jeffery berg's top 10 singles of 2022

 

Here goes my Top 10 Singles of 2022!

10.

YOU AND ME ON THE ROCK 

Brandi Carlile (featuring Lucius)

Sunny, strummy and a pretty perfect Joni Mitchell-inspired love song with a chorus, like the tune's physical setting, that climbs higher than expected.

9.

ANTI-HERO

Taylor Swift

Lead single from Taylor Swift's brilliantly marketed record. A synth-dripped bright pop tune with a mid-80s Tom Petty-esque beat and playful, occasionally evocative lyrics including congressmen and monsters on hills.

8.

FREE YOURSELF

Jessie Ware

After stomping through the drudgery of 2020 with the What's Your Pleasure? album, Ware released an inspiring and much-needed disco banger this year.

7.

HIGH PRIESTESS / MY HORROR

Santigold

After a 4-year hiatus, Santigold released two great singles off her Spirituals album. "High Priestess" is an energetic trek: "The energy I was looking for couldn’t be the old version of punk rock, it had to be the future sound of punk rock," she notes. "My Horror" is a deceptively simple autobiographical song about motherhood, living, and grappling with the world.

6.

BREAK MY SOUL 

Beyoncé 

It's hard not to think of summer of 2022 without this song. Not particularly groundbreaking nor the best track off the album, but a breezy tribute to house and an undeniable anthem of the year. The "Queens Remix" featuring Madonna and the song "Vogue" feels like a new dance club classic too.

5.

WALKIN' 

Denzel Curry

Incorporating a genteel library music track, Keith Mansfield's "The Loving Touch," to varying tempos and reverbs, Curry outlines systematic oppressions while walking with his "back towards the sun"  

4.

COME MY WAY

Saba (featuring Krayzie Bone)

A sample of The Stylistics' "Everything" paired with the smooth-as-silk delivery of Krayzie Bone and Saba's evocative lyrics made for a choice single off the Chicago-based rapper's album that never wore out its welcome this year.

3. 

RIGHT ON TIME

Metronomy

Jaunty, sprightly earworm from Metronomy, acoustic-based with little synth flourishes, that I played over and over this year. Tune-Yards provided a good remix as well.

2. 

THE HEART PART 5 / N95

Kendrick Lamar

The world is never ready for a new Kendrick Lamar track and "The Heart Part 5" rewarded 2022 in droves--not only in its haunting use of Marvin Gaye's "I Want You," its eerie, deep fake people-shifting music video, but Lamar's unreal delivery of potent lyrics. "N95" is another spitfire banger tearing down capitalism, materialism and the hypocrisies of the times.

1.

AS IT WAS

Harry Styles

With strains of a-ha, constrained in a tight 2:47 runtime, "As It Was" is perhaps one of the most blissful-sounding melancholic pop tunes in ages; Harry Styles conquered radio waves and streaming with this smashing elegiac musing on where we've been and the uncertainty of where we are going. 

A look back at the Top 10 singles of 2021. 

My Spotify playlist of all my favorite tracks from 2022.

wildcat

My review of the documentary Wildcat on Film-Forward. Goes to darker places and intriguing places more than the typical nature doc.

no thank you

Loving the new album from Little Simz.

Monday album releases are a nice thing.

last film show

My review of India's Academy Award submission, Last Film Show, on Film-Forward.

nanny

My review of Nikyatu Jusu's impressive, if slightly flawed, debut Nanny is now up at Film-Forward.

A sobering and potent picture of a Senegalese immigrant's experiences in New York City mixed with folklore horror elements.

spoiler alert

My review of Spoiler Alert is up now at Film-Forward.

I enjoyed the movie (and almost cried!) and its cast, and I'd recommend it to others, though some of the attempts at cute and clever cues likely lessened the potential impact.

venice/venice

There's something about the rhythms in the dialogue of Henry Jaglom's films that I just adore. An improvisational feel: not quite real-life, but still performative--almost a "moviefied" version of dialogue. Last Summer in the Hamptons is one of my all-time favorite films, and I remember distinctly watching it over and over when I was a teen. There was something about the mood and distinctive locations of the film--not to mention the magnetism of the actors and the scenes that played out. 

In 1992's Venice/Venice, Jaglom plays a director named Dean, who is at the Venice film festival for the only American picture in competition. Venice/Venice was actually filmed during the 1989 fest in which Jaglom's New Year's Day screened. The young David Duchovny is the star of that film, and also appears here, as an insecure, restless sun-tanning actor, who seems to be aiming for something greater. It's interesting to watch him in retrospect as he later becomes such a famed celebrity and even the titular subject of a pop song. As with Jaglom's other movies, the craft and hierarchies of art, performance, vanity and commerce gets a sort of gentle drubbing. As Jaglom's Dean gives terse, cranky interviews for the press, the alluring Jeanne (Nelly Alard) watches admirably and works up the nerve to talk to him. Of course Dean is attracted to Jeanne (just noticing the similarities in their names now); if Jeanne is attracted to Dean, it's not entirely clear why. Is she so enamored by his films? He isn't attractive so to speak, nor does he seem to be much fun to be around. But there is a push and pull between them--a dynamic--that Jeanne, with her sensuality, wit and sharpness, fosters. It's sort of a compelling romance to watch in its unnerving oddness. 

When the film flips to the vibrant "other Venice" in California (where we see a time capsule of Venice Beach as it was; even one of that summer's ubiquitous Batman logos appears), we are introduced to Dean's lover, Peggy (Melissa Leo). Since her earliest roles, one can see how completely (almost scarily so) committed Leo is to her craft. It is what continues to make her such an exciting actress to watch. Here, with her shaggy golden curls and emotionally open face, she's in such stark contrast to Jeanne's dark sleek hair and air of effortless, sunglasses perched on crown, French posh-ness. But the contrast doesn't fester into a typical combative element between the two women. Instead, Leo delivers a bravura, complicated performance that's a mixture of receptiveness, sympathy, trepidation, and hurt. It creates an engaging connection between the two characters and actors. 

Interspersed throughout this tiny drama are testimonies from women (supposedly all acquaintances of Jaglom) about old movies, romance, and love. Their declarations are sort of cliched and basic desires and wants that they now seem jaded about--nothing comes off as particularly surprising. But the women, staring directly into the camera, in front of a window frame painted puce-pink to match its puce-pink blinds, with their on-the-brink-of-the-1990s styled hair, make-up, and clothing, are a haunting chorus throughout. The movie itself also plays with perception--at one point a table of the actors looks directly at us, in coy proclamation of the falsities of film. The editing feels purposefully rough-hewn and off (are the eyelines matching? does it matter?). Later, there's a pretty amusingly self-indulgent sequence where Dean has a bunch of actresses "audition" as a group for a role to play his wife. The gall, the nerve of him (!), and the perversity of watching these actresses unload. Physics, something that Jeanne has studied, comes into play as a means of locales, chance, and existence. This is a gem of a film, with striking performances, and lots and lots of smartish talking--in that rhythmic, off-the-cuff way that can be so beguiling, well... at least for myself. ***

-Jeffery Berg