Usually I just stick to music, but I thought last year in pop culture was so fun all around, I wanted to do a little recap and share the joy of frivolous entertainment.

Best Divorce Album

4. Teyana Taylor Escape Room

Packed with interludes from iconic women across the entertainment industry, Escape Room is a little too long and a little too experimental, but Teyana Taylor’s return to music was overdue. And a messy divorce from Iman was just the right inspiration.

3. Jessica Simpson Nashville Canyon

Another surprise release, does Jessica Simpson finally sound like she should have sounded all along? Gone are any of the Baby Celine meets Adult Contemporary Britney stylings that make some of her music so awkward. Jessica has fully leaned into her Southern roots on Nashville Canyon, and even though her other best album is a divorce album too (A Public Affair, after divorcing Nick Lachey), I feel like this sound could carry her whether she was breaking up with someone or not. She should stay in this lane!

2. Lily Allen West End Girl

Caucasian Mess! One, I had no idea Lily Allen was married to David Harbour. Two, I had no idea she was so forthcoming about her life (read her memoir from some years back!). So three, I did not expect this album at all and I didn’t expect it to be so direct. And yet, it still has that Lily Allen fun coursing through it.

1. Cardi B Am I The Drama?

Technically, only one third of the album is a divorce album, but at over 20 songs, you could make a whole album from just those tracks. Cardi came back after 7 years with something to prove, and she knocked it out of the park. The growth from her first project to this one was partly spurred by her divorce, but it’s also a product of Cardi studying her craft and becoming a better musician. That better musician put it all on the line showing equal parts vulnerability and attitude.

Guilty Pleasures

5. Beyond the Gates

The first new soap opera in decades and the first Black hourlong soap opera ever, Beyond the Gates is taking me back to elementary school, watching The Stories with my mama, grandma, or babysitter. A lot of the acting is bad. A lot of the sets look fake. A lot of the dialogue feels clunky. And yet, it’s a highlight of my day. I love turning on BTG during my lunchbreak to check in with the bougie Black folks of Fairmont Crest.

4. Stacey Rusch

The sophomore slump did not hit Stacey at all! When she debuted on the Real Housewives of Potomac last year and quickly became a fan favorite, I wasn’t sure if she’d be able to sustain that moment. Cut to her second season, and not only is she sustaining, but she is still rising. Whether she’s the best liar or the worst liar on Real Housewives is still up for debate, but what’s not in question is her commitment to the bit. Stacey is going to be Stacey whether those other ladies like it or not.

3. High Potential

What a random little procedural to get hooked on! Hulu automatically played the first episode of this show for me after Abbott Elementary last year and then I had to binge every single one. Kaitlin Olson is still playing a version of the same Messy White Woman she always plays, but this one is a genius, and if there’s one thing I love is a random fact that I will never use. High Society is just full of little nuggets about the direction churches face in Los Angeles or soil being tracked from one place to another. Fascinating and intensely watchable.

2. Big Jeans

I saw a 14-year-old wearing big ass JNCOs and knew the big jeans were finally back, maybe not forever, but definitely long enough for me to get some good wear out of these stupidly large pants again. I missed my big jeans so much and you know what? I probably won’t give them up this time when they fall out of favor.

1. America’s Sweethearts

MTV/CMT’s Making The Team “docu-series” about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders was fantastic. When Netflix brought it back, I assumed it would be the same format, but Netflix likes to consider itself prestige television, so they changed the lighting, changed the tone, and made a much more serious show. The new iteration makes the viewer more invested in the lives of the women outside of whether they’ll make the team or not and it’s a more intense peek behind the curtain.

Best Performance of a Sad Parent

5. Nia Sanchez, The Valley

Nia Sanchez is gold. A former Miss USA, Nia is playing reality TV like a pageant where she’s trying to win Miss Congeniality. Contrary to most cast members on reality TV, Nia doesn’t pretend that what you see is what you get, and she admits that she and her husband mutually agree to not make each other look bad on camera. It’s a great performance in a genre where marriages fail under public scrutiny. Nia has decided to keep up this character of a perfect wife with a perfect husband and three (now four) perfect little children, and she’s doing it all while battling post-partum depression.

