★ #24 • the star quality hall of fame
just in time to join the year-end list industrial complex!
Hi again. To say the least, it’s been a busy couple of months. But, like lit’ral clockwork, it’s already that time of the year when we’re all able to slow down and reflect on the metaphysical rollercoaster ride that was the last twelve months. I feel very lucky that I’ve been booked up recently with projects ranging from branding a stunt driver, producing merch for a comedienne, designing influencer gifts with barrière and revamping the website for the company behind Chamberlain Coffee’s success. One of my best friends and I also soft-launched a co-working and event space called Depot in Williamsburg. Come borrow our printer anytime.
With some extra time on my hands, I thought I’d dive into the cultural contributions that have provided me with some of the brightest escapes in an often dark and troublesome year. The list captures my thoughts and feelings on the artists and creators that are sometimes snubbed by the Year-End Industrial Complex. That said, there’s also a pastry on this list. And the widely-acclaimed Beyoncé. But let’s get into it, shall we?
Viral Image of the Year: Starbucks Iced Lemon Loaf
There are very few traits that conjure the image of a pop star more effectively than a sinfully sweet interior, an ice blonde mane and mass market appeal. It just so happens that those are all the ingredients found in my favorite meme of the year: the Starbucks Iced Lemon Loaf. It all started with this post that first personified the snack as a young, feminized figure, ready to be scouted for her Hollywood takeover where she’ll inevitably check the boxes on every it-girl’s itinerary: date Pete Davidson, drop Scooter Braun and attend the Met Gala. It’s stupid and perfect just how much it makes sense.
Author of the Year: Maria Bamford
While I read the ghostwritten memoirs of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Julia Fox this year, there’s another media darling whose memoir felt more real and riveting. That is, of course, Maria Bamford, who released her memoir “Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult” in September. If you haven’t seen her Netflix special, you may not know about the comedian’s struggle with living with several mental illnesses. Her memoir dives deep into the highs and rock bottoms of her recovery journey, navigating through her experiences from childhood violin lessons and corporate LA offices to several 12-step programs. The book really captures her genius at making light of some really dark shit like her mental breakdown on the set for a commercial where she played “Crazy Target Lady.”
Villain of the Year: Rachel Leviss
Rachel (née Raquel) Leviss was this year’s “Other Woman” to end all other women. While there’s truly nothing defensible about her or Tom Sandoval’s behavior that catalyzed the explosive affair at the center of Vanderpump Rules, Raq/chel’s heartbreaking and cringe-inducing final five minutes of the finale seemed to paint a genuine picture of remorse. As is almost always the case, the man gets off a lot easier than the woman for committing the same crime. Cut to: Tom Sandoval booked on yet another reality show where he’s sensibly carried by JoJo Siwa while Raquel spends months in a codependency rehabilitation center in rural Arizona. The best villains rebuild toward redemption so good luck with that new podcast, Rach!
Comeback of the Year: Jenna Lyons
Fashionable yet intellectual, exacting yet queer, intimidating yet awkward — as far as publicly facing creative directors go: Jenna Lyons has IT! But as malls and their J. Crews fell from relevancy, so did Jenna’s influence in the fashion world. When she joined the cast of the rebooted Real Housewives of New York, many were confused as to why. It plunged someone so… hinged… into a notoriously unhinged environment far beyond her control. That arena, however, forced her to stop acting as Jenna Lyons the brand and to start acting as Jenna Lyons the person, giving people a lot of reasons to care about her again. And while it doesn’t seem like she’ll be back for more, it does seem that letting her guard down opened the floodgates to lucrative career and PR opportunities.
Visuals of the Year: Jacob Bixenman for “Endless Summer Vacation”
Miley’s maximalism had slowly chipped away the fanbase that catapulted “Wrecking Ball,” her last number one hit in ten years, to the top of the charts. Enter: Jacob Bixenman, the male model, former Troye Sivan life partner and impeccable creative director behind the “Endless Summer Vacation” visuals and music videos. Powered by his viral music video, “Flowers” became Billboard’s longest running number one song by a female artist. For the first time, Jacob’s creative direction portrays Miley and her songs with immaculate minimalism. It created a blank canvas for people to project whatever fantasy (or Liam Hemsworth slander) that they wanted while also undoing the caricature that our shared psyche has created for Miley. She also just looks scary hot in “River.”
