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    15 Songs We Almost Missed This Year

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    Hear tracks by Sofia Kourtesis, Remble, Caetano Veloso and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Sofia Kourtesis, ‘La Perla’At first, Sofia Kourtesis’s “La Perla” develops like a Polaroid shot of a white sand beach. This is earnest, pulsating deep house: ripples of synths, oceanic drum loops, feather-light hums, the iridescent touch of piano keys. But when the Peruvian producer’s voice arrives, the track transforms into something less picture-perfect. “Tú y yo/En soledad/Igual acá/Tratando de cambiar/Tratando de olvidar,” she intones. (“You and I/In loneliness/Same here/Trying to change/Trying to forget.”) Kourtesis composed the song with the water and her father, who was dying from leukemia, in mind; he used to say that staring at the sea is a form of meditation. Lying somewhere between hope and melancholia, “La Perla” embodies mourning: the on-and-off work of confronting your own suffering, while harnessing fleeting moments of solace when you can. ISABELIA HERRERAYoung Stunna featuring Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa, ‘Adiwele’This eight-minute track from South Africa is a collaboration by the singer Young Stunna and the amapiano producer Kabza De Small, from Young Stunna’s debut album, “Notumato (Beautiful Beginnings).” It materializes slowly and methodically, with just an electronic beat at first, then hovering electronic tones and blipping offbeats, then syncopated vocal syllables. Eventually Young Stunna’s lead vocal arrives, breathy and increasingly insistent, tautly bouncing his lines off the beat. “Adiwele” roughly means “things falling into place”; it’s a grateful boast about his current success, but it’s delivered like someone racing toward even more ambitious goals. JON PARELESBabyTron, ‘Paul Bearer’“Bin Reaper 2” — one of three very good albums BabyTron released in 2021 — has several high points. There’s “Frankenstein,” built on a sample of an old Debbie Deb song, and the disco-esque “Pimp My Ride.” But “Paul Bearer” might be the best. BabyTron is a casually talky rapper from Michigan, and in keeping with the rap scene that’s been germinating there for the past few years, he’s a hilarious absurdist, flexible with syllables and also images: “Point it at his toes, turn his Yeezys into Foam Runners,” “High as hell on the roof, dripping like a broke gutter.” JON CARAMANICAMabiland, ‘Wow’For the Colombian artist Mabiland, living with the injustice of anti-Black violence is so surreal, it resembles the worlds of sci-fi and neo-noir films like “Tenet” and “Oldboy.” On “Wow,” she draws comparisons to these cinematic universes, offering a macabre reflection on those who were killed in recent years: George Floyd, but also the five of Llano Verde, a group of teens who were shot in Cali, Colombia, in 2020. Over trap drums and a forlorn, looped guitar, the artist recalibrates her voice over and over, shifting between raspy soul, high-pitched yelps, wounded raps and sweet-tongued singing. It is a subtle lesson in elasticity, creating an expansive vocal landscape that captures her pain in all of its depth. HERRERARemble, ‘Touchable’One of the year’s signature rap stylists, Remble declaims like he’s giving a physics lecture, all punching-bag emphasis and tricky internal rhymes. An inheritor of Drakeo the Ruler, who was killed this month — listen to their collaboration on “Ruth’s Chris Freestyle” — Remble is crisp and declamatory and, most disarmingly, deeply calm. “Touchable,” from his vivid, wonderful 2021 album, “It’s Remble,” is one of his standouts, packed to the gills with sweetly terrifying boasts: “Came a long way from pre-K and eating Lunchables/I just took your life and as you know it’s unrefundable.” CARAMANICAMorgan Wade, ‘Wilder Days’“Don’t Cry,” which Morgan Wade released at the end of 2020, cut right to the quick: “I’ll always be my own worst critic/The world exists and I’m just in it.” “Wilder Days,” from her lovingly ragged debut album “Reckless,” is about wanting to know the whole of a person, even the parts that time has smoothed over. Wade has a terrific, acid-drenched voice — she sounds like she’s singing from the depths of history. And while this song is about wanting someone you love to hold on to the things that gave them their scrapes and bruises, it’s really about holding on to that part of yourself as long as is feasible, and then a little longer. CARAMANICALady Blackbird, ‘Collage’There’s a deep blues cry in the voice of Lady Blackbird — the Los Angeles-based songwriter Marley Munroe — that harks back to Nina Simone, Abbey Lincoln and Billie Holiday. “Collage,” from her album “Black Acid Soul,” rides an acoustic bass vamp and modal jazz harmonies, enfolded in wind chimes and Mellotron “string” chords. It’s a song about colors, cycles and trying to “find a song to sing that is everything,” enigmatic and arresting. PARELESCaetano Veloso, ‘Anjos Tronchos’Recorded during the pandemic, “Meu Coco” (“My Head”) is the first full album on which Caetano Veloso, the great Brazilian musician whose career stretches back to the 1960s, wrote all the songs without collaborators. “Anjos Tronchos” (“Twisted Angels”) is musically sparse; for much of it, Veloso’s graceful melody is accompanied only by a lone electric rhythm guitar. But its scope is large; the “twisted angels” are from Silicon Valley, and he’s singing about the power of the internet to addict, to sell and to control, but also to delight and to spread ideas. “Neurons of mine move in a new rhythm/And more and more and more and more and more,” he sings, with fascination and dread. PARELESCico P, ‘Tampa’The year’s pre-eminent hypnosis. Put it on repeat and dissociate from the cruel year that was. CARAMANICACassandra Jenkins, ‘Hard Drive’“Hard Drive,” which includes the lyrics that provided the title for Cassandra Jenkins’s 2021 album, “An Overview on Phenomenal Nature,” plays like Laurie Anderson transported to Laurel Canyon. With unhurried spoken words and an occasional melodic refrain, Jenkins seeks insight and healing from people like a security guard and a bookkeeper, who tells her “The mind is just a hard drive.” The music cycles soothingly through a few chords as guitars and piano intertwine, a saxophone improvises at the periphery and Jenkins approaches serenity. PARELESFatima Al Qadiri, ‘Zandaq’On “Zandaq,” Fatima Al Qadiri looks 1,400 years into the past to illuminate a view of the future. Inspired by the poems of Arab women from the Jahiliyyah period to the 13th century, the Kuwaiti producer arranges plucked lute strings, echoes of bird calls and dapples of twisting, vertiginous vocals, fashioning a kind of a retrofuturist suite. The song draws on classical Arabic poetry’s ancient reserve of melancholic longing, considering the possibilities that emerge by slowing down and immersing oneself in desolation. HERRERANala Sinephro, ‘Space 5’The rising United Kingdom-based bandleader Nala Sinephro plays harp and electronics, with a pull toward weightless sounds and meditative pacings, so comparisons to Alice Coltrane are inevitable. But Sinephro has her own thing going entirely: It has to do with her lissome, contained-motion improvising on the harp, and the game versatility of the groups she puts together. Her debut album, which arrived in September, contains eight tracks, “Spaces 1-8.” On “Space 5,” she’s joined by the saxophonist Ahnasé and the guitarist Shirley Tetteh; it’s a jeweled mosaic of a track, with the components of a steady beat — but they’re distant and dampened enough that it never fully sinks in on a body level. Instead of head-nodding, maybe you’ll respond to this music by being completely still. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOKaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Emile Mosseri, ‘Moonweed’“Moonweed” is only two minutes long, but contains all the reverie and tragedy of a big-screen sci-fi drama. (It’s a collaboration between the experimental artist Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and the film composer Emile Mosseri.) With its unhurried piano and slow gurgle of galactic synths that arrive like an extraterrestrial transmission sent from the stars, the track manifests as both earthen and astral bliss. HERRERAJohnathan Blake, ‘Abiyoyo’The jazz drummer Johnathan Blake is used to playing as a side musician in all-star bands; when he leads his own groups, he also tends to field a formidable squad. On “Homeward Bound,” his Blue Note debut, Blake is joined by the alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, the vibraphonist Joel Ross, the pianist David Virelles and the bassist Dezron Douglas — today’s cats, basically. Blake has a swing feel that’s both densely powerful and luxuriously roomy, and he deploys it here across a set that includes some impressive original tunes. On “Abiyoyo,” the South African folk song, he strikes the drums softly, with a mallet in one hand and a stick in the other, while Virelles handles a similar balance, using the full range of the piano but never overplaying. RUSSONELLORan Cap Duoi, ‘Aztec Glue’Vertigo alert: Ran Cap Duoi, an electronic group from Vietnam, aims for total disorientation in “Aztec Glue” from its 2021 album, “Ngu Ngay Ngay Ngay Tan The” (“Sleeping Through the Apocalypse”). Everything is chopped up and flung around: voices, rhythms, timbres, spatial cues. For its first minute, “Aztec Glue” finds a steady, Minimalist pulse, even as peeping vocal samples hop all over the stereo field. Then the bottom drops out; it lurches, slams, races, twitches and goes through sporadic bursts of acceleration. It goes on to find a new, looping near-equilibrium, spinning faster, but it doesn’t end without a few more surprises. PARELES More

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      Deaths in 2021: Headline Names Against the Backdrop of Pandemic

