If this strange, interrupted year has had a positive (and not a lateral flow test), it’s been that many of us finally had the time to engage fully with culture. With our regular haunts closed up for much of the year and most travel on hold, getting away from it all frequently meant popping on the headphones, sitting back and luxuriating in all the music and podcasts we’d normally be too busy to appreciate. And with artists creating culture in isolation for an audience who desperately needed connection, this turned out to be something of a vintage year on all counts. From future rap classics and cosmic jazz to forensic investigations and long-form interviews, here’s our pick of 2021’s best.

A 16-track record pumped full of ideas, sketches, sonic invention and verbal revelations, Call Me If You Get Lost sees Tyler, the Creator team up with DJ Drama, the Philly native responsible for the Gangsta Grillz series. Little goes over three minutes in this portrait of an artist at the height of his powers and bursting with inspiration.

Five years after his previous full-length release, Tennessee rapper Mr Isaiah Rashad’s The House Is Burning came soaked in the kind of swampy production, woozy rhythms and vocal pyrotechnics that marked Outkast’s early work. Standout track “Headshots (4r Da Locals)” even manages to craft something fresh out of the timeworn “Ah Yeah” sample.

It might have been the frayed, exhausted feeling brought on by lockdown, but Self Esteem’s “I Do This All The Time” was an unexpected emotional hammer blow when it dropped back in April – a gospel-style earworm with acid lyrics about human frailty like an updated Mr Alan Bennett monologue. The album easily delivers on the single’s promise.

More tugging of the heartstrings came from Mr James Blake, whose latest collection consists of songs first trialled during his streamed lockdown gigs and delved into the messy business of broken friendships. “It hurts like the end of the world,” he sings over a patchwork of sparse pianos, pulsing electronics and manipulated vocals.

Restless, polymathic LA singer-songwriter Dijon’s Absolutely pulled together a disparate range of elements of Americana over 12 short songs. Barnstorming single “Many Times” managed to sound indebted to angular new wave, 1980s soul, grunge and (unexpectedly) Mr Bruce Hornsby. No mean feat, but more so in a song clocking in at just two minutes and six seconds.

With her extraordinary fourth album, Ms Simbiatu Ajikawo aka Little Simz vaulted straight to national-treasure status. Working with producer Inflo (known for his work with Mr Michael Kiwanuka, Sault and now Adele) Sometimes I Might Be Introvert delivered a cinematic vision without feeling flabby or sprawling. Single “Woman” was unavoidable this summer, with its neat evisceration of men “Getting bitter/While she was getting better.”

As dance music enters its fourth decade, it’s mining its own past in increasingly forensic detail. With its euphoric shifts, banks of wordless vocals and trance embellishments, the second album by music duo Bicep reimagined the overlooked stylings of Future Sound of London and Megadog events from the early 1990s. And with dancefloors shuttered, it was just what we needed.

The Weather Station – a Canadian folk band fronted by singer Ms Tamara Lindeman – went fully widescreen with Ignorance, a sprawling, jazzy, deeply atmospheric showcase for Lindeman’s incredible vocal talents. One of those rare records that could equally crop up on Radio 6 Music, a specialist 1Xtra mix or Radio 3’s Night Waves.

New York four-piece Parquet Courts pushed all the boundaries on their seventh album Sympathy For Life, with longer grooves, expansive jams, bigger, club-ready rhythms and dubby excursions, which saw tracks such as “Marathon Of Anger” wander off to explore the margins. A very 2021 take on post-punk.

Multi-instrumentalist Ms Emma-Jean Thackray cut her teeth in a Yorkshire brass band before plunging into a musical education that took in the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, classical theory, the crooked hip-hop of J Dilla and cosmic jazz. All those elements combine to make Yellow one of the year’s most ambitious, inventive releases.

Mr Nick Hilton’s funny, curious and revealing investigation into Cheltenham, and how a very quiet town in the English countryside became one of the world’s epicentres for spying, intelligence and the dark side of statecraft via the GCHQ headquarters. A tale where the truth is very much stranger than fiction.

Where did all those statues, paintings and artefacts that populate the UK’s cultural institutions actually come from? This simple question forms the basis of journalist and author Mr Marc Fennell’s investigations, with our relationship to empire, nation, race and exploration unpacked each week through a different item and its story.

Having made his name exploring the outer reaches of human society worldwide, Mr Louis Theroux responded to lockdown by going virtual and interviewing his subjects from the comfort of his own home. Guests ranging from Boy George to Ms Michaela Cole opened up via Zoom in a series of illuminating conversations.

When Rubberbandits first emerged as riotous YouTube musical comics, you’d have got long odds on their bag-headed frontman Blindboy eventually being responsible for a deeply erudite conversational series, covering all bases from artificial intelligence and Victorian sex communes to the economics of Berlin.

As a data journalist, Ms Mona Chalabi is well-equipped to take on the big questions: “should you break the law?”, “how many friends do I need?”, “is my dentist scamming me?” But when the numbers can’t give the answers, she ropes in experts, strangers and occasionally even her mother to bolster her case.

As the pre-eminent documenter of our strange, postmodern society, journalist and filmmaker Mr Jon Ronson has embraced podcasts in recent years. The slower pace and discursive style suiting his inquisitive tone perfectly. In his latest series, he dissects the culture wars – or, as he summarises them, “almost everything that people yell at each other about on social media”.

Once Upon A Time… focuses on the undergrad years of writers Ms Donna Tartt, Mr Jonathan Lethem and Mr Bret Easton Ellis (class of 1986). It’s a racy history of the idyllic college where some of Gen X’s most influential novelists collided. “In retrospect, it’s like, ‘why were you so fucking miserable?’” asks Easton Ellis. “It was awesome.”

In 2018, a group of US Navy Seals claimed that their leader, Mr Eddie Gallagher, had murdered a 17-year-old POW in Iraq. The subsequent case was a window into the grim reality of life at war. The testimonies secured by host Mr Dan Taberski in this retelling of the investigation unpick a complex story with a huge twist.

“Debunking the junk science behind health fads, wellness scams and nonsensical nutrition advice”, Maintenance Phase is a show aiming to educate you on subjects you didn’t know you were curious about. Ms Aubrey Gordon and Mr Michael Hobbes pull apart everything from BMI and the history of vibrators to how “wellness” leads to Q-Anon.

Following a year filled with protest, conflict and social upheaval, Mr Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr’s podcast on “refusing to accept things as they are” is an essential first draft of history. From water fountains to Black women’s hair, each episode finds a new route into telling the story of our times.