While we continued to navigate the pandemic and retain some semblance of normal life, music provided a lot of how necessary escape. Playlists and even sales lists continued to grow throughout the year into a more porous environment where the newest releases peaked after release and then found a comfortable lower position to reflect ongoing sales and streaming consistency.
Surprisingly, the year opened with two of its largest releases, Jasmine Sullivan and Morgan Wallen (both on January 8th.) Sullivan picked up Album of the Year honors from NPR, Entertainment Weekly, LA Times, and Pitchfork. Wallen rode the crest of a huge wave of support for him during the Fall to a #1 debut for six weeks - the first time that feat has been accomplished since the days of Garth Brooks ("The Chase" in 1992,) and then controversy lead to his removal from streaming and four more weeks at the top from physical/download sales alone. In other words, it was a strange year.
The dominant force in streaming and sales continues to be Hip-Hop and female Pop singers. Fourteen different Hip-Hop albums hit the summit over 2021, showcasing the importance of web coverage (Playboy Carti,) longevity (Drake, Kanye West, J.Cole, DJ Khaled,) and a new wave of consistent artists with multiple #1's (Youngboy Never Broke Again, Summer Walker and Young Thug.) Even Radio proved it could help one-time Yo Gotti associate Moneybagg Yo to the peak.
In between the trend of the huge first or second week followed by a controlled decline, Pop music continues its reign. BTS showed no signs of slowing down their army as the singles "Dynamite" and "Butter" reigned over the summer. However, below the surface, England's Glass Animals carefully used streaming, radio (across genres) and physical sales to keep their 2020 album "Dreamland" selling and their 2020 single "Heat Waves" on the singles charts where it finally hit the Top 10 in its 42nd week there.
However, the year was dominated by Olivia Rodrigo. When her single "Driver's License" dropped again on that lucky date of January 8, 2021, she was a relative unknown. What they likely thought would start with small promotion to her base (like Glass Animals,) caught fire immediately. Within one week, "Driver's License" shattered the record for most streams worldwide in a single day (15.7 million) - only to then break that just two days later (17 million.)
The result was a global #1 single from January 23rd until March 13th. While this phenomenon of months of chart rule has become a trend post-Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" (he topped the charts this year too with his quantum leap breakthrough "Montero (Call Me By Your Name.)" The Rodrigo song became a cultural moment. Fortunately, the critically acclaimed "SOUR" followed in late May and its four separate weeks at #1 (June, July, and September) maintained her time in the spotlight, at least until Billie Eilish's "Happier Than Ever" dropped in the Summer.
Finally, no one was prepared for the battle royale that would end the year. Vinyl factories went into overtime with albums being pressed overseas to meet demand. Labels were forced to push releases in 2022 and the burden became best illustrated by the releases of Taylor Swift's "Red (Taylor's Version)" on November 12th and Adele's "30" on November 19th. It was rumored that Adele pressed 500,000 copies of her LP version of "30" - a number which has not been seen since the glory days of wax.
Taylor Swift's April 24th release of "Fearless (Taylor's Version)" became the biggest single-week vinyl seller of the 21st century. Eight weeks later, the long-awaited LP release of "evermore" topped that record selling 102,000 copies in a single week. In November, the 4LP re-recording of "Red" pushed that number to 115,000 copies in its first week. As Taylor had her own cultural moment with the 10-minute version of "All Too Well" topping the singles charts (dethroning Adele,) sales of all the other albums rose as well.
However, the highest-selling album of the year continues to be Adele's "30." For a project, she almost scrapped, "30" is displaying the same holding power "25" had in 2015. "30" easily became the most pre-added album in Apple Music history. Her single "Easy On Me" was only on Youtube for eight hours before it shattered all records. Its first and second sales weeks broke all previous records on its way to becoming the first US album to sell a million physical copies this year.
