3B — Thursday, January 7, 2016
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Lyrically, the track is life-

affirming. For most, it was a 
groovy, easy beat that many 
matched with the windows-
down, 
warm-summer 
and 

smooth-drinks moments of their 
summer. Artistically, the track 
is exceptionally accomplished. 
What is more important than 
the catchiness and happiness of 
the track are the names attached 
to it: “I Know There’s Gonna Be 
(Good Times)” put Young Thug 
on popular radio. Jamie xx intro-
duced Young Thug, one of the 
most important rappers of this 
year and, surely, the upcom-
ing, to those who had not found 
him yet. Thug and his gloriously 
eccentric, outwardly clever, and 
quietly complex rasps were sam-
pled by the American public in 
this 2015 summer jam. We were 
given something a little more 
strong, a little more sonically 
pungent, to counter the sugary 
overload of the summer’s pop 
music circus. Jamie xx set the 
rap weirdo free on the track, bal-

ancing out his raspy words and 
screams with samples from The 
Persuasions’ 1972 single, “Good 
Times.” Popcaan, an up-and-
coming Jamaican dancehall art-
ist, added inventive twists and 
turns to the tracks. His added 
reggae undertones, pressed up 
against Thug’s melodic, strange 
screams, encourage that invol-
untary head and hip sway.

Jamie xx’s “I Know There’s 

Gonna Be (Good Times)” is a 
smooth balance of something 
tangy and something sugary. It’s 
the second-best banger of the 
year, and it’s actually good. And 
it actually introduced new, dar-
ing artists of the sometimes myo-
pic music industry. It mixed the 
mainstream, Billboard Top 100 
with that which is harder to find. 
Jamie xx is helping you be bet-
ter. He is helping you grow. And 
Young Thug is helping you get 
better. Because “you don’t got to 
struggle/ baby girl sit it down….”

-AMELIA ZAK

2. “Good Times”

Jamie xx Ft. Young Thug

Best Singles of 2015

Opening a TV season with a 

four-minute-long take of a wed-
ding portrait session is a bold 
move. For any other show, start-
ing with a static camera and 
bickering family might appear 
a desperate attempt to appear 
cinematic — clever filmmaking 
tricks have been enough to win 
movies Oscars and earn shows 
their fanboys for life. But Ama-
zon’s “Transparent” isn’t trying 
to show off. That opening shot 
is meant to reacquaint viewers 
with the Pfefferman clan and 
remind them just how uncom-
fortable it is to spend time with 
that family.

“Kina Hora,” “Transparent” 

’s second season premiere, is 
full of gorgeously framed shots 
and top-notch performances, 

but the episode never feels like 
it’s bragging. The swoops across 
hotel windows and claustro-
phobic tight shots augment the 
episode’s 
dramatic 
tension. 

Writer-director 
Jill 
Soloway 

(“United States of Tara”) pulls 
out all the stops to portray the 
horror show that is Sarah (Amy 
Landecker, “A Serious Man”) 
and Tammy’s (Melora Hardin, 
“The Office”) wedding — and 
imperfect wedding portraits are 
only the beginning. “Kina Hora” 
shatters the illusion of normalcy 
and happiness for almost every 
character, sending them spin-
ning on arcs that take them 
through to the end of the sea-
son. Family dysfunction never 
looked so good.

-CHLOE GILKE

3. (Tie) “Kina Hora” 

“Transparent”

“Parks and Rec,” like “30 

Rock” and “The Office,” sig-
nified the end of an era. For 
seven whole seasons, we grew 
along with Pawnee through 
marriages, children and town 
mergers.

What was most beautiful 

was watching Leslie Knope’s 
(Amy Poehler, “Saturday Night 
Live”) 
“pipeline 
dreams” 

become 
a 
tangible 
reality. 

Though we were left with a Lil’ 
Sebastian-shaped hole in our 
hearts, the series finale offered 
the perfect closure — even 
bringing back our beloved Ann 
Perkins (Rashida Jones, “The 
Office”). After the finale, we 
were left desperately YouTub-

ing gag reels, madly scrolling 
through Tumblr GIFs — any-
thing for a little more time 
with these characters. All we’d 
ever wanted was a happily ever 
after for each of them — and we 
got that.

For so many actors — Aziz 

Ansari and Nick Offerman, 
to name a few — “Parks and 
Rec” was their big break; for 
Leslie, Pawnee was her own 
big break toward her presiden-
tial dreams. But for both the 
fictional characters and their 
real-life actors, they will never 
be “too good” for Pawnee, even 
when they move on.

