RECOMMENDS
OUR TOP POPCULTURE PICKS OF THE MONTH
SINGLE
1. Shamir’s “On My Own”
This genderqueer Philly artist wrote the dreamy breakup song last summer, but the single, released mid-June, took on new meaning. As he explains: “It’s morphed into an accidental quarantine anthem.”
BOOK
2. ‘The Living Dead’
Zombie king George Romero lays his apocalyptic view of society over the Fox News age. Though the novel was completed by Daniel Kraus after Romero’s 2017 death, it still has the urgency of his films.
VIRTUAL EVENT SERIES
3. The Secret Arts
Curiosities site Atlas Obscura has brought its unconventional events online during lockdown — now, instead of after-dark soirees in graveyards and abandoned subway stations, it’s offering interactive chats with everyone from watchmakers to mud-ball enthusiasts.
PODCAST
4. ‘Unfinished: Deep South’
This new investigation into Isadore Banks — a wealthy black farmer and World War I vet who was lynched in Arkansas in 1954 — uses one man’s story to show how the terrorism of Jim Crow shaped generations of African Americans.
VIDEO
5. City Girls’ “Jobs”
In this clip for one of this summer’s brashest singles, the two Miami rappers leave behind a fast-food gig for stilettos and OnlyFans accounts. Amid spare, Eighties-inspired bounce, they turn “I don’t work jobs/Bitch, I am a job” into a killer hook.
ALBUM
6. Hum’s ‘Inlet’
For their first LP in 22 years, these Nineties shoegaze bots return to their home planet: Fuzzy guitars crash into complex melodies about isolation, space colonization, and surviving trying times.
FROM THE VAULT
7. Prince’s “Witness 4 the Prosecution”
At his creative peak on 1987’s Sign O’ the Times, Prince was coming up with so many inspired ideas that even his castoffs feel like lost classics — like this gospel-funk rave-up from the album’s massive new reissue, due this fall.
PODCAST
8. ‘Slow Burn’ Season 4
Slate’s hit podcast returns to its political roots for a deep look at David Duke, who went from KKK Grand Wizard to the Louisiana House of Representatives — and who continues to push racism into politics.
DOCUMENTARY
9. ‘The Go-Go’s’
They were drug-dabbling, death-defying queens of Eighties New Wave — and when it comes to their recounting of the good, the bad, and the ugly in Alison Ellwood’s comprehensive portrait, no one’s lips are sealed.
TV SHOW
10. ‘Unsolved Mysteries’
Since the show went off the air in 2002, true-crime has become a different genre, but this Netflix reboot — which drops the narrator (RIP Robert Stack) and the violence-porn reenactments — proves the OG can keep up.