Pop Culture

The 12 Pop Culture Releases GQ is Most Looking Forward to in 2023

A new Mission: Impossible, the Beyoncé Tour, the return of Perry Mason and more.

The 12 Pop Culture Releases GQ is Most Looking Forward to in 2023

Photographs: Getty Images, Everett Collection; Collage: Gabe Conte

We’re only a couple of weeks into January, and most of our New Year’s resolutions have already been shot to hell. But here’s one we can all keep: The GQ staff agreed that they will definitely watch, listen to, and read the following 2023 releases. In fact, we can think of little else.


Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One. Listen, I’d pay $19 to sit in a dark movie theater and watch this nine-and-a-half-minute featurette about one single stunt from the forthcoming Dead Reckoning, Part One (great title). I’d happily give a lesser organ to see the whole thing. Here’s to Tom Cruise foiling death for our enjoyment in 2023. —Sam Schube


The Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie tour. On one hand, it’s a shame that touring is now the primary vehicle for musicians to make money, which is why we’re in a new golden age of nostalgia, for better or worse. On the other hand: We get two sets from Ben Gibbard, ultra-marathoner and musician who wrote the line, “I am thinking it’s a sign / that freckles in our eyes are mirror images / and when we kiss they’re perfectly aligned.” The man went Ultra Instinct and now after 15 years we have a chance to see him sing it live. —Chris Gayomali


Top Chef: Season 20. I’m not even embarrassed to say that I gasped when I read the preview for the next season of Top Chef. For its 20th season, they’re bringing together ALL-STARS from all the INTERNATIONAL editions and it’s filming in London. I’m dying to know which talented chef will be eliminated way too early when they bite off more than they can chew during restaurant wars. I can’t wait to watch Padma robotically ask a contestant if they meant to fuck up their clearly fucked-up risotto. Who will win the grand prize FURNISHED by San Pellegrino? Let’s find out by making super-talented chefs compete in some harebrained challenge sponsored by, like, the new Aquaman. (Cam Wolf)


Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour. After she dominated the summer and every Spotify Wrapped in 2022 with her seventh studio album—a love letter to the queer Black ballroom DJs, drag queens and disco glitterati of Harlem’s legendary vogue balls—the Queen Mother of My House has seemingly made it official: There will be a Renaissance Tour in 2023. We don’t know exactly when, but true believers have been prepping: by watching and re-watching the few vibey videos from her FOMO-fueling Club Renaissance events; by going all night at all-Beyoncé parties where everyone knows every word; and by pressing pause 1,000 times to pore over every frame of her one and only real preview of the album visuals. When that shit drops, Miss One of One will be coming for all my coin. That online queue will get way messier than any Taylor Swift presale… but there’s absolutely no way I’d miss it. The face card never declines, my god! —Joel Pavelski


The Daisy Jones & The Six miniseries. From the moment I opened Taylor Jenkins Reid’s book in 2019, I was transported from my tiny NYC apartment to the chaotic LA music scene of the 1970s. The fictional oral history took me through the rise and fall of a fictional, Fleetwood Mac-esque band (with all the sex and drugs in between) via the perspective of various band members. This spring, my beloved book will become an Amazon Prime miniseries, and while I typically have a love/hate relationship with my favorite novels being turned into TV shows, I can confidently predict that on March 3rd you’ll find me on my couch, pressing play and dying to know how the songs I grew to love on paper actually sound. —Ashley Grates


Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The second installment in the Miles Morales-led animated franchise, Across the Spider-Verse is bringing a whole mess of other Spider-Men (Spider-People? Wait, what about Spider-Pig?) into the fold, and I’m obsessing over whose voices will cameo in the sequel just like I hounded Twitter and Reddit to see if Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield would make their way into 2021’s live-action Spider-Man: No Way Home. (Year-old spoiler alert: They did.) We already know there’s going to be a third film in this series next year, so I’ll have something new to obsess over as soon as I see part two on its June 2 opening day. —Tyler Chin


Really Good, Actually, by Monica Heisey. Heisey’s writing has been making me laugh out loud for years, whether on TVon her Twitter, or when she’s trying to recall the plot of Avatar. She got me again in her tremendously funny and thoughtful debut novel Really Good, Actually, about a young divorcée navigating her marital breakup with the aid of “Night Burgers” and a demented spiral of new hobbies. And we don’t even have to anticipate it for too much of 2023: it’s out on January 17th. –Gabriella Paiella


White House Plumbers. Who better to retell the story of the Watergate break-in and the Nixon-toppling clusterfuck that followed than some of the minds behind Veep? With a cast roster of “Faces We’re Always Happy to See in a Comedy” (Woody Harrelson, Justin Theroux, Ike Barinholtz, Judy Greer), this March HBO miniseries evokes major—and welcome—associations with 1999’s underrated Nixon classic, Dick. I’m still not ready to laugh at our most recent administration of power-grabbing buffoons, but I’m looking forward to laughing at one from 50 years ago. —Josh Wolk


glaive’s new music. Rumor has it that a little birdie who heard it through the grapevine told me we’ll be getting new music from hyperpop breakout glaive this year—which is good because I, for one, am ready for more emotion and more adrenaline in 2023. Also, the 17-year-old musician has employed old paintings made by his mom as cover artwork for his two pre-album singles, “minnesota” and “three wheels and it still drives!”, which is also incredibly tender! All promising signs. —Eileen Cartter


Blossoms Shanghai. Ten years after his last film, legendary Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai is due to release his first TV series, Blossoms Shanghai, this year. (It will be available in America on the WeTV/Tencent Video app.) Described by the director as the “third part of In the Mood for Love and 2046,” Blossoms promises to put the grandmaster of heartbreak cinema back in the mood and milieu of some of his most beloved work. While Christopher Doyle, the cinematographer of Wong’s greatest films, isn’t part of the project, in his new project the director is working with Peter Pau, the Oscar-winning cinematographer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. (The real question of course is whether Wong will be able to coax Maggie Cheung out of retirement. Unlikely but quizás, quizás, quizás.) —Raymond Ang


Caroline Polachek’s Desire, I Want to Turn Into You. With the release of 2019’s Pang, Caroline Polachek established herself as a leading indie pop auteur. Packed full of soaring vocals and drenched in ethereal soundscapes, her album became the ultimate pandemic sleeper hit. In 2021 she released “Bunny is a Rider,” the lead single for her upcoming album Desire, I Want to Turn Into You, which is due out next month. The dancey alt-pop anthem lifted her into the mainstream and proved that she could do something completely different, and four genre-defying singles later, it’s hard to imagine what, exactly, DIWTTIY will sound like. But with Polachek’s appetite for experimentation, what’s certain is that it will be anything but boring. —Katie Philo


Perry Mason, Season 2. Sometimes I think I imagined the first season of HBO’s Perry Mason, a charming, downcast reboot of the famous show that aired so deep in early quarantine as to very possibly be something I invented in a lockdown haze. But! The show, starring Matthew Rhys as the charmingly rumpled private eye-turned defense lawyer, is back for a second season that I may or may not remember. But it will be a pleasant, intermittently exciting way to spend eight weeks. –Sam Schube

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