Atlantic Ocean\u003ca href=\"https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/08/1045161\"> for two weeks\u003c/a> to become a lead singer. But, just days after the 16-year-old proselytizer\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763452863/transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-u-n-climate-action-summit\"> censured\u003c/a> a room of world leaders many times her age for their shared “fairy tales of eternal economic growth,” the internet made her one, anyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most impassioned moments of Thunberg’s September sermon at the United Nations quickly sprouted musical memes. In New York, a drummer \u003ca href=\"https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/greta-thunberg-swedish-death-metal-892000/\">growled\u003c/a> her words above relentless Swedish death metal, a nod to her homeland that doubled as a fundraising blunderbuss for Greenpeace. Two producers turned the speech into bombastic electronica, with roaring choirs and stomping boots\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GOoajKDIME\"> set to scenes\u003c/a> of forests burning and children marching. And another\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABIbH-LtpFs\"> mashed\u003c/a> the day’s \u003cem>cri de cœur\u003c/em>—”Right here, right now is where we draw the line.”—with the Fatboy Slim hit “Right Here, Right Now.” Just days later, Slim himself slipped it into a live set, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWvFcR7UtAI\">sending \u003c/a>his audience into a tizzy.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/zpWftLOWXLY'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/zpWftLOWXLY'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Environmentalism in music is nothing new, of course. A full quarter-century before James Hansen \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/24/us/global-warming-has-begun-expert-tells-senate.html\">told Congress\u003c/a> that humans were changing their climate, Peter La Farge, an indigenous songwriter from the Southwest, repeatedly warned of environmental devastation on 1963’s\u003ca href=\"https://folkways.si.edu/peter-la-farge/as-long-as-the-grass-shall-grow-sings-of-the-indians/american-folk-american-indian/music/album/smithsonian\"> \u003cem>As Long as the Grass Shall\u003c/em> \u003cem>Grow\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, a remarkable album of Native American laments about the various plagues of pioneers. From Joni Mitchell \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94bdMSCdw20\">singing\u003c/a> of the birds, bees and DDT to Neil Young\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33N8M6tQ4e0\"> rhapsodizing\u003c/a> of “Mother Earth / and her healing ways” in 1990 (or\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaaJCJvFP9M\"> grousing\u003c/a> about “old white guys trying to kill mother nature” in 2019), the stars of the ’60s and ’70s have often stepped into a\u003ca href=\"https://www.nrdc.org/stories/story-silent-spring\"> post-\u003cem>Silent Spring\u003c/em>\u003c/a> fray.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s never stopped, really: Depeche Mode\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwS5WexDVHI\"> sang\u003c/a> of forests dying and streams putrefying in 1983, presciently alluding to climate-science deniers. One of Dave Matthews’ earliest songs, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdLj0c9iaEA\">One Sweet World\u003c/a>,” inspired a Ben & Jerry’s flavor that has raised tens of thousands of dollars for an\u003ca href=\"http://saveourenvironment.org/\"> environmental coalition\u003c/a>. There are\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3skR9wQL8s\"> entire milieus\u003c/a> of metal and punk devoted to socioecological unsustainability, realms where\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uiADLX1ZXc\"> nuclear weapons\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QjXtrQKf88\"> animal agriculture\u003c/a> share culpability. On her second album, Miley Cyrus wrote a\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNEZp8BWGEU\"> rock song\u003c/a> about “going green,” while Anohni sardonically\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi0q0O4V5Qs\"> longed\u003c/a> for it all to burn—”dogs crying for water… fish go belly-up in the sea”—above demonic horns and militant drums on “4 Degrees.” Mos Def has\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N5Bk8FMw9Y\"> rapped\u003c/a> about the money-hungry ruining the water supply. And even Smash Mouth tried to alarm us about the corroding ozone layer and melting ice shelf during “All Star,” that song from\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo2SNtFofWI\"> \u003cem>Shrek\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thunberg’s unlikely ascendance as a source of inspiring samples highlights something that’s missing: a song that helps us sort through our globally mounting anxiety about climate change and our role in our own potential doom, an actual anthem that propels people towards action. Despite its news-cycle ubiquity and increasing threat of globe-altering impacts, songs touching on climate change have rarely crossed the threshold of the mainstream, existing instead as a distant flicker on the radar of our collective awareness. “Big Yellow Taxi,” perhaps as close as we’ve gotten to a unifying environmental ode, turns 50 next year; it’s been so ubiquitous for so long it feels as pat as an advertising jingle.