4. David Harbour, Thunderbolts

Sorry to Lily Allen, but David Harbour is hot af and that shot between his legs eating on the couch needed a rewind button in the theater. His Red Guardian has a fraught relationship with his daughter, and even though Harbour brought a lot of comedic relief to Thunderbolts, watching the two of them work through family issues helped ground the movie.

3. Kody Brown, Sister Wives

Nobody has played Wronged Husband louder than Kody Brown. Completely delusional and lacking self-awareness, this man who decided to father almost 20 children with four different women believes they are the reason his relationships with his kids broke down. As opposed to seeing himself as the common denominator, Kody has fully leaned into being the biggest narcissist on reality TV and nobody on any show is as hateable as he is.

2. Dakota Fanning, All Her Fault

Sarah Snook got all the praise, but it was Dakota Fanning’s restrained performance as a working wife & mother with a completely useless manchild for a husband that kept be hooked on All Her Fault. I could have done an entire spin-off of just her coming to terms with the fact that she is raising a husband, not married to a husband.

1. Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths

One of the best performances of the past ten years, Marianne Jean-Baptiste was irrationally angry, sullen, and mean for an entire movie and you still wanted to root for her to come out the other side a better person. Life is hard and it can be even harder when you have feelings inside that you don’t have the ability to express. Plus, she reminded me of my mother. Yikes.

Best Throwback Album

5. Say She She, Cut & Rewind

Disco top to bottom. These three girls from Brooklyn put out a straight 70s album last year and it’s one roller rink track after another.

4. No Guidnce, Confessions of a Loverboy

New Edition swag with Boyz II Men harmonies. This is 90s R&B full stop.

3. South Arcade, 2005

Referential without being kitsch, South Arcade put out an album that would not have sounded out of place on TRL. Their updated take on power pop-punk is nostalgic in the best ways

2. Jae Stephens, Total Sellout

One top to bottom listen of Total Sellout and you can tell Jae Stephens built her musical taste on late 90s/early 00s pop and R&B. All of her track have immediately singable hooks and she even threw a bridge or two in there!

1. Doja Cat, Vie

*sigh* Doja Cat should be the biggest star in the world, but she’s just so fucking weird. An unexpected mashup of 80s pop with 2020s bars, Vie is the most cohesive, consistent, replayable album in Doja’s discography, and I’m sure when her next album comes out, she’ll tell us how much she hated this one, like she always fucking does. So weird.

Find A Better Therapist

5. Jack Quaid, Companion

Maybe if you went to therapy, your sex robot wouldn’t kill you.

4. Shay Johnson, Love & Hip-Hop Miami

Maybe if you went to therapy, you wouldn’t be on reality TV acting worse than you did on Flavor of Love, being played by men, embarrassing your mother every episode, and generally making a big ass out of yourself at 42-years-old.

3. Nick Offerman, Sovereign

Maybe if you went to therapy, you wouldn’t have brainwashed yourself and your kid into believing sovereign citizen bullshit and getting shot up in a parking lot.

2. Sally Hawkins, Bring Her Back

Maybe if you went to therapy, you wouldn’t be trying to use a demon to resurrect the spirit of your daughter into a little Asian girl.

1. Kendra Licari, Unknown Number: The High School Catfish

Maybe if you went to therapy, you wouldn’t have spent years cyber-bullying your daughter and starring in your own Netflix documentary about what a shitty mother you are.

Biggest Disappointments

4. HYBE still won’t let KATSEYE actually sing good songs

We watched the girls from KATSEYE compete on Netflix. We watched them dance, but we also watched them sing. We watched Daniela become more confident in her voice. We watched Sophia belting out songs very week to stay at the top of the leaderboard. We watched the vocal coach point out Manon’s tone and how they would be able to use it often. We watched the introduction of Lara, picked specifically so they’d have a voice that could fill stadiums. And yet! HYBE is still giving them internet brain rot songs and the few songs that have a melodic structure have no harmonies, no ad libs, and nothing that would lead you to believe these girls were anything other than models thrown together for brand sponsorships. It’s a crime!