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      Aaron, Sondheim, Dole and Didion. But the loss of Colin Powell from the virus spoke most directly to the moment the world is in.Hank Aaron was gone. So were Stephen Sondheim, and Bob Dole, and Cicely Tyson, and Larry King, and Joan Didion. Prince Philip, two months short of 100, was buried with all the royal pomp one would expect. But in a year that saw the deaths of a host of figures who helped shape our era in decades past, none spoke more to the still-perilous present moment than that of Colin Powell.His death came not just against the backdrop of a global pandemic in its second unrelenting year, but also as another casualty of it. And his case spoke to the vagaries of an elusive, mutating virus that has laid siege to the world. He had been vaccinated, after all, and was under the best of care at Walter Reed, and still he succumbed, his 84-year-old immune system compromised by multiple myeloma.Kenneth Lambert/Associated PressGeneral Powell joined a death toll that has surpassed 800,000 in the country he long served, both in the military and in the halls of government, and four million worldwide. He was probably the most prominent victim of Covid-19 in 2021, but there were others of influence who fell to it too.Ron Wright, a Texas conservative, in February became the first member of the House of Representatives to die of the virus. The author Donald Cozzens, a former priest who challenged the Catholic Church on its protection of child-molesting clerics, was another Covid victim, as was the music producer Chucky Thompson, a power behind hip-hop and R&B. And no fewer than four American talk-radio hosts, all having the ears of millions on the political right, died of the virus after dismissing the idea of getting vaccinated against it, echoing the message of their most prominent radio peer, Rush Limbaugh, who had compared the virus to the common cold. He died in February, too, of lung cancer.Plenty of luminaries in the obituary pages escaped the virus, of course, dying of more conventional but no less grievous maladies. But they had at least one thing in common: In a year when no one could get out from under the pall of the pandemic, they died in the midst of it, never to see its end.Back over on Capitol Hill, still staggered by the sacking of Jan. 6, respects were paid to some of its stalwarts: Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader and former boxer whose mild public manner disguised a fierce legislative pugilist and tactician; Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who, peering skeptically over the top of his gold-rimmed eyeglasses, interrogated corporate America; John Warner, the genteel Virginia Republican forever identified as Elizabeth Taylor’s No. 6; Walter Mondale, the liberal Minnesota senator turned vice president whose White House ambitions were buried in a Reagan landslide; Carrie Meek, the first Black person elected to Congress from Florida since Reconstruction; and, of course, Mr. Dole, the Kansas Republican who carried his wounds from World War II into a half-century of public service under the very dome that soared above him as his body lay in state just weeks ago.Harry Reid in 2014, when he was the Senate majority leader. A former boxer, he became a fierce legislative pugilist and tactician.Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesSenator Dole was the last of his war generation to win a major party’s presidential nomination, in 1996, and his passing at 98 was another reminder that his former brothers and sisters in arms are a dwindling cohort. Even the youngest of those who fought at the Battle of the Bulge or at Iwo Jima and who still survive have now entered their 90s, their former commanding officers mostly long gone. But one company leader who did hang on until this year was Dave Severance. He led the Marine unit that raised that now-hallowed American flag over Iwo Jima itself in 1945. He was 102.Warriors for a CauseThe world at large lost a host of dignitaries whose battles were in the political arena. One was F.W. de Klerk, the South African president who tore down the barriers of apartheid erected by his Afrikaner forerunners, a white power structure that collapsed in no small part because a fellow Nobel Peace Prize honoree, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, had pounded at it from the pulpit. Farther north, one of apartheid’s nemeses, Kenneth Kaunda, a founding father of African independence and the first president of a liberated Zambia, died at 97, having so dominated his country for 27 years that some supporters had viewed him as a minor deity.Roh Tae-woo at his inauguration as president of South Korea in 1988. With a stern eye, he oversaw his country’s transition from dictatorship to democracy.The Asahi Shimbun/Getty ImagesHalf a world away, two former strongmen who led South Korea in back-to-back regimes in the 1980s and ’90s died within a month of each other: first, in October, Roh Tae-woo, a former general who oversaw, with a stern eye, his country’s transition from dictatorship to democracy; then, in November, Chun Doo-hwan, the bloodstained dictator who had seized power in a coup and later handpicked his friend Mr. Roh to succeed him.In Argentina, a country long in the grip of dictatorship, the charismatic Carlos Saúl Menem, the beneficiary of the first peaceful transfer of power there from one constitutionally elected party to another since 1916, died at 90, having presided over an astonishing economic recovery in his 10-year rule, 1989-99, only to tumble from grace, pulled down by corruption.In the Middle East, there were Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who tried but failed to resist the rise of religious radicalism as the first president of the Islamic Republic of Iran; Ahmed Zaki Yamani (though he died in London), the schmoozing, globe-trotting Saudi oil minister who became a player in the rise of Persian Gulf states to stratospheric heights of wealth; and A.Q. Khan, the so-called father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb.Dr. Khan’s work left no doubt that his country had acquired weapons of mass destruction. But had Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? Yes, proclaimed Donald Rumsfeld (an assertion echoed by his colleague General Powell in the George W. Bush White House). Time would prove him and others in the administration wrong, but not before, as defense secretary, Mr. Rumsfeld had helped push the United States into another invasion, after Afghanistan, and into another war.Others who died this year had fought on entirely different fronts. Simple but courageous acts of defiance by both Martha White and Lucille Times in the Deep South of the 1950s, predating and presaging Rosa Parks, led to bus boycotts that in turn gave momentum to the civil rights movement and to warriors for the cause like Bob Moses. He endured brutality and jail in trying to register voters in Mississippi, where he “was the equivalent of Martin Luther King,” the historian Taylor Branch said.Margaret York had pushed open a door that had long been shut to women, becoming the highest-ranking woman in the Los Angeles Police Department (while inspiring a feminist version of a buddy cop show, “Cagney & Lacey”).LaDonna Brave Bull Allard in 2017. She led resistance in North Dakota to what she called “the black snake,” an underground pipeline that threatened tribal burial grounds. Jens Schwarz/laif/ReduxLaDonna Brave Bull Allard lived up to her name by establishing a “resistance camp” in North Dakota to block what she called “the black snake,” an underground pipeline that in its thousand-mile slithering would, she claimed, veer too close to sacred Native American burial grounds, one holding the remains of her son. The camp became the catalyst for a global protest movement that embraced issues of tribal sovereignty, environmental justice and more.And Madeline Davis became the first openly lesbian delegate to a national political convention in the United States, rising to speak before Democrats in Miami Beach in 1972 to argue, unsuccessfully, for an anti-discrimination plank in the party’s platform. “I am a woman and a lesbian, a minority of minorities,” she told what few delegates remained at the time, for it was 5 a.m. before her turn at the podium came. “Now we are coming out of our closets and onto the convention floor.”Some took the call for equal rights to athletic arenas. The Olympic gold-medal sprinter Lee Evans raised a Black fist from the winners’ platform in Mexico City to protest racism in the strife-torn America of 1968. Lee Elder’s mere presence at the 1975 Masters in Augusta, Ga., was symbolic enough — as the first Black golfer ever to compete in the tournament, and doing so in face of death threats.And Joan Ullyot, a competitive runner herself, became a powerful voice for women who sought to compete in marathons, producing research that irrefutably debunked assertions that women were not built for it and then pressing the International Olympic Committee to include a women’s marathon in the Games. The first was in 1984.Arenas and StagesElsewhere in sports, the coaching ranks took an unusually heavy toll. The N.F.L. lost, among others, John Madden, whose winning decade with the Oakland Raiders was just a prelude to a more sensational run as the most colorful of TV color commentators and a video-game king, and Marty Schottenheimer, the winner of 200 regular-season games with four N.F.L. franchises. College football lost Bobby Bowden, the architect of a powerhouse at Florida State; college basketball lost John Chaney, who led Temple’s Owls to 17 N.C.A.A. tournaments.John Madden in 2006. His Hall of Fame career coaching the Oakland Raiders was a prelude to a sensational run as a color commentator and video-game king.Matt Sullivan/ReutersAnd if baseball managers in the dugout can be lumped with head coaches on the sidelines, then a final tip of the cap must be paid to the irrepressible Tommy Lasorda, who had, as he liked to say with only slight hyperbole, bled Dodger blue.Henry Aaron’s death, of course, generated big headlines, accompanied by tales of his home run heroics and the racial animus they aroused among those who couldn’t countenance the idea of a Black man outslugging Babe Ruth. But other stars, too, fell, their exploits now sports lore: the ferocious Sam Huff of the football Giants; the acrobatic forward Elgin Baylor of the Lakers; the lightning-quick Rod Gilbert (“Mr. Ranger”), who dazzled hockey fans at Madison Square Garden. In auto racing, the brothers Bobby, 87, and Al Unser, 82 — born into the sport’s most illustrious family in the same decade — died seven months apart in the same calendar year.Performers of a different mold had left their imprint on stages and screens portraying anyone but their actual selves, yet we mourned their passing all the same as if we knew them. Christopher Plummer was Georg von Trapp, of course, in “The Sound of Music,” but also too many other characters to count in his rich seven decades as an actor — from King Lear to Sherlock Holmes to General Chang, the one-eyed Klingon in “Star Trek VI.”Cicely Tyson in 1973. She’s remembered as the unconquerable wife of an imprisoned Louisiana sharecropper in “Sounder” and the indomitable title character in “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.” Dennis Oulds/Central Press/Getty ImagesCicely Tyson was indelibly two characters: Rebecca, the unconquerable wife of an imprisoned Louisiana sharecropper in “Sounder,” and the seen-it-all title character in “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” who survived into the civil rights era, to age 110, recalling her memories of slavery.Olympia Dukakis will forever be Rose, Cher’s sardonically wise mother in “Moonstruck”; Helen McCrory, the blue-blooded witch Narcissa Malfoy in a clutch of Harry Potter films; Cloris Leachman, the flighty landlady of Mary Richards in “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”; Hal Holbrook, a one-man-show Mark Twain; Michael K. Williams, the swaggering, openly gay hoodlum of “The Wire”; and Ed Asner, who else but Lou Grant?You could also say that Larry King was a performer, hosting talk shows on radio and TV seemingly forever, but he never played anyone but his loquacious, inquisitive and ingratiating self. Ditto Jackie Mason and Mort Sahl: stand-ups performing as themselves — or at least very funny versions of themselves. (Their fellow jokester Norm Macdonald was an exception, as comfortable alone on a stage as he was in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch or his own sitcom.)The proscenium stage knew no greater loss in 2021 than that of Stephen Sondheim, who, if he rarely took a curtain call bow from one, could nevertheless bask in the applause of a grateful theater world enriched by his music and lyrics.Stephen Sondheim in 1990. His music and lyrics enriched the theater world.Fred R. Conrad/The New York TimesAnd where performance is nothing but wordless drama (or sometimes comedy) in exhilarating motion, there were farewells to the magnetic Jacques d’Amboise, who may have done as much as anyone to popularize ballet in America, and the daring ballerina Patricia Wilde — both of them eternally linked to the great choreographer George Balanchine of New York City Ballet.The classical music stage, and the orchestra pit, were bereft with the deaths of James Levine, the maestro of the Metropolitan Opera whose brilliant career was darkened in the end by a sex scandal, and two of opera’s most illustrious singers in the last half of the 20th century: the virtuosic Slovak soprano Edita Gruberova and the German-born mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig, a radiant fixture at the Met for years.A Drummer and a RapperIn a vastly different musical sphere, Charlie Watts, the solemnly aloof drummer of the Rolling Stones, became the second member of that age-defying band to die, at 80 (after Brian Jones a half-century ago). Mary Wilson was the second to do so among Motown’s original three Supremes (after Florence Ballard). Michael Nesmith left just one of the four Monkees still standing (Micky Dolenz). And with the death of Don Everly seven years after that of the younger Phil, the Everly Brothers will survive now only in their hit recordings of yesteryear.The drummer Charlie Watts in 1965. He was the second member of the age-defying Rolling Stones to die.George Wilkes/Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesMore fresh in memory were the explosive lyrics of the rapper Earl Simmons, a.k.a. DMX, who had channeled the mean streets of his boyhood Yonkers into No. 1 albums and onto the stage before pumped-up thousands. He was just 50.Chick Corea, a jazz pianist at heart, found a new audience by infusing his music with rock. And the flutist, composer and bandleader Johnny Pacheco, one of a raft of Latin musicians to die this year, spread salsa far and wide as its unofficial ambassador.If Mr. Pacheco was intent on expanding a genre, Larry McMurtry, in the world of letters, was out to subvert one — the western — by scrapping the cowboy and outlaw mythologies of dime-store novels in favor of unvarnished stories like “Lonesome Dove” and “The Last Picture Show.”Anne Rice, meanwhile, was revivifying a moribund branch of the book world — the Gothic horror tale — with stories of vampires. Beverly Cleary was a virtual children’s-book cottage industry as she found unlikely drama and mystery in middle-class America. And no one could dissect any and all aspects of American life with a more exacting eye than Joan Didion, though the unsparing journalism of Janet Malcolm could give her a run for her money (even while questioning the very ethics of journalism itself).Janet Malcolm in 1981. Her unsparing journalism examined American life even while questioning the very ethics of journalism itself. Nancy Crampton via Malcolm familyThe world said goodbye to them all, but in 2021 any death reported in the obituary columns was always set against that bigger story that never seemed to leave the front page. It was a disorienting phenomenon for the second year: noting the passing of this famous person or that one, from cancer or heart attack or the infirmities of old age, in the midst of a plague — a scourge that continued to take one life after another from all corners of the world while leaving everyone else, or almost everyone else, masked up and wondering if they’d ever get theirs back.Inevitably, despite the skeptics and the deniers, we turned to the scientists, knowing that they’re the ones who must finally give us the weapons to get us out of this. Many trailblazers from that community died in 2021, among them Nobel Prize winners who helped unlock the secrets of the universe (Toshihide Maskawa’s eureka moment, in understanding why the Big Bang didn’t destroy said universe, came in the bathtub) and explorers, like E.O. Wilson, who uncovered clues to human nature in the biosphere.E.O. Wilson found clues to human nature in his explorations of the biosphere.Hugh Patrick Brown/Getty ImagesBut there were also those whose time in the labs had more practical goals. One was Helen Murray Free, who helped develop a simple paper strip that when dipped in urine made it easier to detect diabetes — a revolution in diagnostic testing. Millions have benefited.And there was Andrew Brooks, a Rutgers researcher who, in the early dark days of the pandemic in 2020, came up with the first saliva test for the coronavirus, a breakthrough that was rolled out after getting emergency approval from the federal government. This was before there were vaccines and before testing protocols were revised once the airborne nature of the virus was fully understood. But as the governor of New Jersey said at the time, Dr. Brooks’s contribution to the cause “undoubtedly saved lives.”We’ve continued to turn to the Dr. Frees and the Dr. Brookses, and they’ve responded with alacrity with vaccines and treatments. But as the pandemic races on, the entreaty to them remains the same, still urgent but hopeful: Please, do more. More