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/94bdMSCdw20'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/94bdMSCdw20'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>In the last few years, however, global warming and the intense feelings it fosters have begun to creep subtly into lyrics where you may overlook them, a quiet corollary to a movement \u003ca href=\"https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/how-experimental-musicians-are-soundtracking-the-end-of-the-world/\">spider-webbing\u003c/a> through electronic music. Songwriters are increasingly treating climate unease like the very air we breathe or the technology we use—a part of life with which we must reckon and reconcile, like love or lust or loss.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These new tunes aren’t protest songs as we think of them, and they don’t shoehorn motivational slogans into their choruses; they are reflections of a reality lived under the specter of global collapse, the evidence of our personal adjustments to an anxiously indeterminate present and future. And their writers, unlike Thunberg, aren’t looking to proselytize to world leaders or to synthesize scientific research into an empowering single—they’re not the experts, after all. They’re just people offering others a way to sort through what’s happening, even to mourn what’s already been lost. It’s the difference between a command and a confession, a lecture and a conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“We’re afraid of darkness. We’re afraid of endings. We’re afraid of death,”\u003c/strong> says Tamara Lindeman, a Canadian singer whose work as The Weather Station has started \u003ca href=\"https://theweatherstation.bandcamp.com/track/the-most-dangerous-thing-about-you\">to integrate\u003c/a> snippets of impending disaster into her songs. Her next album, due in 2020, commits to the subject. “To look at something so profoundly devastating is so scary, but it’s powerful if you can allow yourself to feel those feelings. You can stop hiding from it. Having that experience through art is healthy.”\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/mcPDgWMkEiM'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/mcPDgWMkEiM'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Some of these newer songs confront global warming like a mammoth sparring partner, squaring up to the subject wielding rhetoric like fists. Andrew Bird’s “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv68Kivrl5g\">Manifest\u003c/a>” sounds as breezy as a Sunday stroll through the Laurel Canyon, with licks of whistling and gliding strings. But in the first verse, he renounces the United States’ westward sprawl, condemning a country of unfaithful stewards. He gazes at the ocean with anxiety and ponders the way we burn ancient organisms—the fossils in our fossil fuels—just to drive to the grocery store. During 2016’s “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_UKDPR7k_E\">Generation Why\u003c/a>,” Weyes Blood offers her fearful vision like she’s reading the evening news: “It’s not the past that scares me / Now what a great future this is gonna be.” She spells out “YOLO” during the hook, her mind caught in the evermore-tight vice between modern indulgence and future existence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Others, though, are almost subliminal in their climate change invocations. Justin Vernon hides his worry in plain sight during Bon Iver’s “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIzFg4eEvbQ\">Holyfields\u003c/a>.” With his clutched falsetto, he renders “The dawn is rising / the land ain’t rising” almost as an aside, as if the circumstances of\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/kidspost/high-tides-flood-venice-for-third-time-in-one-week/2019/11/18/ad73a1f8-0701-11ea-ac12-3325d49eacaa_story.html\"> modern Venice\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/climate/coastal-cities-underwater.html\"> future\u003c/a> Mumbai, Bangkok and Miami are so obvious they’re best left coded. Lana Del Rey slips her own stark observations into the final verse of “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrSX_OcpeJg\">The Greatest\u003c/a>,” calmly inserting a note about wildfires and eternal heat waves between lines about Kanye West’s blond hair and Hawaii’s bomb scare. On a song where “the culture is lit,” it’s a lyrical detail that’s easy to miss—just as it’s possible to overlook that, on the album’s \u003ca href=\"https://images.app.goo.gl/NyMxNWrxnBe1idkz5\">cover\u003c/a>, California is burning.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Blake Mills knows that coastline in flames well.