National writers pick their cultural favourites of the 2010s

KENDRICK Lamar certainly emerged as one of the (if not THE) best rappers of his generation over the decade, having won 13 Grammys, being named one of Time’s most influential people in the world and even receiving a Pulitzer Prize for his 2017 album Damn.

But it’s the critically acclaimed 2015 record To Pimp A Butterfly which would take the top spot as my own favourite album of the decade, with Alright standing out as the best song. Written in response to police brutality against the African American community, Def-Jam co-founder Rick Rubin called the hip-hop/jazz/soul track the “protest song of our generation”.

The song’s catchy “We Gon’ Be Alright” refrain was sung at anti-Trump rallies and Black Lives Matter events across the US and gave marginalised communities a sense of hope in a time of increased tensions around the world.

READ MORE: Scottish poets and writers to adorn buildings with their Message From The Skies

I saw Lamar perform in Glasgow in 2018 and seeing Alright live was a huge highlight for me – the passion, anger and soul in his performance was moving. As we head into a new decade, Alright will be a protest song for a long time to come.

Film: First Reformed (2018)

Taxi Driver writer Paul Schrader’s First Reformed is devastating. The film focuses on the life of a minister of a small congregation, who is struggling with depression following his son’s death in the Iraq War and his divorce.

While questioning his faith he is introduced to an extremely climate-conscious father-to-be who wants his partner to have an abortion because he does not believe it would be ethical to bring a child into the world.

After the man takes his own life, the minister grows closer with his grieving wife and begins to truly see how corrupt the world around him is – from the church he has built his life around to the environment he once believed God created with such precision.

Schrader’s film reflects the hopelessness many of us feel when we think about the impending climate crisis, and the flaws which are now so evident in the institutions we have been brought up to believe are on our side. First Reformed certainly captures the anxiety of modern living, but ultimately it shows the power in belief – and the horror that can occur when those beliefs crumble.

Book: Teeline For Journalists

When National staff were asked for their top picks of the decade, I joked that my shorthand books would have to be on my list because of the sheer amount of time I’ve spent with them since 2014. Surprisingly my colleagues said I should go with it, what with the debate that’s taken place around shorthand in recent years.

So, first off, an admission. I don’t have 100 words per minute – although I was told when I began studying journalism that this was necessary to get employed in a newsroom. I appear to have proven that theory wrong – as have many of my course mates who have moved on to major publications and broadcasters since graduating in July.

I picked up shorthand quickly at college and that gained me an NCTJ qualification, which I am grateful for and proud of, but while I was working part-time, doing internships and a dissertation at university it fell by the wayside.

Every few months I returned to Teeline For Journalists in the hope of boosting my speed a little more without the daily practice. It failed. I graduated this year with 90 words per minute – just shy of that target – promising I’d keep practising. Honestly? Thanks to modern technology, I’ve not looked at it since I returned my graduation gown. But the book is still on my shelf, and maybe in the next decade I will finally achieve that “all-important” 100-words-per-minute goal.

KIRSTEEN PATERSON MULTIMEDIA JOURNALIST
Song: Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams (2012)

“I hate these blurred lines,” intoned singer Robin Thicke, a man who seems to be the very definition of nominative determinism. Thick? You’d have to be if you can’t see the problem with this song, directed at a hot “bitch” who, despite being a “good girl”, definitely “wants it”.

Even Pharrell Williams, a man who was 40 years old at the time of penning the 2013 hit, couldn’t see it was “rapey”, even when paired with a video showing fully clothed, fully in control men and fully naked, fully objectified women. I sure hate Blurred Lines too, Robin. But even still, it’s certainly one of the songs of this horrible, hateful decade in which a man who’d “grab ‘em by the pussy” can still become US president and a senior member of the British royal family uses a provincial pizza restaurant to prove he couldn’t have had non-consensual sex with a trafficked teenager.

Lawyers will at this point want me to point out at there are no charges facing HRH Prince Andrew of the House of Windsor, which I am of course happy to do. Blurred lines, see? They’re everywhere – what’s legal, what’s not? What’s acceptable, what’s not? What’s regrettable, what’s not?

