The Watch - The 2017 Year in Music With Lindsay Zoladz, Plus the Mailbag (Ep. 214)

Episode Date: December 28, 2017

For the final show of 2017, The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald chat with music critic Lindsay Zoladz about the year in music and their favorite songs, albums, artists, and playlists (1:00). Later, they open up the mailbag and answer some listener questions about the year in culture (26:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is chock full of year and goodness. We talked to The Ringers Lindsay Zolads about the year in music. We shared some of our favorite records, favorite albums, favorite singles of the year, talked about how we're listening to music now, whether or not Andy is washed. And then at the end of the episode, we just talked to each other about some of your questions. You had some mailbag questions. Very reflective, very old-length sign. Does that how you say it?

Sign? Sign? I think it's more like Zion. Is it a little zine? I'm certain to think you're worse of pronunciation than I am. I'm low-key getting worse. I think it's because my brain is getting slower. Let's get into this episode of The Watch.

I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm editor at The Ringer.com. And joining me in the studio is Andy Greenwald. And on the other line, our perfume genius, it's Lizzie Zolens. Dilly, Dilly, my friend.

What's up, Lindsay? This is a fairly annual occurrence of Lindsay joining us to talk about the year in music. It should be more often than the annual, but here we are. This is a Delco podcast. Yes. I was Montco, to be fair. Were you? Yeah.

We are representing the southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority. There it is. Lindsay is one of the cultural writers for the ringer.com in case you were living under a rock. And she did a really great roundup of the best songs of the year on the ringer.com for our year. coverage. She has also been nice enough to share with us a sprawling best albums list. And we're just going to kind of take it from there using Lindsay's list as a roadmap. But we're also just going to talk generally about the year of music because, Lindsay, I don't know if you know this about Andy, but he is working through some issues via his relationship to music. And I think that you're

about to do some amateur therapy work here. To be fair, I've been doing that for 30 years. Yes. But, okay, Lindsay, well, thank you for joining us. Thank you for being here for us. for having me. Always a pleasure. Here's why I need. You've spent the year on the music beat, other beats as well, but you're ear to the streets, ear to any Bluetooth speakers, as the case may be. And at the end of this year, I enjoy, as a former music writer, I

like the end of the year, I like making a list, I like making the Spotify playlist now and think about it. But I've come up kind of against a stumbling block this year, and I need your help unpacking it. Here's my question for you. Multiple choice. A, I'm old. B, the year has been so crushingly depressing in a real politics sense that music has not been able to match it. Or three, this was a remarkably bad year for music.

And I'm not sure if it's one, two, or three, or a combination of them. And I defer to your judgment. Is there a D that's like A and B? And maybe like a little bit of C? I mean, I'm older too now. I think we're all older than we ever thought we'd be. Do you identify as washed, Andy? Is that your generational signifier?

My feeling is that, you know, I've heard the term in relation to myself from other people. Yeah, so I'm willing to say that. Sure, but I fight against it. I fight against the wash. So tell me about what is the year in music to you. Did you think this was a particularly vibrant year or particularly good year? Or has it been tough for you, too, to navigate it in the face of all of the other nonsense pouring into our ears? I also found it really tough this year.

And I think it was just the political climate and kind of like just gray cloud hovering over every possible cultural industry this year. I did kind of have more trouble putting a list together, finding like narratives. Like it's hard to say this as, you know, a music critic. And I was paying attention to music all this year. But I think it didn't feel at the forefront of my experience as much as it had in other years. I think a lot of other critics felt that too. But no, but so when, I mean, even the piece you wrote for the ringer, the very good piece that drive from the headline, the best songs of the year were the unlikeliest.

Now is that, are you, when you wrote the piece, are you specifically speaking to the fact that people like Lilousievert like literally hit upload from a hotel room and made the most, arguably the most popular song of the year? Or are you saying that in a year that upended all of our expectations in so many ways, culturally, politically, socially, socially, the expected hits weren't there and we had to look elsewhere. Yeah, I think there was, you know, there was just chaos across the board in America this year. And I think that extended to more of like the hit single than the album, I think. And I talked about this a bit in the piece. But yeah, like you look at some of what became the biggest songs

of the year. Obviously, Cardi B, Bo Dac Yellow, like that was a very kind of spontaneous origin story. It was not even supposed to be her single. It was kind of just like a freestyle over a Kodak Black beat. And that ended up becoming kind of the consensus pick, I think, for Song of the Year. It was number one across most of the major list that I saw, including my own. Yes, and I got to say that I loved your lead on that, which is that every generation gets the juicy it deserves. Because it allows, it means a lot. It's complimentary towards Young Cardi, but it also,

gives the washed members of this podcast of good feeling in their hearts. And an entry point, I guess. Yeah, that's part of what I love about that song, just the exuberance of like it is the feeling of new money and kind of just, like, she's not even been rapping that long. And I think there's an energy to that song of her, like, realizing in real time that she's really good at rapping. And there's something just about the energy to it that is really contagious. And like I said, I think it just was the.

the kind of feel-good anti-hater's anthem that we all seem to need. There was also something contagious about the energy surrounding the music and people's response to it. I mean, there's that incredible video of people dancing to it in a, I don't know which New York City subway station. I think it's the Times Square. Yeah, which like to make that a sight of joy. Yeah.

