The Drama Club: May 2026

This month in The Drama Club: Lykke Li's final album, two films destined to leave you struggling to breathe, a playlist for kissing in the rain, and what happens when fashion forgets it's supposed to be dangerous. Let's go →

Each month, I am sharing a playlist. You can read about the playlist and then find streaming links below. If you use a streaming service that you do not see below, please reach out and I will create links for your streamer for choice.

Last month, while rain drizzled around us and I waited for the traffic light to change, I watched a couple kiss in the rain. From my perspective across the street, it felt like maybe the kiss was the result of a successful first date. Everything seemed to slow down around the couple while they shared saliva and there was something intrinsically beautiful about it. Together, they had abandoned any insecurities about the rain and chosen each other.

Aerodynamism is a playlist about that feeling of abandonment in pursuit of choosing someone else. It’s not exactly a sentimental playlist and should not be pigeon holed into being a playlist for life’s romantic moments, as it holds songs you probably would never think to play while looking into the eyes of someone you love. Instead songs like “Nosedive” by Man/Woman/Chainsaw and “idea 1” by Kelela operate as a bit of a nudge from the universe to just let it all go. But don’t fret, you’ve got your expected kiss me softly in the rain moments courtesy of James Blake and Arlo Parks. It’s all about balance.

At the center of the playlist, there is a turn. Throwbacks by Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Chairlift make room for the playlist to abandon acoustic guitars and embrace synthesizers. It’s the moment where your safety with your person is confirmed and everything starts to flow. It’s the moment I witnessed when two people found each other and everything suddenly made sense. That’s what Aerodynamism is about. I hope you find it.

Stream Aerodynamism on Apple Music / Soundcloud / Spotify

Each month, I recommend two movies: one you can watch at home and one you should head out to the theater for. At the end of this section, you’ll find a list of some releases coming this month.

Sometimes, you just don’t want to know very much about a movie before you see it. There is power in the unknown. You can’t allow your brain to make assumptions, meaning you’re able to sit in the theater and let a movie grab you in ways you never could have imagined. That’s the kind of feeling I want to have going into Backrooms, the new A24 film coming to theaters at the end of the month. The film stars Oscar nominees Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve but not much is available as to their roles. What we do know about Backrooms is mostly informed by the director’s previously released web series of the same name from 2022. In the four years since its release, the series has garnered over 75 million views and is considered one of the most successful “found footage” online horror series of all time. Judging from the online series and the film’s trailer, it would appear that the feature film follows a therapist whose patient has gone missing into an alternate dimension. That’s all you need to know. You can find out the rest when Backrooms arrives in theaters on May 29.

There was a night last month where I was transported to a rave in Morocco. Óliver Laxe’s Sirat is the kind of movie that simply takes over the entire room where it is playing. Frankly, there is nothing casual about this movie. From the opening scene of a DIY rave being set up in the desert to the shocking twists and turns of the film’s plot to the astounding sound design and original score by electronic musician Kangding Ray, Sirat is a deeply serious glimpse into a kind of unimaginable world far from our daily routines. There are elements of it that resemble my favorite David Lynch film, Lost Highway, while others distinctly echo Gaspar Noé’s 2018 film Climax, two films that use music and disorienting camera work to establish an addictive yet nightmare-esque quality. Sirat’s plot follows a father who is looking for his missing daughter who he believes is at the desert rave. But that’s simply the way in. But that’s simply the way in. In Islamic eschatology, the word sirat refers to the bridge all of us must cross on Judgement Day on our way from heaven to hell. Casual stuff. By the time the title card hits nearly 25 minutes into the film, you’re on that bridge and the film is moving in a myriad of directions exploring the purpose of family, dance and our larger place in the world. The cinematography is in and of itself worth a watch by any film enthusiast, but the film manages to establish such a unique tone that any viewer will easily become enthralled. It’s the kind of film that trickles into your mind and leaves you gasping for air. You can watch Sirat now on Hulu. 

More May Movies To Be Ready For:

The Devil Wears Prada 2 (Out Now)

Mortal Kombat II (May 8)

Is God Is (May 15)

I Love Boosters (May 22)

Each month, I recommend two pieces of music: something new and something I have recently returned to. At the end of this section, you’ll find a list of some releases coming this month.

This Friday, Lykke Li is releasing her eighth and potentially final album, The Afterparty. Lykke has been in rotation for me since her debut, Youth Novels, back in 2008 and has been one of the most consistent indie pop darlings ever since. 2018’s so sad so sexy has aged perfectly, with tracks like “two nights” and “sex money feelings die” feeling fresher now than when they arrived. Her 2014 release, I Never Learn, is an album more people should consider to be a pop bible, with its perfect blend of pop sensibilities and moving acoustic soundscapes. “No Rest For The Wicked” is a 10/10 song that stands out in her stacked catalog and deserves a spot on every Best Songs Since 2000 list. After a fairly forgettable 2022 album that quite literally no one remembers, I am thrilled to tell you The Afterparty is ready to recement her legacy. The album has been preceded by three singles, all of which are fabulously melancholic pop tracks written from the perspective of a heartbroken woman who still manages to find beauty in the every day. The best of the three is “Knife In The Heart,” which is an early song of the year contender for me. The track features a stellar earworm of a hook courtesy of a co-write by Rick Nowels. Nowels is one of the most prolific writers of the last forty years in pop and his work is embedded into classics like Madonna’s Ray of Light, Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence and Celine Dion’s seminal Falling into You. That's a lineage. And with The Afterparty, Lykke Li has finally found her place in it.