Stand Up of the Year: Patti Harrison
I have yet to recover from seeing Patti Harrison’s show “My Huge Tits Huge Because Infected NOT Fake!” Read that twice. That is truly the title. The show was extremely layered. The first layer being the enormous prosthetic breasts that Patti wears that periodically bleed through her blouse before she ultimately “gives birth” to Stuart Little’s children (and a series of rats and snakes) through her nipples. Then she paints another layer with a 15 minute reading of a script that she wrote for “Emily in Paris” that features a character named “Ruth Bader Godsburg” who sails over the city using her genitalia. Patti, a transgender woman, uses comedy to subvert expectations that trans people must conform their minds to that of a perfect activist role models and their bodies to easy to understand aesthetic binaries. It was all genius, shocking and shockingly genius.
Actor of the Year: Catalina Saavedra in “Rotting in the Sun”
When I saw that Chilean actress Catalina Saavedra had been nominated for a Spirit Award for her character Vero in “Rotting in the Sun,” it made me think about how important believability is for a strong acting performance. In “Rotting in the Sun,” Jordan Firstman plays himself, a horny, often nude and egotistical influencer desperate to get a film made. After Vero accidentally kills the film’s director Sebastián Silva, also playing himself as a despondent film director, she and Jordan Firstman become the perfect foils for one another as she smartly leverages their cultural differences and plays dumb to cover up her tracks. As one of the few actors not playing themselves, her performance anchors the film in reality.
Director of the Year: Todd Haynes
I was lucky enough to see Todd Haynes introduce his film “May December” at NewFest a few months ago. It’s a remarkably unsettling and somehow still hilarious melodrama starring Julianne Moore (in her fifth five Todd Haynes film) and Natalie Portman. In the film, Natalie Portman’s character is an actress named Elizabeth Berry. She descends on the family home of Julianne Moore’s Gracie Atherton to study her for a role where she plays Gracie at the height of her real-life tabloid sex scandal. The film is a meta interrogation on how filmmaking in and of itself is often exploitative, hurting the real people that it spotlights, though, when Hollywood hurts people it’s often celebrated. Todd Haynes packages it all in his signature wry, queer sensibility that makes all the darkness go down like sugar.
Creator of the Year: Aliyah’s Interlude
I’ve been aware of Aliyah’s Interlude on TikTok for awhile now, including writing a poem for this very Substack using her takedown of Water Sign men in 2022. This year, she skyrocketed to mainstream consciousness by dropping the single “IT GIRL” which has taken on a life of its own all across TikTok since racking up 55.7K uses of the sound. A quick scroll through the audio turns up videos from top creators like Avani and Rickey Thompson, Real Housewife of Beverly Hills Dorit Kemsley and the ultimate stamp of y2k It Girl approval of a Paris Hilton collab with Aliyah herself. Aliyah’s content has always been unapologetically y2k, bubblegum cyber fun and it’s exciting to see her parlay her style sensibility into an addictive anthem. As the top comment on the “IT GIRL” music video says, “ALIYAHCORE TODAY, TOMORROW, YESTERDAY, AND FOREVERRR”!
Song of the Year: Grimes
From the mind of a self-described “Marie Antoinette figure” comes “I Wanna Be Software,” a saccharine bop about the deeply human desire to be understood as concretely as code and to reiterate until you become someone else’s idea of perfection. It’s a fitting track for this year as ChatGPT and generative AI took hold of nearly every creative medium and industry known to mankind. Notably, Grimes said this track is “100% human,” though, she has plans to release two competing albums with one created by humans and the other created with AI using her ‘ElfTech’ voice generator. She also released “Cold Touch” this year as a collaboration between the artist Kito and GrimesAI. Love her or hate her, she’s always leading us into new terrains.
