The 25 biggest cultural moments of the decade, from the release of Frozen to the Harvey Weinstein scandal

Ed Power reflects on the scandals, releases, deals and deaths that made up the 2010s

Saturday 28 December 2019 12:00 GMT
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Harvey Weinstein, Taylor Swift and Stormzy are among the cultural figures who have been making waves over the past 10 years
Harvey Weinstein, Taylor Swift and Stormzy are among the cultural figures who have been making waves over the past 10 years

Instagram, Brexit, Avengers, Ed Sheeran headlining Wembley… look back on the decade now and it is clear that we’ve been living through an era unprecedented in its contradictions.

Social media has brought us closer even as it has whipped the world into a state of perpetual Them vs Us rancour. Pop rules over rock. Yet a scruffy troubadour from Suffolk is the biggest name in music.

Television, meanwhile, has never been more sophisticated. But the biggest show of the age was an orgy of dragons, violence and nudity. There are no secrets any more. And then Harvey Weinstein was unmasked as a sexual predator hiding in plain sight. It’s confusing, no question, and historians years hence will have quite a task making sense of it all.

For now, here are the 25 most significant culture moments of the 2010s.

One Direction form (2010)

Of Simon Cowell’s many contributions to civilisation – see also Jedward, Susan Boyle and Piers Morgan’s career in America – surely the most enduring will be the alliance of Harry, Niall, Louis, Zayn and… the other one (sorry, hi Liam…we’ve just remembered you). It was during the 2010 run of The X Factor that Cowell decided to assemble a Voltron-like pop behemoth out of five skinny teens slathered in Brylcreem. What followed was the 21st century version of The Beatles, with better hair, tighter trousers and not a single memorable tune (go on, hum one – we dare you).

David Fincher releases The Social Network (2010)

“I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo” went the choral Radiohead cover in the trailer. Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg indeed came across rather slithery in the made-in-dramatist’s heaven collaboration between Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher (with Trent Reznor pitching in on the soundtrack). This account of Facebook’s bro-tastic early years still stands up on its own terms. But it also foreshadows the unease we would later develop towards social media, Big Tech and, yes, the internet itself.

Ed Sheeran releases “The A-Team” (2011)

Unstoppable: Ed Sheeran at Lovebox in 2011

Years putting up with James Blunt and other, now forgotten, sappy sops had brought the singer-songwriter tradition to a dark and scary place. But then scruffy chap-from-down-the-street Sheeran parachuted in with his mumblecore take on Cat Stevens. He became the first troubadour to headline Wembley and is today the most streamed artist on Spotify. In his wake arrived a horde of Sons of Ed – George Ezra (Ed goes on a gap year), Hozier (Ed forgoes hair-care products), Dermot Kennedy (Ed watches The Commitments too many times), James Bay (Ed refuses to take off his hat) etc. They’re an unstoppable army and have us surrounded.

REM split (2011)

When the second biggest band of their generation (they never quite snatched the gong from U2) announced they were calling it quits, the world responded with a shrug. A decade on, REM’s relevance has shrunk further (did you care about the recent reissue of Monster?). The cultural baton has passed from rock to pop and the era of the mega band is over. Today, it feels faintly surreal it was ever a thing in the first place.

The Avengers is released (2012)

Disney accountants… assemble! It was the formula that couldn’t fail – and yet the Avengers nonetheless succeeded beyond the wildest expectations of Marvel and its Mouse Masters (Disney having acquired Marvel in 2009 for $4.24bn). Captain America, Iron Man, Black Widow, Hulk and Loki bounded across the screen together – destined to become as iconic to this generation as Luke, Leia, ET and the Ghostbusters were to previous ones. Cinema would never be the same again – to the delight of geeks everywhere and the bafflement of Martin Scorsese and many others.

Danny Boyle’s Olympics opening ceremony (2012)

The Queen and James Bond parachute into the Olympic stadium. No, really...

How at ease with itself and its place in the world Britain seemed. It was the summer of 2012 and the Trainspotting director had fired the starter pistol on the London Olympics with a stunning, yet never vainglorious, celebration of British history and culture. A mere four years on, the Brexit referendum would see the nation tearing itself apart, the exceptionalist strain in the national psyche laid bare. In hindsight, Boyle’s Olympics extravaganza was a vision of a utopian Britishness that never quite existed.

