The “Applause” performance was not her greatest TV concert, but it was a great one, as well as a self-aware eulogy for her career to date. Sometimes, when slogging through yet another forgettable awards show, I wonder whether Lady Gaga getting fake booed while peeking through a white square represents the last bit of wonderful nonsense that mega-scale pop will ever cough up. The ouroboros was complete when you looked at your phone and made this expression. Drake memed himself before others did he used memes others made of him. He, of course, had some control of this dynamic. Broader debates over appropriation, authenticity, sports, the family unit, and so much more were litigated in terms of his sweaters. Reaction GIFs, dance crazes, text prompts, overdubs: His cult-and cult of haters-led the way on all formats. Which came first, modern internet culture or its favorite rapper? Just as Drake’s musical trajectory in the 2010s told the story of almost every larger shift in pop, the way he surfed the viral sea told the story about discourse itself. But the tornadic beats, devious melodies, and feral sound effects certainly evoke some cataclysm that, from the sound of it, might at least be aesthetically neat. electronic musician Clark had doomsday in mind when he recorded this ferociously beautiful opera-as-rave that became my go-to adrenaline booster. No era has a monopoly on apocalypse anxiety, but a decade that began with the end of the Mayan calendar and ended with freaky United Nations climate forecasts had special reason to fret about whether there’d be a next decade.
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