-KAREN HUA

4. “One Last Ride”
“Parks and Recreation”

Was there a more purely 

joyful moment this year than 
when the inmates of Litchfield 
briefly escaped from prison 
and spent the day at a nearby 
beach? Everyone knows that 
it’s just a temporary excursion; 
soon, they’ll be rounded up 
and brought back. But for now, 
that’s okay.

Even forgetting about that 

moment at the lake, though, 
“Trust No Bitch” is full of excru-
ciatingly beautiful moments. 
Black Cindy’s (“Adrienne C. 
Moore, “30 Rock”) attempts to 
prove her Jewish beliefs turn 

from selfish to sincere in a stun-
ning monologue about faith. 
Morello (Yael Stone, “Spir-
ited”) weds her frequent visi-
tor Vince (John Magaro, “Not 
Fade Away”), inspiring tears 
from the stoic Healy (Michael 
J. Harney, “Deadwood”). In a 
series that usually (and right-
fully) lingers on the injustices 
of the criminal justice system, 
“Trust No Bitch” is the rare epi-
sode that celebrates life, friend-
ship and love. It’s absolutely 
awe-inspiring.

-BEN ROSENSTOCK

5. “Trust No Bitch”

“Orange is the New Black”

“We’ve got to wake up at a cer-

tain point and recognize what’s 
going on here!”

In perhaps the most poeti-

cally ironic statement of the year, 
Fox News correspondent Ger-
aldo Rivera made a resounding 
appeal for the Black Lives Matter 
movement when he attempted to 
criticize Kendrick Lamar’s per-
formance of “Alright” on the BET 
Awards. Forget that his idea of 
waking up involves completely 
disregarding the concerns of Black 
Americans and condemning rap 
music as the primary cause for 
their struggles (because it’s cer-
tainly not discrimination!). Wak-
ing up to Black Americans’ reality 
is what rap music — and Kendrick 
Lamar’s music especially — has 
always been about.

Accordingly, Lamar’s sopho-

more album, To Pimp a Butterfly, 
is a masterpiece of Black protest 
art. With the weight and intri-
cacy that carries this album, the 
genius of “Alright,” one of its most 
straightforward and commercial 
tracks, could be initially missed — 
it doesn’t take more than a single 
play to understand what “n***a, 
we gon’ be alright” means. But this 
kind of blunt activism is exactly 
what 2015 calls for. With its clear 
message highlighting police bru-
tality and the roiling racial ten-
sions across the country, “Alright” 
has become a clearly articulated 

rallying cry for the fight. Dem-
onstrations across the country 
have featured the infectious hook 
shouted alongside speeches by Al 
Sharpton and prayers for Freddie 
Gray, Sandra Bland and the scores 
of other Black men and women 
killed by police in 2015.

“Alright” also happens to be a 

fantastically well-executed hip-
hop song. The psychedelic pop 
energy that opens the track sus-
tains itself from start to finish, 
propelled by Lamar’s urgent deliv-
ery. It’s this energy that allows 
“Alright” to function both as a 
party-ready single and a protest-
ready chant. Many have listened 
to this song during a pre-game or 
on the way to the bar, enjoying the 
beat but failing to listen to the lyr-
ics and recognize its poignancy.

The powerful music video for 

the song, however, makes it clear 
that this isn’t typical radio fod-
der. Ending with a police offi-
cer shooting Lamar down like a 
hunter takes out a waterfowl to be 
hanged on the wall, the message 
of “Alright” is by no means made 
quaint or complacent. Yet, even 
with such a heavy burden, Lamar 
manages to keep the positivity. 
It’s something that we all need to 
remember, whether we’re facing a 
mountain of racial issues or you’re 
just worried about that upcoming 
test: we gon’ be alright.

-MATT GALLATIN

1. “Alright”

Kendrick Lamar

Is it R&B? Reggae? Meren-

gue? Drake drew from innu-
merable sources to synthesize 
“Hotline Bling,” seeming to 
anticipate 
everything 
con-

sumers would want as their 
anthem. A mix of musical styles 
just eclectic enough to be inter-
esting, but not enough to alien-
ate the mainstream listener, 
with lyrics specific enough 
to be believable but general 
enough for everyone to get 
behind and with a video from 
Director X with the potential 
for infinite meme adaptations: 
“Hotline Bling” has exploded 

into omnipresence. Drake said 
himself he drew inspiration 
from the creative process of 
dancehall — a derivative of 
reggae in which one or more 
DJs improvise over the same 
recorded or live beat — and the 
merengue-esque rhythm (and 
dance moves) are impossible 
to ignore. Take it for what you 
will — as a sexist anthem of a 
commodity fetish, that song 
you hate to love, that song you 
love to love or all three — we all 
know when that hotline bling.

