Bad Year; Good Content

anna dorn
4 min readJan 4, 2021

2020 in review

Normally these types of lists come out before the new year, but who cares about time anymore?

2020 was a weird one. A virus named for a Mexican lager ravaged planet Earth. The US government fucked up even more than usual. The chaos queen was voted out of the White House by a zombie and a cop. We all became captivated by a TV show starring Hugh Grant.

Whenever the world gets bleak, I comfort myself by remembering that a compelling book or album or movie is around the corner. It’s one of the few things I can count on.

MUSIC

Miss Anthropocene, Grimes

Grimes hasn’t made a bad album, but this is probably her most sophisticated, combining everything she does best — the sublime looping of Visions and bewitching glossolalia of Halfaxa and the expertly produced pop hooks of Art Angels.

Inner Song, Kelly Lee Owens

Inner Song sounds like light dancing on a wall or the rippling surface of a lake. I listen almost every day, which feels appropriate for an album about “seeking something spiritual in the act of repetition.”

how i’m feeling now, Charli XCX

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anna dorn

vagablonde (unnamed press, may 2020); bad lawyer (hachette books, spring 2021)