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Born in Santa Monica and raised in Malibu, the songwriter and star producer, once\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/arts/music/blake-mills-releases-his-second-album-heigh-ho.html\"> called\u003c/a> “the last guitarist I heard that I thought was phenomenal” by Eric Clapton, is conditioned to months of perpetually balmy days, interrupted with occasional downpours as fall slides into winter. But a few years ago that rain was slow to come, and the landscape around Los Angeles felt like a tinderbox. When, at last, storms arrived, a friend joked to Mills that maybe it would be the last rain ever for Los Angeles. The storm’s petrichor, Mills remembers, smelled of nostalgia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mills sat down at his piano and began to ponder what that might mean. The result—a sobering, tender ballad called “Summer All Over”—teeters at the threshold of hope and despair. With his sigh caked on the keys like mud at the bottom of some drought-devastated lake, Mills tempers his quiet horror by “looking for laughter, looking for kindness,” for any human quality that aims to right our colossal wrongs. Mills captures that seesaw of feelings musically with a pervasive flicker of melodic dissonance. Electronics drift in the background, like smog hovering above a troubled valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Writing about the season of summer inherently evokes a Beach Boys vibe, maybe because I’m in Los Angeles,” says Mills, who penned the song with Cass McCombs and hopes to release it on his third album. “But the implication of the warmest season happening all over the world at the same time is an ‘endless summer.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He notes the sad irony of a term that, less than 50 years ago, belonged to\u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/album/05J8PFXdYKeYNb8YjqqJYr\"> a relatively carefree\u003c/a> Beach Boys collection. But “Summer All Over,” an enticing title that suggests burnished bodies on a California shoreline, is tragically beautiful, a warm hug from an old ghost. Rock and roll can’t be all good times on the bleeding edge of environmental ruin.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>While touring for the last several years,\u003c/strong> Kentucky songwriter Joan Shelley came to similar epiphanies along the California coast. Not long ago, she was driving north from Los Angeles to Seattle between shows, marveling at the scenery along California’s fabled Highway 1. She remembers the cliffs and the sunlight glittering on the Pacific, a fantasy come to life. That image is captured by “\u003ca href=\"https://joanshelley.bandcamp.com/track/stay-all-night\">Stay All Night\u003c/a>,” a seaside reflection from her quietly uneasy 2019 album,\u003ca href=\"https://joanshelley.bandcamp.com/album/like-the-river-loves-the-sea\"> \u003cem>Like the River Loves the Sea\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. She marvels at the vista but, in the final verse of her reverie, wonders how temporary it may be, hoping that “the waves don’t rise this high.” Actually, it was the opposite: On a recent return visit, that road was closed, nearby cliffs washed into the water by landslides.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/3u4Pe2YHH-Y'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/3u4Pe2YHH-Y'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>During the album’s arresting centerpiece, “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u4Pe2YHH-Y\">The Fading\u003c/a>,” Shelley retreats to Kentucky, the place Mark Twain (\u003ca href=\"https://oregonscribbler.com/mark-twain-i-want-to-be-in-kentucky-when-the-end-of-the-world-comes-because-they-are-always-20-years-behind/\">allegedly\u003c/a>) joked he’d like to be when the world ended, because it’s always years behind everywhere else. Shelley keys on that idea as she reclines to witness the natural world overrun the order we’ve imposed upon it. “I cheered the flood / when the water hit the wall and won,” she lilts, her cotton-soft voice temporarily stiffening. It’s a love song at, and for, the end of time, an exercise in appreciating what you’ve had the chance to cherish, whether it’s a drink of gin or a gentle lover or a lovely day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes, Shelley admits, she turns off the news, because the devastation is too much to hear. As a songwriter, then, it was paramount to create a new way of approaching that helplessness, of facing those truths. These songs don’t protest reality—they simply acknowledge it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“With the small rooms I play for, I’m hoping to give people tools for feeling where we may want to be numb. There’s a grief that is hard to admit to,” she says. “But through art, people can express those low-humming anxieties in a way that isn’t so hard to face.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sweetly wizened voice trailing Shelley’s during “The Fading” belongs to fellow Kentucky native Will Oldham. She, in turn, adds harmonies across \u003cem>I Made a Place\u003c/em>, Oldham’s first record as Bonnie “Prince” Billy in eight years. Moments of intense worry and woe linger in the record’s quiet corners, absorbing the light of these seemingly incandescent songs. During the album’s jaunty first verse, a home burns, part of a personal conflagration that Oldham suggests is spreading. And during the hypnotic “Nothing Is Busted,” a wounded woman and an oblivious man capture the dynamic between our ecosystem and our social order, a relationship hamstrung by the need for new things to sell, buy and discard. “This particular assemblage of molecules and memories someday soon may just run out of gas,” Oldham sings in one song’s closing verse without pausing to take so much as a breath, as if racing against the apocalypse.