A Decade of Culture

As we turn the corner from 2019 into 2020 we are officially leaving behind the chaotic decade of the 2010s and into the uncertain (rather futuristic-sounding) decade of the 2020s. Our world has changed so much just in ten brief years in the broad strokes of popular culture. Our attention has never been so in-demand as our current moment and the constant stream of information shows no signs of stopping. In such circumstances, it’s helpful to look back over this content-heavy decade and pick out the real gems that meant something to us and shaped our decade more than others. So, here at The Attic we are rounding up some of our favourite music, films, books, and television of the past decade. Reminisce with us over the year that was, and we hope you’ll have a very happy New Year!

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ELIZA CAMPBELL

Book: My book of the decade is, without a doubt, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch (2013). I’ve read it every single year since it came out and I always find something new when I do. It’s raw and intricate and just downright beautiful.

Music: I’ve been torn between Lorde’s two albums released this decade, Pure Heroine (2014) and Melodrama (2017), and Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer (2018). Lorde and I are almost exactly the same age and her music strikes a chord with the introspective and fiercely nostalgic part of me. Dirty Computer, on the other hand, is simply just one of the most creative and wonderful albums. I could listen to it on repeat for days and never get bored (and I have). I think I’ll have to call this one a tie.

TV Series: I think Black Mirror (2011-present) has to steal the show here for me. I watched it on 4OD back when it was still a Channel 4 show in 2011 and, even if some of the episodes aren’t great, I can never thank Charlie Brooker enough for the San Junipero episode in season 3.

Film: My pick for film of the decade is The Handmaiden (2016). It’s based on one of my favourite novels (Sarah Water’s Fingersmith). It’s a gorgeous, refreshing take on the story and one of the best lesbian films ever made. Park Chan-wook is a genius director.

OLIVIA GÜNDÜZ-WILLEMIN

Book: I think it’s near impossible to pick a book of the year let alone of the decade, especially considering I started university in 2010 and did entire worlds of reading for my English & Comparative Literature BA and then for my MA. Under duress though, I think Edith Wharton’s entire body of works and more specifically The House of Mirth would have to win, if only because I spent literal years of the decade working on it. It’s a beautiful and haunting novel, arguably more relevant now than ever. One day I’ll be able to finish writing the pieces I’ve started on it for The Attic. Maybe in 2020…

Music: The most influential album for me this past decade has definitely been Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City (2013). There have been so many others that I’ve loved – Oh Wonder (2015), Maggie Rogers’s Now That the Light Is Fading (2017), Sylvan Esso’s What Now (2018)... even Hozier’s eponymous debut album (2014), but Modern Vampires was the one I listened to the most and the one that still just fills my entire body with joy. Nothing compares, and I still demand that the entire world stop when “Hannah Hunt” comes on.

TV Series: This one is difficult for me. The different shows that have come out this past decade have played important roles for me both academically and socially. The Hour (2011-2012) sticks out as my critical favorite of the decade – it’s the one show I still find myself thinking about years after its untimely ending and the one show whose cancellation I’m salty about. Still, I think the show of the decade for me has to be Downton Abbey because it played such a role in my life for years and by the timing of the internet, connected me to so many of you here today.

Film: There have been so many films that have impacted me this past decade that again, it’s difficult to choose. 2017’s Phantom Thread stands out to me as a highlight – it was everything I loved about Hitchcock films, just updated to what we modern viewers need. Psychologically thrilling and infinitely beautiful, the film is frustrating but tells an absolutely gripping story while giving us some of the most beautiful costumes to grace our screens in recent history, along with an equally wonderful soundtrack that has become a favorite to write to these days. Honestly though, if it weren’t for the fact that it isn’t released in Switzerland until January 1, 2020 and so that I won’t get to see it a second sooner, I have the feeling that Greta Gerwig’s Little Women would come in as a very late favorite. In addition to being a text dear to my heart as a child, Little Women played an important role in getting me through and over my burnout in 2016, and everything I’ve heard about the film (save the casting of Meg, I’m sorry all) has me believing that it does the story incredible justice.

AMY RICHARDSON

Book: I have thought really carefully about this one. I read a lot, so it’s tough to pick just one. But I think that reading Chimamanda ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists (2014) has really helped to shape my thinking and approach to life this decade. When I went to university in 2011 I wouldn’t have identified myself as a feminist. In rural Warwickshire it was not really seen as a positive thing. But throughout my university years and in particular my MA studies I have become more and more confident about my feminism and how it needs to be inclusive. I have read many books about feminism and feminist books since, but this slim volume sums it all up so beautifully. Also every single novel of hers I’ve read has broken me, so to feel inspired is a nice change.

