A decade of goodbyes
2010s’ wins and losses in music, film and TV
A few weeks ago my eyes fell upon a “best albums of the 2010s” list, and I was instantly irritated. I feel like we can only now make a best albums of the ’90s list after we’ve had a little time to look back on which trends played out better than others. Yet I’m tasked with some commentary about the past decade, which is funny because I just don’t think of the 2010s as a decade yet, perhaps because “The Tens” sounds awkward. Maybe a new roaring ’20s lies ahead. Considering how rotten times seem, I hate to think what the subsequent crash will look like.
But I guess catastrophe is at least something.
I did see an amazing David Byrne
concert in Houston in the 2010s. Just last year in fact, when he played Houston’s White Oak Music Hall, the foundation of a show he’s since taken to Broadway. He’ll be the guide on my river ride: “Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.”
When Byrne released that song with Talking Heads in 1980, the means didn’t easily exist to make that line a permanent sound loop until some primitive new species finds it in the future and wonders, “What the flibberty went wrong here? “Ohhhhhh …”
I started a list of cultural stuffs I admired over this span. But it felt, well, listy. Consider this, instead, a deconstructed list. A Top 100 or something like that, shattered like a crystal punch bowl, with the shards scraped into a dustbin and dumped into a paper sack. It’s a collection of things that is wet, sharp and difficult to sell as an entity.
Sure, I’m a homer, but music and film that came from Houston in the 2010s proved both popular and innovative. I mean, the Knowles sisters alone accounted for five albums this decade, and I’d classify four of those as masterpieces. People don’t care about albums as they once did, so both sisters decided to double down on what an album could be, making recordings that had pop singles but that also worked better if you didn’t deconstruct them into songs.
Outside our regional confines, Kendrick Lamar released four albums this decade, each one a brilliant short-story collection. Admittedly, we’re due for a new one. But let’s hold something back for 2020. Something we can look forward to, for a change.
What else in music? You say hello, I say goodbye. The scroll of musicians who moved on over the past decade is astounding because of the way two generations were taught to consume music. Country music lost scores of legends, and rock ’n’ roll lost Prince, David Bowie, Tom Petty and scads of others. The obits became water flowing underground: an endless stream under our daily doings.
If there was a palpable yet vague cross-generational outpouring of grief for these passings, I suspect many of us were less empathetic when younger artists punched out over the past few years, part of an epidemic about which we’re still learning to speak. One generation’s 27 club has become another’s 20 club. These are nasty times, and the more sensitive among us appear to be struggling more than ever.
From a business standpoint, we’re meant to believe that there’s greenery springing around the stump. That vinyl has bounced back, and I guess it has. At the midpoint of 2019, vinyl was poised to outsell CDs for the first time since 1986. But let’s be clear: 8.6 million LPs sold in the first half of the year. Presumably a boost occurs during the holiday season, so let’s round up. What if 18 million or 19 million LPs sell this year? That’s fewer copies sold than Hootie & the Blowfish’s “Cracked Rear View.”
Maybe the streaming services will compensate artists. But five years ago 43 million streams of “Happy” on Pandora earned Pharrell Williams $2,700. If you love music, go buy music.
Film and books proved more resilient.
Movies got bigger — at least it feels that way to me. CG allows fight scenes between inhuman combatants to wipe out city blocks. I can’t decide if “The Avengers” and “Star Trek” filmmakers trust us to assign human cost to this destruction or if they think we’ll assume cities are leveled only on Sundays, when most people are home working. Or maybe they want the stakes to be high, but they’ve done a rotten job conveying that.
While the bankable juggernauts get bigger, the smaller stuff remains viable. I can’t speak to the finances, but film appears more willing to accommodate a smaller big vision than music. Again, my mind comes back to Houston, where native Richard Linklater had an astounding decade that I think film nerds will discuss for a long time in the future. He created a weird micronot-documentary about a bizarre Carthage killing with “Bernie” in 2011. He generated flowing lavalike tension with “Before Midnight,” the third in a series. He did a couple of smart films that most people didn’t see. And he closed the year with “Where’d You Go, Bernadette,” which was a beautiful meditation on stifled creativity and the unpredictable ways it can explode. And none of those were his masterpiece.
That would be “Boyhood,” from 2014, a meditation on the effects of time in a single life shot over the span of a decade.
Linklater made “Boyhood” for about $4 million. Which is only a modest budget in the world of film. But the films that stuck with me this decade were often done on the cheap*. “Arrival” was haunting and allegorical, and it cost a mere $47 million, which is a bargain for aliens. “Moonlight” had no aliens, and cost about $4 million. “The Hunt for the Wilderpeople” cost about $2.5 million. I just Googled “city budget” and “$4 million” and found out Louisville, Ky., had a $4 million budget this year. So this decade proved people can make amazing films for the budget surplus of the 29th-largest city in the country. You hear that, cities?
I suppose “Wilderpeople” invites a little chitchat about Taika Waititi — who for my money is the most important filmmaker of the decade. “Wilderpeople” was a charmer that made about $23 million. The writer, director, actor from New Zealand also directed “Thor: Ragnarok,” which banked $850 million on a $180 budget. On the percentages, “Wilderpeople” was the bigger hit. Regardless, admiration for a guy who can find bank on these two wildly different scales.
Like music, TV was all about farewells, though these endings were premiditated. Like the creator of Mexican telenovelas, our TV overlords increasingly see the value in setting expiration dates on their series, rather than letting them wobble for years toward contrived conclusions. This golden age of TV remains a fount that shows no signs of draining its source, as streaming services and premium-cable outlets went from outliers to the generators for 21st century televised art. If anything, there’s too much TV. Talk about First World problems, though.
That said, the many farewells — “The Americans,” “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men,” “Justified,” “Game of Thrones” — felt difficult because saying goodbye hard. Even if these farewells prompt sentimental moments — sigh, “Parks and Recreation” — they’re for the best. Perhaps because of the quantity of shows and the frequency of farewells, the conversation about TV has shifted from overall quality of a story to the ability for its creators to conclude in a successful manner. Some struck perfect notes: “You’re the Worst,” “The Americans,” “Justified.” Others spent years training, only to sputter at the finish line. You don’t need me to list them and their contrived solution to warring kingdoms.
But I find reasons to be hopeful going into a new decade, even though I’ve always found decades to be sloppy ways to categorize culture. The popular music of 1991 — to name just one example — sounds much more like the music of the late-’80s than the music of the mid-’90s.
So we lose Prince, who is not replaceable. But we got Kendrick Lamar, who isn’t a one-man-band like Prince was but who is nevertheless a storyteller with few peers. We lost “Parks and Recreation” but got “Making It.” I’m tired of protest music — not just the songs, the idea that ire as art will change things. Amy Poehler’s weird crafting show embraces positivity at a time when I feel we could use it. For my money, it’s the greatest protest song of our time.
And if it prompts a new trend of reality TV that doesn’t involve yelling, disparaging comments and curt dismissals, I’ll line up for what comes next. Agitation and weirdness will remain welcome. But I can also find comfort in repetition when it’s not nasty. I suppose that’s another way of describing hope, which is a theme I’m seeking in the decade ahead.
There is water undergound.