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For most of \u003cem>I Made a Place\u003c/em>, Oldham dances around or with these end times. But during “This Is Far From Over,” an acoustic stunner near the album’s center, he faces them with softness and resolve. Presumably written for his newborn daughter, the song conjures a world where rising tides force her to take to the sea as an adult, a continental refugee who will do her best to persevere. It is a tragic lullaby, a preemptive apology for the mess she will inherit. Despite the title, Oldham is neither blithe nor disingenuous, using the last verse to confront the possibility that new kinds of life will thrive in humanity’s absence. “The whole world’s far from over,” he sings in the final line at the edge of his falsetto, just where his voice might crack into tears.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>“Our kids are being handed a rotten deal, everyone’s children,”\u003c/strong> says The National’s Matt Berninger, father to a 10-year-old daughter, Isla. “The Industrial Revolution gave the Earth a gaping wound not that long ago in the grand scheme, and it’s bleeding out fast. But a tipping point is happening, I think, in understanding how rigged that system is.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The National have rarely been an overtly political band—Berninger has instead spent two decades mapping the darkest and most dangerous corners of his psyche. He’s worried out loud about\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPp-3QSXf1g\"> handing down\u003c/a> his worst habits to Isla, about\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsZmE95t2Yw\"> taking love too hard\u003c/a> for his own health, and about\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxL_xRM0Wug\"> losing himself\u003c/a> in the\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCfWAVRR794\"> strange alchemy\u003c/a> of lust and blood and booze. But now the peril of climate change has entered that matrix of considerations, part of “the soup of everyone’s minds and hearts all the time,” as he puts it, alongside sex and drugs and comedy and general dread.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In December 2018, Berninger was at a wedding just north of Los Angeles when a song sketch from The National’s Aaron Dessner arrived. Berninger woke up one morning before sunset and, while wandering the streets, unspooled 17 verses to the loop, a sort of living chronicle of his consciousness. There were headline anxieties about the alt-right and immigration, opinions about R.E.M. and The Bible, an interest in the seemingly infinite minimalism of artist\u003ca href=\"http://www.artnet.com/artists/hanne-darboven/evolution-leibniz-a-bSB3naI0qNnejm9Es8cqXw2\"> Hanne Darboven\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/Po61rjjdUPs'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/Po61rjjdUPs'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>When he sent the epic to Dessner and filmmaker and producer Mike Mills, they trimmed his diarist sprawl and added an unexpected twist: the dire verses of “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvFrSG37idM\">Noble Experiment\u003c/a>,” a waltz for the end of humanity, released by indie-rock eccentrics Thinking Fellers Union 282 in 1994. During the finished version, “\u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/track/50DAgICmMnWaUVXQiLGlLx\">Not in Kansas\u003c/a>” from this year’s \u003cem>I Am Easy to Find\u003c/em>, a small choir intones those doomed words—”Be a fish or a weed or a sparrow / For the Earth has grown tired and all of your time has expired”—between Berninger’s own verses.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The National effectively nest the end of the world inside a laundry list of mundane thoughts; it’s like finding your own death certificate in the day’s otherwise ordinary mail. The world teems with distractions, “Not in Kansas” implies, to keep us from the crisis at the door.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t know how any artist isn’t talking about all of this stuff—sexism, racism, global warming, corporate corruption. I can’t spend time on a song now unless it’s somehow \u003cem>aware\u003c/em> of that stuff,” Berninger says. “Art has the responsibility to try to enlighten, instead of \u003cem>just\u003c/em> entertain. Pop music is still afraid to get into it, but not everyone.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps the closest that recent pop has come to the subject is “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W9VYY5QpLg\">PARAD(w/m)E\u003c/a>,” a slyly sparkling 2018 single from the North Carolina duo Sylvan Esso. The tune is ebullient, with a chorus that sounds like a mechanized schoolyard chant and verses that shimmer like sunshine on the distant desert horizon. It’s possible to hear and even sing along without ever reflecting on its apocalyptic scenes—the gasless gas stations, the flora-less forests, the reprieve-less heat.