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      Our Favorite Arts Photos of 2021

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      After 15 months of darkness, live music returned. In New York, Foo Fighters reopened Madison Square Garden.Photograph by Tim Barber for The New York TimesOur Favorite Arts Photos of 2021These are the pictures that defined an unpredictable year across the worlds of art, music, dance and performance.Laura O’Neill More

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      A Trip Through Pop, Rap and Jazz’s Past, in 27 Boxed Sets

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      Collections from labels like Fania and Armabillion, icons including Ray Charles and J Dilla, and living artists such as Beverly Glenn-Copeland and Radiohead were welcome additions this year.In an era of abundance when every day brings a deluge of new music to consume, it may seem particularly futile to turn to the past. But this year’s resurrections and recontextualizations in boxed sets and reissues gathered up what’s been forgotten or overlooked — or in some cases, what’s been dissected ad nauseam but still commands attention — and put it back at center stage. As Taylor Swift proved this year, there’s no reason the old can’t be experienced as new, too.‘Almost Famous 20th Anniversary’(UMe; multiple configurations with deluxe editions starting at $169.98)Cameron Crowe’s 2000 film, “Almost Famous,” was his fond reminiscence about writing for Rolling Stone during the hard-partying, all-access 1970s. The expanded anniversary editions are overstuffed with familiar songs alongside a few live rarities. They also include a disc of mostly folksy soundtrack instrumentals by Nancy Wilson, from Heart, and the complete recordings of the film’s invented band, Stillwater — a Led Zeppelin/Bad Company knockoff stomping through songs written by Crowe, Wilson and Peter Frampton — along with, in boxed-set style, the demo versions. (A Stillwater EP, minus the demos, is also available separately.) Stillwater’s vintage style was meticulously reconstructed — booming drums, screaming lead guitar (from Mike McCready of Pearl Jam) — with hints of meta self-consciousness in the lyrics. “It was juvenile, it was something wild,” the band shouts in “You Had to Be There.” JON PARELESArmabillion Recordz(Armabillion.com; albums start at $30)One of a handful of obscurantist rap reissue labels that have emerged in recent years, Armabillion is based in Italy but specializes in limited-run vinyl pressings of undersung gangster rap classics from around the United States, especially the South and the Bay Area. This year’s slate of releases has been impressive, among them Gank Move’s dreamy, tough-talking “Come Into My World”; Coop MC’s slinky “Home of the Killers”; Ant Banks’s essential debut album “Sittin’ on Somethin’ Phat”; and the rowdy “Straight From tha Ramp!!!” by Tec-9 (of U.N.L.V.), an early release on Cash Money Records. JON CARAMANICALouis Armstrong, ‘The Complete Louis Armstrong Columbia and RCA Victor Studio Sessions 1946-1966’(Mosaic; seven CDs, $119)The period covered by this boxed set mostly fits within what’s considered to be Armstrong’s long midcareer lull, but when it comes to the creator of the modern jazz solo, even the mellow years can support a certain level of fascination. And this loving revisitation from the jazz archivalists at Mosaic spares no enthusiasm: The scholar Ricky Riccardi’s liner notes clock in at roughly 30,000 words, illustrated by 40 photographs, most of them never before seen. And the recordings — covering the full sweep of Armstrong’s studio dates for Columbia and RCA over a 20-year span — have been transferred directly from the originals and remastered. There are two discs of singles that include midsize- and large-ensemble performances, a rare duet with the German singer and film star Lotte Lenya on “Mack the Knife,” and even a promotional track, “Music to Shave By,” that Armstrong recorded on behalf of the Remington Company. Also included are his Columbia LPs from this era, plus outtakes from the sessions: “Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy”; “Satch Plays Fats” (that’s Fats Waller); and his musical-theater collaboration with Dave Brubeck, “The Real Ambassadors.” GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOPastor T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir, ‘I Shall Wear a Crown’(Numero Group; five CDs, $35; five LPs, $90)Half a century ago, T.L. Barrett was far from the only pastor in Black America — or even on the South Side of Chicago — fusing gospel standards with funk. But good luck finding anyone who did it with more flavor, more hooks or more genuine frontman flair. “I Shall Wear a Crown” pulls together the four albums and various singles Barrett released throughout the 1970s, all with his Youth for Christ Choir joined by a crackling rhythm section. The end of the ’60s was a golden moment for youth choruses on wax, with the era’s each-one-teach-one activism shining through. (See also: the Voices of East Harlem; Sister Nancy Dupree’s classroom choir in Rochester, N.Y.; and the loose group of neighborhood kids whose voices are captured on James Brown’s “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud,” from 1968, possibly helping to set off the trend.) But Barrett’s music evolved through that moment, and he kept finding new ways to use the choir. By the mid-70s, he was dealing with synthesizers and crunchy electric guitar and cosmic slow-jam textures. This is the era that provided Kanye West with one of his most brilliant “Life of Pablo” samples, “Father Stretch My Hands,” a sultry, tantalizingly slow song in multiple parts. The box’s 24-page booklet features evocative and scholarly liner notes by Aadam Keeley and Aaron Cohen shining light on what has been, in many ways, a life of bridged contradictions and extraordinary achievement. RUSSONELLOThe Beach Boys, ‘Feel Flows: The Sunflower & Surf’s Up Sessions 1969-1971’(UMe; five CDs and hardcover book, $125)The Beach Boys revisit a less-heralded era in their history in “Feel Flows.”“Sunflower” (1970) and “Surf’s Up” (1971) were the Beach Boys’ most ambitious attempts to stay relevant in the 1970s while living up to Brian Wilson’s vision of merging complex music with mass popularity. “Sunflower” celebrated the joys of music and romance; “Surf’s Up” was as topical as the Beach Boys would ever be, worrying about environmental pollution, fatal student protests and the end of youthful innocence, with lyrics that sometimes reveled in literary conundrums. The boxed set includes both of the full albums and some complete outtakes, along with concert performances, alternate versions and stripped-down instrumental and a cappella tracks. The tracks are an education for aspiring producers, unveiling elaborate arrangements and savoring every earnest nonsense syllable of the band’s defining vocal harmonies. PARELESThe Beat Farmers, ‘Tales of the New West’(Blixa Sounds; two CDs, $19.99)The debut album from the San Diego band the Beat Farmers, released in 1985, is a dynamic and sturdy roots-rock gem, with flickers of the cowpunk sound that had been coursing through the region in the years just prior. The band’s best known song from this album, “Happy Boy,” scans as a novelty in retrospect, but the rest is full of savvy guitar work, slinky, yelpy singing and a rollicking rhythm section, peaking on the uproarious and blowsy “Lost Weekend.” The reissue’s bonus disc is an assured and easeful concert recording, “Live at the Spring Valley Inn, 1983.” CARAMANICAThe Beatles, ‘Let It Be (Super Deluxe)’(Capitol; five CDs, one Blu-ray audio disc and hardcover book, $140; five LPs and hardcover book, $200)An expanded boxed set for the Beatles’ “Let It Be” includes two discs of studio conversation.Anyone who didn’t get enough Beatles outtakes, dialogue and rehearsals in Peter Jackson’s documentary “Get Back” can try the expanded boxed set of “Let It Be,” which includes a new mix of the original album and singles (including the goopy orchestral arrangements), two discs of studio music and chatter, and another of the engineer Glyn Johns’s rough 1969 mixes from the album sessions. After making elaborate, groundbreaking studio albums, for “Let It Be” the Beatles dared themselves to record live in real time in front of a film crew — no pressure — joined only by the keyboardist (and unifier) Billy Preston. As in the documentary, the outtakes contrast Paul McCartney’s goal-oriented consistency with John Lennon’s casual restlessness. The find is the 1969 mixes: more open, more revealing, sounding even more live than the original album tracks. PARELESBush Tetras, ‘Rhythm and Paranoia: The Best of Bush Tetras’(Wharf Cat Records; three LPs, $98.98; two CDs, $29.98)With their most-loved songs scattered across various 7” singles and EPs, the delightfully prickly New York art-rockers Bush Tetras are the perfect candidates for a best-of collection like “Rhythm and Paranoia,” a chronologically sequenced triple album that puts their long, rich career into proper context. Thanks to underground hits like the walking-after-midnight anthem “Too Many Creeps” from 1980 and the groovy kiss-off “You Can’t Be Funky” the following year, the group was often associated most closely with the post-punk and no wave scenes. But the latter half of this set proves that for decades it continued to evolve in surprising yet intuitive new directions, as heard on the 1996 Fugazi-like wailer “Page 18” or the billowing blues-rock of “Heart Attack” from 2012. LINDSAY ZOLADZEva Cassidy, ‘Live at Blues Alley (25th Anniversary Edition)’(Blix Street Records; two LPs, $37.98)A new Eva Cassidy reissue presents her first solo album fully remastered, in the highest fidelity available.Though the vocalist Eva Cassidy didn’t write her own songs, and could sometimes slip into an almost exact approximation of Aretha Franklin or Bonnie Raitt’s phrasing, it never made sense to question her legitimacy or intent. Cassidy’s heart was right there, laid bare in her voice. When she saved up the money to record “Live at Blues Alley,” her first solo album, in January 1996, Cassidy wasn’t even a known figure on the small Washington, D.C., music scene. Just months after it came out, she died of cancer at age 33. It would be another couple of years before she broke through to a wider audience, thanks to a posthumous compilation CD, “Songbird” (drawn partly from the “Blues Alley” recordings), and the stream of cobbled-together releases that followed. This new reissue, pressed at 45 r.p.m. onto a pair of heavyweight LPs, presents the original document fully remastered, in the highest fidelity available. RUSSONELLOWhat to Know About ‘The Beatles: Get Back’Peter Jackson’s seven-plus hour documentary series, which explores the most contested period in the band’s history, is available on Disney Plus.Re-examining How the Beatles Ended: Think you know what happened? Jackson may change your mind.Yoko Ono’s Omnipresence: The performance artist is everywhere in the film. At first it’s unnerving, then dazzling.6 Big Moments: Don’t have time to watch the full documentary? Here’s a guide to its eye-opening scenes.