That's not fair, Lindsay. It's a very joyful place if you like pausing for 10 minutes to watch kung fu movies. Wait a second. And also, I mean, like let's take a second to talk. to talk about milk carton, you know, the plastic bucket drummers. Well, that's because you last lived there in the 90s, when that was much more. There was like a real run of like 90s movies where guys would, you'd stop and watch the plastic bucket drummer.

So that one dude caked up off that. But, you know, the way that people reacted to Bodak Yellow, I thought was very telling because sometimes I feel like the music industry can just kind of feel like the snowpiercer train and around every bend, you're just like, oh my God, are they going to make it? And I think that's part of it. I remember talking with you and reading your stuff on Slack last year when we were kind of going through the Frank Ocean Watch. And it felt like all of your, there was like a kind of awareness that this thing was coming,

that these albums could be dropping at any moment. This year I thought that there was more, they tried to make coordinated releases. They tried to put all their eggs in one basket and say, okay, here's the Lord record, here's the Taylor record, here's, you know, whatever. And there's something the gears are off with the way that we're getting music delivered to us. And I think that you could make an argument that, you know, having the entire history of music at your fingertips at any given moment has sort of diffused our attention on any central artists. But, you know, I think that there's something right now about the fact that your number one song is this thing that was like such an organic like it was on, it was on the radio.

People started to really like it. People started to know all the words. People started to hear it coming out of car windows. People started to hear at clubs and bars. That's how songs are supposed to catch on. And it's not this like, we're going to jam this down the culture's throat. I think so we've, the past couple years, we've had the surprise album, which I think was a way to figure out how to get like trending currency in a time of just having, like you said, access to everything at our fingertips. And you kind of saw some of the bigger artists.

almost like pushing against that this year and with the Taylor Swift album and just how orchestrated that rollout felt. And, you know, I think that did not hurt her at all in album sales. Like she was kind of, I think we saw with reputation, like she still is too big to fail on the album side of things. And a lot of artists, you know, even like Drake just getting massive plays on what essentially was a playlist and people are going to listen to it because it's Drake and people are going to buy it because it's Taylor Swift. But I think the hit single became kind of the flip side of like it was like the year of the surprise single or the surprise hit as opposed to the surprise album.

I think that kind of spontaneity became the currency just in a smaller format because I talked about this in the piece that as much as the Taylor Swift album like probably will go on to be the biggest selling album of the year. It doesn't feel like it defined the landscape in that way. And I think that's because there was this failure to kind of have like a hit single that stuck. And I think the just her and Cardi B kind of going head to head on the charts was a really was a watershed moment for, you know, how a song becomes a hit in the digital age and that you can't really rely on a lot of the blueprint of how to write a hit song in 2017. I think there's a lot of, whereas like that was happening in the album format and the album charts a few years ago, I think that

that slipperiness is in the hit single now, which is, was exciting to watch. And especially because it's so hard to root against Cardi B. Like everybody loves her. She loves everybody. It was except whoever the song is about. So yeah, I think it was, it was, it was, it was, the year that I found myself paying more attention, I think, to songs over albums, but I think there also were several really brilliant records that came out this year. Just small Cardi B remarked. She made me love a G.EZ song. So I think she truly is this year's Wonder Woman. I don't know that I can go that far with you. I mean, no limit. That's on my playlist. You know, I think that the Taylor, the story of Taylor this year, which I think has been,

obviously like very highly debated with our internally at our company and also with it with the in the larger world is it is an instructive one because there was something about in 1989 and maybe that maybe I'm imagining this you can correct me if I'm wrong that felt very knowing of a hipster underbelly to her fan base you know what I mean and even even the fact that Ryan Adams made a cover record of it even the fact that she was starting to work with the guy from fun and you know and and have like these in these other influences and sort of suggest that maybe that she was kind of also listening to Fleetwood Mac along with Haim or something, and that there was just this kind of like, oh, Taylor's cool.

Like, I'm sure Sean Fennessey is drawing up my separation papers as I say that, but that there was, and then this record felt like she was just like, I'm going to move on without this block of voters. You know what I mean? It's not even, I don't even mean to draw the political parallels because I think those are really dangerous with Taylor. But I think that her story is in some ways, a story of the mainstream music business this year? Well, if only you mean by that,

how the mainstream music business seems to not quite know what it's doing anymore, and some of the actors within the business do, they know it just hit upload, and it makes sense, and it works, and it's spontaneous, and it's fun. The thing about the Taylor Swift album that shocked me so much, and this has happened to other pop stars before, rarely, I think, as just immediately, which is that she just slipped.