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/4W9VYY5QpLg'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/4W9VYY5QpLg'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Singer Amelia Meath laughs ruefully about fans who show up to shows wearing homemade shirts reading “How’s that for manifesting our destiny,” having misinterpreted the song’s linchpin indictment as a self-help mantra fit for yogis. About halfway in, Nick Sanborn’s keyboards wobble from their glistening perch, slinking briefly into a morass beneath taunting handclaps. In the refrain, Meath’s proclamation of liberation—”We finally got free”—comes only after she reveals the cause: We’ve already ruined everything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While “PARAD(w/m)E” never landed on \u003cem>Billboard\u003c/em>‘s charts, it suggests a clear framework for some future global-warming protest anthem, much like Billie Eilish’s subtly hypnotic “all the good girls go to hell”: lyrics so sharp listeners might not feel the knife, surrounded by music that celebrates whatever it is we’ve salvaged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No one likes the guy at the party who is just talking about horrible stuff all the time. But that’s me,” says Meath, smiling. She’s worked to weave such concerns into Sylvan Esso’s third LP, likely arriving in 2020, without being didactic. “That song is cloaked, very specifically, to be easy to swallow. That is the dream: Make the funnest music about the heaviest shit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>In Iceland, mourners \u003c/strong>\u003ca href=\"https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/08/19/okjokull-glacier-funeral-iceland-activists-establish-plaque/2049194001/\">\u003cstrong>hold\u003c/strong>\u003c/a>\u003cstrong> funerals for dead glaciers.\u003c/strong> In Washington state, a pioneering three-credit \u003ca href=\"https://www.uwb.edu/news/february-2018/environmental-grief\">course\u003c/a> called “Environmental Grief & Climate Anxiety: Coping in the Age of Consequences” teaches students how to sort through their despair and identify its sources. (The class subsequently became a\u003ca href=\"https://www.foxnews.com/us/global-warming-bringing-you-down-washington-state-offers-course-on-eco-anxiety-climate-grief.amp\"> Fox News punchline\u003c/a>.) And in magazines from\u003ca href=\"https://www.vogue.com/article/eco-anxiety-grief-mental-health-climate-change\"> \u003cem>Vogue\u003c/em>\u003c/a> to\u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/amp/en_uk/article/gy48d4/environmental-grief-climate-change-anxiety\"> \u003cem>Vice\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, recent articles about “eco-grief” signal the drift of these fears into the mainstream.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Songs about climate change are an inevitable, essential, and overdue component of that movement, a necessary response and tool for people “to process the truth and the existential dread,” as Berninger puts it. And while these songs have slowly started to accumulate during the last several years, it seems that we’re just at the edge of a new tide of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next year, alongside new records from Sylvan Esso and The Weather Station, Grimes—a fringe pop star who has delighted in dancing at the edge of accessibility for a decade—will release\u003ca href=\"https://pitchfork.com/news/grimes-announces-new-album-miss-anthropocene/\"> \u003cem>Miss Anthropocene\u003c/em>\u003c/a>. “Each song will be a different embodiment of human extinction,” she has written. So far, its singles have mined the power dynamics of abusive relationships and the burden of despondency, topics that get to the nuance of the overarching issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a presidential election year, when the United States is officially able \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/climate/trump-paris-agreement-climate.html\">to exit\u003c/a> the Paris Climate Agreement, Grimes likely won’t be alone, either in commiserating peers or coping listeners. The British singer-songwriter Bill Fay, now in his late 70s, touches on the topic for \u003ca href=\"https://pitchfork.com/news/bill-fay-announces-new-album-countless-branches-shares-new-song-listen/\">\u003cem>Countless Branches\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, due in January, while buzzy LA producer \u003ca href=\"http://shallou.com\">Shallou\u003c/a> cloaks concerns about environmental collapse in breakup imagery on an album due next summer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>None of these songwriters work under the illusion that these tunes, however poppy or plainspoken, will literally \u003cem>fix\u003c/em> anything, from reversing President Donald Trump’s confusing climate-change \u003ca href=\"https://time.com/5622374/donald-trump-climate-change-hoax-event/\">denial\u003c/a> to adjusting people’s disposable plastic habits. As working musicians, they have practical issues of their own to navigate, anyway, as the mechanisms of distribution for their work—be it a server churning through electricity or\u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en_uk/article/9kz3y5/this-is-how-bad-your-vinyl-obsession-is-for-the-world\"> an LP made with petroleum\u003c/a> or a tour bus burning gas—inextricably entail a carbon footprint for now. Coldplay \u003ca href=\"https://news.yahoo.com/coldplay-postpones-future-global-tours-climate-change-fears-135905727.html\">won’t tour\u003c/a> behind their recent \u003cem>Everyday Life\u003c/em> until they can do so in a carbon-neutral way, a powerful stand from one of the world’s biggest bands but a strategy that’s not yet sustainable for small acts working merely for their living. It’s the essential friction of making and selling art that questions capitalist foundations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for now, these songs simply exist for the people who need them, their writers included. They’re not expressions of what they know or what they want you to do but only how they feel—and implicit permission slips for you to feel that way, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m not hoping to shine a light on something for anybody. Everything that needs to be said is being said really clearly,” says Mills, referring to scientists and policy experts who know and can articulate what he cannot. “But my song is about how we’re reacting to that information. And despair in music can help soak up the despair of the people listening.