Music: This is tough. I started this decade aged 17 and solely listening to rock and heavy metal music. I end it with one of my favourite playlists dedicated feelgood, bubblegum pop and an iPod and Spotify account filled with so many genres of music that it’s impossible to sum it up neatly. But I guess my decade has been mostly defined by the same band that shaped my early 2000s too - Fall Out Boy. 2013’s Save Rock and Roll launched my favourite band back with a newer, most streamlined and poppy sound that fit my changing tastes perfectly. American Beauty/American Psycho (2015) contains songs that can instantly cheer me up. An honourable mention must go to Taylor Swift’s 1989 (2014) for being released at a particularly bleak time in my life and helping to cheer me up. I saw her the next year at BST Hyde Park and it was genuinely one of the best nights of my life. Scottish band Chvrches have also been a huge part of my decade. They released The Bones of What You Believe in 2013 and ever since I have been obsessed with them. I genuinely don’t think they have ever released a bad song. They have done some truly incredible work covering songs in Radio 1’s Live Lounge. Love is Dead (2018) is one of my favourite albums ever - listen to Deliverance, a techno, rocky, synthy banger with a beautifully soaring chorus. Amazing.

TV Series: While I’m tempted to go with Olivia and say Downton Abbey, which has been hugely influential for me for the exact same reasons, I shall instead select another. The first episode of Game of Thrones was released in 2011 and I started watching the series a year later. The final installment came earlier this year. I have literally spent most of the decade either watching GoT or waiting for a new series to start. Some of it was fantastic, a fair amount was awful, but the cultural impact of the show is undeniable.

Film: Honestly, I think my favourite films of the decade are Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2 (2017). I love both of these so much and they are so delightful that I can’t choose just one. I saw the first one in the cinema with my parents surrounded by a load of small children and it was fabulous. It surpassed my expectations so much that I didn’t think the second one could be any better, but it absolutely was. The Paddington Bear books are some of my favourites and I used to love having them read to me when I was younger. Watching these films made feel like a small child again - but with an adult understanding of some of the jokes, of course. If you haven’t seen them, please do. They are genuinely heartwarming and lovely for all ages.

RAQUEL REYES

Book: Without a doubt, for me Amor Towles’ Rules of Civility is the book of the decade. Set in post-Depression era New York and published in 2011, I find myself like Eliza and The Goldfinch, rereading it every year since I first picked it up in 2013. While I have a deep love for New York in the winter and the 1930s, it’s more of the characters here that truly hold onto my heart and the main character, Katey Kontent (terrible name aside) is especially beloved. As a self-described existential mess, I find more often than not that the stories central to women my age finding their way in the world are the ones that captivate me the most, and Katey Kontent delivers. They give me a sort of motivation — if not downright hope — that my own life might be just as interesting.

Music: When I think about it, I spent much of the 2000s listening to bands like Vampire Weekend, The Killers, and Arctic Monkeys. While I still love them, the 2010s for me were truly the decade of solo female artists. There are so many I could list that I loved, be it for single songs or entire albums, and this year especially I think of Maggie Rogers, LÉON, Lizzo, Lorde, Brittany Howard... If I had to pick an album for the entire decade though, I’d be stuck between two: Florence + The Machine’s Ceremonials (2011), and Adele’s 25 (2016). Ceremonials (along with this year’s High As Hope) could probably encapsulate the entirety of why Florence + The Machine might be my favorite musical act in existence, with their hauntingly romantic lyrics and intensely overwhelming melodies. Nothing I listen to makes me feel the way I do listening to Florence + The Machine. Mirroring Eliza’s sentiment about Lorde, I feel a connection to Adele’s music because we are of a similar age, with each of her albums released in my own 19th, 21st, and 25th years. I realize its a common sentiment with Adele’s music, but it has always felt cosmic to hear my own emotions around a certain age expressed so much better than I could ever hope to say. Four years later, I still listen to When We Were Young on a regular basis.

TV Series: I suppose I could join Amy and Olivia in stating Downton Abbey for the same reasons they did, but the truth is that I sort of gave up on it when people started dying. (I do this with a lot of shows, actually.) I could list Merlin for the same reason; despite airing from 2008 to 2012, I didn’t watch until Olivia convinced me in 2015, a catalyst to what would ultimately become our aesthetic coven and perhaps The Attic itself. Personally, Halt and Catch Fire (2014-2017), You’re The Worst (2014-2019), and Lovesick (2014-2018?) have been some of my favorite shows I’ve ever seen and to choose between the three would kill me. Each has its own staggering qualities and lives on in my constant re-watch schedule, and if I had to pick a unifying theme it would be that all three manage to capture so much of the human condition, from love and career to mental health and grief, in such real and perfectly imperfect ways. I would wholeheartedly recommend all three.

