I feel like I only just stopped singing Carly Rae Jepsen's “Call Me Maybe” quietly to myself at all hours of the day. I'm back at it after reading this mostly excellent Ryan McNutt piece on pop music, criticism, and Taylor Swift—whose “22” is a treat and a half lemme tell ya—and taking pop as seriously as music critics have historically treated rock music.
Michael Robbins on Louise Glück: “The poems exist within the illusion that their speaker is addressing precisely nobody but herself—and perhaps some flowers.”
Okay, so I don’t like conventional “Best ofs”, but I do like thoughtful year-end features. Like The Millions’s Year in Reading. Word lovers, like, say, Jeffery Eugenides, or Emma Straub, or Rob Delaney, just telling you about some things they loved reading this year. No listing, no hierarchies, new books, old books. It’s a beautiful thing.