Williams eventually came to understand after an international outcry over the song, which was still a major hit – one that a US court ruled had borrowed heavily from Marvin Gaye’s 1977 number Got to Give It Up, ordering Williams and Thicke to pay his estate £4 million.

The song was released before #MeToo, in which women and girls sought to expose abusers and harassers, but it could be the soundtrack to the misogyny and entitlement driving those men to commit sex-based cruelty.

In October, Williams said he is “embarrassed” by some of his work, citing Blurred Lines as a turning point. “It’s like ‘what’s rapey about that?’,” he said. ‘‘And then I realised that there are men who use that same language when taking advantage of a woman, and it doesn’t matter that that’s not my behaviour.” I realised that we live in a chauvinist culture in our country. I hadn’t realised that. Didn’t realise that some of my songs catered to that. So that blew my mind.”

Book: Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda (2016)

In a decade in which superheroes ruled, Liu and Takeda spawned a sophisticated and breathtakingly beautiful comic series that deserves every bit of its critical acclaim.

Now spanning four graphic novels, Monstress is set in a matriarchal world inspired by early 20th-century Asia, where protagonist Maika Halfwolf has to come to terms with what’s inside her as war rages. Spoiler: it’s not just teenage angst. Racism, belonging, families, betrayal – there are big themes packed into slender volumes thanks to Liu’s economical, well-paced writing and Takeda’s lush illustrations.

Each panel is a masterpiece, full of steampunk glamour, Art Deco influence and intricate detailing. These are stories to savour. The tale of the comic’s creation is every bit as remarkable as its content, with Chinese-American Liu and Japanese Takeda collaborating via a translator to overcome deficits in each other’s languages.

Altogether, Monstress is a marvel – and while the comic house of that name and its main rival DC continue to dominate, it’s stayed somewhat below the radar. No matter, it’s an awe-inspiring example of what the genre can be and a series set to grow into the next decade.

PAUL KAVANAGH (WEE GINGER DUG) COLUMNIST
Song: Delayed Train by Preston Reed (2013)

It’s always a bit of a worry when a middle-aged man is asked to pick a favourite piece of music. All music becomes instantly uncool by virtue of the fact that it’s a middle-aged man who likes it.  But that’s not the case with Delayed Train. It’s just one man and an acoustic guitar, but Delayed Train from Preston Reed’s 2013 album In Here Out There is a breathtaking work of genius.

A native of New York state for the past 18 years, Preston Reed can be found at his home in the Ayrshire seaside town of Girvan, at least when he’s not touring around the globe.  When you think of Girvan, you typically think of going doon the watter for a wet fair fortnight, but you can add to that “home of one of the world’s best guitarists”.

Inventor of a guitar technique called percussive guitar, Reed is admired around the world by other professional musicians. He’s very much the guitarist’s guitarist... and no wonder, the man has 10 fingers on each finger.

If you were ever a budding teenage guitarist, struggling with the first few bars of Stairway to Heaven, listen to this and weep. But you’ll be weeping with joy at the sheer brilliance and virtuosity of Preston’s music.

Book: The Place Names of Fife, by Simon Taylor and Gilbert Márkus (2006) It’s not a prize-winning novel. It doesn’t have great characterisation. It’s deeply geeky and very much a niche interest, but for me this is the book of the decade.

The volumes detail the meaning an origin of every place name across the county, and show how the Gaelic language once dominated in the area. If anyone ever tells you that Gaelic was never spoken in the Lowlands, all you need to do is to point to the wealth of Gaelic names which litter the landscape.

It’s thanks to these books that I was able to produce a Gaelic map of Fife. Published in 2006, this series of books was the first in a huge project carried out by Glasgow University called Scottish Toponymy in Transition.

Place name studies in Scotland have alway slagged far behind those in England, traditionally in Scotland we’ve been reluctant to study the true extent of the Gaelic language and the impact of Scots on our landscape.

It’s a series of books which tell the story of the very landscape of Scotland, and which trace the ebb and flow of Pictish, Cumbric, Gaelic, Scots, Norse, and English across the country. And that is the story of Scotland itself.

Film: Arrival(2016)

It’s got spaceships and aliens, in it? What’s not to like? I’ve always been a sucker for sci-fi, but this movie by Denis Villeneuve elevates the genre with an intellectual and thought-provoking examination of love, loss and the nature of language.