You know, her read on the culture, whether it was cynical, whether it was calculated, whether it was brilliant, was unimpeachable. for the last few years. And on this record, nobody wanted to hear this. I mean, okay, two million people clearly wanted to hear this. I'll use eye statements, as I was taught in my college orientation. I did not want to hear her complaining about petty feuds with the Kardashians on hit singles or about how the old tailor and the new tailor just make a good song, you know? And I feel like that record was profoundly schizophrenic because she tried to split the difference.

She tried to do half of it with Max Martin and half of it with your generation's Max Martin, Jack Antonoff, Lindsay, who I know you have opinions about. And I wanted to sort of steer the conversation in that direction anyway because I think that, for the most part, that Taylor record is a failure. There are some good songs on it. I think the Lord album, which Jack co-wrote and produced all of, is a triumph. And I think you had it high on your list as well. It's my favorite record of the earth, the Lord record. And I think it's interesting to think about that and the Taylor album together because when you really break down, like, the DNA of them, they're a lot more similar just in structure and the songs and the sounds than they are different.

And yet one of them was kind of critically adored in the way that the Lord record was. And then another one was seen as this commercial behemoth that got, you know, pretty middling reviews. I think I was surprised at how positive some of the reviews of the Taylor Swift album were, as someone who kind of went in. They were also very selectively, they were used very selectively on her Instagram account. That was amazing. Oh, well, yeah, I did it for the gram. Yeah, I think that I agree. The Lord record, it just felt like such a singular personal, intimate vision that we don't often get in pop music, like, of this moment.

It really just felt like it was made by this one kind of weird person, Lord, a very wise beyond her years just being. being from New Zealand. I still maybe believe the birth or theory that she's like actually 42 and had all these life experiences because she really, there's a lot of wisdom in those songs. But yeah, I think, so I wrote a piece about Jack Antonoff a couple weeks ago and who I think really came to the forefront as the big pop producer this year, mostly because, you know, in the midst of all this, all the Me Too movement, Dr. Luke, and the Kesha battle, his star obviously really fell and just a few years. And I think, obviously, although Max Martin is not implicated in that scandal, he worked with him.

So it's kind of this old model of hit making that through a combination of scandal and just being outdated at this point is kind of falling from the top. And like you said, Andy, the Taylor Swift album kind of being schizophrenic in this way of half Jack Antonoff, who even though he produced the terrible first single, look what he made me too. I think he produced most of the best stuff on that record. But that split between him and Max Martin, I think, is really telling and of the kind of confusion of like how do you engineer a pop hit going forward in this time when kind of spontaneity. and almost like underdog status is the currency. Speaking of overdogs and underdogs, quiet and loud, I wanted to ask how you navigated a particular divide that I think has existed in music always,

but has really been brought to the fore by the way we consume music these days, which is the divide between things that go for the biggest possible audience and that feel like shared experiences are triumphal. I mean, Lord is the rare artist who splits the difference where you have that record that feels wholly personal, but you have a song like perfect places on it that feels like it could be the biggest thing in the world at any moment, even though the single release was probably botched.

But so the divide between listening to those records, listening to Kendrick, and it's exciting certainly for the first week because you feel like everyone is. And then, you know, in my own experience, I did, I loved those records, but I also spent much of the year listening to Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, you know, and, and smaller things that just pleased me, that his golden messenger record I loved. But I wouldn't even, I'm not even going to cape up for it because it just sounds like Dylan. And I find it pleasurable. thing is, is that, you know, so Andy and I probably grew up where Spin was, at least in our minds,

like this sort of, for lack of a better phrase, and we've been bringing it up a lot recently, like a water cooler around which the voice and the Voices review section and Spins review section were kind of where you would go for guidance about shaping your aesthetics and shaping your taste and shaping what you should and shouldn't be listening to and even getting angry at what they think you should be listening to. And Lindsay, I think it's probably fair to say, right, that you grew up with pitchfork filling that role to some extent, right? Yeah, although I was, I didn't read a ton of music. I had a spin subscription and didn't.

I'm, again, I'm on the cusp. I'm a washed millennial. So I identify. So like, I'm old millennial and kind of on the bubble. But I know generally I buy into your. My thin theory teetering as it is, I think that you said something interesting a few minutes ago where you were like, you know, it's more sought for me. It was more songs and albums this year.

And I would take that a step further and say that it seems like with the breakdown of having any of these central taste maker devices to go to and say like what is cool or what is interesting or what should I be listening to or what are people talking about, you're finding more and more stuff like is rap caviar the album of the year. Is, you know, some message board thread or some group text that you're on that you share songs. You know, I found that my songs were coming from these really disparate places. one of my favorite things this year was to go to the bottom of an artist Spotify page and see the mixes that they made, you know, and start messing around there. I mean, I really enjoy like the mixes that Greg Dooley and Jason Isbell and people from Los Campesinos made after their records were coming out. Washed, washed, washed, washed, washed. I'm aware of the washed part. But their taste isn't necessarily washed.

I agree. And then, you know, I think we've talked about it on this podcast before, but you could make the argument that rap caviar is probably the most important. piece of taste making out there. Now, the two million people who bought reputation in five minutes after it came out on CD or whatever would disagree with us. But can you talk a little bit about where you've been finding your music? So Lil Peep, RIP, the rapper who passed away a couple weeks ago now, I feel like I listened to his playlist as much as I was listening to his music because it was just this fascinating blend of like some 41 and Gucci Main and then like one of his own songs. Yeah.

