By Stacy lee kong

For the last Club Friday Q&A of the year, I’m highlighting the best and worst pop culture moments of 2023, courtesy of some of the smartest culture critics I know. (I covered my moments in the Friday newsletter, ICYMI.) Yes, someone mentions Beyoncé, and Taylor, and Britney. But, we also get into Ozempic, Lizzo and… Canadian songstress Amanda Marshall (?!). Read on for their thought-provoking and often very funny insights on this year’s highs and lows—and happy holidays!

Meera Estrada, culture expert

Best: Barbiecore. I was there for it all! Loved the fashion, beauty looks and, of course, the film. Greta Gerwig managed to dig at consumerism, making fun of Barbie’s money machine itself—Mattel—and gave women a moment of solitude and satisfaction by unapologetically showing what the world could be if we screwed the patriarchy and women ran the world. Given world events of late (and forever), I think we’d be a lot better off if that were true. I watched the movie twice in the theatres… Sorry Barbenhiemer, but Barbie crushed the box office and stole the hearts of a ton of kids—and moms, too. Also, if you know me, you know I’m always team pink, whether it’s cool or not. 

Worst: Those big red boots everyone was wearing in the summer. What can I say except WTF? Just because you have money, does not mean you have style.

Sydney Urbanek, culture writer

Best: For me, it’s probably a tie between seeing Lady Gaga’s Jazz & Piano show in Las Vegas and seeing Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé. But since I already wrote at length about the former… it was truly so cool to get to watch a Beyoncé-directed movie on the big screen for the first time. I actually saw the tour in question back in July and my answer is still the film.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and writing about Beyoncé’s film work—not everyone knows this, but she’s credited as a director on more than a dozen feature-length projects—and, funny enough, that’s involved a lot of really isolated experiences over the years… combing through low-quality YouTube videos for a grad school paper that only a single professor might read, or recommending someone an obscure making-of doc from 2009 and knowing they probably wouldn’t watch it, or trying to make zero noise premiering Homecoming in a home office at midnight by myself. So it was fun—and kind of surreal—to get to buy four tickets to Renaissance and then text three friends being like, “Beyoncé on the big screen?” Aside from the show itself translating almost better to screen than stage (I thought), it’s easily her funniest and most tear-jerking documentary in recent memory, and it was cathartic to do all that giggling and sniffling among friends.  

I love Beyoncé’s work because it’s always spectacular but never not full of contradictions, just like its author, which means it always brings out interesting conversations and some of the best cultural criticism I’ll read in a given year. I’m always grateful to get to parse thoughtful critiques of the stuff I care deeply about, whether I agree with every word or not.

Worst: A couple months ago, Britney Spears published her much-anticipated memoir, The Woman in Me, telling her life story and laying herself bare on her own terms for the first time in… well, forever. I was especially moved by the quieter moments in the book about being a young girl with big dreams who grew up into a one-woman cultural phenomenon—naïve and overly trusting, by her own admission, but also headstrong and ambitious. Britney is subjected to a laundry list of abuses in the story, but is actually quite measured in recounting them. For instance, she’s very clear that her father has been abusive her whole life, but chooses to contextualize that abuse in decades of Spears family trauma; he made her suffer because he’d suffered. The book is definitely damning, but it seems less written to destroy anyone’s life and more to finally take back her own.  

So I found myself disappointed by how the book was covered and talked about as it was coming out, reduced to a meme by social media and clickbait basically everywhere else. It felt like out-of-context snippets went viral every day, which had people doing things like sensationalizing (and worse, litigating) her abortion. It didn’t take long for fake news stories to circulate about how former members of her circle (Timberlake, Federline) were coping with the book, and you may also have seen snippets that were totally fabricated and not realized. Then there was that clumsy SNL skit, which I found unkind at best and irresponsible at worst for how it mixed real and fake quotes from the book. And all of this distracted from The Woman in Me being both a harrowing read and a powerful reclaiming of one’s agency. Which means we’ve kind of failed Britney once again; we’re still making her and her trauma into punchlines, and still speaking for her even though she’s literally out here speaking for herself. 

Meaghan Wray, freelance writer

Best: As a recovering Royal Family writer, I got a great deal of pleasure out of how much the world totally roasted Prince Harry's memoir, Spare, when it was released in January. I still haven't read it, but I've heard enough dramatic readings of particularly salacious parts (did we really need to know he got frostbite on his weiner?) on TikTok. That was enough for me. We had one month of lolz before 2023 started to take a total nosedive.

Worst: I haven't said much about this because I don't think we all need to have a hot take on everything, but definitely the most disappointing moment of the year for me is the lawsuit against Lizzo. The allegations of bullying, sexual and racial harassment are pretty egregious and while I'm a believer that this doesn't negate the good she's brought to the world, it's hard to hear the stories from her dancers when she has, until now, been such a beacon of hope and positivity for so many.

Radheyan Simonpillai, film critic and pop culture columnist

Best: Nepo Baby queen Romy Croquet's pasta-making video.

Worst: Amy Schumer's Instagram posts.

Ruth Young, Friday Things assistant editor

Best: This moment is really for long-time fans of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. After Kyle Richards and Mauricio Umansky announced their separation, seeing Allison DuBois (the medium from Camille Grammer's dinner party in season one) rejoin the chat and basically say “I told you so,” was the full circle moment I didn’t realize I needed. Runner up: definitely “Angela Bassett DID the thing.” 