‘Changüí: The Sound of Guantánamo’(Petaluma; three CDs and hardcover book, $63)When he realized there were very few recordings of local, rural changüí — music for all-night neighborhood parties in Guantánamo province, at Cuba’s eastern tip — the journalist Gianluca Tramontana began making his own with a hand-held stereo recorder, capturing the music live, acoustic and unadorned. This extensive boxed set, annotated with lyrics and musicology, offers Afro-Cuban music at its most elemental and kinetic: endlessly syncopated riffs picked on a tres (Cuban guitar) backed only by percussion and the plunked bass notes of a marímbula (a box with metal prongs), topped by singers who may well be improvising rhymes, answered by backup refrains. The lyrics offer history, advice, love, pride in the changüí tradition and up-to-the-minute commentary on what’s going on at the party or in the world. More important, the percussion and tres make the music eternally danceable. PARELESRay Charles, ‘True Genius’(Tangerine; six CDs and hardcover book, $105)“True Genius” collects decades of Ray Charles’s work.For me, and others, America’s greatest male singer was Ray Charles. His voice was grainy, earthy and wise; his emotional impact was unmistakable and complex, merging pain and strength, sorrow and humor, flirtation and heartache. Of course, he was no slouch as a pianist, either. This straightforward, career-spanning compilation covers his early years as he forges his fusion of gospel, swing, blues, country and pop, though for his pivotal 1950s Atlantic singles — “Hallelujah, I Love Her So,” “I’ve Got a Woman” and “What’d I Say” — it swaps in live versions instead of the studio classics. It moves through his decades as an interpreter, when he homed in on the soul within other people’s hits, and includes a rambunctious 1972 concert set from Stockholm and latter-day duets with admirers like Willie Nelson, Norah Jones and Billy Joel. PARELESJ Dilla, ‘ Welcome 2 Detroit — The 20th Anniversary Edition’(BBE Music; 12 7” singles for $129.99)A box of 7” singles includes instrumental versions and alternate mixes of J Dilla’s 2001 debut studio LP.By the time the tastemaking Detroit hip-hop producer J Dilla released his 2001 debut studio album, “Welcome 2 Detroit,” he was already somewhere in the realm of mythos. A member of the Soulquarians and the Ummah production collectives, he was known for music that was both luscious and thumping — he was wildly influential and essentially uncopyable. (He died in 2006.) “Welcome 2 Detroit” is a musically wide-ranging album, but never thrums with anything but his particular vibration, the J Dilla feel that exists somewhere just beneath the skin. This immaculately detailed boxed set features 7” singles of the album’s songs along with instrumental versions, alternate mixes and a book detailing the making of the album. CARAMANICAWillie Dunn, ‘Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies: The Willie Dunn Anthology’(Light in the Attic; two LPs, $35; MP3 download, $10)Willie Dunn (1941-2013) was a Canadian songwriter, filmmaker and Indigenous activist; this set offers just a sampling of his extensive recorded catalog. He emerged in the 1960s with songs rooted in folk and country, sometimes incorporating Indigenous instruments and melodies. His voice was a kindly but forthright baritone, with hints of Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Gordon Lightfoot. Dunn was a cleareyed storyteller, and in songs like “The Ballad of Crowfoot” he chronicled individual lives, historical injustices and the power and majesty of nature. PARELESBob Dylan, ‘Springtime in New York: The Bootleg Series Vol. 16 (1980-1985)’(Columbia/Legacy; five CDs, hard-bound book and memorabilia, $140)The latest excavation of Bob Dylan’s archives is from the first half of the 1980s, when he let go of the certainties of his born-again phase and returned to thornier, more enigmatic songs that still grappled with morality, love, history and responsibility on the albums “Infidels” (1983) and “Empire Burlesque” (1985). He also tried 1980s-style production, which left those albums with overblown drum sounds and a dated electronic sheen. Two discs from the 1980 sessions and rehearsals for his 1980 “Shot of Love” are mostly throwaways, except for the murky, ominous “Yes Sir, No Sir.” But the songs from sessions and tours for “Infidels” and “Empire Burlesque” offer more. The set unveils a full-band version of “Blind Willie McTell” and a boisterous, bluesy rock song that only surfaced briefly on tour in 1984, “Enough Is Enough.” It finds more vulnerable, less gimmicky versions of familiar songs, and it details the evolution — and sometimes overnight rewrites — of the songs that became “Foot of Pride” and “Tight Connection to My Heart,” a close-up of Dylan’s constant tinkering and improving. PARELESBeverly Glenn-Copeland, ‘Keyboard Fantasies’ and ‘Keyboard Fantasies Reimagined’(Transgressive; LP, CD, cassette or download, from $6.99 to $27.99)This is the latest installment of the campaign to resurrect the work of Beverly Glenn-Copeland, the Canadian new age/electronic music producer and singer whose recordings were rediscovered a few years ago. “Keyboard Fantasies,” originally released in 1986 in a limited cassette run, is entrancing and almost uncannily soothing. “Welcome to you, both young and old/We are ever new, we are ever new,” Glenn-Copeland softly warbles, a beacon of safety and possibility. The original album, now released on CD and vinyl for the first time, was followed by a collection of remixes and reinterpretations by acolytes, most notably Kelsey Lu’s ecstatically elegiac take on “Ever New.” CARAMANICAGeorge Harrison, ‘All Things Must Pass (50th Anniversary Edition)’(Capitol/UMe; Uber Deluxe Box, $999.98; Super Deluxe Box with eight LPs, $199.98, or five CDs, $149.98; other configurations from $19.98 to $89.98)Seek out the discs featuring 42 previously unreleased demos from George Harrison’s solo debut, “All Things Must Pass.”Anyone who has watched “Get Back” knows how creatively stifled George Harrison was feeling in the final days of the Beatles. His first post-Fab Four solo album, the sprawling, tenderly spiritual masterwork “All Things Must Pass” from 1970, became a repository for all those pent-up ideas. The joy of creation is palpable throughout the 50th anniversary deluxe edition of the album, which features a meticulous and punchy new mix derived from the original tapes by Paul Hicks. The set’s most revelatory material is on the discs featuring 42 previously unreleased demos, which strip Harrison’s compositions down to their bare essentials and showcase the almost otherworldly outpouring of song-craft that accompanied his musical liberation. This season of retroactive Beatlemania is the perfect opportunity for a deep dive into Harrison’s long-gestating opus — consider it “Get Back,” Part 4. ZOLADZ‘It’s a Good, Good Feeling: The Latin Soul of Fania Records (The Singles)’(Craft Latino; four CDs, one 7” vinyl record, $63.98; two LPs, $29.98)While it was on its way to becoming New York salsa’s equivalent of Motown Records, Fania was also helping to boost the Latin-soul hybrid known as boogaloo. In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Fania put out a stream of albums and singles with English-language lyrics, mixing funk, rock ’n’ roll and son rhythms; dollops of doo-wop vocals; and more than enough cowbell. This box culls together 89 such singles that Fania released between 1965 and 1975; most weren’t hits, but plenty were by hitmakers: Ray Barretto (whose smash “El Watusi” had presaged boogaloo), Joe Bataan, Willie Colón. Boogaloo could sometimes feel like a fusion of related but not directly compatible parts (“Everybody gather ’round,/I’m gonna introduce the Latin soul sound,” Joe Bataan sings, with something of a heavy hand, on “Latin Soul Square Dance”), but some of the most fun to be had here is on the covers of pop and soul hits sprinkled throughout, which embrace the task directly: Larry Harlow’s orchestra covering “Grazing in the Grass,” Harvey Averne’s take on “Stand,” Joe Bataan’s “Shaft.” The LP version of the box is abridged, including 28 tracks across two discs. RUSSONELLOThe KLF, ‘Solid State Logik 1’(Streaming services)In 1992, the KLF — the British Dada prankster dance-music anarchists who had become global hitmakers in the previous two years — fired machine-gun blanks at the audience at the BRIT Awards and announced their retirement from the music business. Shortly thereafter, they took their whole catalog out of print and, later, burned one million pounds in royalty payment cash. So it’s cause for excitement, and perhaps skepticism, that the group’s catalog began to trickle onto streaming services this year. Most crucial is the compilation “Solid State Logik 1,” which contains all the stratospheric, ornate, deeply ambitious hits: the spooky “What Time Is Love? (Live