And I wasn't super tuned in to like the experience of listening to one of his mixtapes, but I thought his music like made more sense in a playlist format that's kind of like, here my influences and then here's me and here's my friend's track. So I do think there was music that just makes more sense in a playlist form, which feels like a very 2017 thing. And it's the juxtaposition too, right? So you start thinking about him differently if you know that he also is listening to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance, right? Totally. And there's something really intimate about it. And I think that was something that there was like a sense of intimacy that connected him to a lot of his fans. I think that's true of even, you know, like any kind of SoundCloud rapper that has a page of, you know, stuff they're like listening to alongside their own music.

Like that's a way that a lot of people are finding tracks now. So there's kind of this contextualization that feels very of the moment, but also just like things flowing through the stream. Lindsay, to wrap up, I wanted to say, can you give us and our listeners one record that you feel like probably got overlooked this year? but you feel like would really send 2017 out in the right way if somebody checked it out. I love the band Charlie Bliss. I've been evangelizing for them all year. But they are so good. It's a Brooklyn four piece that just make like really happy, grungy, poppy 90s guitar rock.

And I listen to their album Guppie so much this year, I think because it's very buoyant and kind of makes you forget about what's going on in the world. And they also did a on the AV Club cover series. They did a cover of Steal My Sunshine by Len. It is like the most euphoric three or four minutes of music that I think existed in the world this year. So I ride very hard for that album. And that came up pretty high on my list. I think it was on Rob Herbilla's list too.

Lindsay, does it make me more awash to say that they made me think of Velocity Girl right. Is that the most watch thing I can say? Oh no, that's a great thing to say. I love Velocity. What's a record Greenwald that you feel like people might be overlooked that you want them to check out? Well, you know, Velocity Girl in the 90s had a lot of banners. Sorry again. Sure. Yeah, my favorite record of the year was the EP by Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, the French press, an Australian band. But the one that I think people should check out, and I just saw her play last week and was amazing, is this Australian woman named Alex Leahy, who had an album called I Love You Like a Brother, and it's kind of pop punk, but she just has.

What's the rock equivalent of having bars? She's got tunes. She's got rifts, yeah. She's got chords? Yeah. She's got riffs. She rules. This album rules.

It made me very, very happy in a year when I otherwise didn't feel all that happy. Can I ask one last question? Because we did not talk about Kendrick. No, I am. And I do want to ask if you guys have listened to the Kendrick Dam Collectors Edition, quote, unquote, which is just the track list of Dam backwards. Or in reverse order. I haven't, but I also never watched the Blade Runner director's cuts.

You know what I mean? The Godfather chronologically. I'd like to see the Venn diagram of those people. I'm just like, you'd be surprised. I'm like, I'm good. Like, maybe this is also speaks to the dissembling of the album in our current age. But I like that album. I like those songs.

And it's okay if you want to play them in a different order. But I'm not here for the stories, you know? Does that make sense? I mean, I got to say, I was with you until yesterday. And then I tried it. And I'm all about it. I'm all about N-Mad. which is what I'm calling it now, which is damn backwards.

Yeah, do you like that? I do like that. But maybe he should have just released it that. I don't know, right? Like, release the album the way you want people to hear it. Sure, why not? He's got the Kwan right now. He could do whatever he wants.

My overlooked record of the year that I think people should check out is this band The Dirty Nill. They put out an album called Minimum R&B. They're from Canada. They sound like Steve Albini producing a bubblegum, like, power pop version of Nirvana. that's like almost how I would describe Charlie Bliss. Yeah. I thought about it more.

Yeah. So maybe they should go out on tour together. I would definitely just follow them. You know, that's how I would describe Big Shack as well. Oh, okay. So Lindsay, thank you so much for joining us. It's been great.

We'll have you on again soon. To check out Lindsay's singles list, that's on the ringer.com. We'll post Lindsay's album list along with our own. Lindsay, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Sonos. We've been talking about Sonos all year long on the watch. It's a speaker system that really just, you know, me and Andy fall back in love with music.

It is just so awesome. It is the modern stereo. You have it in your house. It can play in different rooms. It can play different songs in different rooms, different volumes in different rooms. You can have a party. You can have one kind of music playing for you in one room, one kind of music playing for your roommate, or your loved one in another room.

It's perfect. And, you know, the only thing that we really wanted from, from Sonos was the ability to talk to it. And that's where Sonos One comes in. Sonos One blends great sound with Amazon Alexa, the easy-to-use voice service for hands-free control of your music and more. You can use your voice to play songs while you cook. You can tell Alexa to turn up the volume while you're in the shower.

