What were your 2016 highlights?
Hip-hop and r’n’b had a riot, with compelling albums from Anderson .Paak, Beyoncé, Solange, A Tribe Called Quest, Blood Orange, Chance the Rapper, Xenia Rubinos and Kadhja Bonet. The pop star of the year was Christine and the Queens, who was a bracing breath of fresh air.
There was also a rake of great Irish releases too, thanks to Rusangano Family, Bell X1, Cathy Davey, Bantum, Brian Deady and Ciaran Lavery. A late-year release from Tony MacMahon, in the shape of Farewell to Music, deserves not to be lost in the seasonal blur.
In the cinema, Paterson, Room, Arrival and American Honey stood tall, while Weiner showed that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. Donald Glover's Atlanta was the best of the TV bunch, while Billions, The Night Of and Rectify were also hugely satisfying.
I made a rare trip to the theatre and hit the jackpot with Michael Keegan-Dolan's outlandishly colourful and majestic Swan Lake/Loch na hEala.
Aideen Barry's Brittlefield at Dublin's RHA Gallery was a visual-arts highlight, a review of her work to date which did what all great art should do, making you pause for thought. Georgia O'Keeffe's retrospective at London's Tate Modern was eye-catching, while Jesse Jones's No More Fun and Games at the Hugh Lane gallery and her In the Shadow of the State collaboration with Sarah Browne prompted questions about uneasy political realities.
In books, nothing surpassed the quiet candour and drama of Amy Liptrot's The Outrun, with honourable mentions due for Conor O'Callaghan's Nothing on Earth, Dan Lyons's Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble, James McBride's Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul, Mike McCormack's Solar Bones, Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run and Patrick Deeley's The Hurley Maker's Son.
And the lowlights?
Summer music festivals. It’s high time for a reinvention. If we have to spend our summers in fields to see bands, how about a different or more engaging experience?
What was 2016’s most common plot twist?
Deaths, sadly. The year was but a pup when David Bowie died, which set the tone for a year when obituary writing became an essential part of the pop beat. From Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Sharon Jones, George Martin and Phife Dawg to Irish artists Conor Walsh, Fergus O’Farrell, Bap Kennedy and Rainy Boy Sleep, the Grim Reaper was at large with unnecessary gusto.
What’s your cultural resolution for 2016?
I’ll be interested to see how Creative Ireland comes out in the wash. It promises much, though the lack of due diligence when it came to the name (an Irish design community has been operating as Creative Ireland since 1999) does not bode well.
2016 in three words?
Well, sure, lookit . . .