Last month at Coachella, I spent a lot of time with Boys Noize. First, there was his showstopping collaborative set with Nine Inch Nails that I wrote about as my favorite set of the festival. Then, there was his DJ set an hour later, which was a relentless sonic journey of house music unafraid to be brashly feral.  While trying to keep up with the nearly 140bpm pace of the set, I was reminded of seeing the German-Iraqi electronic producer at my second Coachella in 2008. At the time, he was touring his debut, Oi Oi Oi, an absolute menace of an album. I distinctly recall watching as he played his iconic remix of Feist’s “My Moon My Man” and thinking, “this guy just gets it. He gets me.” It was a different time for dance music, one less obsessed with drops and more focused on how far you could distort sounds until suddenly they sounded even better than their original form. Oi Oi Oi was the kind of record I would confidently put on at a house party in the late 2000s and know everyone was going to have a good time. From the technologic “hello” that starts the album opener “& Down” to the French electro infused groove of “Shine Shine” to the sheer force of tracks like “Oh!” and “Lava Lava,” Oi Oi Oi is banger after banger in a way most electronic albums these days are too scared to attempt. Dance music is currently in a frat bro nightmare, with everything sounding too similar and lacking any sort of edge. Going back to the bloghouse era has been a reminder of how much crunch the genre used to showcase. Thankfully, Boys Noize has released a few tracks this year and he let them shake the Yuma Tent at Coachella to the point where my vision was going blurry. As his set began, he baptized the room with “HYYTUP” and never once let the energy die down. That’s the kind of edge more dance music deserves to have these days. In our deeply frustrating and emotionally complex modern world, it serves as a balm and escape route. So, go ahead, put on Oi Oi Oi and sweat it out. We all deserve it.

More May Albums To Be Ready For:

Aldous Harding - Train On The Island (May 8)

MUNA - Dancing On The Wall (May 8)

Maisie Peters - Florescence (May 15)

Boards of Canada - Inferno (May 29)

Iceage - For Love Of Grace & The Hereafter (May 29)

Each month, I recommend two pieces of television, which means less and less these days but for our purposes, television means anything you can stream that isn’t structured as a film. At the end of this section, you’ll find a list of some releases coming this month.

Did you know there is a new Spider-Man show coming to Amazon Prime later this month? Did you know it is a noir style series that is being released in both full color and black and white versions? Did you know Nicolas Cage is playing Spider-Man? Neither did I. But it’s true. Later this month, Spider-Noir is coming to Prime with an eight episode series directed by Nzingha Stewart. Unlike what most would expect, in this specific universe Spider-Man is not a high schooler. Instead, he is an aging private investigator going through a deeply upsetting time in his life. Enter Nicolas Cage. This is Cage’s first leading role in a television series and he was a huge proponent of releasing the black and white edit of the series in hopes of garnering new fans of the entire noir genre. Stylistically, Spider-Noir is the kind of series that anyone who loved Sin City as much as me will have to give at least one or two episodes to prove itself. The visual language on display here is succinct, specific and completely in conflict with nearly all other Marvel properties, meaning maybe it will prove to be something worth our time. Then again, the quality of Marvel’s outputs has been on such a striking decline over the past few years that maybe Spider-Noir will lack the punch. But read the beginning of this paragraph again and tell me you’re not at least a little intrigued. We will all find out if Spider-Noir can live up to the hype when it arrives to Amazon Prime on May 25.

On May 21, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will air its final episode. And when it goes, it takes the entire franchise with it. CBS is retiring the Late Show name after 33 years, first under Letterman, then under Colbert, and what replaces it is Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen. I don't need to say anything else about that. What I will say is that The Colbert Report was the first piece of political satire that made me feel like paying attention was worth it. That show, and that character, cracked something open in the culture at exactly the right moment, during the Bush years, when absurdity was the only honest response to what was happening in the room. Colbert carried that sensibility into The Late Show and held it through eleven seasons, nine of which made it the highest-rated late night program on television. CBS called the cancellation a financial decision. They also said Colbert was irreplaceable and chose to prove it by cancelling the show entirely rather than finding someone new. I believe them on the second part. The Late Show is ending during an administration that treats accountability like an inconvenience and satire like a threat. Make of that what you will. Colbert certainly did. 