3. Popeyes’ new hot wings recipe

At some point in 2025, Popeyes changed their hot wings recipe. Now, the wings are just regular wings with regular flavor, and you can get them drenched in sauce or absolutely covered in flavored dust. There are no regular hot wings anymore, with an option to punch up the flavor with a sauce or a powder. And it’s a shame because those were the best hot wings on the market.

2. Taylor Swift’s boring album and insane cash grab

That lady is worth a couple billion dollars and still felt the need to squeeze every penny out of her fanbase over a mediocre album not once, but twice. Every five minutes, she dropped a slightly different version of her album, prompting the Swiftie collectors to ultimately buy 10 to 20 copies of the same record. If that wasn’t enough, she released a movie about the album without any details as to what it would contain. And it contained absolutely nothing. She gave vague reasons behind the songs, too chickenshit to actually admit which songs were about specific people, and presented lyric videos of each track. Not a visual album. Not a making of. Not a behind the scenes. She put out a listening party for $20 a ticket. Super disappointing.

1. Angel Massie’s flop season on Real Housewives of Potomac

Has a first season housewife ever had such a disappointing debut? Angel, who clearly “moved” to Potomac just to be on the show, did not like the girls and the girls didn’t like her. She picked insane fights with people who didn’t do anything to her simply because, dare I say, she wanted to be besties with the light-bright ladies and imagined beef with Wendy instead. She hosted a girls trip where she split the group in half, which is covered in Housewives 101 — KEEP THE GROUP TOGETHER FOR THE BEST SCENES! Half the girls had no hot water. She got lost on the way to her own excursion and left her cooks with $1,000 of food on the grill that nobody was going to eat. She cried every other episode and it took 7 to 10 business days for her to work out her feelings or a comeback whenever someone threw shade. Whoever cast her might not have a job anymore honestly.

Best Angry Woman

5. Tammy & Amy mad at each other.

The 1,000 lb sisters are BEEFING y’all. One got skinny, the other one got skinny and then fat again, so she’s mad about it. Both of them have deep emotional issues they need to address. And they’re each jealous of the other one. Very juicy white trash drama.

4. Lambrini Girls mad at the bigots.

These girls will threaten to punch you in the face for being anti-trans, and they’ll tell the press to tell you to come find them so they can make that threat real. In the grand spirit of punk music, they are not afraid of confrontation and they are not here for bigots, racists, transphobes, or anyone else who would feel at home in a room full of troglodytes.

3. Jasmine Crockett mad at Republicans.

“Bleach blonde, bad built, butch body.” Do not play with Jasmine. She stands on business and on necks.

2. Carol/Rhea Seehorn mad at the apocalypse.

How is Carole such a prolific writer with absolutely no handle on how to process her emotions? I mean, I get it, it’s the apocalypse, very unprecedented emotions to work through I guess. It made for one of the most entertaining story arcs of a consistently angry woman that I’ve seen recently.

1. Dr. Simone Whitmore mad at her kids and her husband.

The Mouth of the South, the Human Bullhorn herself! Dr. Simone Whitfield took righteous anger to another level last year when she exploded at her ungrateful sons and her mooching husband over dinner. For over a decade, we’ve watched Dr. Simone bring home the bacon and attempt to set her sons up for success while not handing them everything on a silver platter. Finally at her breaking point, the boys are finishing school, want her to continue funding law school, and mama is ready to slow down and RETIRE. And her unemployed husband? Silent. Just sitting there eating his food. She screamed a hole right into another dimension and I’d be surprised if she and Cecil weren’t headed down the road to divorce once again.

