Beyonce

The various film and TV awards ceremonies so far this year have been a predictable round; there have been few surprising winners, and the events both on-stage and off have largely been well-behaved and respectable. All hail, then, to the Grammys, which has managed to take conventional expectations of what an awards show should be and has subverted them considerably, combining everything from a transcendental comeback by one of music’s greatest stars to one of the night’s winners being dragged off by police in handcuffs. First things first though: the Grammys represented yet another victory for Taylor Swift, a woman who, at this rate, is going to become TIME’s person of the year for a second year in a row.

Even rock and roll can have produced few stranger paths than the one that led a then physically unprepossessing, raspy-voiced African-American named Anna Mae Bullock from her early days as a devoutly Baptist sharecropper’s daughter in Depression-era Tennessee, to her final years as a practicing Buddhist living in a whitewashed mansion overlooking the dove-blue haze of Lake Geneva. That was the life trajectory of the artist known to the world as Tina Turner, who died Wednesday at the age of eighty-three.

Renaissance, Beyoncé's first solo album in six years, dropped at the end of July. Critics raved about the genius of Queen Bey. Pitchfork gave the album a 9/10, calling it "immaculate." The Guardian referred to it as a "breathtaking, maximalist tour de force." "America Has a Problem and Beyoncé Ain’t It," the New York Times declared. Thematically, Renaissance is courageous. It's a departure from the pop-laced R&B songs we typically hear from Beyoncé. It leans heavily on club music; it subverts expectations. However, Beyoncé's clear desire to make a statement means that the entire project comes across as trying way too hard. It's an album a listener is supposed to "get" rather than enjoy.

It's been four years since pop superstar Taylor Swift went full lib. After years of speculation over her political leanings (her silence on issues led some to believe she was a secret Trump supporter), Swift urged her fellow Tennessee residents to vote against the "appalling" and "terrifying" Republican Marsha Blackburn for Senate. "I will be voting for Phil Bredesen for Senate and Jim Cooper for House of Representatives. Please, please educate yourself on the candidates running in your state and vote based on who most closely represents your values," Swift wrote in an Instagram post. Since then, Swift has been outspoken about her pro-choice, anti-gun, and anti-Trump views.

Like Moses descending from the heights of Mount Sinai, former president and current prophet Barack Obama has today delivered his latest tome to the masses. A Promised Land, his fourth book, is a 'riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making — from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy'. Or so his publisher says. Cockburn, old-fashioned fellow that he is, has believed in the power of democracy for longer than 12 years. To mark the book's publication, Obama has summoned one of the spirits of his bygone era: he's tweeted out a playlist. 'Music has always played an important role in my life — and that was especially true during my presidency,' he writes.