at Trancentral),” the ecstatic and triumphant “3 a.m. Eternal (Live at the S.S.L.)” and “Justified & Ancient,” with those Tammy Wynette vocals that still, three decades on, are disorienting in just the right way. Is the reissue series a scam? A prelude to a prank? Or a concession to permanence from a musical act that seemed content to live on only as a memory? CARAMANICANirvana, ‘Nevermind: 30th Anniversary (Super Deluxe Edition)’(Geffen; five CDs, one Blu-ray videodisc and hardcover book, $200)A 30th-anniversary edition of “Nevermind” features four concert recordings from 1991 and 1992.GeffenAs if Nirvana ever had to, it proves its punk bona fides yet again with the 30th-anniversary expansion of “Nevermind.” The newly remastered album adds a little additional clarity that brings out both the songs’ pop structures and the rasp and yowl of Kurt Cobain’s voice. It’s packaged with four live concert recordings of variable fidelity from 1991 and 1992 — Amsterdam (included as both audio and video), Melbourne and nearly mono-sounding sets from Del Mar, Calif., and Tokyo — that show Nirvana bashing the music out night after night, screaming and blaring, overloading with physical impact and probably spurring some wild mosh pits. Wherever the tour led, as Cobain sang, there was “no recess.” But the 20th-anniversary “Nevermind” box, in 2011, included a better-sounding 1991 concert, “Live at the Paramount,” and more rarities. PARELESOutkast, ‘ATLiens (25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)’(Legacy Recordings/Sony Music; four LPs, $69.98)A sublimely sinuous Southern funk album full of jackhammer rhymes, “ATLiens,” the second Outkast album, from 1996, is perhaps the duo’s most overlooked from its pre-pop-breakthrough era — not the scrappy statement of purpose that preceded it (the 1994 debut, “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik”) nor the psych-rock philosophy lesson that followed (“Aquemini,” from 1998). But it’s crucial to the Outkast worldview formation — it shows the duo both at ease with the languor of laid-back Southern production but also champing at the bit to incorporate small moments of explosion. This release includes the original album alongside, for the first time, the full set of instrumentals. CARAMANICA‘R&B in DC 1940-1960’(Bear Family; 16 CDs, $273.04)Probably the heavyweight champion of boxed sets this year (it weighs 10 pounds), “R&B in DC 1940-1960” collects nearly 500 singles recorded in the nation’s capital back when doo-wop, mambo, early rock ’n’ roll, jump blues and big-band jazz were first being lumped together in the pages of trade magazines into a category called “R&B.” It’s all contextualized engagingly in a 352-page book, full of closely researched history, images and song-by-song notes. You can tease out the presence of some major figures and themes: Marvin Gaye lingers in the backing vocals on at least one track; his mentor, Bo Diddley, also makes an appearance; the recordings of the Clovers and Ruth Brown, as the notes attest, played a role in keeping Atlantic Records afloat in the label’s fledgling days. But the point of this collection is to get you to listen more broadly, and more completely, to an entire musical and social moment: Jay Bruder, the researcher who compiled the collection, wisely included commercials, jingles and other radio-broadcast ephemera in this collection. These are the sounds of Washington in the midcentury, when it was home to one of the country’s most thriving Black middle classes and an incubator of musical talent to match. RUSSONELLORadiohead, ‘Kid A Mnesia’(XL; three CDs, $23; three LPs, $60)Radiohead dig out songs that didn’t make the cut for “Kid A” or “Amnesia” on a new box taking in both releases.Radiohead thoroughly dismantled its rock reflexes to make “Kid A” (2000) and “Amnesiac” (2001), two albums drawn almost entirely from the same sessions. Its former arena-rock guitars and anthemic choruses receded behind fragments, loops, electronic beats, orchestral experiments and ominous noises; disquiet and malaise floated free. “Kid A Mnesia” unites the two companion albums and adds a disc of alternate takes, stray instrumental tracks and songs Radiohead had not quite committed to disc: “Follow Me Around” and “If You Say the Word.” They’re not revelations, but they extend the mood. PARELESThe Replacements, ‘Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take out the Trash (Deluxe Edition)’(Rhino; four CDs, one LP, one 7,” $79.98)Snarling, thrashing and defiantly tuneful, the Replacements’ 1981 debut album, “Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash,” has always sounded like a power-pop LP stuffed into a blender and flicked on to high. But this comprehensive, 40th-anniversary deluxe edition is a sustained reminder of the craft and winning chemistry behind an album that was never quite as anarchically tossed-off as it seemed. Across 100 tracks — 67 of them previously unreleased — it becomes clear that the sturdy melodic core of Paul Westerberg’s songwriting and the ramshackle fury of Bob Stinson’s solos were present from the earliest days of the Minneapolis band’s existence. Some of the most fascinating tracks on this reissue, though, point to where the Replacements were headed on “Let It Be” from 1984 and beyond: A handful of Westerberg’s solo home demos, the best of which is the gut-wrenching “You’re Getting Married,” foreshadow the ragged-heart balladry of a ’Mats classic like “Answering Machine.” Nearly four hours of material is plenty to sift through, but a high percentage of this “Trash” is treasure. ZOLADZThe Rolling Stones, ‘Tattoo You’(Interscope; four CDs, picture disc and hardcover book, $150; five LPs and hardcover book, $198; two CDs, $20)Beyond the kick of “Start Me Up” and the unexpected tenderness (and Sonny Rollins saxophone solo) of “Waiting for a Friend,” “Tattoo You” (1981) was a second-tier Rolling Stones album: vigorous performances of merely passable material. With band members estranged, it was built largely by finishing lyrics and vocals atop outtakes from previous albums. Its 40th-anniversary expanded version includes nine previously unreleased songs that casually continue the album’s 1981 strategy, revisiting tracks from the vault; Mick Jagger sings some obviously anachronistic lyrics in songs like “It’s a Lie,” which mentions eBay. (More deluxe versions add a two-CD 1982 Wembley concert recording.) The new tracks offer familiar pleasures: hearing the band romp through every song. PARELESNina Simone, ‘The Montreux Years’(BMG; two LPs, $29.99; two CDs, $19.98)Between 1968 and 1990, Nina Simone played the Montreux Jazz Festival five times.The most arresting scene in Liz Garbus’s 2015 Netflix documentary “What Happened, Miss Simone?” is a performance from the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival, during which a weary but incandescent Nina Simone performs her interpretation of Janis Ian’s “Stars.” Simone’s reading is one of the most damning and deeply felt critiques of fame I have ever heard — and luckily it is featured on “Nina Simone: The Montreux Years,” a new and beautifully packaged two-album collection of live material. Between 1968 and 1990, Simone played the Swiss jazz festival five times; each performance was both a reflection of a specific moment in her career and a testament to her continued virtuosity. For all her ambivalence about jazz festivals and her noted preference for performing in classical music halls, Simone clearly had a special connection to Montreux and, as this collection attests, brought her best to its stage decade after decade. ZOLADZWadada Leo Smith’s Great Lakes Quartet, ‘The Chicago Symphonies’(TUM; four CDs, $71.99)The trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith turned 80 this month but continues to compose and perform prolifically. And his projects have only been growing grander in scale, while still centering his stark, epigrammatic style of playing and writing. Smith’s latest effort (it isn’t an archival recording) is “The Chicago Symphonies,” four extended works, carefully composed but minimalist in craft, written not for an orchestra but for a quartet: the Pulitzer Prize winner Henry Threadgill on alto saxophone, John Lindberg on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. (The saxophonist Jonathon Haffner replaces Threadgill on the fourth and final symphony.) It’s the same group that was featured on Smith’s celebrated “Great Lakes Suite,” from 2014. This new collection of music is dedicated not to the natural beauty of the region, but to the lives of great Midwesterners, from politicians like Abe Lincoln and Barack Obama to Smith’s own colleagues in the avant-garde. The simpatico between Smith and Threadgill is an exciting and rarely documented thing, and it gives these already spellbinding compositions the allure of a privileged conversation. RUSSONELLOThe Who, ‘The Who Sell Out (Super Deluxe Box Set)’(UMe/Polydor; five CDs, two 7” singles, hardcover book, memorabilia, $139)A new boxed set pulls together the Who’s scattered trove of recordings from 1967-69.The Who tried multiple directions while writing and recording “The Who Sell Out,” amid tour dates and the general psychedelic ferment of 1967. Pete Townshend was coming up with character sketches, expanding songs toward mini-operas and layering voices and instruments ever more ingeniously. To hold together its hodgepodge of songs, “The Who Sell Out” was sequenced as a pirate radio show, including jingles and parody commercials. The boxed set pulls together the Who’s scattered trove of recordings from 1967-69. It expands the original album (in mono and stereo versions, plus non-album singles) with three discs of recordings from 1967-68 along with sketches that Townshend would mine for “Tommy” in 1969 and, newly unveiled, a dozen of Townshend’s increasingly ambitious demos, including a thoroughly unrelaxed “Relax” and a smoldering, baleful “I Can See for Miles” that fully maps out the album version, which would be one of the Who’s pinnacles. PARELES More