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Disney buys Star Wars (2012)

Having swooped in for Marvel, the Magic Kingdom turned its tractor-beam on Lucasfilm. The Star Wars brand was duly sucked into the mothership for a bargain $2.2bn. And then – cue swarming Tie-Fighter noises – came a galaxy of new products. The Force Awakens (2015) was an enjoyable remix of the original Star Wars (1977). But follow-up The Last Jedi crashed and burned having attempted to fix a franchise that wasn’t broken. The next phase of Operation Conquer the Entire Universe was recently put into action with The Mandalorian, the main attraction of the new Disney+ streaming service.

House of Cards debuts (2013)

Kevin Spacey snaps a dog’s neck, Robin Wright waxes chilly in glorious trouser suits. Yes, the first episode of David Fincher’s Netflix thriller had its moments. But House of Cards was far bigger than itself. It was the mega-bucks franchise with which Netflix revealed to the world the sweep of its ambitions. Oceans of content would follow – from retro romp Stranger Things to the (since cancelled) Marvel adaptations, including Dare-Devil and Jessica Jones, and royal rumpus The Crown. The way we watched TV would never be the same again.

The Red Wedding in Game of Thrones (2013)

Michelle Fairley as Catelyn Stark and Kelly Long as Joyeuse Erenford

Look out…they’re behind you! Actually no, they’re all around you. And now they are stabbing your pregnant wife in the belly… So long Winterfell hero Robb Stark and hello Game of Thrones, cultural juggernaut. With season three’s Red Wedding – the penultimate episode was actually called “The Rains of Castamere Game of Thrones adaptors David Benioff and DB Weiss proved themselves masters of subverting expectations. At the time, they must have felt on top of the world. After all, George RR Martin was close to finishing his second-but-last Song of Ice and Fire novel, The Winds of Winter, leaving Benioff and Weiss more than enough time to bring the show to a satisfactory end. What could possibly go wrong?

The finale of Breaking Bad (2013)

As we try to put the disastrous finale of Game of Thrones behind us, it is comforting to recall those blockbuster shows that concluded on a satisfying note. After five searing seasons, the Ballad of Walter White finished with Bryan Cranston’s chemistry teacher turned meth magnate bleeding out, as his sidekick Jesse drove into the night and Badfinger blared. The perfect end to the great morality play of our age.

Frozen is released (2013)

It is a sign how we have come, and how quickly that, a mere six years ago, a sugar-frosted power ballad about learning to love the real you could be considered vaguely revolutionary, even subversive. But “Let It Go”, the song upon which Frozen coasted to global success, was received as something genuinely groundbreaking by minorities everywhere. Elsa embraced the ice queen within. And outsiders and outcasts the world over stood up and sang along. It was a big gloopy gummy bear of a tune. Yet it encouraged the downtrodden to find their voice.

Taylor Swift goes pop (2014)

Taylor Swift performs in Los Angeles in 2014

She was already a phenomenon – but the true dawning of the age of Tay-Tay came with “Shake It Off”, her self-referential rumination on fame, self-esteem and finding the courage to love yourself in a world of online hate and anger. Swift was confirmed as the first pop star forged completely in the social media age.

Gamergate (2014)

The existence of a huge hidden army of trolls and extremists drumming in the deep was confirmed during this frightening online hate campaign against females in the video game industry (whether developers, journalists or simply gamers). The controversy would eventually burn itself out. Yet we had been put on notice. The internet might bring people together. It is also a breeding ground for intolerance and paranoia.

Hamilton debuts on Broadway (2015)

A musical about the constitutional underpinnings of the nascent United States, told via the medium of hip hop? It sounded like a spoof from Saturday Night Live, rather than the must-see it became. But Lin-Manuel Miranda was not throwing away his shot – and Hamilton went stellar, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Love Island is rebooted (2015)

Caroline Flack on ‘Love Island’

Reality TV reached middle age this decade and we looked back at early 2000s Big Brother and wondered at the innocence of it all. Enter ITV’s revamp of the forgotten 2005 series Love Island. Toned singletons were locked down in a Mediterranean villa and encouraged to hook up and break up. Questions about the responsibility television producers owed their guinea pigs began to be asked when two former contestants died by suicide. Yet the merry-go-round spun on and indeed gathers speed as we count down to the first winter edition of the series.

