We get it—there is simply too much. So, as in years past, we are giving our editors a last-minute opportunity to plug the books, movies, albums, shows, skits, or any piece of cultural ephemera that didn’t quite get the attention or acclaim it deserved. To entertain your holiday guests, we present all the things you really should know about—as well as more of our year-in-review coverage—here.
The crooner displaced the commedia dell’arte Pierrot on my list of (sad) male archetypes this year. This is thanks largely to two (unrelated) Swedish albums: Sugar World by Jonatan Leandoer96 (better known as Yung Lean), produced by Frederik Valentin; and Power Ballads by Carl HS aka Carl Hjelm Sandqvist and produced by Hannes Ferm.
Both Sugar World and Power Ballads showed a sheer vocal power in which the unpolished vulnerabilities of the voice came to the fore. This rawness of Leaondor and Sandqvist’s sound feels connected to revelation or even confession. Leandoer does this with humor. Leaning into the guise of the wedding singer, he wears an ivory suit with his name embroidered on the back, a Colgate-white ruffled shirt, socks, and gloves, and a dazzling boutonniere. In the video for “Blue Light” we see him in a moment of introspection, removing his makeup, revealing his real-life-distinctive tattoos. He’s alone at the end of a party which is spiraling into hedonism. Kitsch set design, including a Martini Rossi ashtray, cocktail olives on a plastic spear, a red rose, speak to a vintage ’70s dissolution.
Photo: Teitur Ardal / Courtesy of Carl Hjelm Sandqvist
Carl HS meanwhile wears a powder-blue shirt jacket, black shoes with white socks, and pink bow tie, accessorized with a rictus smile. You can imagine the ‘70s era car, infused with the permanent smell of stale cigarette smoke, that he might have driven up to a venue, or the the drab hotel room he might return to where he’d drink hard liquor in a shade matching the wood paneling.
Why would such young men—Leandoer was born in 1996, Sandqvist five years—channel these relics from another era? Why the crooner now? The music has a raw honesty; their sounds feel “unretouched” and analogue, restoratives in a world of digital slickness. I can’t help thinking that somehow this crooner idea is related to a wave of post-war nostalgia that is rising as the world seems to splinter. In short succession, we’ve seen movies about Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Barbie. (Of course, the reality behind the facade for many of these figures contradicted the polished facade.) A crooner’s baseline is lower to start: His kit is polyester to the stars’ satin. In a world so unsettled, it’s easy to feel displaced. Maye we are all, like the crooner, singing for our supper.