Amy Adams plays a linguist called in to initiate communication with the 12 spaceships which have landed on Earth, each containing enigmatic tentacled aliens with a method of communication which is radically different from human language.

As she explores the alien language, she discovers that she’s exploring the nature of reality and time itself.

This movie is essentially a lesson in linguistics disguised as a blockbuster, but don’t let that put you off. It’s a rollercoaster of emotion which will make you think as well as tug on your heartstrings.

Beautiful to look at, intellectual and ambitious, Arrival is the direct opposite of the more typical bug-eyed monster school of alien contact movies exemplified by Independence Day.

This is a sci-fi movie for people who don’t like sci-fi.

MICHAEL RUSSELL CABINET SECRETARY AND COLUMNIST
Book: H is for Hawk By Helen Macdonald (2014)

For an addicted, all-my-life, daily reader, I must get my fix. Ten years is a long time and a lot of books.

So in trying to settle on my book of the decade, I have had to sift through hundreds of titles.

At least two outstanding Scottish novels (Graeme MacRae Burnet’s His Bloody Project and James Robertson’s The Professor of Truth), at least one great piece of Scottish historical research (James Hunter’s Insurrection), a hugely significant contribution to cultural, political and travel writing (David Gange’s Frayed Atlantic Edge) and an all-absorbing literary experiment , which still haunts me (Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders) would be in contention, as would – amongst many other volumes – Atul Gwande’s Being Mortal and Caroline Shenton’s fascinating study of a key moment in Westminster history, The Day Parliament Burned Down.

But in the end the book the imprint of whose effect has stayed with me longest in that time is a surprising, but truly great one: Helen Macdonald’s 2014 memoir H is for Hawk, a searingly honest and immensely moving personal story of a year in which she lost her father and trained a hawk.

Film: Lincoln (2012)

I don’t get much time to watch television so feel very unqualified to pass judgement on a programme from the decade, although as time-shifted viewing is now possible on every channel I can catch up with things such as my friend Douglas MacKinnon’s wonderfully elegant and greatly entertaining Amazon Prime series Good Omens, as well as a fair bit else.  My taste in movies is, in the kindest interpretation, eclectic. My wife, for example, cannot abide anything by Wes Anderson whilst I regard him as one of the great storytellers of our time.

At least two of his films have to be in my shortlist – The idiosyncratic Grand Budapest Hotel and the completely off the wall Moonrise Kingdom.

Others making the final cut would include Dunkirk for its remorseless accuracy and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri for the original and effective treatment of a harrowing subject.

Mr Turner, a good example of the excellence of English historical filmmaking would be there too.

But the best of the decade? Probably Lincoln, Spielberg’s stately, politically accurate, visually and aurally stunning homage to one of the greatest figures in his nation’s – and our world’s – history.

NAN SPOWART, WRITER
Film: Capernaum (2018)

This is the most powerful film I have seen for a long time and I don’t think anyone watching it can fail to be unmoved.

It’s almost unbearable as it drives home just how precarious life is for people living on the edges of society. What makes it even more remarkable is that the main child actor was a 12-year-old Syrian refugee who had escaped the war to live in Lebanon with his family.

The other main characters include an Ethiopian illegal immigrant and her baby, who just about steals the show.

Directed by Nadine Labaki, her producer partner, Khaled Mouzanar, took out a mortgage on their house without her knowledge to make it. It won the Jury Prize at Cannes last year, receiving a 15-minute standing ovation and was nominated for best foreign-language film at the Oscars, making Labaki the first female Arab director to be nominated for an Academy Award.

There has been some criticism of the unrelenting hardship it portrays but that’s life for millions of people and that’s the point.

Book: Milkman by Anna Burns (2018)

This is like nothing else I’ve read in the last decade and I am in awe of Anna Burns for creating such an individual and memorable voice in the main character.

It is a vivid picture of what it must have been like to grow up during the troubles in Northern Ireland and the claustrophobia of living in a community awash with suspicion of the other is almost palpable.

Idle tittle-tattle can harm the lives of people in any community but Burns shows how malicious gossip could cost lives and often did in the Northern Ireland of the time.