Film: The most impactful film of the decade that comes to mind is Phantom Thread (2017). I don’t usually go for thrillers but this film is so much more than that in so many ways, and that bewitches me in a very dark fairy tale sort of way. It doesn’t hurt that it’s visually stunning, set in 1950s London and featuring so many countryside drives it may have eased my own city-girl blow at moving to a more rural area last year. But what I love about it the most is the attention to detail paid to the couture throughout, and that Daniel Day-Lewis went through the trouble of learning so much. Despite the abundance of machinery in my own university’s fashion studio, I did a majority of my final year’s work in hand and couture stitches, and seeing the techniques on that large a scale made me fall utterly in love.

TARIQ HOOSEN

Book: This is a sadistic question, and I love it. For me, the one that had me sitting back stunned, that had me weeping like a child, that made me feel most seen and understood, was undoubtedly Jordy Rosenberg’s Confessions of the Fox. It’s part historical “document”, telling the story of an 18th century thief (and trans man) Jack Shephard, and his lover, a sex worker named Bess Khan (who is also a woman of colour!). Part of it is also a series of footnotes that detail the story of a modern trans scholar who has discovered the document, and his responses to uncovering the story. Rosenberg’s research and take on history is impeccable, humane, and rigorous, and he writes with a lyricism that shakes me to the spine. It’s a meditation on gender, desire, the body, memory, and resistance that is, to me, a perfect, perfect work of art. It’s replaced The Brothers Karamazov (for God’s sake!) as my favorite book, and the one that feels most like a part of me.

Music: Another sadistic question, and one I’ll answer infuriatingly. I’ve recently come out of a weeks-long hyperfixation on Stephen Sondheim. I read Meryle Secrest’s biography of him, and am completely transfixed by the man’s mastery of craft. I’ve been playing the recording of Sunday in the Park with George over and over and ugly-crying. His song, Children & Art, is a piece of perfect work that I wish I could ever have the talent and skill to write (and it’s the inspiration for my next tattoo). Other than that, I’ve also spent a ridiculous amount of time listening to The Decemberists (they’re my entire aesthetic. Send prayers), as well as Hozier (yup I am Yearning Millenial Trash), but the band that has had the deepest impact on me is Dry the River. I was introduced to them by one of my oldest and dearest friends, during a very difficult time in my life. It breaks my heart that they’re no longer active, because their work is exquisite. It’s all of desire honed and sharpened and refined like a knife. There are so many songs of theirs that I identify with the people and times in my life I’ve loved most.

TV Series: This is maybe a little easier for me, because my incredibly patient husband has introduced me to such incredible things that I kind of ignored before. I was never a big TV watcher, but some of the best pieces of art I’ve encountered lately has been on television. My favorite series of all time is definitely Black Sails, and it’s very special to my husband and I (gay pirates! GAY PIRATES!!), but it’s also just poignant, and epic, and aching, and brilliantly written and realized. It says things about myth, and story, and choice, and sin, and grace, that I kind of took into myself in a very visceral way. It’s magnificent. I also have to give mention to Over the Garden Wall, Alias Grace, and BoJack Horseman.

Film: I have to put my two cents in about Phantom Thread as well, because dear God. I think what I love most about it is how it delicately explores the many fraught and strange and wondrous and horrifying ways we negotiate power and desire in relationships, in order to find each other at last. The score is also magnificent -- it functions almost as a character on its own. And Daniel Day Lewis. Well. You know. God. I still think about Alma’s final monologue, and what it says about love, the work of love, the strange and ruthless alchemy of it, and how it functions over time, just resonates with me very deeply since I’ve married my husband. This is my second marriage, and I want to get it right (I behaved entirely too much like Woodcock in the first). This is the one it all rests on, and I’ve learned so much about myself, and what love does to transform and refine us, as we do to love in turn, and that monologue just says so much, so beautifully. I also loved The Lobster, and Midsommar (I would’ve murdered those rude grad students too tbh).

M.A. MCCUEN

Book: In all honesty, I think that Sally Rooney’s Normal People is my book of the decade. I spent the majority of the decade sorting through my own Connell-and-Marianne style will-they-won’t-they relationship (the answer was “won’t-they” which in the end was really and truly the best thing). The emotions of the characters in so many ways echo many of the same emotions that I’ve felt in this decade. Her novel was the first time I felt so seen by a book and comforted by chaotic understanding. It’s a novel that I’ve come back to again and again because each reading is another opportunity to continue to understand myself. As I’ve also fallen in love with Ireland throughout this decade, I think that the Dublin setting only fits the summative-ness of this book in my life.

