On the Media Menu: 80s Music Flashbacks and Massive Fantasies

My minimalist year in music was dominated by Conan Gray’s Gen Z throwback to synth-pop; plus Brandon Sanderson's mammoth fantasy, Wind and Truth

Outside of videogames, I have no plans to do year-end “best of” rankings for all the other media I’ve consumed over the past twelve months. That’s mostly because I don’t have anything near a consistent or current media diet — I rarely watch television as it airs, most of my reading focuses on my never-shrinking “to be read” pile of books that I’ve bought at any time in the past decade (or longer), and my resistance to seeing movies in theaters makes my cineaste experience the opposite of au courant.

Worst of all is my experience of music, an art form that I haven’t been current on since sometime in the mid-1990s. That doesn’t mean I’m ignorant of what’s going on. I read Vulture daily (plus plenty of other arts and entertainment news) so I know who’s out there. I just don’t usually bother to listen to any of it.