Sexual harassment is also addressed in the book but it’s not all bleak. There’s a lot of wry humour and the way Burns portrays male and female relations is darkly funny. It deserved to win the Booker Prize in 2018, a first for a Northern Irish writer.

Song: Born This Way by Lady Gaga (2011)

Gaga again showed she was tuned into the zeitgeist when she released this single in 2011.

It’s the epitome of a great pop song – it’s catchy, with a great vocal and it makes you want to dance and sing. The lyrics are what really make it stand out though, and they were perfect for a generation growing up with social media and images they felt the need to conform to, with a message particularly relevant to the LGBTQ community and other minorities.

Dua Lipa, Jax Jones, Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars, Justin Timberlake and Calvin Harris, to name a few, have all released some great pop songs over the last decade but I have to pick one so it has to be this.

KARIN GOODWIN, WRITER TV: Fleabag (2016)

THE shaky camera focuses on the front door, then cuts to a woman breathing in ragged gasps, wearing red lipstick and “Agent Provocateur business”

overcoat belted over the top. She turns her head to the viewer and regards us with a steely, conspiratorial eye. And we’re off.

Welcome to the explosion that is Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s exhilarating TV series about sex, death and everything in-between. Made in 12 perfect parts, divided across two series, it dominated our screens – and arguably a lot of other space too – in the later part of the decade.

It actually started life in a small, dank Edinburgh Fringe venue in 2013, then was commissioned by BBC Three and became era-defining TV comedy. It tells the darkly hilarious story of a woman who “f*cks everything”, from the man she meets on the bus, to the failing Guinea Pig café that falls into liquidation on her watch, her family relationships and, of course, her best friend’s boyfriend.

Under Waller-Bridge’s deft hand, the male gaze is put firmly under the microscope. It’s also packed full of brutal one-liners that will never leave you, shockingly relatable incidents of inexcusable behaviour and has compassion and redemption in spades.

The characters that drive the narrative are brilliant too. Highlights include the exquisite passive aggression of Olivia Colman’s godmother, uptight sister Claire – played by Sian Clifford – who gets a haircut that makes her look like a pencil, and Hugh Dennis’s portrayal of the bank manager done for sexual harassment, but with all the more empathy as a result.

Then there’s her desire for that unforgettable hot priest (Andrew Scott) – who but Fleabag would put herself in competition with God? It’s about guilt and consumption, it’s transgression and forgiveness. But though soaked in metaphor it retains a light effortlessness throughout. The whole thing comes together as an exploration of love and of bodies, of performance and authenticity in all its messiness. But with great jokes.

In the end Fleabag is rejected by both fathers – but she gets to keep the statue and walks off into the night to save herself. OK, so it’s North London and it’s privileged and that CGI fox is slightly disappointing. But come on. This is masterful TV and Waller-Bridge richly deserves all the plaudits going.

Song: Boys By Lizzo (2018)

We started the decade with Beyoncé declaring girls run the world. Now we’re at the end of it and Lizzo doesn’t need telling. And she’s turning her attention to boys.

Born Melissa Viviane Jefferson, this body-positive black woman from Detroit has been grafting for years. She started touring under various guises in 2011 and her first major play album – Coconut Oil – received some rave reviews in 2016. But it was only three years later that she really achieved mainstream breakthrough with her third album Cuz I Love You. Awards and adoration have followed.

There are so many hits it’s hard to choose a favourite, but the stomping, tongue-in-cheek joy of Boys – with its catchy refrain and cow bell high notes – must be up there.

It’s another shout out for independent women. “Baby, I don’t need you,” she sings, “I just wanna freak you”. Lizzo puts herself out into the world and asks to be accepted just the way she is. And in this tongue-in-cheek number she shows no double standard. Big, small, rural or urban, bearded or clean shaven – she’s celebrating them all in this bouncy pop song with added ooze.

She’s also paying homage to the ultimate one. In the video she poses in front of the music note mural on the Minneapolis Schmitt Music building, referencing an infamous 1970s Prince photo shoot. She’s even sporting a similar Afro. It’s a bold legacy to claim but with this retro-funk classic it’s one she seems more than worthy of.