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">\u003cem>Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=Music+For+Our+Emergency&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Kelly Clarkson and Fred Rogers. Both are much-loved national treasures who embody family values and wholesome hearts. So it made perfect sense on Tuesday when everyone’s favorite \u003cem>American Idol\u003c/em> winner covered Mister Rogers’ classic “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Clarkson gave the theme tune a soulful, easy listening vibe as part of her \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbc.com/kelly-clarkson-show\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">daytime talk show\u003c/a> on NBC. The cover was chosen to tie in with Tuesday’s guest, Tom Hanks, who was appearing in support of his role playing Rogers in the new movie \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3224458/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can hear Kelly’s laid back jazzy take on the song below. (And if you pay close attention, you’ll notice some very special outfits in the audience…)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nngz6cAKsaE\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cp>She was the rescued feral cat from Indiana with dreamy green eyes, four extra toes and a tongue even more famous than Miley’s. But on Monday morning, news broke that \u003ca href=\"http://lilbub.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Lil BUB\u003c/a> had waddled off to the catnip palace in the sky, breaking the hearts of her 3 million Facebook fans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://twitter.com/IAMLILBUB/status/1201552296489967621\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Never held back by her dwarfism, in her short life this four-pound kitty achieved more than many humans five times her age. BUB helped out creatures less fortunate than herself by raising over $300,000 for the ASPCA via \u003ca href=\"https://store.lilbub.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">merch sales\u003c/a>, public appearances and other \u003ca href=\"https://secure.aspca.org/donate/lilbub\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">fundraising\u003c/a> efforts. Possibly even more remarkably, an hour-long video of her \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuHZSbPJhaY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">purring in front of a fireplace\u003c/a> once garnered over 4 million views on YouTube.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s not all. In addition to authoring her own book, \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Lil-BUBs-Book-Extraordinary-Amazing/dp/B00NAK01KQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Lil BUB’s Lil Book: The Extraordinary Life of the Most Amazing Cat on the Planet\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, BUB also appeared in two movies—\u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4383594/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Nine Lives\u003c/em>\u003c/a> (starring Christopher Walken!) and \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4057146/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>I’ll Be Next Door For Christmas\u003c/em>\u003c/a>—as well as a documentary about her life and origins, titled \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNyW-GKOG2k\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Lil BUB & Friends\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her YouTube talk show (why \u003cem>wouldn’t\u003c/em> she have one of those?) featured guests like \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbICDkQb46g\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Michelle Obama\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7tETcTnQcM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Whoopi Goldberg\u003c/a> and punk rock hero \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW4mwjSIkoE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Steve Albini\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7tETcTnQcM&t=173s\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>BUB tried to sum up her own enduring appeal in her book. “My limitless wisdom and razor-sharp wit, paired with my ability to overcome disabilities,” she wrote, “provide laughter, hope and inspiration to humans all over the world.” Arguably though, her spirit was best captured on the duet she recorded with party pal Andrew WK, on which he sang: “Stronger than a lion / Cuter than a baby / You bounce through space / Like a magical feline lady.