Loving this trend of looking back at political statements in old songs and realizing with disappointment how relevant they still are. For today’s installation of cultural disappointment, here’s a hip hop song about abortion, dropped by Digable Planets back in 2010. It’s really good, and unfortunately now poignant as always. Some lyrics to entice you: “Aborting mission should be your volition / But if Souter and Thomas have their way / You’ll be standing in line unable to get Welfare while they’ll be out / Hunting and fishing / It has always been around, it will always have a niche / But they’ll make it a privilege, not a right / Accessible only to the rich / Hey, pro-lifers need to dig themselves / Because life doesn’t stop after birth / And for a child born to the unprepared / It might even just get worse.” More of these, please.

Every year, Pantone selects a single color to reflect our times. Perhaps you’re wondering what they’d choose at the end of 2018, the third consecutive intolerable year on record. Drumroll, please. It’s……. coral. “Living Coral,” actually, because it’s not a paint swatch without an adjective, this is a color full of optimism and joy. Oh, and of reefs, which are actively dying. Which, I think, also makes coral the color of denial. Coral is a forced grin through gritted teeth, insisting, “Everything. Is. FINE.” Coral is a 1950s dad insisting we all get along as a family, goddamnit. Coral is smiling instead of crying because you don’t want to get fired.

This isn’t the first time Pantone chose a color too aspirational to be taken seriously. There’s last year’s purple, of course, announced just a year into Trump’s presidency; 2017’s ‘greenery’ amidst sweeping climate change, and let’s not forget 2016’s dual blue-and-pink, because the gender binary was totally over by then. Call it zeitgeist or call it hitting us while we’re down. What is the color of salt in a wound?

Panning away from denial, radio stations are banning ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ because it is, well, rapey. Among topics covered in the song: slut shaming, roofies, the male ego, ‘no’ registering as ‘yes’ (she literally says, “the answer is no,” as a part of the four-minute coercion). However, many high-horsed culture critics refute the song’s rapiness, citing how repressive things were in the 1940s and, given that context, how clearly the female singer actually does want to get it on. But given, uh, *today’s* climate, and also how we need a full-article explainer on why ‘no the song is actually ok!,’ it might be worth a re-think.

Please reference this Nars lipstick in coral : universally flattering, as the lore goes, and particularly effective in rendering lips “delicious-looking,” à la Dean Martin. Aptly named “Breaking Free.”