-REGAN DETWILER

3. “Hotline Bling”

Drake

5. “Hello” Adele

I’ll never shut up about her eye-

liner, and neither should you. And 
who knew sepia was still available 
as a filter? Was that a flip phone? 
Is that faux fur coat from Saks? 
Do they have Saks in London? 
These are the thoughts that cross 
our minds when “Hello” starts 
playing on the radio. All we have 
to do is hear those fatal opening 
lines in our cars, and we’re toast. 
Doomed. Goners. “Hello … it’s 
me.” (The ellipsis is essential.)

This instantaneous recall — 

and depression — is a testament 
to the strength of a signature aes-
thetic, of her music videos, her 

ballads, her voice. These ingre-
dients blend into one another, 
creating the acrylic-nailed, cher-
ub-voiced conglomeration that 
can only inhibit one name: Adele.

Let us not forget that Adele 

released this monumental tune 
a mere three months ago, in 
October. It quickly broke many 
records, achieving over a mil-
lion digital sales and 4.79 million 
online streams in a week. Its video 
surpassed Miley Cyrus’ “Wreck-
ing Ball” in acquiring around 27.7 
million views on YouTube within 
a 24-hour span. What more is 
there to say? After a painfully 

One of the many excellent 

aspects of AMC’s “Breaking Bad” 
spinoff, “Better Call Saul,” is its 
winning performances. While 
Bob Odenkirk (“W/ Bob and 
David”) continues to make Saul 
Goodman the most charismatic 
crooked lawyer of Albuquerque, 
it’s Jonathan Banks’s (“Commu-
nity”) acting as the hapless Mike 
Ehrmantraut that made “Better 
Call Saul” such a standout this 
past TV season. In the show’s 
sixth episode, “Five-O,” the non-
linear plot delves into Mike’s 

backstory as a Philadelphia cop 
and the mystery behind his son’s 
untimely murder. Though Oden-
kirk showed both comedic and 
dramatic depth as Saul, viewers 
got to see some raw emotion from 
the usually expressionless Mike. 
As both Saul and Mike grapple 
with morally ambiguous deci-
sions, “Five-O” plays out like some 
of “Breaking Bad” ‘s best episodes; 
it’s heartbreaking, thrilling and 
devastating to watch, making for 
powerful television.

-SAM ROSENBERG

2. “Five-O”

“Better Call Saul”

What happens when a self-

actualizing 
housewife, 
her 

stressed out husband and a 
misogynistic criminal are con-
fined inside a small cabin? The 
result is “Fargo” ’s eighth epi-
sode, “Loplop.” Fleeing from 
both sides of the law, Ed and 
Peggy Blumquist (Jesse Plemons, 
“Breaking Bad” and Kirsten 
Dunst, “Spider-Man”) hold one 
pursuer, Dodd Gerhardt (Jeffrey 
Donovan, “Burn Notice”), hos-
tage in a desperate bid to save 
their skins. A near-perfect dis-
play of dark humor unfolds as 
Ed realizes how in over his head 
he is and Peggy slowly loses her 
grip on reality to the detriment of 
Dodd. Between stabbings, failed 
extortion and cheesy Ronald 
Reagan movies, cabin fever sets 

in as everyone starts to go crazy.

As the couple bumbles through 

their kidnapping, the terrify-
ing Gerhardt enforcer Hanzee 
Dent (Zahn McClarnon, “Long-
mire”) circles closer and closer 
on their location, leaving a trail 
of violence in his wake. Stoically 
intimidating, 
Hanzee 
injects 

pure tension into every scene he 
inhabits. The show slowly brings 
his suffering to light as he lashes 
out against ignorant degradation.

A large part of “Fargo” ’s suc-

cess comes from its ability to 
make viewers laugh through 
their gasps of horror. “Loplop” 
exemplifies this tendency, setting 
itself apart in a season full of stel-
lar episodes.