You can even request a lullaby out loud when you're tucking in the kids or you're tucking in yourself. Sometimes people want to hear a little bit of quiet bedtime music. I don't know. Play songs, turn on the lights, adjust the temperature, check the news and track. managed smart devices, and more with the helpful Amazon Alexa, all using a single Sonos speaker. And since Sonos is continually updating with new features, services, and skills, your music and voice options will both keep getting better and better over time. And now Sonos is offering the listeners of the watch 10% off one order of $2,500 or less for any product on Sonos.com. It's the holidays.

give you or someone your love the gift of music all over again, and why not have that Sonos one so you have somebody to talk to when you don't feel like talking to your family. The offer is available for a limited time only and cannot be combined with other discounts or promotions. Use the promo code Watch 10. That's capital WATCH10 at Sonos.com to receive this offer. Okay, Greenwald, our producer, Zach Matt,

can I just take a quick second? Let me just take a quick second. This episode is going up in the 28th. This is a, we've been doing this podcast for many years. Is this our last part of the year? Yeah, this will be our last pot of the year. I love doing this podcast with you still. Oh.

I'm worried about you. I think that you're slipping a little bit. I am. I think that you've lost the courage of your convictions and that you're, you're part of group think and the lame stream media. Fair. You should watch more billions. Was that, all that was just, that's what you were doing?

I wanted to say how much I enjoy doing this with you. I love you. This has been another wonderful year of podcasting with you. And I also wanted to give a big shout out to our. producer, Zach Mack, always there with encouragement, always there with production help, always there seeing the bigger picture for us. Always there with some notes on how we could get better. Yeah, just encouraging us to be structured, to repeat some, to repeat some things. I think Zach has been awesome to work with. We can't wait to work with him more in 2018 to bring

you the best possible version of this podcast. I also want to say, depending on how much food Andy's had on any given day. First of all, they have no food in the studio. Do you guys understand that? There's nothing here. There's a jar of lafie-taffee. I'm an adult man. You're still eating it like jaws on a teenage man. I tried it. This is not food. Look, here's what I wanted to say.

I wanted to echo everything that you said as well. I am greatly appreciative that I get to do this with my best friend. I wanted to like, would you want my slate pitch on this? I never liked you. And I don't like television. I also want to thank, of course, the Bringer Podcast Network for putting us on. Absolutely, man. Zach, for giving us the nudges when we need them.

Most of all our listeners for being with us through all our catcher. phrases and also for recognizing like the diamond and the rough quality to podcasts like our YouTube podcast, which I think will be recognized as one of our best episodes. I think so. I also just want to say just quick rest in peace to the television championship belt who won the week and all the other just banger bits. No rest in peace, man. In 2018, they will rise again. Okay, let's go through a couple of these mailbag questions. Some really quality ones here. You've got mail. Happy Steve asks, how do you see the watch changing and evolving in 2018? I feel like a year ago you could do a week-to-week

update on a consensus show, which I'm not sure is possible anymore. Good question, Steve. We talked about this with Sam. This is our question to ourselves. This is a running thing. You know, we try to just kind of talk about whatever is happening in pop culture that we're interested in on a week-to-week basis, but it's definitely the show has evolved since we used to just like, be like, it's Monday. We're talking about episode four season three of Homeland. I think what we'll try to do, and I've seen some people suggested, is that they really like the way we did Stranger Things, which is even though that there's a binge watch and most people or most hardcore Stranger Things fans were probably done with that series in the first

three, four days, just to set a schedule and to stick to it and roll it out. And I wish we had done that with Mind Hunter because I think we both love that show so much that we could have talked about. And it had really, really high quality standalone episodes that we could have broken down. And so in the future, I think we'll try to do more than any. Aside from getting a new co-host, what else do you envision for 2018? Yeah, well, you know, I think that transitioning Katie Nolan into like the watch universe is going to be a big deal for us. But once we get over that, I think it should be smooth sailing. And, you know, though she prefers Zuropa to Octong Baby, should I keep up this bit?

That's funny. No, I'm done. I love it. Yeah, I think this is the most interesting thing for us going forward. Excuse me, Katie Nolan! Maybe you've heard about Earth Day, sister. Maybe you care about the Amazon rainforests. Keep going.

Yeah, no. Run it back. No? That's it. Yeah, that's it. This is the tricky part for us, and I think that it's going to require some earlier identification of shows that we want to do this with, for sure. And maybe some feedback as well as the shows that people are excited about and deserve this kind of treatment.

You guys have been great this year. You turned me on to Channel Zero. I feel like there's a bunch of dark. We found shows through you. I mean, it's gotten that point where television is almost. like the way music was in like the late 90s and early 2000s where there's just like it's coming at you from all these different directions. Yeah. And also, and I think we'd like some feedback about this too, we have noticed that people seem more willing to either go with us at our pace for some shows

or go back, basically. Yes. Yeah. We have felt a little bit freed that we didn't have to be tethered to the release schedule because frankly, the release schedules, I mean, they're not the way they used to be. It's not a weekly release schedule. So the fact that we could take some time between episodes talking about Mind Hunter made sense, although I think we probably took too long, as you said. Sure. So we're going to figure it out. I mean, there are going to be big events this year.