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      For Pop Music, 2021 Was the Year of the Deep Dive

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      Documentaries brought us closer to musicians this year, and it wasn’t always pretty.The pandemic, it seems, sent certain enterprising music lovers into editing rooms. For those still leery of gathering for a live concert, the 2021 consolation prize was not a slew of ephemeral livestreams, but an outpouring of smart, intent music documentaries that weren’t afraid to stretch past two hours long. With screen time begging to be filled, it was the year of the deep dive.Those documentaries included a binge-watch of the Beatles at work in Peter Jackson’s “The Beatles: Get Back”; a visual barrage to conjure musical disruption in Todd Haynes’s “Velvet Underground”; far-reaching commentary atop ecstatic performances from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival in Questlove’s “Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)”; and a surprisingly candid chronicle of Billie Eilish’s whirlwind career — at 16, 17 and 18 years old — in R.J. Cutler’s “The World’s a Little Blurry.” The documentaries were about reclaiming and rethinking memory, about unexpected echoes across decades, about transparency and the mysteries of artistic production.They were also a reminder of how scarce hi-fi sound and images were back in the analog era, and how ubiquitous they are now. Half a century ago, the costs of film and tape were not negligible, while posterity was a minor consideration. Experiencing the moment seemed far more important than preserving any record of it. It would be decades before “pics or it didn’t happen.”The Velvet Underground, in its early days, was simultaneously a soundtrack and a canvas for Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a multimedia club-sized happening that projected images on the band members as they played. Although the Velvets’ social set included plenty of artists and filmmakers, apparently no one got the obvious idea of capturing a full-length performance by the Velvets in their prime. What a remarkable missed opportunity.Haynes’s documentary creatively musters circumstantial evidence instead. There are memories from eyewitnesses (and only eyewitnesses, a relief). And Haynes fills the lack of concert footage with an overload of contemporaneous images, sometimes blinking wildly in a tiled screen that suggests Windows 10 running amok. News, commercials and bits of avant-garde films flicker alongside Warhol’s silent contemplations of band members staring back at the camera. The faces and fragments are there, in a workaround that translates the far-off blur of the 1960s into a 21st-century digital grid.Todd Haynes’s “The Velvet Underground” fills the lack of concert footage with an overload of contemporaneous images.Apple TV+Luckily there was more foresight in 1969, when Hal Tulchin had five video cameras rolling at the Harlem Cultural Festival, which later became known as “Black Woodstock.” New York City (and a sponsor, Maxwell House) presented a series of six weekly free concerts at Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park) with a lineup that looks almost miraculous now, including Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, B.B. King, Sly and the Family Stone and Mongo Santamaria, just for starters. Tulchin’s crew shot more than 40 hours of footage, capturing the eager faces and righteous fashions of the audience along with performers who were knocking themselves out for an almost entirely Black crowd. Yet nearly all of Tulchin’s material went unseen until Questlove finally assembled “Summer of Soul” from it.The music in “Summer of Soul” moves from peak to peak, with unstoppable rhythms, rawly compelling voices, snappy dance steps and urgent messages. But “Summer of Soul” doesn’t just revel in the performances. Commentary from festivalgoers, performers and observers (including the definitive critic Greg Tate) supply context for a festival that had the Black Panthers as security, and that the city likely supported, in part, to channel energy away from potential street protests after the turbulence of 1968.Questlove’s subtitle and his song choices — B.B. King singing about slavery, Ray Baretto proudly claiming a multiracial America, Nina Simone declaiming “Backlash Blues,” Rev. Jesse Jackson preaching about Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder in 1968, even the Fifth Dimension finding anguish and redemption in “Let the Sunshine In” — make clear that the performers weren’t offering escapism or complacency. After five decades in the archives, “Summer of Soul” is still timely in 2021; it’s anything but quaint. Here’s hoping that far more of the festival footage emerges; bring on the expanded version or the mini-series. A soundtrack album is due in January.The music in “Summer of Soul,” which includes the 5th Dimension, moves from peak to peak, but the film doesn’t just revel in the performances. Searchlight PicturesCameras were filming constantly during the recording sessions for “Let It Be,” when the Beatles set themselves a peculiar, quixotic challenge in January of 1969: to make an album fast, on their own (though they eventually got the invaluable help of Billy Preston on keyboards), on camera and with a live show to follow. It was one more way that the Beatles were a harbinger of things to come, as if they had envisioned our digital era, when bands habitually record video while they work and upload work-in-progress updates for their fans. In the 1960s, recording studios were generally regarded as private work spaces, from which listeners would eventually receive only the (vinyl) finished project. The “Let It Be” sessions represented a new transparency.Its results, in 1970, were the “Let It Be” album, reworked by Phil Spector, and the dour, disjointed 80-minute documentary “Let It Be” by the director Michael Lindsay-Hogg — both of them a letdown after the album “Abbey Road,” which was released in 1969 but recorded after the “Let It Be” sessions. The Beatles had announced their breakup with solo albums.The three-part, eight-hour “Get Back” may well have been closer to what the Beatles hoped to put on film in 1969. It’s a bit overlong; I will never need to see another close-up of toast at breakfast. But in all those hours of filming, Lindsay-Hogg’s cameras took in the iterative, intuitive process of the band constructing Beatles songs: building and whittling down arrangements, playing Mad Libs with syllables of lyrics, recharging itself with oldies and in jokes, having instruments in hand when inspiration struck. Jackson’s definitive sequence — the song “Get Back” emerging as Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr are jamming one morning — merges laddish camaraderie with deep artistic instinct.Cameras were filming constantly during the recording sessions for “Let It Be” in January 1969.Apple Corps“Get Back” newly reveals the situations that the Beatles were juggling even as they pushed themselves toward their self-imposed (and then self-extended) deadline. They moved from the acoustically inhospitable Twickenham film studios to a hastily assembled basement studio at Apple. They seriously mulled over some preposterous locations — an amphitheater in Tripoli? a children’s hospital? — for the impending live show. There was so much tension that George Harrison walked out of the band, only to reconcile and rejoin after a few days. Meanwhile, they faced predatory coverage from British tabloids. It’s a wonder they could concentrate on making music at all.Yet as established stars, the Beatles could work largely within their own protective bubble in 1969. Fast-forward 50 years for “The World’s a Little Blurry,” and Billie Eilish faces some of the same pressures as the Beatles did: songwriting, deadlines, playing live, the press. But she’s also dealing with them as a teenage girl, in an era when there are cameras everywhere — even under her massage table — and the internet multiplies every bit of visibility and every attack vector. “I literally can’t have a bad moment,” she realizes.In “The World’s a Little Blurry,” Eilish performs to huge crowds singing along with every word, sweeps the top awards at the 2019 Grammys and gets a hug from her childhood pop idol, Justin Bieber. But as in her songs — tuneful, whispery and often nightmarish — there’s as much trauma as there is triumph. Eilish also copes with tearing a ligament onstage, her recurring Tourette’s syndrome, a video-screen breakdown when she headlines the Coachella festival, an apathetic boyfriend, inane interviewers, endless meet-and-greets and constant self-questioning about accessibility versus integrity. It’s almost too much information. Still, a few years or a few decades from now, who knows what an expanded version might add? More

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      The Artists We Lost in 2021, in Their Words

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      This year, as pandemic deaths ebbed and flowed, a distinctive, eternal beat — that of artist’s deaths — played on as usual, bringing its own waves of collective grief. Some, such as Cicely Tyson and Stephen Sondheim, held the spotlight for generations. Others, like Michael K. Williams and Nai-Ni Chen, left us lamenting careers cut short. Here is a tribute to just a small number of them, in their own words.Cicely TysonAssociated Press“I’m not scared of death. I don’t know what it is. How could I be afraid of something I don’t know anything about?”— Cicely Tyson, actress, born 1924 (Read the obituary.)Melvin Van PeeblesMichael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“I want people to be empowered and also have a damn good time.”— Melvin Van Peebles, filmmaker, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)“I want my steps to speak.”— Liam Scarlett, choreographer, born 1986 (Read the obituary.)“I remember my childhood often, I remember a lot of the past. But when it comes to music, I always look forward.”— Nelson Freire, pianist, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)Bob AvianKarsten Moran for The New York Times“When my parents went out, I would push back the furniture, clear an open space, turn on the record player and leap around the apartment.”— Bob Avian, choreographer, born 1937 (Read the obituary.)“School was a crashing bore and a terrible chore, until one day when I was cast as the girl with the mandolin in ‘Sleeping Beauty.’”— Carla Fracci, dancer, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)“As I grew up in Kyoto, the wood of the Buddhist statues, trees, the grain of the wooden pillars, the patterns on the floor, the stones in the gardens, the bamboo, trees and plants in Kyoto are all a part of me — and as I read a script, I borrow from all these things.”— Emi Wada, costume designer, born 1937“I still feel sky-deprived when in the forested places. Many, many people born to the skies of the plains feel that way.”— Larry McMurtry, novelist, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)Ed AsnerWally Fong/Associated Press“My father told me, ‘You didn’t make a success as a student, you’re not going to make a success as an actor.’ I said, ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’”— Ed Asner, actor, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Olympia DukakisAbramorama“I came to New York with $57 in my pocket.”— Olympia Dukakis, actress, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Charlie WattsEvening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“When I first went to New York with the Stones, the first thing I did was to go to Birdland. And that was it. I’d seen America. I mean, I didn’t want to see anywhere else.”— Charlie Watts, drummer, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)Jacques D’AmboiseJohn Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images“Spread me in Times Square or the Belasco Theater.”— Jacques D’Amboise, dancer, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“If you have a leading character, they should be in a hurry. You can slow it down when you’re shooting, but it helps in the writing: Even if they’re not moving, they’re thinking about moving on, or getting away from the scene they’re in.”— Robert Downey Sr., filmmaker, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)Joe AllenJim Cooper/Associated Press“I always said I lacked ambition — but that does not mean I was lazy.”— Joe Allen, theater district restaurateur, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“I don’t assume an audience’s interest. I assume the opposite.”— Charles Grodin, actor, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Jerry PinkneyJoyce Dopkeen/The New York Times“I solve problems — visual problems.”— Jerry Pinkney, children’s book illustrator, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Larry KingAlberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images‘‘If you’re combative, you never learn.”— Larry King, TV host, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)Anna HalprinSam Falk/The New York Times“I started to teach people how the body actually works. I looked at the skeleton. I did human dissection. I did all these things to understand the nature of movement, not just my movement.”— Anna Halprin, choreographer, born 1920 (Read the obituary.)“I’m not interested in the intentions of artists; I’m interested in consequences.”— Dave Hickey, art critic, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)Nai-Ni ChenStephanie Berger for The New York Times“My thirst for expressing myself, both East and West, could only happen through creating my own company.”— Nai-Ni Chen, choreographer and dancer, born 1959 (Read the obituary.)Virgil AblohDavid Kasnic for The New York Times“When I studied engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, it was the humanities classes that I had put to the side that ultimately started me on this path of thinking about creativity in a much more cultural context — not designing for design’s sake, but connecting design to the rhythm of what’s happening in the world.”— Virgil Abloh, designer, born 1980 (Read the obituary.)Yolanda LópezAlexa Treviño“Those of us who make images must always be very conscious about the power of images — about how they function — especially in a society where we are not taught our own history.”— Yolanda López, artist, born 1942 (Read the obituary.)“You’re more anarchic onstage than you are anywhere else.”— Helen McCrory, actress, born 1968 (Read the obituary.)Michael K. WilliamsDemetrius Freeman for The New York Times“The characters that mean the most to me are the ones that damn near kill me. It’s a sacrifice I’ve chosen to make.”— Michael K. Williams, actor, born 1966 (Read the obituary.)bell hooksKarjean Levine/Getty Images“We cannot have a meaningful revolution without humor.”— bell hooks, writer and scholar, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)Norm MacdonaldMargaret Norton/NBC, via Getty Images“Making people laugh is a gift. Preaching to them is not a gift. There are people who can do that better. Preachers.”— Norm Macdonald, comedian, born 1959 (Read the obituary.)“The thing that everybody thinks is going to work will not. The thing that nobody thinks will work will.”— Elizabeth McCann, theater producer, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)“The success of my books is not in the characters or the words or the colors, but in the simple, simple feelings.”— Eric Carle, author and artist, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)“I think children want to read about normal, everyday kids.”— Beverly Cleary, author, born 1916 (Read the obituary.)Young DolphPaul R. Giunta/Invision, via Associated Press“My whole thing is about giving these folks the real.”— Young Dolph, rapper, born 1985 (Read the obituary.)“I try to use words that fit a pattern, that are musical and expressive, but do not sound mechanical. Above all it should have a speech rhythm that is like the rhythms that the audience would speak.”— Carlisle Floyd, composer, born 1926 (Read the obituary.)“Birds were the first composers. They like to sing in spring. Purely serving of the beauty — that’s what we try to do.”— Louis Andriessen, composer, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Cloris LeachmanAssociated Press“I don’t have a lot of trappings, I think, in my personality. I’m just a simple person, with a silly bone.”— Cloris Leachman, actress, born 1926 (Read the obituary.)“I’m a witness of my time, you know, of a history.”— Hung Liu, artist, born 1948 (Read the obituary.)“Technology is changing the way people work. With electronic mail, the internet, teleconferencing, people are starting to ask, ‘What is a headquarters or office environment?’”— Art Gensler, architect, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Christopher PlummerTom Jamieson for The New York Times“I’ve made over 100 motion pictures, and some of them were even good. It’s nice to be reborn every few decades.”— Christopher Plummer, actor, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)“After you see your work, you always want to go right back and do it all over again.”— Lisa Banes, actress, born 1955 (Read the obituary.)“I think of the art as dead when it leaves my studio. I don’t even own it anymore. Installing in a museum or a show that’s coming up, I’m not allowed to touch my own work ever. It just seems strange to me. If somebody puts me in front of my drawings, I’d put more text in it. It’s never finished, but none of my work is ever finished.”— Kaari Upson, artist, born 1970 (Read the obituary.)SophieFrazer Harrison/Getty Images For Coachella“I don’t have the need to bring any more clutter into the physical world. And I like the fact that musical data is weightless and spaceless in that way.”— Sophie, pop producer and performer, born 1986 (Read the obituary.)Etel AdnanFabrice Gibert, via Galerie Lelong & Co.“My paintings are not usually titled. Art should make people dream, and when you have a title, you condition the vision.”— Etel Adnan, author and artist, born 1925 (Read the obituary.)Michael NesmithMichael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“We’re a couple of old men, but we sound the same when we play this music — and it nourishes us the way it nourishes you.”— Michael Nesmith, musician, born 1942 (Read the obituary.)“We always put music first and marriage second. One night after dinner, for instance, I was going to do the dishes and Jerry said, ‘Forget the dishes. Let’s practice. I’ll do the dishes later.’”— Dottie Dodgion, drummer, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Jessica WalterDove and Express, via Hulton Archive/Getty Images“Even my ‘leading ladies’— you know, in air quotes — were characters. They were not Miss Vanilla Ice Cream. They weren’t holding the horse while John Wayne galloped into the sunset.”— Jessica Walter, actress, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)“The last note, the high last note — it must say something.”— Edita Gruberova, soprano, born 1946 (Read the obituary.)DMXChad Batka for The New York Times“I’m going to look back on my life, just before I go, and thank god for every moment.”— DMX, rapper, born 1970 (Read the obituary.)Stephen SondheimFred R. Conrad/The New York Times“Life is unpredictable. It is. There is no form. And making forms gives you solidity. I think that’s why people paint paintings and take photographs and write music and tell stories that have beginning, middles and ends — even when the middle is at the beginning and the beginning is at the end.”— Stephen Sondheim, composer and lyricist, born 1930 (Read the obituary.) More