-MATT BARNAUSKAS

1. “Loplop”

“Fargo”

Best TV Episodes of 2015

3. (Tie) “Hardhome”

“Game of Thrones”

Season five of “Game of 

Thrones” had its ups and 
downs. On the one hand, it 
failed to grow interest in 
major 
plotlines 
(*cough* 

Dorne *cough*) and completely 
ruined the character arc for the 
once strong Sansa Stark. How-
ever, there were some moments 
where the show reminded me 
why I loved it, and the biggest 
example was “Hardhome,” an 
episode of television that made 
every battle that came before it 
in the series look cheap. In the 
hour, Jon Snow (Kit Haring-
ton, “Pompeii”) leads a group 
of the Night’s Watch to a town 
of Wildlings to save them from 
the incoming White Walkers. 
What they, and us as view-
ers, were not expecting was a 
full-fledged battle between the 

parties. The episode’s visuals 
could compete with any from 
cinema, with broad landscape 
shots and brutal but beauti-
ful violence. One of the last 
shots of the episode, where the 
lead Walker raises his arms to 
bring the battle’s dead back to 
life, still sends shivers down 
my spine when I think of it. It 
established the White Walkers 
as a real threat, forever chang-
ing the course of one of televi-
sion’s most important series. 
There was nothing on TV in 
2015 that matched the scale 
and size of “Hardhome,” and 
there will likely be nothing 
that comes close, at least until 
the next season of “Thrones.”

-ALEX INTNER

4. “Let It Happen” Tame 

Impala

One of the most sacred respon-

sibilities in friend groups is 
bestowed upon he who manages 
the aux cord. In a room or car full 
of people with eclectic tastes in 
music, it’s crucial to select some-
thing that everyone can vibe to. 
There’s always the classic rock 
enthusiast, the hip-hop head, the 
“whatever is on the radio” type, 
and the aux cord DJ has to manage 

all of these personalities by play-
ing something universally agreed 
upon as “dope.”

“Let It Happen” is just that: a 

certified aux cord crowd-pleaser. 
Despite clocking in at damn near 
eight minutes, no one ever seems 
to notice its ridiculous length. The 
only moment that might cause 
some head-scratching is about 
halfway through, when Kevin 

lengthy hiatus, people wanted 
Adele back. And she came to us, 
finally, in 2015.

The thing is, though, it’s 

not the videos, the glitz or the 
glam that cemented her place 
on our list. All of that helps the 
situation, yes, but Adele’s funda-
mental magnetism is her voice. 
Equally smoky as it is powerful, 
that London-laced instrument 
has spawned some of the best 
ballads of the decade. Drake 
couldn’t have sung the sump-
tuously 
devastating 
“Some-

one Like You.” Selena Gomez 
wouldn’t be able to carry “Chas-
ing Pavements” past the first 
verse, not in a hundred years. 
Can Ellie Goulding’s pint-sized 
pipes handle “Rolling in the 

Deep”? Ahem.

Alas, no one could’ve said 

“Hello” to us as melodiously 
as our most favorite Brit, prob-
ably the finest talent to cross the 
pond since Winehouse. Adele is 
able to twist a phrase, a banal 
word, into a mellifluous plea 
that somehow taps at that little 
empty space in our hearts, put 
there in the first place by some 
awful ex-boyfriend, girlfriend, 
lover, life. And in doing so she 
reassures us we’re not alone out 
there, in the sepia-toned day-
light. She’s here for us.

“Hello,” she says, unapologet-

ically. “It’s me.” 

And I can’t stop staring at her 

eyeliner.

-MELINA GLUSAC

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Parker seems to mash his fist on a 
particular excerpt that loops just 
long enough for everyone to notice. 
But then there’s “the drop.” Across 
all genres and personalities, every-
one loves a good drop, and this one 
more than delivers.

At this point in the song the 

vocals return for a now-familiar 
melody, but this time soaked in 
a Daft Punk-esque vocoder that 
makes it pleasantly indecipherable 
(word to Young Thug). Countless 
synths layer on top of one another 
to build a tastefully pop, angelic 
banger. The title alone suggests 
some sort of divine advice you 

already know but need to hear 
from someone else. Parker almost 
commands you towards the end of 
the track with “Try to get through 
it / Try to push through it / Take 
the next ticket / Take the next 
train.” Does the power of Tame 
Impala compel you to fight the 
current, as the vortex-shedding 
album cover suggests? Or perhaps 
just let it happen and see where 
the tide takes you? Or maybe you 
should focus on what you’re play-
ing after this? I don’t know, man. 
Your call.

-SHAYAN SHAFII