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She does now, Andrew WK. She does now.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVYRR1Fj17M\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>Never held back by her dwarfism, in her short life this four-pound kitty achieved more than many humans five times her age. BUB helped out creatures less fortunate than herself by raising over $300,000 for the ASPCA via \u003ca href=\"https://store.lilbub.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">merch sales\u003c/a>, public appearances and other \u003ca href=\"https://secure.aspca.org/donate/lilbub\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">fundraising\u003c/a> efforts. Possibly even more remarkably, an hour-long video of her \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuHZSbPJhaY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">purring in front of a fireplace\u003c/a> once garnered over 4 million views on YouTube.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s not all. In addition to authoring her own book, \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/Lil-BUBs-Book-Extraordinary-Amazing/dp/B00NAK01KQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Lil BUB’s Lil Book: The Extraordinary Life of the Most Amazing Cat on the Planet\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, BUB also appeared in two movies—\u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4383594/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Nine Lives\u003c/em>\u003c/a> (starring Christopher Walken!) and \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4057146/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>I’ll Be Next Door For Christmas\u003c/em>\u003c/a>—as well as a documentary about her life and origins, titled \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNyW-GKOG2k\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u003cem>Lil BUB & Friends\u003c/em>\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her YouTube talk show (why \u003cem>wouldn’t\u003c/em> she have one of those?) featured guests like \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbICDkQb46g\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Michelle Obama\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7tETcTnQcM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Whoopi Goldberg\u003c/a> and punk rock hero \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW4mwjSIkoE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Steve Albini\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/r7tETcTnQcM'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/r7tETcTnQcM'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>BUB tried to sum up her own enduring appeal in her book. “My limitless wisdom and razor-sharp wit, paired with my ability to overcome disabilities,” she wrote, “provide laughter, hope and inspiration to humans all over the world.” Arguably though, her spirit was best captured on the duet she recorded with party pal Andrew WK, on which he sang: “Stronger than a lion / Cuter than a baby / You bounce through space / Like a magical feline lady.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She does now, Andrew WK. She does now.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/gVYRR1Fj17M'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/gVYRR1Fj17M'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"tagline": "The flip side of gentrification, told through one town",
"info": "Gentrification is changing cities across America, forcing people from neighborhoods they have long called home. Call them the displaced. Now those priced out of the Bay Area are looking for a better life in an unlikely place. American Suburb follows this migration to one California town along the Delta, 45 miles from San Francisco. But is this once sleepy suburb ready for them?",
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"tagline": "Exploring the Bay Area, one question at a time",
"info": "KQED’s new podcast, Bay Curious, gets to the bottom of the mysteries — both profound and peculiar — that give the Bay Area its unique identity. And we’ll do it with your help! You ask the questions. You decide what Bay Curious investigates. And you join us on the journey to find the answers.",
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"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
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"order": 8
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},
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"order": 1
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"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
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"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 9
},
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"hidden-brain": {
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"order": 18
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},
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"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
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"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
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"source": "WaitWhat"
},
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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