More May TV To Be Ready For:

Life on Earth: Attenborough’s Greatest Adventure - PBS (May 6)

Amadeus - STARZ (May 8)

Chopped Castaways - Food Network/HBO Max (May 12)

Dutton Ranch - Paramount+ (May 15)

The Boroughs - Netflix (May 21)

Each month, I dig into one cultural topic that feels unavoidable. Sometimes it’s a moment, sometimes it’s a movement, and sometimes it’s just a question I can’t stop thinking about.

From the jump, I did not like this year's Met Gala theme. "Costume Art" is the kind of thing I would expect to hear from a 7th grader trying to convince me their horrendous outfit was actually groundbreaking. It is not the phrase I thought would create an inspiring first Monday in May.

Unfortunately, I was right.

At its best, the Met Gala is a warzone of fashion. As looks move up the carpet, our views of what clothing can accomplish should be relentlessly challenged. Every person walking those steps should inspire gasps, applause, tears, or at minimum some strange sensation you don't have a word for yet. The carpet is not a runway or a photo opportunity. It is a response. The right Met Gala look is a conversation between the person wearing the clothes, the designer who made them, and the institution hosting the night. Unlike award shows, the Met Gala is not necessarily about being beautiful. On the first Monday in May, beauty is the floor, not the ceiling. It's about standing next to some of the greatest art in the world and having the audacity to belong there. It is a night to say something that could not have been said any other way. At its worst, the Met Gala is, frankly, a costume party.

Thankfully, not everything was a Party City costume last night. Emma Chamberlain stunned in 1997 Mugler, a perfect designer for the theme. Lisa's Robert Wun look featured 3D-scans of the singer's own arms and hands to create a silhouette inspired by traditional Thai dance positions. French singer Yseult took my breath away with her Harris Reed demi-couture look featuring over 400 hours of glass bead work. And then there was Chase Infiniti's stunning Thom Browne look, which demanded the viewer pay attention and realize the intricacies of the craft, just as we would a Renaissance painting.

But those were exceptions. And exceptions, by definition, prove the rule.

Kylie Jenner in Schiaparelli is where that logic collapsed most visibly. The craftsmanship was never in question. Schiaparelli does not make mistakes with construction. But there is a difference between a house that knows how to build and a look that knows what to say. This was the former without the latter. Jenner arrived in a gown pulled halfway down with a bodysuit underneath, serving the camera without serving the theme. It is the kind of look that exists entirely in the screenshot. It has no argument, no interiority, no risk. It asks nothing of the viewer whatsoever. And in a room full of the world's greatest art, asking someone to simply look is the quietest form of failure. This is exactly the failure mode the theme should have prevented. “Costume Art" was the theme. Art makes an argument. Art has a point of view that exists whether or not anyone is watching. Some looks dare you to look away. This one never gave you a reason to look in the first place.

If fashion is art, then it has to behave like art. It has to be controversial, unafraid, and solely, irreducibly yours. The rule at the Met Gala now, however, seems to be: Rihanna. Not literally. But spiritually, silhouette by silhouette, the carpet has become a tribute show nobody announced. Rihanna has become the canonical reference, the gravitational center everything else orbits. Think about what she actually did. In 2015, she arrived last, in a 55-pound canary yellow Guo Pei gown that took two years to make, the train fanning out across the steps like a proclamation. In 2018, she dressed as the Pope. Not Pope-adjacent. Not Pope-inspired. She borrowed a real cardinal's mitre, wore it with a Maison Margiela minidress designed by John Galliano, and made you reckon with Catholic power, beauty, and transgression in a single look. In 2021, she walked the carpet in an oversized black Balenciaga overcoat with a matching beanie and told Essence she wanted something that felt like a black hoodie, the thing we're usually incriminated by. Each of those looks was a claim. A statement that had never been made before and could not be repeated. We saw the legacy of these moments in looks from SZA, Beyoncé, Sam Smith, and even Madonna. Amongst a sea of her own influence, it was poignant that Rihanna’s Margiela look at times felt a modern take on the Magic Mirror from Snow White.

There is a disease in culture right now. It has infected music, film, television, and fashion equally. The disease is nostalgia mistaken for vision and reference mistaken for creativity. We have found comfort in the familiar dressed up as something new. The Met Gala carpet is most certainly not immune. Remember, influence without interrogation is just imitation. When designers and their clients are constructing looks that rhyme with past appearances rather than building something new, the carpet stops being a conversation and starts being a cover song. And here is the thing about cover songs: the best ones understand that the point is never to replicate. The point is to find what the original could not say and say it instead. The best covers bring something to the song that was not there before. What we are seeing on the Met Gala carpet is not even that. It is karaoke. It is people hitting the notes without understanding why the notes were written. The best looks at any Met Gala never ask for permission from the past. Instead of sampling, they make a claim about the present that belonged entirely to them. Fashion does not build culture by looking backwards. It builds culture by being the first person in the room to say something nobody was brave enough to say yet. That is what the Met Gala carpet is supposed to feel like every year.