Is this where music is going? One can only hope. TikTok became the year's major player in the industry, even though artists are truly only capable of using it for promotion. As songs were used on the app in the millions, they suddenly translated into streaming success, radio demand, and even (but still in very few cases) physical sales leaps. TikTok's best case in point would be Italy's Maneskin, who rode a five-year-old performance of a lesser-known Four Seasons cover to the tops of charts worldwide. After topping the charts in nine countries (and hitting the Top Five in nine more,) their success on TikTok moved them into a surprising success at streaming. With their singles (now including their actual 2021 release "I Wanna Be Your Slave" with Iggy Pop) leading the band onto the Global streaming charts with the likes of all the artists you read about above, the label licensing their music - the newly revamped Arista Records - wisely serviced them across all formats in the same week. This possible new era of full format assault gave them a Hard Rock Top 10 ("Zitti e buoni,") an Alternative Top 10 ("I Wanna Be Your Slave,") and "Beggin'" ending the year on the charts in six other formats including a platinum single in the Billboard Top 20.
The biggest beneficiary of all TikTok success continues to be Walker Hayes, who made some TikTok videos of his family dancing (capitalizing on their main trend) and wound up with so many likes and memes that Applebee's brought back the Oreo Cookie Shake mentioned in his song. However, its late July release to Country Radio saw it soar to #1 on the Hot Country Songs chart where it stayed until November 20th. And where it remains this week.
So be on the lookout for those first weeks of the year 2022, you might just find what we will be reading about this time next year.
As print continues to be overtaken by electronic reading, audiobooks, and the ongoing growth of podcasts for informational consumption, the Graphic Novel is quietly making a comeback. With its brilliant combination of image and story, the best method for a graphic novel to make its impact is in your lap.
While the novel is rigidly important for its ability to allow you as the reader to paint the author's world as you see fit, the graphic novel is at its best when it is either creating a fanciful new world that simply could not exist within words or unleashing emotion-based illustrations of the newfound existentialism of everyday life.
The drawings that artists like Didier Kassai make for Marc Ellison's "A House Without Windows" are literally humanity on display. Seeing poverty ravage the lives of young children in Central Africa is harrowing. Reading about it would prove to be even harder. However, Kassai's earthy watercolors make these people truly appear to be rising above it all.
For twenty-seven years, Marvel artist Barry Windsor-Smith sat on his story "Monsters." The giant 300-page coffee-table book size tome is riveting as a story. While it follows the typical arc of the superhero creation myth, it springs to life through its subversion of the cliches that now threaten to unhinge the Marvel empire. However, Windsor-Smith's classic old-style of hand-drawn illustration is what keeps you coming back for more. Even at its most frightening and grotesque, Windsor-Smith draws with a romantic sense of beauty.
There is nothing inherently romantic about Simon Hanselmann's "Crisis Zone." Filthy and filled to the brim with alarming gross-out humor, "Crisis Zone" is not for everyone. However, like subversive comedy shows ("Monty Python," "Mr. Show," and this year's triumphant "I Think You Should Leave") the humor is there to make you laugh in the present. There is an underlying message about even among the craziness of its pandemic-based exploded view of friendships, relationships, bad habits, peccadilloes, and illicit consumption - we identify with living in situations we cannot control. Perhaps, the Australian illustrator shows us all hurling ourselves into the same great unknown.
If you wish to dial the madness back a little and indulge in a short, illustrated book that is like a Sunday comic strip version of "Sex And The City," look for Miranda Tacchia's brilliant and blistering "Unimpressed." Her illustrations are warm, earthy, and beautiful. Each page is like a painting with her characters existing both as "animated" and "artistic" creations. "Unimpressed" is the story of everyday life for women in the big city. It pulls no punches. It filters nothing out either. Tacchia needs only a short sentence to decimate an entire wall of modern conversational myth.
Finally, with all the success in looking at the present, graphic novels even beautifully recapture the past. The Norwegian illustrator Jason uses his spartan style of drawing and classic use of four-panel design to tell three chapters in the life of Ernest Hemingway. The fact that Jason disassociates his drawn characters with what the original coterie around Hemingway looked like (except maybe clothing or hairstyle) - makes you automatically see the entire experience in a new light. Covering Hemingway in Paris in 1925 and 1944, and Cuba in 1950, "Good Night, Hem" interconnects Hemingway's life with his writing. The Ken Burns documentary from this year was definitely a thing of beauty and revelation. However, "Good Night, Hem" does an incredible job of putting his writing about his life back in its hallowed place.
The Graphic Novel is a journey that merits repeating. A short flip through can be transformational. To sit down and relive the entire experience or merely an episode can put the world for you in a different perspective. While not all of these works are for everyone, the world of the graphic novel is silently growing to bring forth something to draw you in.
Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe in Hattiesburg.
