10 weird, wild and wonderful pop culture moments that defined 2023

Another year, another 12 months of cultural history for historians to puzzle over 300 years hence. (Oh, to read the theses the robots will write about the internet’s meltdown over Harry Styles shaving his head!) Whether you watched these moments play out in real time on your FYP or tuned out around the point when Fyre Festival announced it would be coming back for round two, it’s been quite the year in pop culture.

Here, the 10 talking points that defined the zeitgeist in 2023.

1. Barbie was everything

You only had to sit in a theatre, awash in a sea of hot pink, to grasp the cultural impact of this summer’s biggest movie, “Barbie.” (Extra points if you did this as part of a Barbenheimer doubleheader, wherein you watched it before or after atomic bomb epic “Oppenheimer,” which opened the same weekend.)

The Greta Gerwig-directed phenomenon somehow managed to critique both the patriarchy and modern feminism, while becoming the first film by a female director to make more than a billion at the box office, all in one neon-saturated, dance number-sprinkled swoop. The movie leads the Golden Globes nominations with nine nods, including Best Director for Gerwig and Best Actor for its stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.

2. Taylor Swift entered her world domination era

To condense Taylor Swift’s year into a few sentences is about as impossible as condensing her 10-album discography into a single stadium show, but if she managed that for her Eras tour (she sings 44 songs over 3½ hours), we can try. In addition to her billion-dollar grossing tour and the film it spawned, which saw the highest first-day ticket sales of 2023, Swift released two chart-topping albums, “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” and “1989 (Taylor’s Version),” which are re-recordings of albums she put out years ago, part of her industry-shaking campaign to own her own work. She was the most streamed artist of the year on both Spotify and Apple Music, and got six Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year.

She did all this while still having a rather active social life: not only did she single-handedly keep New York’s paparazzi busy with her frequent restaurant dinner outings with celebrity pals, she also hard-launched a relationship with NFL star Travis Kelce. No wonder Time crowned her “Person of the Year.”

3. Samantha Jones re-entered the “Sex and the City” universe

Blink and you’d miss it, but the latest season of “And Just Like That” saw Samantha Jones finally make an appearance in the “Sex and the City” reboot. This was notable because, until then, actor Kim Cattrall had famously abstained from participating in this widely panned continuation of an iconic television show, speculated to be an indication of ongoing frostiness between Cattrall and lead Sarah Jessica Parker.

Cattrall’s scene was comically and pointedly brief: Samantha in the back of a car, on the phone to Carrie from an ocean away. It was, unequivocally, the best 73 seconds in the show’s three seasons.

4. Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour ran the world

The dress code was “silver,” the production four years in the making and the impact global. We refer, of course, to Beyoncé’s Renaissance world tour, which broke ticket sales records worldwide, becoming the second-highest grossing tour by a female artist in history and the highest grossing by a Black artist ever. The New York Times estimated a “Bey bump” of $4.5 billion (U.S.) to the economy, equivalent to the amount Beijing garnered when it hosted the 2008 Olympics.

It was a fashion feast, showcasing 148 galactically stylish costumes from 35 top designers, including Loewe, Balmain and Mugler. Special mention to Beyoncé’s 11-year-old daughter Blue Ivy, who joined her mom’s dance troupe onstage for several performances.

5. #Scandoval spilled beyond the Bravo-verse

Even if you had no idea a Bravo show called “Vanderpump Rules” existed, the scandal it spawned this spring was nigh inescapable. Dubbed “Scandoval,” the main players were Ariana Madix and her then boyfriend, Tom Sandoval (above), who both got their start as bartenders in the reality show set in an L.A. restaurant, and their cast mate Rachel Leviss.

In March, news broke that Sandoval and Leviss had been having an affair — a lightning bolt necklace was the smoking gun — which unspooled into months of revelatory headlines, including but not limited to: Leviss and Sandoval slept together while Madix was asleep next door, one cast member called another a “poo-poo head,” and Sandoval threw a temper tantrum when an article claimed his signature white nail polish was the only thing he was capable of staying loyal to.

6. We were glued to Gwyneth Paltrow’s ski crash trial

With a witheringly patronizing “I wish you well,” Gwyneth Paltrow exited a Salt Lake City courtroom, vindicated after being found not liable for crashing into an optometrist on a Utah ski slope in 2016.

The trial spawned a series of meme-able moments that kept us enthralled: Paltrow’s quiet-luxury court outfits, which made her look exactly like the sort of person who’d be on trial for a skiing-related crime; the prosecution’s fawning cross-examination that included compliments on how tall she is; and a sidebar about her acquaintance with Taylor Swift (“friendly, but not good friends”). It cemented Paltrow’s status as a blissfully out-of-touch icon, utterly unbothered by her unrelatability.

7. Hollywood went on strike

On May 2, Hollywood’s writers went on strike over a labour dispute with the major studios. At issue, in part, were residual payments from streaming (drastically lower than they might have received from old-school television) and their potential replacement by artificial intelligence. Similar issues led the actors’ union to follow suit in July, bringing the film and television industry to a near-total standstill, including promo appearances like premieres, talk shows and interviews for movies studios were releasing anyway.

It was a rare chance to see your favourite celebrity on the picket line — Olivia Wilde, Jeremy Allen White, Octavia Spencer, Mandy Moore, Richard Gere — and a moment when film and TV workers showed their power to the studios, which ultimately came to agreements with both unions after months of strike action.

8. Celebrities bared their souls for book deals

Twas the year of the tell-all celebrity memoir, which saw everyone from Britney Spears to Pamela Anderson, and Paris Hilton to Jada Pinkett Smith spill their guts and drop bombshells in literary form. Even royals got in on the act: Prince Harry’s “Spare” became the fastest selling non-fiction book of all time when it released in January.

These books, none of which could be accused of being the publicist-penned fluff of yore, set a new precedent for revelatory celebrity storytelling and had us glued to the pages.

9. Rihanna returned to the stage

That’s how you make a re-entrance: for her first live performance in five years, Rihanna descended from a platform onto the Super Bowl halftime stage, launching into a medley of her bangers, including “Work,” “Rude Boy” and “We Found Love.” It was the most watched halftime show ever and drew millions more viewers than the actual football game.

Casually, she also announced her second pregnancy by doing it with a red-latex-clad bump. Now, if only she’d follow that with news of a new album …

10. Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner became the year’s most surprising couple

A celebrity couple we did not have on our bingo card for 2023: “Call Me By Your Name” heartthrob Timothée Chalamet and lip liner mogul Kylie Jenner. But there they were, canoodling at the Beyoncé concert in Los Angeles.

Rumours had circulated about the unlikely pair as far back as January, circa Paris Fashion Week, but it took nine months for the gossip mill to procure confirmation they were dating. Fast-forward to year’s end and, per Us Weekly, this Gen Z power couple is “fairly serious.”