Worst: Taylor Swift is definitely known for her marketing prowess and 2023 was maybe her biggest year to date. However, seeing the ways in which the “Taylor’s Version” albums were used for capitalistic gain was disheartening, especially since these re-recorded albums were meant to symbolize a reclamation of Swift's work. One of the worst offenders was the re-release of 1989. In addition to a new version of the album that was released in vinyl, cassette, CD and digital formats, Swift surprise-dropped the 1989 (Taylor's Version) Sunrise Boulevard Yellow edition on August 17, noting it was only going to be available for 48 hours. This version of the re-release cost $31.90 and featured the same track list as the regular re-release (including five ‘from the vault’ songs that didn’t appear on the original album); the only real difference was the colour of the vinyl itself and the cover photo. Predictably, Swifties rushed to buy the special edition… only for Swift to announce a third version (Aquamarine Green) the following week. In November, news broke that 1989 (Taylor’s Version) had sold nearly 1.7 million copies, handily surpassing the original album’s release, which is lovely for her. But encouraging overconsumption just to sell more albums probably isn’t great for her fans.

Lora Grady, journalist and beauty editor

Best: There were a lot of notable fashion moments at this year’s Met Gala, but my award for best entrance went to the infamous cockroach. While everyone was waiting for queen Rihanna to make her entrance, the roach took its moment to shine in the spotlight. Photographer Kevin Mazur snapped a close-up of the bug, sharing it via Variety on Twitter, and suddenly the entire conversation shifted to this little creepy crawler. Like many others, I was thoroughly disappointed to find out that the 2023 Met Gala was honouring Karl Lagerfeld, who was problematic for a lot of reasons including racism, misogyny and fatphobia. (In case you missed it, Stacy and I discussed these issues more in depth with Emily MacCulloch and Ingrie Williams of The T-Zone.) I can’t help but feel that Lagerfeld would be appalled by the presence of a common NYC cockroach receiving so much attention in the middle of his moment. It added some much-needed levity to the situation. The roach was, unsurprisingly, stepped on pretty quickly after his debut. RIP to the brave little fashion disruptor. It ran so the bedbugs at Paris fashion week could walk.

Worst: Growing up in the early aughts nearly destroyed my body image. Diet plans and celebrity workouts were advertised on every channel. I joined Weight Watchers at 13. It took years for me to shed the toxic effects of diet culture and I attribute most of my healing to the body positivity movement. As everything #BoPo started trending around 2012, I was thrilled to see the change in conversation over the years. But all trends are passing and as #BoPo became a marketing device, it started to lose its meaning and roots in fat acceptance. This year, the pendulum swung back: Ozempic entered the chat and suddenly, thin was in again. I feel a sad sense of deja vu when I see headlines like “Celebrities who've displayed insane body transformations and sudden weight loss since Ozempic.” I remember taking diuretics at 15 in an effort to shed weight as fast as possible, so I can only imagine how many young minds think Ozempic is a good idea. There are serious health risks involved and there’s a shortage of the drug, which means folks who use it to manage diabetes can’t fill their prescriptions. I’m clinging to a bit of hope that as we move into the season of New Year’s resolutions, we remember that celebrating all shapes and sizes remains crucial to the self-esteem of our future generations. 

Russ Martin, writer and culture critic

Best: My very first concert was Amanda Marshall. At the time, she was riding high on her self-titled record, one of very few to ever be certified diamond in Canada. I was in the second grade, holding my mom’s hand. Marshall had the best career a Canadian musician could hope for, then, due to a bad business deal, straight up disappeared. In the spring of 2023, Marshall announced her first tour in two decades. The morning tickets went on sale, I waited for the clock to hit 10:01 a.m. like it was The Renaissance Tour pre-sale. Tickets secured, I called my mom, who screamed like she’d won a radio contest when I told her we were going to see Amanda Marshall. The show itself, at Massey Hall, was electric. We both cried when she sang “Dark Horse.” Her voice had the same incredible range as in the nineties and she belted like a woman who’d been waiting for that very moment. I felt old and young all at once and, seated with my mom, very happy. It was the best moment of my year.

Worst: I’ve started most recent years with a single pop culture wish: a new Rihanna record. At the tail end of 2022, Rih released the very bland “Lift Me Up” for the Black Panther soundtrack and I finally let my hopes go. Rihanna doesn’t owe us another record and, in retrospect, 2016’s Anti was the perfect high note for her to go out on. Going into 2023, I set my hopes on a new act—the British girl group Flo. Their buzzy debut single, “Cardboard Box” harkened back to the heyday of Destiny’s Child, 3LW and Blaque, and was one of the best songs of 2022. With the promise of a debut album, 2023 felt primed for a Flo breakthrough. The year started off strong—Flo teamed up with Missy Elliott in March for a reimagining of “Work It” called “Fly Girl.” It was catchy and fun, but momentum quickly stalled. The promised album shrunk down to an EP, 3 Of Us, which failed to live up to “Cardboard Box” or even “Fly Girl.” The excitement at their mini tour of North America was palpable, but it’s the year’s end Flo and has yet to deliver their album or even a worthy follow-up single. Maybe 2024 will be the year? I can’t go back to waiting for Rihanna. 

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