The Definitive Pop Culture Moments of 2016, Ranked

GOAT.

Then promptly loses her (or not? unclear), but whatever—for a brief, shining moment, anyone who has ever pined from afar or been "benched," as the youths call it, got the resolution we you, uh, lovelorn folk hardly ever get the satisfaction of indirectly feeling. It was so public! So epic. The real-life reenactment of "NOW KISS." It was good while it lasted or still lasts, TBD.

Oy. Given the developments that followed, this is now slightly less funny but still good for memes, because in times like these, playing variations on a few broadly known themes is how we deal. We also write think pieces about her particular brand of womanhood and how it's okay or not okay to mock her. But this is the one event we keep going back to.

Although it was *technically* and somewhat LOL-ably headlined by Coldplay and Bruno Mars was there too, it was Beyoncé's show, which can be said of most of 2016. She performed "Formation" for the first time, announced the accompanying tour, dropped her visual album Lemonade, and left BeckyGate unscathed while the rest of the parties allegedly involved—and not involved at all, poor Rachael Ray—limped away with metaphorical eyepatches and crutches aplenty. This was the year Beyoncéproved she could flawlessly do anything, and it all started here. More on this later.

Or is immolated, if you prefer. On the long, long list of People Who Could Have Had a Better Year, TSwift comes out ahead of even those college kids who think about death and term papers all the time, for the following reasons: The messy end of a relationship. The end of another relationship. Kim Kardashian with the receipts. Public opinion turning against her. Unrepentant overuse of the snake emoji. How will she shake, shake it off? Because this isn't a question of "if."