RECOMMENDS

OUR TOP POPCULTURE PICKS OF THE

1. Tyler, the Creator

Tyler’s live charisma is second to none, making each show a frenetic visual feast. So the tour to support his excellent LP Call Me If You Get Lost will definitely be one of 2022’s must-see events.

2. ‘Dilla Time’

Journalist Dan Charnas’ definitive biography of the late hip-hop producer J Dilla isn’t just an account of rap’s craftiest beatmaker but the entire neo-soul scene he helped shape.

3. ‘Wild Boys’

For the third season of Campside Media’s Chameleon, comedian and journalist Sam Mullins unearths the story of the “Bush Boys,” two raggedy young men who appeared in a small Canadian hamlet claiming they’d been raised in the woods and had never encountered society. It upended the town — but it was all a lie.

4. ‘I Want You Back’

Amazon Studios’ new Jenny Slate-Charlie Day rom-com, dropping for Valentine’s Day, follows two fast friends who team up to win back their exes — offering a 110-minute romp as comforting as drugstore chocolates.

5. ‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ Season Four

She flamed out as Shy Baldwin’s opener last season, but our favorite fictional midcentury comedienne is back, this time trying to strike out on her own as a headliner, and maybe change show business in the process.

6. ‘Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché’

Celeste Bell, daughter of X-Ray Spex’s Poly Styrene, became the keeper of her mother’s legacy after Styrene’s death in 2011. In this fascinating new doc, Bell delves into the good and the bad of it, from the racism Styrene encountered as a groundbreaking Anglo Somali punk singer to her struggles with mental health.

7. “Funny Girl,” by Father John Misty

This new track has sardonic songwriter Josh Tillman quietly reintroducing himself, dazzling in Harry Nilsson melodies with a little help from an orchestral arrangement that echoes Old Hollywood. It has us psyched for his first album in four years, Chloë and the Next 20th Century, out in April.

8. ‘White Lies’

Meet the other Walter White. Author A.J. Baime recounts the incredible double life of this mixedrace journalist who lived the high life during the Harlem Renaissance while also going undercover as a white man in the Jim Crow South to investigate lynchings for the NAACP.

9. Erin Rae’s ‘Lighten Up’

One of Nashville’s finest folkies hits her stride on this stunning (and uncharacteristically upbeat) collection of focused psych-folk and West Coast roots pop, from the swirling organ rave “True Love’s Face” to the Topanga Canyon bliss of “Can’t See Stars.” It’s her most adventurous LP to date.