It is the most glorious time of the year. Beyond the traditions of the holiday season, this is the time when editors, critics and content creators from across the media landscape interact in their own annual tradition: the cultural inventory.
From TikTok trends to Billboard hits, viral moments, and blockbuster films, writers compile and rank the phenomena that captured our collective attention most over the past twelve months in hopes of contextualizing our shared lived experiences. However, this practice of inventorying the year’s most significant cultural moments is hamstrung by our superficial understanding of culture. But with a better understanding, we can make a better list.
We refer to these occasions as “cultural” because they consist of cultural productions such as music, art, film, and dance. However, the criteria by which they are measured, analyzed and ranked as “the defining pop culture moments of the year” is disproportionately based on popularity and not culture.
And therein lies the red herring: we confuse popularity and culture, but they are not analogous, although they are used interchangeably and erroneously. Writer Charles Bukowski refers to popularity as something known or loved by many people. This is appropriate considering its etymology. ” “Popular” is derived from the Latin word “populus,” meaning people, so popular refers to the prevalence of anything within the general public.
Culture, on the other hand, is something completely different. Culture is a creation formula that helps us translate the global and identify a set of conventions and expectations for other people like us. Is the carpet an ornament, a souvenir or a place of worship? Well, it depends. The appearance of the object depends on who you are and how you see the world due to your cultural adherence and therefore you interact with the mat accordingly.
The difference between popularity and culture is material. Popularity is the extent to which something is known. Culture is the system by which meaning is made and manifested. One is based on prevalence (popularity), and the other is rooted in meaning (culture). The variance between the two is sizeable, necessitating the need to distinguish one from the other and combat the colloquial shorthand traditionally used to conjure one with the other.
Culture is not a codeword for popularity, and what’s popular isn’t necessarily significantly cultural. You may know the ending to this phrase, “800-588-2300 __________,” (you may have even sung the jingle in your head) but it likely doesn’t have much meaning in your mind beyond being a carpet company’s commercial mnemonic. However, pop culture is the extent to which something is well-known and full of meaning. Juxtapose the aforementioned Empire commercial with Nike’s “Just Do It,” you’ll realize that the differences are far more than just hairsplitting. One is well-known (Empire), and the other is both prevalent and meaningful (Nike).
This rethinking requires reevaluating how we compare the year’s biggest pop cultural moments. Instead of identifying the most popular moments from the last twelve months, we ranked the moments that were (1) the most popular and (2) the most significant. This is not a popularity contest; It is a meaning-making competition, where the most significant occasions have also been the most widespread victories.
For instance, both Billboard and Spotify crowned Taylor Swift as the top artist of 2024, largely because of her sold-out Eras tour and high volume of streams. Yet, with the launch of her genre-defying country album, Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé’s impact in 2024 was more impactful. Taylor is extremely popular, no doubt, but Beyoncé has both prevalence and richer meaning—one that defined the year and gave context to a broader discourse around gatekeeping and appropriation.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – APRIL 1: (EDITORIAL USE ONLY) (left to right) Beyoncé accepts the Innovator AwardArray. . [ ] Stevie Wonder Award at the 2024 iHeartRadio Music Awards at the Dolthrough Theater in Los Angeles, California, on April 01, 2024. 2024. Broadcast live on FOX. (Photo via Kevin Winter/Getty Images for iHeartRadio)
Similarly, think of Sabrina Carpenter and her hit “Espresso. ” It’s the most listened to song in the country this year and, unsurprisingly, everywhere. Shopping malls, TikTok videos, advertisements, and every single teenage girl’s ultimate playlist had This song on repeat since its release in April of this year. But when you compare “Espresso” to Kendrick Lamar’s “They Not Like Us,” you see a significant difference. “They Not Like Us” is not just a popular record; It was a catalyst that sparked a verbal exchange about race, belonging, and what it means to be hip-hop.
Beyoncé and Kendrick produced cultural work that extended popularity; they helped us make meaning of the world around us. They influenced the cultural conventions of society—our beliefs, artifacts, behaviors, and language. It’s phenomena like these that define a year. They change us, both how we see social life and how we navigate through it. Poor Drake knows this better than most.
This proposed rubric of assessment (the combination of prevalence and meaning) not only helps to reduce the seemingly arbitrary and reductive nature of these “year in review” lists but also provides a better criterion by which we evaluate the moments that best defined us. While some may roll their eyes at this annual ritual of cultural accounting, these lists serve as more than just content filler for a slow news season. They are mirrors reflecting our collective journey through time, helping us understand not just what we watched, listened to, or talked about but also who we were as a society during these twelve months.
Watching Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese go from high school basketball to the WNBA wasn’t just a career transition, it was a category transcendence. The discourse surrounding her rise has gone beyond sports watching to become a national debate that has forced us to reevaluate gender stereotypes and the barriers they impose. Likewise, this occasion has gone beyond mere ubiquity to become something much more significant than advertising for organized sports.
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA – JUNE 16: Caitlin Clark #22 of the Indiana Fever and Angel Reese #5 of the … [+] Chicago Sky look on during a game at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on June 16, 2024 in Indianapolis, Indiana. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Emilee Chinn/Getty Images)
Consider the prevalence of Brat Summer. “Brat” was a colloquialism introduced by Charlie XCX that represented a state of being that exuded confidence and a desire to be the center of attention. This was not your average TikTok trend; “brat” was a cultural state of being that encouraged people to put themselves “out there” despite any perceived imperfections. Brat occupied the collective consciousness and became a shorthand to describe people daring enough to be bold in the face of potential scrutiny, as ascribed to Kamala Harris’ unexpected presidential run after President Biden dropped out of the race.
Like most cultural events, Brat catalyzed a debate about the zeitgeist that gave rise to another culturally defining moment: the clever meme. Demure a reaction to the child’s outgoing display, which favored modesty over extravagance. This gave the language a cultural shift in self-expression and a subversion of childish aesthetics. The spread of the word “sensitive” is not limited to adopting the latest buzzword; It is the demarcation of a shared identity assignment from some other, socially constructed through derivative works.
All of these moments are wrapped in meaning to help us make sense of the phenomenal social world in which we coexist. From the assassination of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson to Donald Trump’s re-election, the biggest cultural moments of the year are the most publicized; They are the ones who replace us: they replace our beliefs, our artifacts, our behaviors and our language. They provoke debates about corporate responsibility, as in the case of Thompson’s murder, and call into question our morality and our acceptance of government institutions, as in the case of Trump. We revel in these occasions in combination and interact in collaborative discourse to make sense of what this means and says about us. This practice is culture construction.
READING, PA – NOVEMBER 4: Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump. . . [ ] takes the level of a crusade at the Santander Arena on November 4, 2024 in Reading, Pennsylvania. With a day to go before the general election, Trump is running a re-election crusade in the battleground states of North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan. (Photo via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
When you scratch beneath the surface, these year-end summaries are themselves cultural artifacts—metatext, if you will, that help us establish a shared cultural narrative. They transform the chaos of countless individual moments into a coherent story of who we were and what mattered to us during a particular year.
For example, an increase in Bible sales may simply be a testament to our collective anxiety over societal uncertainties. Likewise, the rise in the men’s makeup market may reveal a shift in attitudes toward gender or masculinity. that we engage in a broader verbal exchange about our collective values and interests, which is for other people “like us. “
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