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      TikTok’s Music Critics Reflect on 2021

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherFor many, TikTok is a music discovery engine. Snippets of new songs make their way through the app, providing the soundtracks for dances or comedic sketches. Old songs get resurfaced in new contexts. It is a fount for curious and patient listeners.But there is a different and less central version of music discovery on TikTok: the videos made by the app’s informal gathering of music critics, historians and enthusiasts. Often, the music they’re recommending — which encompasses 1990s indie rock, contemporary video game music, old jazz, contemporary underground hip-hop and beyond — doesn’t overlap with what’s happening on the rest of the app. Instead, these are committed, independent voices following their own muse.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation with four of TikTok’s most singular music aficionados about their favorite albums and songs of 2021, which include releases from Charlotte Day Wilson, Japanese Breakfast, Elujay and more; what it’s like to develop individual taste in the age of the algorithm; and the unexpected joy of tracking down physical media.Guests:Margeaux Labat, @marg.mp3 on TikTokEric Morris, @cyberexboyfriend on TikTokCam Sullivan-Brown, @_itsjust_camm on TikTokHunter White, @wahwahmusic on TikTokConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      The Best TV Episodes of 2021

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      Among the thousands of hours of television that came out this year, episodes of “Call My Agent,” “For All Mankind,” “Mythic Quest,” “Pose” and “WandaVision,” among others, stood out.From left, “Dave,” PEN15” and “Genius: Aretha” put out some of TV’s best episodes of the year.From left: Byron Cohen/FX; Hulu; Richard DuCree/National GeographicTelevision today comes in big portions, as anyone who spent seven-plus hours with the Beatles over Thanksgiving weekend can attest. But just as a marathon jam session can yield a few tight singles, the most memorable TV is still often the well-crafted individual episode. As Mike Hale, Margaret Lyons and I end another year’s binge as TV critics for The New York Times, here are a few of the installments from 2021 that topped our personal hit parades. JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘Call My Agent!’ (Netflix)‘Sigourney’More than 30 European actors — including stars like Isabelle Huppert, Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno — have graciously and often mercilessly lampooned themselves in this French dramedy, playing clients or prospective clients or angry former clients of the fictional talent agency ASK. In this Season 4 episode, an American stepped in, and Sigourney Weaver, speaking more than passable French and playing herself as an utterly charming manipulator, was flawless. (Streaming on Netflix.) MIKE HALE‘City of Ghosts’‘Bob & Nancy’Plenty of children’s shows are cute but “City of Ghosts” is also beautiful, and its poetic wistfulness about Los Angeles would be at home on a premium cable drama. Instead it’s in this plucky, naturalistic cartoon about ghost-hunting kids who have a podcast. I loved every episode of this show. But I picked “Bob & Nancy” because it’s about a marionette theater, and thus it toys with ideas of animating the inanimate — rich ground for a show in touch with the spirit realm. (Streaming on Netflix.) MARGARET LYONSHarley Quinn Smith in the finale of “Cruel Summer,” which offered both a happy ending and a surprising twist.Freeform/Bill Matlock‘Cruel Summer’‘Hostile Witness’This teen kidnapping mystery took all the hallmarks of prestige-y crime shows — split timelines, dark lighting, tangential secrets — and repackaged them with a kicky ’90s YA flare. It was one of the juicy highlights of the summer. But shows like this are only as good as their finales, and “Cruel Summer” managed the trick of both a happy ending and a thrilling, dark twist. (Streaming on Hulu.) MARGARET LYONS‘Dave’ (FXX)‘Somebody Date Me’Texting can be a crutch for TV shows, a way to use pop-up bubbles to give characters phone-enabled telepathy. Not so in this playful, smart half-hour, in which Dave Burd’s up-and-coming rapper made (and lost) a date with Doja Cat. As the two musicians courted with their thumbs, “Somebody Date Me” showed how context and time can change the meaning and reading of the smallest online (mis)communication. Thumbs-up emoji! (Streaming on Hulu.) JAMES PONIEWOZIKThe Season 2 finale of “For All Mankind,” with Krys Marshall, revolved around multiple white-knuckle missions.Apple TV+‘For All Mankind’ (Apple TV+)‘The Grey’Each season of this space-race alternative history is a multistage booster rocket. The slow-moving early episodes expend a lot of fuel, building energy and narrative force until the show reaches escape velocity. (My aerospace engineer readers, I beg you not to fact-check my metaphors.) The white-knuckle Season 2 finale moved with the deftness of a docking maneuver, as a U.S.-Soviet conflict on the moon and a threatened war on Earth required risk and sacrifice on two celestial bodies and points in between. (Streaming on Apple TV+.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘Genius: Aretha’ (National Geographic)‘Amazing Grace’‘Pose’ (FX)‘Take Me to Church’The music and community of the Black church co-starred in two praiseworthy hours of TV. The Aretha Franklin bio-series peaked as it focused on the recording of the 1972 “Amazing Grace” live album at New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, fusing the artist’s past and present in a crucible of soul. In “Pose,” a grim diagnosis led Pray Tell (Billy Porter) back to his hometown and church community, both to confront the homophobia that drove him from it and give voice to the music that sustained him. (Stream “Genius: Aretha” on Hulu; buy “Pose” on Amazon.) JAMES PONIEWOZIKPerry Mattfeld, left, and David Webster, in the “Somewhere Over the Border” episode of “In the Dark.” CW‘In the Dark’ (CW)‘Somewhere Over the Border’This CW drama about a blind woman and her buddies, who run a rescue-dog agency and get involved in drug dealing and murder, is no more than a serviceable thriller. But the rapport among its central characters, Murphy (Perry Mattfeld), Jess (Brooke Markham) and Felix (Morgan Krantz), has developed into one of the more believable and moving portrayals of friendship on TV. When Murphy found herself stranded in a strange country, the strength of those ties was the foundation of a taut and agonizing hour. (Streaming on Netflix.) MIKE HALE‘Line of Duty’ (BritBox)Season 6, Episode 5Tension and deception pump through the veins of this breakneck procedural about a British internal-affairs unit, and no show does cliffhangers better. You could point to just about any episode; this one, with one of the heroes following a possibly dirty cop into an abandoned industrial park because that’s what the job called for, was off the charts. (Streaming on BritBox.) MIKE HALE‘Love, Death & Robots’‘The Drowned Giant’In just 13 minutes, this elegant short about a giant’s corpse that washes up on a beach one day captures, in a perfect snapshot, humanity’s tendency to desecrate marvels, to behold a world-changing event and decide simply to carry on. Based on a short story by J.G. Ballard, “The Drowned Giant” is rendered here in mostly realistic animation, with the giant’s clean-shaven cheeks, tidy fingernails and muscular chest shown in aching detail. In an era when so many shows just blend together, this episode stands out for its light touch and sad imagination. (Streaming on Netflix.) MARGARET LYONSIn a memorable episode of “Making It,” contestants like Jessie Lamworth, (right, with the host Amy Poehler) made Halloween costumes.Evans Vestal Ward/NBC‘Making It’‘All the Holidays at Once’Post “Great British Baking Show,” lots of reality competition series have gone away from the cutthroat in favor of the warm and fuzzy, and perhaps no show is warmer and fuzzier than the craft competition “Making It.” Each episode has its charms but “All the Holidays at Once” was especially thrilling, because unlike some of the show’s grander projects, crafting your own Halloween costume is pretty standard fare, even for layfolk. The contestants’ giddy joy in presenting their creations to the judges was matched only by my own giddy joy at seeing their silly and spectacular costumes. Jess won with her superb alien-abduction costume but when everything is this fun, don’t we all win? As a bonus, this episode also included Melañio telling a story about a bat in a toilet, a tale that will haunt me for the rest of my days. (Streaming on Hulu.) MARGARET LYONS‘Mythic Quest’ (Apple TV+)‘Backstory!’Having come up with one of the best pandemic-inspired episodes of 2020, this video game-industry comedy is gunning for TV’s high score in stand-alones. This installment gave the back story-obsessed game writer C.W. Longbottom (a wonderfully blustery F. Murray Abraham) his own flashback as a struggling sci-fi author in the 1970s — a funny and poignant tale of irony, professional jealousy and success at a cost. (Streaming on Apple TV+.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘Nuclear Family’ (HBO)Episode 3Ry Russo-Young’s three-part documentary about her lesbian mothers and the sperm donor who sued them for parental rights, threatening to pull apart her family, built to a powerful and eloquent conclusion. It both affirmed the importance of the battle her mothers fought and questioned the assumptions of everyone involved. (Streaming on HBO Max.) MIKE HALEIn a March interview with Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle discussed their separation from the royal family.Harpo Productions/Joe Pugliese‘Oprah with Meghan and Harry’One so rarely gets to receive or send a “turn on your TV right now” text, especially in my line of work. So for that dual thrill alone this interview earned a place in my heart. It was the kind of programming that barely exists anymore: a tell-all network special in which celebrities share genuine new information with Oprah, the patron saint of soul-baring. There were Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, aglow in the California sun, decrying racism and candidly discussing mental health crises. Which would have been enough, but they also reset the royal narrative, gave Oprah eggs, fought back tears and gazed lovingly at one another — all while sitting in chairs sold by Christopher Knight from “The Brady Bunch.” Television, baby! I love you! MARGARET LYONS‘PEN15’ (Hulu)‘Yuki’Mutsuko Erskine had never acted before her daughter, Maya, cast her to play Maya’s mother in Hulu’s brutally funny teen comedy. Sometimes daughter knows best. This showpiece episode, in which a chance meeting with an ex-husband led Yuki to look down a road not taken, was a rich vignette of an immigrant’s experience and a subtle performance to cap off the role, literally, of a lifetime. (Streaming on Hulu.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘The Simpsons’ (Fox)‘The Dad-Feelings Limited’Who would have thought that the origin story of Comic Book Guy, done partly as an affectionate sendup of a Wes Anderson film, would be so lovely? (Streaming on Disney+.) MIKE HALE‘Snowfall’ (FX)‘All the Way Down’This brutal and only-as-sentimental-as-it-needs-to-be drama about a rogue C.I.A. agent and a young Black entrepreneur, partners in the crack wars in early 1980s Los Angeles, still does not get enough attention. That’s especially true of the stories written by the novelist Walter Mosley, like this chilling, tightly packed episode about rage, revenge, gentrification and wanting to go straight. (Streaming on Hulu.) MIKE HALEIn “WandaVision,” Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen channeled multiple eras of TV including, in the premiere, 1950s sitcoms.Marvel Studios‘WandaVision’ (Disney+)‘Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience’Several installments of this superhero psychodrama, set in a bizarro-world version of classic sitcom formats, could have made this list. But might as well start at the beginning, in which Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) played house on a 1950s stage set whose made-for-TV perfection turned horrifyingly (and ingeniously) wrong. (Streaming on Disney+.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘What We Do in the Shadows’‘Casino’“Shadows” is one of the funniest shows on TV right now, and “Casino,” where the gang heads to Atlantic City, was my favorite episode this season. Nandor (Kayvan Novak) becomes entranced by a “Big Bang Theory” slot machine — “‘bazinga’ is the war cry of Sheldon,” he explains — and in perfect, cascading horror, this leads to the total dissolution of his understanding of the universe. “Shadows” is its best when the vampires’ grandiosity clashes with their vulnerabilities, especially their excitability, and I’ll never see another in-house ad on a hotel TV without thinking that it’s Colin Robinson’s favorite show. (Streaming on Hulu.) MARGARET LYONS More

