Under the Radar’s Top 130 Songs of 2021

Jan 25, 2022 Mark Redfern

It is confounding that so many outlets insist on posting best songs of the year lists in early December. Not only are there several more weeks left in the year, in which a number of potential great songs could be released, it also takes time to digest all the tracks released in November and earlier in the fall. We’ve obviously taken too much time.

Tim Roth & Iazua Larios on ‘Sundown”

Jan 24, 2022 Web Exclusive

Leading actors Tim Roth and Iazua Larios discuss the themes of their latest film ‘Sundown”

Elizaveta on the 10th Anniversary of Her Overlooked Pop Masterpiece “Beatrix Runs”

Jan 24, 2022

“On one hand, I’m a bit of a contradiction—in me reside basically two, three, or four different artists,” Russian-American pianist/singer/songwriter Elizaveta Khripounova explains. “I think that maybe what makes me a bit of a weird artist also is that at heart and in essence, I was always a composer, rather than a performer. So, for me, it was always about writing songs.”

Yard Act on Their Debut Album “The Overload”

Jan 21, 2022 Issue #69 - 20th Anniversary Issue

Amusing characters populate some of the songs of Leeds, England post-punk four-piece Yard Act, including those on their debut album, The Overload. Midway through the album’s title track, frontman and wordsmith James Smith sings from the perspective of Graham, who dispenses unwelcome advice about how they’d be “better off kicking that dickhead singer you’ve got in out the band” and should stick to covers and avoid political lyrics, especially if they want to perform at a pub called The Grand run by a landlord named Fat Andy.

Under the Radar’s Top 130 Songs of 2021 Part 1

Jan 25, 2022

It is confounding that so many outlets insist on posting best songs of the year lists in early December (in 2021, December 6 seemed to be a popular date to post such lists, including ones by Pitchfork, Paste, and Rolling Stone, with NME’s list dropping the next day). Not only are there several more weeks left in the year, in which a number of potential great songs could be released, it also takes time to digest all the tracks released in November and earlier in the fall. We’ve obviously taken too much time.

As with our Top 100 Albums of 2021 list, we had other pressing priorities in the fall of 2021 (our 20th Anniversary Issue and Covers of Covers album) that delayed deciding on our favorite songs of 2021. As a base we started a nomination process with all of the songs that landed in the main rankings (usually a Top 10) of our Songs of the Week lists in 2021. We then asked our writers for additional nomination suggestions (they had to be original songs first released in 2021, no covers). Once we had the final nomination list, our writers voted. When everything was calculated it added up to 130 songs we particularly liked. While many of the songs are taken from records that landed on our Top 100 Albums of 2021 list, there are also some standalone singles, songs from 2021 full-lengths that didn’t make the albums list, and advance singles from some anticipated 2022 albums. We limited it to no more than three songs per artist, otherwise half of each album from Japanese Breakfast and Wolf Alice (our #1 and #2 albums of the year) would’ve shown up on this list. By Mark Redfern

The KVB, DEK @ The Bodega, Nottingham, UK, 21st January 2022

Jan 23, 2022 By Dom Gourlay

The KVB’s first ever headline show in Nottingham goes down an absolute storm

Sundance 2022: Ten Films We Can’t Wait To See

Jan 23, 2022 By Kaveh Jalinous

Picking just ten films was an extraordinarily difficult task, but here are the films that we are most excited to see at this year’s Sundance.