David Bowie’s death (2016)

As T-shirt designers and cover bands know only too well, rock stars have been passing away for decades. But until recently these deaths were tragic mishaps. The ageing process is the new heroin overdose as the classic rock generation reaches the end of the setlist. Bowie dying in 2016, just three days after the release of incredible final album, Blackstar, was the one that hit many of us hardest. Yet he was merely one among a legion that also included Leonard Cohen, Lemmy from Motorhead, Glenn Frey of The Eagles and The Fall’s Mark E Smith (and yes, this is the first time in recorded history that The Eagles and Mark E Smith have appeared side by side in a sentence).

JK Rowling brings back Harry Potter with The Cursed Child (2016)

Ten years ago, Harry Potter looked like yesterday’s phenomenon, ready to assume its place on the dusty shelf next to Lord of the Rings and Narnia. But JK Rowling couldn’t resist going back, first with this sprawling play (written by Jack Thorne from a story by Rowling) set partly inside the head of the middle-aged Harry. And then came the wildly uneven Fantastic Beasts films – aka the reason Johnny Depp still has a job. Rowling had started the Quidditch match over, for good or ill.

Apple AirPods are released (2016)

Apple AirPods launch event in San Francisco

Having democratised mp3 players and invented the smartphone, Apple with its AirPods has introduced the masses to Bluetooth earbuds. The tech went immediately mainstream too. One moment you couldn’t help thinking how silly those free-floating buds looked. The next you were coughing up £200 for a set of your own.

Sally Rooney publishes Conversations with Friends (2017)

Rooney’s debut novel saw her hailed one of those archetypal “voices of a generation”. And she created even bigger tremors with follow-up Normal People (soon to be a BBC adaptation). But what her ascent really proved was that bright-eyed millennials have supplanted middle-aged white male novelists as the sages of the age. What’s Jonathan Franzen been up to lately? Were any of us even aware he published a book (Purity) as recently as 2015?

Fortnite launches (2017)

Video games used to be the new Hollywood, with top titles routinely outperforming big movies. But with Fortnite, they became the new rock’n’roll, surging through the bloodstream of youth culture. Where once kids worshipped pop stars and footballers, now their imagination is dominated by candy-coloured combatants jumping off cliffs and sneak stabbing one another in the virtual kidneys. Fortnite has sent an entire generation weak at the knees.

Harvey Weinstein is disgraced (2017)

The producer turned himself in, after a sex assault investigation, in New York in May 2018

Just two years on #MeToo has brought about unimaginable change, at least in the entertainment industry. And it began with a New York Times report unmasking the power-broker producer as a brutal predator. The film world was turned upside down, reputation after reputation demolished. Yet how far have the shock waves truly travelled? #MeToo has never seriously troubled the music industry. And out in the real world, many women remain at the mercy of men like Weinstein.

Billie Eilish achieves one billion streams on Spotify without releasing an album (2018)

Four years on from Taylor Swift and “Shake It Off”, pop music was about to be reinvented all over again. Influenced by Nine Inch Nails as much as by The Neptunes, Billie O’Connell and her brother Finneas have pulled pop into a dark, nightmarish never-land. And we can’t have enough of it. The impact is comparable to that of Nirvana on rock, when hair metal was rendered suddenly irrelevant. Poison and Mötley Crüe in this scenario are Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and their contemporaries.

Kanye West visits the White House (2018)

The Kanye psychodrama has been must-see viewing since he rushed Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs. But now came a moment for the history books as an egotistical eccentric with ludicrous dress sense… met Kanye West (should that be the other way around?).

Stormzy headlines Glastonbury (2019)

Stormzy and his Union Jack stab vest hit Glastonbury this summer

Grime was already far too successful for us to entertain the idea that it “came of age” when Stormzy, in his Banksy stab vest, closed Friday night at Glastonbury. But this was nonetheless a headline moment as the artist brought his state-of-the-nation lyrics and beats to the ultimate stage.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge signs a $20m deal with Amazon (2019)

Traditional television is the past, streaming the future. And in this global marketplace what chance have state broadcasters such as the BBC? Not much, it was confirmed, as Phoebe Waller-Bridge followed her triumphant second season of Fleabag by inking a $20m exclusivity deal with Amazon. Streaming, it was made painfully clear, is the Champions League of telly. State broadcasting is meanwhile on its way to becoming whatever they call the Vauxhall Conference nowadays.

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