They're going to be a big series. Westwallback, baby. Oh, God. Why do you have to ruin a festive holiday episode? Cowboys and robots, dog. So thank you, Steve, for your question. And I would expect those too well. And we are going to try and do things like bring the championship belt back.

We like to torture Zach with our inability to stick with weekly bits. but we'll stick with it. Joreen, perhaps the number one fan? I feel like that. We love Joreen. Joreen asks Chris, what will you watch for Andy? See, Jureen is the best.

So Joreen, we both know what the answer to this question is, is me spending the entire holidays catching up on the Americans. What a grim, grim holiday that would be for you. This is your call, man. This is your birthday candle. out. It's a lot of power. And honestly, I don't know. I feel like I just want to... You get one

season because it was arc who's only the one season. I can't go back and I can't watch four seasons of all and catch fire. I want to pocket this one. Okay. Because I think that there are so many new series coming out. There's going to be something in fiscal year 2018 that I'm going to fall in love with

early and you are going to just skate past. And at that time I will grab you and I'll pull out Joreen's card and I'll say you have to watch this. And then the results will play out in front of microphones. I'm going to save it. Because the ships that have sailed have sailed. You're not going to be

watching the Americans. You will be taking a corporate mandated five-week hiatus during the final season. So I can just grab both mics. Scott asks. If you don't talk about the Americans or let me talk about the Americans, I'm going to be like the Joe Biden Liquid Swords meme. Hey, I would love nothing

more than for you to just feel like you had an opportunity to talk about television. Thank you. I don't have as many platforms as I used to. This is it, man. I know. I know. Speaking of platform, Scott asks, how do you feel about the direction of music journalism with pitchfork being bought out by Kande Nast? The direction of publication seems to have changed. He says to maximize clicks. Has click bait ruined music journalism? Let's take this as a broader question. Sure. Okay, so I appreciate your specificity, Scott, but if you don't mind, we'll just use that as a

jumping off point. One of the things that Andy and I talk about so much is like the sort of how much we were enthralled by the conversation around television, especially five or six years ago, and the way, because of where it would land in a week, a show would be able to sort of give birth to all this interesting stuff,

all this into conversation. Mad Men recaps in and of themselves were a form of literature almost, you know, when you thought back, think back to like what Molly was doing, what you were doing. Matt Sites. Yeah, Matt Sites.

Natasha Cooper, like all these people. So I think there was a lot of excitement around what you could do with a television show. And then not unlike music journalism, I feel like there's been almost a democratization of dialogue about television and about pop culture in general through social media,

which I think is good and bad. You know what I mean? I think that there's a lot of signal to noise, but I think a lot of people who didn't really necessarily have their viewpoints represented in a mass way are now able to voice opinions. And those opinions are making,

a big difference. I think they're actually starting to make differences in programming, too. Where do you see things going? Are you wistful for the days of the my column? In all criticism? I mean, just bring you back to the... I mean, we are still, for lack of a better term, I think, critics. I think that to bring the music part of it back in, it's a it's a card before horse or horse before cart thing, because for a long time, the role of music journalism was to review records and give you a sense of them so you might buy them. It was basically, or not,

so you would find your way into it. A lot of that stuff, you couldn't hear it, right? Whereas TV criticism, such as it existed, was pretty typical. It was a lot like movie criticism, but it switched when the order switched. We now, for the most part,

you know, and I remember when I was writing criticism for Grantland, the preview piece would be fine, but then what people really wanted was the recap or the retroactive piece where I could actually specifically spoil things and talk about things and get into the conversation. TV criticism flourished when the order switched. And I think what we're seeing in music writing is a bumpy transition to that model, right?

And I think that some of pitchfork's better writing this year has been deeper and contextual about the subject. I think their Sunday reviews are really strong when they go back and think about records that are classics and re-review them with a modern sensibility. I think that some of their reviews, most successful reviews, have really been about place. sing that album in the moment because they've given up this idea that we have to sell you on it because you can just stream it for free. I'll say that as I've stepped away, I stepped away from being a TV critic two years ago and I definitely don't miss the chaos of it, especially with all of these, with even more shows to cover. Sure. That was very difficult. But I have really come to appreciate the role even more having stepped away from it because especially with so many things out there,

there is a vital role to play for smarter creative thinkers in terms of shaping the conversation and connecting the work to the fan and vice versa. And I think that we're seeing that it's just playing out in different ways. You know, has the conversation migrated to Twitter? Has the Lord help us one way or another? Has it migrated to podcast? We hope so. Yeah. But it's certainly active. But I think in terms of the service journalism that existed in the past, even as recently in TV as four or five years ago, that seems to be on the way and when what's going to replace it remains to be seen. This time period in television reminds me of a little bit of like when Napster and audio galaxy came in and people, it was almost like the seal had gotten broken.

Sorry, I just wanted to say that into a mic. A seal had gotten broken and this idea that you needed to sort of, you needed a, you needed a taste maker to tell you where to look because you had X amount of dollars to spend on a product. And when you have streaming platforms legal and illegal, and when you have all this stuff being put up on mass, entire seasons of shows, I think you just go on your own personal walkabout with this stuff a little bit more than, hey, I'm going to wait for Andy, Seppin-Wall, Herman, Mo Ryan, Emily Nussbaum, whoever it is, tell me this is important. Now, we talk about this, and we're still in the Matrix.