Music: In many ways, my relationship with music and albums are so tied in to the memories that go with them. I have this really clear memory of listening to Roo Pane’s Paperweights (2015) album my senior year of college. I was traveling through the US on a road trip, waiting to hear back from grad school and gap year programs, and listening to that album over and over again. It’s soothing, gorgeous music might have been the only thing that kept me calm as I was so full of nerves and anticipation. I also have a very fond place for Oh Wonder (2015) which I listened to every single day while driving to school my first year as a high school teacher. Their dreamy and hopeful music were a lovely way to get whisked away to school. At the end of the year, I went to an Oh Wonder concert and it felt like a culminating celebration of having survived my first year teaching (which is notoriously torturous).

TV Series: Despite all the repetition, I feel like I cannot say anything else but Downton Abbey. It truly influenced all aspects of my life: the books I was drawn to read (I took a whole English lit course on Downton Abbey in college), the aesthetics I brought into my own life, and the places I traveled (yes, I took the obligatory pilgrimage to Highclere). So many friendships I’ve formed across the internet have been instigated by Downton. And, of course, I’m not sure I’ve loved any couple like I loved Mary and Matthew. My embarrassing second choice would be an Australian teen drama called Dance Academy that I watched and re-watched for most of the decade as a way to vicariously live out my ballet dreams. The show ends with a poignant film about learning to re-evaluate and re-shape your childhood dreams as you go into adulthood, which I think has been a major theme of the last decade for me.

Film: I raved about it in my London article earlier this year, but I will always be here to rave about About Time (2013). This film is so whimsical with scenes like: afternoon tea by sea, lovely nights at the theater in London, and my favorite ever montage set in the Maida Vale Tube Station. This film is soft and dreamy. It celebrates life and love and the unexpected turns that life takes. It’s all about the beauty of everyday moments and living intentionally, something I’ve tried to absorb into my own lifestyle.

Zoë G. BURNETT

Book: As with most of my recommendations, my favorite books of the decade are an exercise in knowing one’s audience. Hilarion, L’énigme des fontaines mortes by Christophe Estrada (2013) marked a personal milestone as my first French page-turner, bought in the 6th while living in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, a lifelong dream achieved. As it is still only available in its original language, do please let me know if you are a native speaker and would like to collaborate on a translation. On the other side of humanity, My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent (2017) was so intense that I couldn’t read it before bed. Tallent’s harsh creation inspired my own upcoming novel, and the force of his work continues to compel me towards writing fiction which can do that. Another is Patrick deWitt’s French Exit (2018), a novel that exemplifies how comedy treads a fine and tragic line, held together only by how much a person is willing to numb themselves to either.

Music: In 2010, I had just graduated from high school. A boy with whom it was complicated introduced me to the rock duo Sleigh Bells’s debut album Treats, released in the same year. Although he and I are no longer in touch, this and their successive albums became a staple of my personal playlist with their chaotic rhythms, lead singer Alexis Krauss’s haunting vocals, and their scathingly picturesque videos that often seem ripped from my brain. I was fortunate enough to see them open for LCD Soundsystem early in the decade, and am eagerly anticipating their next headline tour.

TV Series: The 2010s have seen a proliferation of television series that has redefined the category, allowing plots and characters (and worthy actors) to often reach their full potential in a way that only master filmmakers could handle within an average of two hours. Although Mad Men began in 2007, its finale in 2015 does not seem so long ago and still makes me ache in a good way. There have been ups and downs since; the decline and cancellation of The Borgias (2011 - 2013), the disaster that Game of Thrones (2011 - 2019) became, the almost complete broadcasting dominion of Downton Abbey (2010 - 2015, 2019). The Man in the High Castle remains my underrated dark sci-fi favorite (2015 - 2019), and I still can’t wait to see what The Crown (2016 - ), The Marvelous Mrs Maisel (2017 - ), and The Mandalorian (2019 - ) will show us next.

Movies: Without reservation, this is the most difficult decision I’ve had to make while writing for The Attic. It will probably come as no surprise that The VVitch: a New-England Folktale (2015) is my favorite film of this decade. A hallmark of new horror, it not only raised the bar for the genre but also that of historical drama. It confronts contemporary issues such as feminism, post-colonialism, and religious strife while portraying a painstakingly detailed and specific encapsulation of family life. The VVitch is a world unto itself, echoing how we comprehend reality through the chambers of our deep, dark fears. Snubbed by major award boards that continue to fuel the bland Hollywood machine, The VVitch has earned viewer recognition throughout the past five years. The surprisingly wide release of writer and director Robert Eggers’s second film The Lighthouse (2019) is a beacon of hope not only for those who want to see something new, but also for viewers who aren’t afraid to be challenged by what they are seeing.