Year in review: The biggest newsmakers of 2021

Is there a better, more shiny-domed figurehead for 2021 than Spotify’s , a living symbol of the increasing mutability of the common fact? Rogan’s endless quest for ignorance was a sort of leitmotif for the entire year: Joe Rogan . Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan expresses vaccine skepticism, , treats it with ivermectin, then gets mad when people refer to it as “horse medicine.” Joe Rogan . Rogan is somehow the soil in which so much of the chaos of this information-agnostic year seemed to grow: You’d be reading , and then, BAM, there’s Joe Rogan, intruding into the narrative once again. [William Hughes]

Kathryn Hahn started 2021 with a top-tier MCU performance as Agatha Harkness on Disney+’s WandaVision—which led to and the great She didn’t win the Emmy, but the buzz got her into and even helped her get cast as Joan Rivers in a Showtime series—but, in a bizarre twist, when it turned out that the producers didn’t have the rights to Rivers’ story. Don’t worry about Hahn, though: [Sam Barsanti]

With a rock solid album promo plan and a whole lotta guts, Lil Nas X moved from a potential one-hitter to one of the biggest names in the pop and rap game. Starting his year off with a bang, he spurred plenty of internet controversy with his devilish music video for “” featuring a racy lap dance on Satan himself. The video was followed by the of Satan shoes and a wardrobe malfunction on , and was topped off with the release of a . Lil Nas X made the internet his wonderland, taking joy in shutting down the haters. [Gabrielle Sanchez]

Machine Gun Kelly is the kind of celebrity who has been around for a long time but, until this year, you would have been reasonably forgiven for having never heard of him or. Part of the reason that changed is that he started dating Megan Fox and the two have been …. But also his music career really took off thanks to and [Sam Barsanti]

Few people failed upward harder in 2021 than country music’s Morgan Wallen, who managed to top a 2020 that saw him behave in a fashion that was too unruly for even a Kid Rock-owned bar (imagine it) by . Wallen’s label, the country stations, and the CMAs all responded by expressing public censure. while Michael Strahan grilled him (by morning TV standards, at least). And the fans? The fans , leading to the paradoxical situation where Wallen is now nominated for at least one music award he’s [William Hughes]

“My friend’s cousin’s swollen balls” became the phrase of the week when took to Twitter to explain the far-reaching reasoning behind her absence at this year’s Met Gala. What started as an outlandish online rant eventually turned into “Ballgate,” catching the attention of . Around the same time, Minaj caught more headlines for regarding a previous rape case against her husband . [Gabrielle Sanchez]

For someone who didn’t have any new movies to promote this year, Quentin Tarantino sure made headlines a lot. He always seemed to have something attention-grabbing to say—like when he mentioned that , or. And that’s without even getting into his incendiary conversations with and . Tarantino has also spent the year constantly giving us updates—and immediately changing his mind—about what he wants to do in his career. One day; another he’s . [Tatiana Tenreyro]

The year 2020 was huge for Taylor Swift. She released two critically acclaimed albums—and —and announced that she’d be re-recording her previous albums after her . And 2021 turned out to be just as major for the artist. Swift first , followed by. The latter was widely celebrated and discussed by her fervent fanbase, as it includes the 10-minute version of “All Too Well,” which tells the story of a turbulent romance with an older love (rumored to be Jake Gyllenhaal, who Swift briefly dated in 2011). The uncut lyrics are delightfully scathing. Swift, who knows her fanbase all too well (heh), also that her followers quickly fell in love with, starring Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink and Teen Wolf’s Dylan O’Brien. [Tatiana Tenreyro]

This wasn’t Timothée Chalamet’s breakout year (that would be 2017, with Call Me By Your Name and Lady Bird), but he certainly made a sizable impact on 2021. Chalamet starred in Wes Anderson’s and Denis Villeneuve’s (which, thankfully, is); he’s going to appear in Adam McKay’s timely apocalypse movie; and he even played Edward Scissorhands’ son in a weird car commercial. On top of all of that, he for an upcoming prequel. Chalamet is here, and he’s definitely not going anywhere. [Sam Barsanti]

Rapper Travis Scott had a fairly quiet 2021, at least for the first 10 months: A few collaborations, a track on Kanye West’s Donda, . That relative peace , the first night of the Scott-produced-and-fronted Astroworld festival in Houston. Details of the causes of the lethal crowd crush that began during Scott’s set that night remain unclear—and are likely to continue to be the subject of . The grim results are all too obvious, though: 10 dead, including a 9-year-old child, and hundreds injured. Meanwhile, Scott faces not only legal threats, but an ongoing examination of the ways his behavior, past and present, may or may not have influenced a thoroughly avoidable tragedy. [William Hughes]