You know what I mean? We're outside of it. I don't know whether my symbolism was working here. But there are lots of people who are not spending their days on Twitter and are not reading five articles about something and having – they're not – Phantom Thread has not been spoiled for them because they looked at a website two days earlier or something like that. And I think that they're just probably responding to and receiving culture in the same way that they were a few years ago. And to those people, I'd love to move in with you. But, you know, I think that this, I think there might be a correction coming.

I don't know what it could be, but I think that everybody who's come through the studio has talked about feeling a little overwhelmed a little bit. Like, I can't catch up. I can't be on top of it. Whereas I think five years ago, you just really felt like I watch, I love TV and I watch all the good shows. Well, we're recording this, I think, two weeks before it's going to air. So the whole landscape could have changed in the intervening time. But the day that we're recording this is the day that. that Disney's purchase of the media assets of 21st Century Foxes seems poised to go through.

And one of the things that I think people are beginning to grapple with with this news, the consequences of which are, you know, they're going to play out over a lot of time. And as I said before, it's really not about Wolverine joining the Avengers. It's the broadcast network Fox may cease to exist. The reason broadcast TV exists now is because they are entities that are subsidized as part of a larger multinational corporation. And they are also connected to studios. And the studios feed the shows for their initial airings to the networks.

And then they continue to own them through their much longer tail life cycle. What this deal does is Rupert Murdoch's company is retaining Fox, the network, but losing the studio to Disney. So all of these shows are now, the model to monetize them is now broken. So what could this mean? It could mean Fox could stop making original scripted shows. They could just go to, it could just be Fox News on broadcast. It could be sports at plus Fox News plus cheaper reality shows.

We don't know how that's going to play out. But it does begin to suggest that this glut of everything is not sustainable in the sense that really only certain players can have a seat at the table. So it's not that the broadcast networks will all continue and Netflix and HBO and whoever. It's that Netflix might just devour the business model. And who knows? The taste of these places could change too. You know what I mean? But I think we are operating under the assumption now that some of the things that we like

we're going to have multiple avenues for them. And frankly, you could make the example that we're going to get, we get X-Men movies from Fox and we get Avengers movies from Disney and they're kind of the same but kind of different. But maybe there really only will be one tap for that sort of thing. So, you know, we say we get smart single-camera comedies on Netflix and NBC and HBO. We might not get them on all three in the future. So that might change. That might break up the glut.

But the only other note I was going to say about the original question about critics is it's been interesting to watch how some of the arbiters and highest profile writers have responded to the deluge. And there are people like the great Alan Seppenwall who's on the front lines and indefatigable about it. I clearly tapped out if I was even in that conversation. Matt Sites is able to wade his way and pick the things that matter most to him. I mean, he was written so beautifully about filmmaking specifically in shows like Twin Peaks. while not having to worry about young Sheldon necessarily because they have other writers covering that. And then someone like Mo Ryan seems to be surfing above the wave

and becoming more of a reporter, which I mean she always was a reporter, but talking about the systemic issues in the industry. Sure. So all of this is to say maybe this is, I don't know if this is hopeful or typical for the end of the year, everything is still changing. Yeah.

We have one more question here. And I'm going to sort of flip this to two things. So Jenny wants to know what 2017 TV show movie or book where you most hype for and then most disappointed by. We got a lot of heat for not putting Thrones on our top 10. I don't know necessarily that I was, that I just don't think I was supremely disappointed by it. I just think that I'm too close to it, I guess.

I don't know. I'm not too close to the actual production of Game of Thrones. No, I would say I was disappointed by it. I think it's fair to say. I think that I'm always... Were you the most disappointed by it? That I'm struggling with, but I'm like, I was super hype for...

Like, I always am for Thrones season. It's so fun for us, and it's so fun for us to do the show with our friends that we've been doing and to do the live shows and be a part of the conversation. But I think it's safe to say that I think we wanted more from this season. We wanted more from the season in terms of events that mattered, not just events on the way to the big finale. We wanted more than that ridiculous plan to kidnap a zombie and bring it to Circe.

There were those things that made it disappointing, especially because in those seven episodes and with the limited time frame and the promise of Lutrain, we were much more hype. Easier for me to answer the other half of it. I can't believe they made Twin Peaks again. Yeah. I can't believe it didn't meet my expectations. It transcended them and became something else that's crucial to my life and artistic memory and experience that I just would never have asked for that.

And then finally, Last Jedi, man. I was so off the hype train that I didn't even have hyper expectations. And this guy, Ryan Johnson, delivered on everything. I'm still processing how he pulled this off to make an emotional. interesting, creative, artistic, fun... Blockbuster. Box-ticking blockbuster. I mean, that's an achievement.

