Live streams – and TikTok – came into their own, 1969 burst on to the screen, and everywhere, the sound of one producer’s Midas touchFiona Maddocks’s best classical
music of 2021Read the Observer critics’ review of 2021 in full hereOther people! We stepped – some hesitantly, others pell-mell – back outside last spring. Even if summer and autumn 2021 often felt like a cautious return to normalish (terms and conditions very much applied), amps were dusted down, guitar techs tuned up and Portaloos could not be hired for love nor money as audiences and artists once again met IRL to exchange CO2.
For every summer festival that went ahead, though, it felt like two were cancelled. The live music industry cried out for government-backed insurance schemes; these came very late in the day. Glastonbury went online, but glitched; Kano, Idles and Thom Yorke’s new project the Smile nonetheless made memories. Indoor venues reopened; the practice of being politely frisked for your Covid status became just another part of going out.