Not too long ago, a friend pointed out that we know more people who’ve been laid off than people who haven’t. She was right! But it’s not just our chosen industry that feels like it’s approaching a flatline; media is hellish, just like the rest of the world. In a society that values human productivity over humans and clout over... everything, reconciling meaningful creative work with a living wage can feel impossible at worst and really fucking hard at best. What are we in the face of the Algorithm and the brands? Anything? Idk. I lost faith for a while.

Lately, though, I’ve felt inspired by friends and peers and artists who are pushing on and plowing through. If this year blew everything up, I now believe profound transition will follow, a time to push the circles that make up our Venn diagrams a little closer together. I think that’s why I cried the first, second, and third times I listened to Ariana Grande’s “thank u, next.” At least half of what remains of The FADER editorial staff reported the same. At home in a quiet bedroom, or surrounded by strangers in an Uber pool, her graciousness and honeyed resolve did us in. Metrics-wise, it soon became her most successful release.

“I’ve loved and I’ve lost / But that’s not what I see,” she twinkles, over production that sounds like it would be at home on any radio station in 1998. Ari has a massive audience, but here she sings as though she’s locked eyes with herself in a mirror. Sure, “thank u, next” is a song about romantic breakups — she namechecks her relationships with Big Sean, Mac Miller, and Pete Davidson — but really it’s a philosophy on par with anything Eckhart Tolle has ever said. Her clarity is universal and contagious, and her logic is somehow warm and gentle: if something doesn’t serve you, maybe its absence will. —RAWIYA KAMEIR