Album of the Year: Lana Del Rey
Surely by this point into 2023, you know that there IS a tunnel under Ocean Blvd. Lana Del Rey’s latest album is possibly her best since 2019’s Grammy-nominated “Norman Fucking Rockwell.” Her song “A&W” is more than a cheeky reference to the retro soda, it’s also a cynical confessional from a romantic who has been burned one too many times. “Peppers” is experimental and thirsty. “Grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he’s deep-sea fishing” is one of several love letters to her family on the album. The album’s final track, “Taco Truck x VB” is a bow that ties together the album’s exploration of her life’s biggest influences with a distorted version of the track widely seen as her greatest work. Her life is her poetry and as seen in her recent shift working at a Waffle House in Alabama, she may just be America’s greatest living poet.
Pop Star of the Year: Troye Sivan
When Troye Sivan’s lead single “Rush” dropped earlier this year, it was met with days and days of heated discourse about poppers and body types. As one of the few openly gay pop stars, Troye Sivan faces a lot of pressure for his work to somehow reflect the entire diversity of LGBTQ+ experience. Rather than aim frustration at music labels and media for not creating more opportunities for diverse queer artists, many people decided that Troye Sivan must be morally flawed therefore undeserving of his success. As Rush exploded in popularity, he narrowly dodged an unjust cancellation attempt, with Charli XCX notably defending him, before releasing a well-crafted and extremely personal album about his experiences of queer sex, love and heartbreak. And with “One Of Your Girls,” he broke the internet in elevated drag, successfully transitioning into a main pop girl.
Lifetime Achievement: Beyoncé
Beyoncé is special to me for many reasons. To start, she is also a Virgo from Texas and is therefore a North Star and blueprint for all of us other Texan Virgos aspiring to #GetOnHerLevel of creative excellence. In August, I traveled to Atlanta to see her live for the first time at the Renaissance World Tour and honestly couldn’t believe my eyes nor my ears at her belting her ballads “Flaws and All” and “1+1” as the opener for her own show. She is a, famously, uniquely gifted vocalist but her concert film contextualized her talent with her other roles of being a CEO, a mother and her mother’s daughter. As an album, “Renaissance” first inspired me sonically with its iconic samples and collaborations of Black music icons like Donna Summer, Grace Jones and Big Freedia, positioning Beyoncé as the de facto torch bearer of today’s Black music excellence. Her chrome dipped tour and film proved her commitment to not only centering her own legacy but lifting up the past to inspire the future of culture and art at large.
Honorable Mentions
Viral Image of the Year: Selena Gomez Blanket
Author of the Year: Sam Lansky as Britney Spears for “The Woman In Me”
Villain of the Year: Colleen Ballinger
Comeback of the Year: Trisha Paytas
Visuals of the Year: Manu Cossu for “Houdini” by Dua Lipa
Stand Up of the Year: Ruby McCollister’s “Tragedy”
Actor of the Year: Cailee Spaeny in “Priscilla”
Director of the Year: Yorgos Lanthimos and “Poor Things”
Creator of the Year: Noah Beck
Song of the Year: "Princess Diana" by Ice Spice
Album of the Year: “Get Up” by NewJeans
Pop Star of the Year: Addison Rae
Lifetime Achievement: Taylor Swift
Overall, this year felt like a whirlwind, the good kind, though, the kind that somehow doesn’t romanticize productivity over well-being while smacking you over the head with a mug that says “YOU HAVE AS MANY HOURS IN A DAY AS BEYONCÉ!” It’s been a year where I’ve really dug into myself and found ways to make work that I’m proud of while still finding the joy in it. It’s been a year where I’ve made the best work of my career. Thank you for your support here, there and everywhere! I’m so grateful those of you who have believed in me and trusted me with your biggest and most personal projects and those of you who have helped bring it all to life. And to Beyoncé and all of the inaugural inductees who’ve kept me inspired all year long.
HAVE A HAPPY HOLIDAY & A SEXY NEW YEAR!