Yeah, and the extent to which that he, almost in some ways, I think that he, that there are elements of this in the Force Awakens and even to some extent in Rogue One, but I really think that we, you know, and we've talked, by the time you hear this, we will have talked extensively about Star Wars, but the thing that I was most oppressed by

with Brian Johnson is the extent to which he almost changes the visual language of this franchise, which for a long time I didn't think that it was possible. And you can listen to our Star Wars podcast to hear more about that. I don't know if I had anything that I was wildly disappointed by. I think that we've talked extensively over these last few podcasts about a low-level hum of discomfort with the year and maybe not be able to derive as much joy out of culture as we have in the past because of other things happening in the world. And I think that this year that was sort of hard for me was to just kind of, if there was anything that was disappointed,

was that I don't think that I got as much out of pop culture this year as I have in years past. It was harder for me to bury my head in the sand. It was harder for me to really be like, this is what's the most important thing in the world to me. There is just a little low level of discomfort. And I think that that's a question about whether you're going to art for escapism or whether you're going art for entertainment or whether you're going to art for be challenged. I go for all three. And I actually, our year-end podcast aside, I think that I was like, oh, I was going to

television for pure entertainment. I think I needed to make a distinction there where I think entertainment is an artistic skill. I think that there is a difference between I just want bright colors and soothing sounds and I feel better about the world. I actually think telling stories with energy and verve and and Panache is like part of the job, you know, and I think that's what I was responding to this year. But if I had a disappointment, it was just more 2017, more broadly speaking. And then if there was things that I loved, it was that, you know, I just had, I was very happy to find that some of the artists that I'm so invested in like a Fincher with Mind Hunter are still capable of making absolutely astonishing art.

Yeah, despite everything you said, which I agreed with, it was particularly special to be surprised and joyful about things this year and to find things to really connect with like the shows and movies that we've already mentioned, like Lady Bird, like. Yeah, I mean, I would say Lady Bird was probably the most important thing I experienced this year. Lady Bird and for me, leftovers, and yes, the young Pope, even though it was months ago. I just one more note about escapism. I think an underreported aspect of how television has failed us in some ways in terms of providing, or cultures failed us in terms of providing us with a necessary escape or intellectual artistic stimulation that takes our mind out of Twitter and out of politics. is how much work it requires now.

We, obviously for podcast reasons, we've already been owned it once on this shorter than usual segment of a podcast, we miss the week-to-week episodes. We miss covering something week-to-week. I would say that when something is, when a show, when you're enveloped in a show and you're loving it and it airs week to week,

it captures your mind and it blankets your existence in a really wonderful, exhilarating, sometimes stimulating way that allows you to sort of have this third rail of your life at all times, where you read the news and it's grim, you have a personal interaction and it's not great, but you kind of know in the back of your head. I was going to talk around it,

but you know in the back of your head that you were left in a certain place on Sunday, and then that place is waiting for you again on Sunday, and that's kind of an exciting thing. And for as much as I love... Other than Peaks, did you have that feeling this year, though? Week to week? With a show?

Yeah. Not really. I mean, that's the thing. I felt that more in the nearly weekly act of going to the movies. Right. I think I saw 60 movies this year. I mean, you know, and a lot of, plenty of them I saw at home or whatever, but new movies. And just going to see it comes a night and going to see Logan and going to see Dunkirk became a kind of church for me.

I just think that, you know, Mind Hunter I loved, but I also loved because. because my wife got really into it and we were watching it together. And for as nice as it was to during those few nights when we were just sort of doing two or three per night, it was really exciting and fun to look forward to because we knew we were going to watch that together and we were both equally excited about it. There is something that I miss about having the night

where we knew we were going to do it. And it sounds very weird to be like, oh, a romantic night on the couch watching, you know, principal tickler. That's one of the founding pillars of the society. The thing that you can agree with your wife on? Yeah, it was just like the collective sort of excitement that happens in an apartment or a house or in your life where you're just like, I'm really anticipating this. And you can anticipate Stranger Things season two, but pretty

much at midnight when it goes up, you are under the gun to kind of get through it. I think as we're talking about this live on the microphones and people can respond, I actually think this conversation alone is making me feel more committed to structure. I'm looking at Zach. Wow, this is a huge win for Zach. But lots of compliments and a commitment to structure. We can ding him a little bit too. everything he wanted out of this. And he got a plus one to Star Wars Force Away, Star Wars Last Jedi. So this has been a great week in the team Zach Mack.

But I mean it because I think that I'm sitting here bemoaning the lack of community around a show and the lack of structure and watching it. And it's almost as if we don't have a twice-weekly podcast where we could provide that structure at least for ourselves and then have our community come along with us. So I think the takeaway from this podcast is, Pretty good year by Zach. Great job by the listeners. And saving culture remains on our scrawny aging shoulders. We will talk to you in 2018. Thank you so much for listening.

Happy New Year, Berenskis! Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by Sonos. You know how much Andy and I love using Sonos around the house. Just changes the way you listen to music in your apartment or a home. All we wanted was to be able to talk back to our Sonos. And now we have it. Sonos One blends the great sound of Amazon Alexa, the easy-to-use voice service for hands-free control of your music and more you use your voice to play songs while you cook,

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