Very Best of 2025

5. Twinless

Why did everybody sleep on my movie?? Not only did the movie itself subvert expectations and turn out to be a completely different film from the one you thought it was setting up, but Dylan O’Brien put in the single best portrayal of a gay white man that I’ve ever seen. He plays a straight twin and a gay twin in the same movie, and the way he played the gay one felt so authentic, it was like he dropped right out of Hell’s Kitchen. It wasn’t a caricature in any way. It wasn’t even based on stereotypes. But the way he moved, the way he walked, the way his face changed expressions while he talked — it felt so naturally gay. I’m still impressed.

4. Toni Braxton’s renaissance

Toni Braxton is back again! Of all the things to catch on with the kids last year, I did not think the choreography to one of her Grammy-winning hits from twenty-five years ago would be the thing. Along with America’s obsession with the video, people started to re-visit her catalog and she saw spikes in listeners for every album. Part Anita Baker, part Whitney Houston, and part Elvis, Toni Braxton’s unique voice has gained a younger audience. With her finally standing up to her baby sister on the final season of The Braxtons and holding court as the only lady on tour with Boyz II Men and New Edition, Toni Braxton is looking better than ever at 58 and poised for another career peak.

3. Wet Leg, Moisturizer

As a duo, Wet Leg won two Grammys in 2023 and were nominated for Best New Artist, losing to Samara Joy (understandable). After expanding to a five piece by recording their second album with their touring musicians, I wasn’t sure if Wet Leg would be able to capture the magic of their debut. Silly me! Moisturizer is everything good about their debut and turns it up a dial. They feel like a band that has always been together. Even though the band is still centered on the original duo, the five of them wrote the songs together and in many cases, more collaborators contribute to a better product (see: Beyonce’s albums). From beginning to end, Moisturizer defeats the sophomore curse and cement’s their place in music as a band with a lot of road ahead of them. And, I didn’t realize this until I had already made my list, one of the songs (“Mangetout”) was in episode two of Heated Rivalry, so what a nice transition into my number two spot.

2. Heated Rivalry

Best show of the year. Best press tour of the year. Best podcast explosion of the year. Everything about Heated Rivalry is lighting in a bottle. Two extremely hot men who are very comfortable with their bodies and each other depicting some of the hottest gay sex scenes ever seen on premium cable also happen to be two extremely talented actors giving the breakout performances of their careers. From Hudson’s autistic presentation to Connor’s flawless Russian speech pattern and mannerisms, Shane and Ilya felt like very real and very unique characters we hadn’t seen on screen. The chemistry between the actors and the love between the characters leapt off the screen and crossed over into the mainstream in a way that few gay stories do. Straight men became fully invested in this show about two gay hockey players having really hot sex and they were openly discussing it on podcasts, on messageboards, and in casual conversation. That part alone was so beautiful in a world where gay rights are under attack and it felt like a tipping point in gay love stories just being presented as love stories. Sleekly shot, superbly acted, and masterfully directed, Heated Rivalry and the surrounding hysteria was amazing to experience in real time.

1. Jade’s second act

Little Mix was not one of my favorite groups. I thought their discography was kind of weak.

Jade was not my favorite in Little Mix. I thought Perrie was by far the best singer.

Solo careers after a group break up can be hit or miss, and I was expecting another miss from Jade, but boy was I wrong. With her very first single, “Angel of My Dreams,” Jade showed that she was not planning to be your average pop star. She had a point of view and musical points of reference that the other girls could not compete with. With influences from Diana Ross to punk, 90s R&B to showtunes, Jade’s debut album should have felt like a disjointed mess, but, as she said in her final US concert last week, at the core she’s “just a pop girlie” and that’s the through-line. Regardless of her inspiration, she never strays too far from making a good pop song. And singing the hell out of it! Whereas there are male singers known for using their falsetto most of the time (think Maxwell), female singers don’t tend to rely on it as much. Jade spends about 20% of her album in falsetto, it’s really high, and she really knows how to use it.

What sealed the deal for me was realizing she wasn’t just a studio singer. When I saw her in Brooklyn at the Paramount, the mic was on!! She sang every song just as well, or better than, on the album, and she doesn’t need a group or background singers. We could be witnessing the birth of the next great pop star, and not to be greedy, but I can’t wait for the next album.