alt. mondays 035
Was there ever any need for new year resolutions at the start of 2021? Boy, that’s a tough beat for anyone who is just lucky they made it through 2020, isn’t it?
Away from a pandemic ripping through the world though, retrospectively looking at the lessons from last year offers a glimpse into an unintentionally revelational year for a lot of age-long conventions around everyday life. Mostly stuff the panic of COVID-19 forced us all to stop and think about.
Like for example, remote-work has fast-tracked, the digitisation of office culture. Makes you wonder why trees are still getting cut for papers when we have had the technology to evolve past them for so long, doesn’t it?
And it doesn’t stop there. The unexpected free hours that resulted from working from home forced many of us to rediscover abandoned hobbies. Though experts still seem to be in a never-ending debate about the correlation between productivity in the office vs working from your kitchen table, a paper by American Economic Review from as far back 2017, already suggested workers are happier when they work in their jammies. This apparently, is mainly because the most depressing part of the day for most people, is the commute. Go figure right?
In the larger society, retail shopping has jumped, virtual apps are reinventing how people connect and interact across borders. Even more wholesome, as the world slowly re-opens, amidst fears of a second wave, the focus for many is spending more time with loved ones — because if the lockdowns taught our capitalistic world anything it’s that individualism can be crushingly depressing when you have no choice but to isolate. Plain and simply put; we need each other.
Taking all of these into cognisance is how we arrived at #vision2021, our first playlist for the year. We didn’t bother dressing up these picks with any grand agendas because fuck it, we’re in 2021, and if you’re reading this, that means you survived 2020 too. And that’s about enough motivation to envision the next 12 months with a sense of optimism. Enjoy this 20-track selection of alt. mondays 035 featuring music from SZA, Kanye West, Wizkid, Erica Banks, Saweetie, Apartment VII + more. Happy new year guys.
Stream alt. mondays 035 via Apple Music and Spotify below: