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We’ve collectively spent the last few weeks slicing and dicing the year in music every which way, from the obviousstuff to the morebizarremoments. But after taking on 2016’s best exhaustively as a group, we wanted to offer a few favorites on the individual level. Here, Pitchfork editors and writers recommend great music reads (not from Pitchfork) that changed how we thought about music in 2016.
For all of us music nerds who find ourselves suddenly, inexplicably getting older and older and uncooler and uncooler by the minute, there’s a lot to relate to here. -Amy Phillips
The Limits of Loving The Boss // Ann Powers // NPR Music
I’ve read just about everything there is on Springsteen, but Ann Powers’ essay on his autobiography was the rare piece that got me thinking new thoughts. The essence of his musical appeal is surrender to the power of rock’n’roll, and Powers’ piece acknowledges this. But she also, while holding this first thought in mind, digs a bit deeper into the thornier aspects of Springsteen fandom. -Mark Richardson
“The Brave and Strong Survive, Child” // Hua Hsu // The New Yorker
The inimitable Hua Hsu poses a question that should be on the minds of all critics in a post-Trump world: “What’s the point of listening to music during a moment that seems so fraught?” He gives an unforgettable and personal answer to this question, via a meditation on the ever-expanding borders of the American Songbook and the inherent optimism that music can lend to the future. -Kevin Lozano
Stolen Language: The Strange Case of Meghan Trainor’s Blaccent // Carvell Wallace // MTV News
This was a tough call to make, among the Zandria Robinson’s memorable meditation on “Formation” for her own New South Negress blog, Reggie Ugwu’s exhaustive BuzzFeed feature on the folks who lend a human touch to streaming algorithms, Chris Heath’s thick stack of wildly delightful Prince stories in GQ, or NPR’s Ann Powers on growing up Bowie-fied. Ultimately I have to give my formal props to Carvell Wallace, for a piece that’s far more interesting and important than the musician it’s about. The cultural appropriation (and subsequent erasure) of not just black music but black language is explored with rare candor here. In Wallace’s words, “The practice has roots so deeply woven into rock history that we usually don’t notice it.” Which is precisely why we need him to explore it. -Jillian Mapes
Leaving Britney Alone // Lindsay Zoladz // The Ringer
A plea for a bygone pop star, and for the power to be unreal. -Ryan Dombal
When Music Is Violence // Alex Ross // The New Yorker
In Pascal Quignard’s The Hatred of Music, a 1996 book translated into English this year by Matthew Amos and Fredrick Rönnbäck, the French novelist and essayist points out that the Latin word for “to hear” (audire) is part of the Latin word for “to obey” (obaudire). Critics usually talk about music in all kinds of ways, but its potential for brutality is generally overlooked, despite a steady trickle of revelations over the years about its use in torture (also see David Peisner’s “War Is Loud”). Having written an essential book about classical music in the 20th century, Alex Ross was better positioned than most to document the sad history of music’s use as a weapon, and the way he does so here is a tour de force. Most impressively of all, though, he draws on Quignard’s work to explore what music’s capacity for barbarity means on a deeper level. Ironically, acknowledging that music isn’t just “the food of love” or a universal language that connects us all doesn’t mean denigrating the art form; instead, it’s a way of properly respecting music’s power. If music can save, it can also devastate. -Marc Hogan
The Cleanest Death // Jenny Zhang // Yours Truly
In which Mitski and poet Jenny Zhang celebrate the eroticism of strict boundaries and a healthy hustle. -Laura Snapes
Beyoncé in ‘Formation’: Entertainer, Activist, Both? // Jon Caramanica, Wesley Morris + Jenna Wortham // The New York Times
The rare roundtable that's actually worth reading from front to back. I first saw this while waiting in line at MoMA, and it was so compelling, it made me want to rush home to rewatch “Formation” on a big screen. “This is a woman who understands her own power, how to harness and magnetize us to it”—what a perfect way to explain why we are all still sipping the Lemonade months later. -Quinn Moreland
The Slippery Appeal of the Biggest New Band in America // Jia Tolentino // The New Yorker
Jia Tolentino tackles that trickiest of critical phenomena: a band that millions of listeners clearly love, yet few critics, or even curious bystanders, will so much as cop to having heard. While she has no interest in flattering her subjects—comparing them to MOR behemoths like 311 and Imagine Dragons, she writes, ”Name any white-male-fronted musical act from the past two decades that’s achieved significant commercial success while inspiring critical apathy, and you will hear that sound in Twenty One Pilots, if you listen long enough”—she nevertheless refuses to pander to pearl-clutching music snobs. By the end, surrounded by an arena full of the band’s fans and bathing in the glow of their smartphones, she has not only figured out what makes the band tick, but helped us locate our own inner Twenty One Pilots fan—no easy trick, when that’s someone you may have lost track of decades ago. -Philip Sherburne
Thanks, Starman: Why David Bowie Was the Greatest Rock Star Ever // Prince: Nothing Compared 2 Him // So Long, Leonard Cohen: Death of a Ladies' Man // Rob Sheffield // Rolling Stone
As Rob Sheffieldwrote last week, “This was a year when there seemed to be a crack in everything, but damn little light getting in.” I’m still in awe that Sheffield could write with such pure grace and wisdom about three of his heroes after they passed, particularly since each of these high-wire acts were completed within a day of each artist’s death. I hope they were as cathartic for him to write as they were for me to read. -Stacey Anderson
How Does It Feel // Patti Smith // The New Yorker
On the morning of December 17, I saw Patti Smith sing and read poems in the lobby of the Museum of Modern Art, an unannounced performance for Jean Genet’s birthday. “We have to strengthen ourselves,” she told us before a raw, acoustic take of “People Have the Power.” “We are going to be called upon to be stronger than ever.” You could start by reading this wise, economical essay that Smith had published just a few days earlier. It’s her bracing reflection on singing “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” at Dylan’s Nobel Prize ceremony, where she “somehow entered and truly lived the world of the lyrics.” It’s a work of pure, human energy and resilience. -Jenn Pelly
Why Post Malone Matters (Bieber Aside) // Corban Goble + Winston Cook-Wilson // Inverse
A dadaist exploration of Post Malone and existential dread. -Matthew Strauss
Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom: Before 1970// David Toop
A typically multi-faceted and prismatic look at improvisation, written from the perspective of a practitioner. Turns out exploring free improvisation in music is really about exploring life. -Mark Richardson