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      Best Comedy of 2021

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      The return of indoor shows brought comedy closer to normal, and there were plenty of specials from Bo Burnham, Tig Notaro, Roy Wood Jr. and others.From left, a scene from Tig Notaro’s HBO special “Drawn,” Susie Essman in HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and Tiffany Haddish in Netflix’s “Bad Trip.”From left: HBO; John P. Johnson/HBO; Dimitry Elyashkevich/NetflixComedy got dangerous in 2021. Not cancel-culture dangerous (though after creating one of the loudest controversies of the year with his Netflix special “The Closer,” Dave Chappelle might disagree). More like “I might contract Covid at this show” dangerous. After a (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime shutdown of live performances, audiences returned to indoor shows, and comics picked up where they left off. These are some of the highlights.Best Punch Line Inside a Club to Defuse Covid AnxietyOne night at the Comedy Cellar, Dave Attell told a guy in the crowd: “I’m glad you’re wearing a mask because we need a survivor to tell the story.” But in the basement of the West Side Comedy Club, Bill Burr took down the elephant in the room even quicker: “I’m happy to be down here working on a new variant.”Best Experimental ComedyTig Notaro is not the first stand-up to turn herself into a cartoon, but her “Drawn” HBO special was the most ambitious attempt, using a different animated style for each bit — realistic one moment, whimsically fantastical the next, veering from the perspective of the audience to a cockroach. Imagine if Pixar did stand-up.A scene from “Drawn,” an animated HBO special from Tig Notaro, which uses a different animated style for each bit.HBOBest Musical ComedyThis was the year that visual humor caught up to the verbal kind in comedy specials. Bo Burnham invented a new comic vocabulary with his Netflix hit “Inside,” a filmic meditation on isolation, the internet and ironic distance itself. It was so tuneful and thematically well made that a blockbuster musical is surely in his future.Best Opening BitIn “Imperfect Messenger,” a Comedy Central special packed with refined comic gems, Roy Wood Jr. begins by discussing things that are not racist but feel racist. Things that have, as he puts it while rubbing his thumb and his fingers together as if he’s grasping at something, “the residue of racism” — like when white people use the word “forefathers,” or when you go somewhere and there’s “too many American flags,” which he calls “too much freedom.” He rubs his fingers and thumb again and asks: “How many American flags equal one Confederate flag?”Roy Wood Jr. in his Comedy Central special “Imperfect Messenger.”Sean Gallagher/Comedy CentralBest DirectingWith a jangling horror soundtrack, claustrophobic close-ups and the menacing humor of a Pinter play, the movie “Shiva Baby” offers a modern spin on the postgraduate angst of “The Graduate.” Its director, Emma Seligman, is the most promising cringe-comedy auteur to come along in years.Best MemoirIn the Audible original “May You Live in Interesting Times,” Laraine Newman describes studying with Marcel Marceau, dating Warren Zevon and farting in front of Prince. She gives you what you want in a “Saturday Night Live” memoir, but what makes her audiobook excel is her nimble voice, impersonating a collection of characters, none more charismatic than her own.Best Documentary“Mentally Al” catches up with the unsung comic Al Lubel when he’s near broke, disheveled and struggling with an impossibly dysfunctional relationship with his mother. Onstage, however, he’s consistently hilarious, even when the audience doesn’t think so. After countless documentaries about how a really funny person became a star, there’s finally a revelatory one exploring why one didn’t.Best Political ComedySometimes the most powerful punch is a jab. In “Oh God, an Hour About Abortion” — an understated, humane and deeply funny examination of the experience of having an unwanted pregnancy and an abortion — Alison Leiby uses observational comedy to reframe a political question at a critical moment for reproductive rights.The comedian Alison Leiby performing at Union Hall in Brooklyn in September.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesBest Keystone Cops UpdateNot since Chaplin has running from the police been as funny as Tiffany Haddish in “Bad Trip,” a scripted movie on Netflix that includes unscripted scenes, such as Haddish emerging from under a prison bus dressed in an orange jumpsuit, forcing a male bystander into an uncomfortable decision.Best SpecialThere’s never been a better year for handsome comics making jokes about their fraying mental health. Along with Bo Burnham unraveling onscreen and John Mulaney describing the depths of his addiction in live shows, the British comic James Acaster delivered his masterwork, “Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999,” on Vimeo. It’s a nearly three-hour show, wildly funny and deeply felt, that mocks how easily mental struggles can be turned into entertainment before doing just that.Best Arena SpectacleThere were prop missiles, shining diamonds and a massive sign that announced “World War III” in lights. I’m still not sure what the battle was about, but as soon as the born entertainer Katt Williams charged into the Barclays Center, yellow sneakers a blur, it was clear he had won.Best Netflix DebutNaomi Ekperigin is a natural — a comic that can make you laugh at just about anything: summing up Nancy Meyers movies, vaccines, clichés (why L.A. sucks), the way she says “OK.” In a half-hour set, as part of the collection “The Standups” that will be released on Netflix on Dec. 29, she even has two different jokes about the color beige that earn laughs. It’s a delight.Naomi Ekperigin performs in Season 3 of “The Standups,” coming to Netflix on Dec. 29.Clifton Prescod/NetflixBest Grand Unified TheoryIn describing how the porn industry pioneered everything on the internet, from user-generated content to diversity casting, Danny Jolles, in his endearing and far too overlooked Amazon Prime Video special, “Six Parts,” finds a new way to describe the fragmentation and filtering of the news: fetishes. All news, he argues, has become “kink news,” catering to our narrow, even perverse whims.Best Inside Comedy ParodyLast year ended with the release of “An Evening With Tim Heidecker,” a parody of edgy stand-up comedy that was a bit too vague to really resonate. Now, Heidecker hit the bull’s-eye with his recent YouTube spoof of The Joe Rogan Experience; its 12-hour running time (really one hour on a loop) is its first joke. So precise, so meticulously sensitive to the details, to the cadence and lingo of that podcast, his conversation with two sycophantic guests (played with pitch-perfect smarm by Jeremy Levick and Rajat Suresh) is a master class in sounding absolutely earth-shattering while saying precisely nothing.Best Argument for the Staying Power of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’No comedy that started in 2000 should still be this funny. Part of the reason for this feat is the consistently elite supporting performances, none more important than Susie Essman, who shined this year. Famous for her volcanic fury, she can do dry and understated just as well. I have not laughed louder at a television show this year than after hearing her say the word “caftan.”Susie Essman, left, plays Susie Greene in the long-running HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”John P. Johnson/ HBOMost Underrated Star ComicJim Gaffigan has put out so much material for so long that he’s easy to take for granted. The fact that he’s family friendly probably doesn’t help his press either. His dynamite new special, “Comedy Monster” (premiering Tuesday on Netflix), may be his best, showing Gaffigan at his most dyspeptic. It suits him. Who would have thought that he would so satisfyingly eviscerate marching bands and parades? Or have the most unexpected prop joke of the year (keep an eye out for a grand piano). More