Y’know what? This really didn’t need to be a two parter. Sure, Part One spilled over 4’000 words, but’s that’s just because Arctic Monkey’s shameful behavior presented me with the chance to go off on a wrestling tangent, and that’s a guaranteed extra twenty five hundred words right there. I reckon I’ll bang through the rest of these in around 2’000 words, as I’m almost certain The Sport of Kings is unlikely to make an appearance. 6’000 words is a not at all ridiculous length for an entry. My ‘50 Song Memoir‘ entry was, if memory serves, 7,296,586 words, and that’s one of my most popular posts of all time. You. Whores. Love. Length.

But, twice the content, yeah? Twice the clicks, twice the sweet, sweet advertising dollar. I mean… technically, yeah… Double zero is still zero, maths fans. Could be worse, I could be giving each entry it’s own individual page and forcing you to click ‘next’ each time, like those fucking awful lists you see on the internet, like… like… well, like this dumb blog that nobody reads every year end, I suppose. We’ve got some motherfucking stonkers coming up, mind, so ready your tiny minds to be blown like you were the window cleaner’s penis and this list was your mum (oooooooooooooooh!!). This pointless intro only exists because I hate the entries being scissored by a page break. Besides, I couldn’t let you know what no.5 is before I’ve got your delicious clicks. Clickety-click!

5 Car Seat Headrest: Twin Fantasy (Face to Face)

(2018’s best album)

Listen, you pricks, I wrote about how amazing this record was, like, yesterday, so I’m not going to drone on about it again to ‘Arctic Monkeys’ levels. I didn’t need to ‘revisit’ this album, like I’ve done with many other previous winners. I don’t need to remind myself how much I adore this record. It’s recent enough that it’s still right there floating in the aqueous humor of my consciousness. ‘Twin fantasy’ isn’t a past love that I’m absentmindedly reminiscing over, like when I waxed lyrical about the way The Weeknd smiled at me while he gave me a loving handjob behind that burger van back in 2011. No, this album is still very much my current significant lover. I live with it, we never argue and we fuck hard every chance we get. Spoiler alert: I haven’t fallen for any 2019 as hopelessly and completely as I fell for this Virginia band’s (they weren’t a Virginia band by the time I’d finished with them, I’ll tell you that for nothing) career highlight and masterful suite of near stream of consciousness genius. I’m not going to keep telling you how good it is, if you haven’t exposed your life to it yet then you’re really beyond my effort, if you’ve heard it but claim not to love it then I have to question what traumatic experience happened to you in your youth that compels you to lie so brazenly. I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed. Disappointed that you’re a useless cretin. And probably a Nazi.

I’ll just say that, even placing in the top five, this may still be a scandalously low placing that might suggest ‘Twin Fantasy’ has fallen victim to whatever the opposite of recency bias is. Is there already a term for the opposite of recency bias? I feel like there should be.

No, that’s obviously not it, the fuck is wrong with you, Google?

So I guess I should read those articles then… I mean, it would only take a few minutes… It’s getting late though…

OK, so there’s no way of knowing if there’s a an opposite to recency bias, so I’m just going to call it ‘nostalitosis’ and claim at least 30% of the profits from all future uses of the term. Recency bias is the phenomenon of only really remembering things that happened close to the current time. A bias, if you will, toward the recent. I believe nostalitosis is actually far more prevalent among art critiques though- we’re actually far more likely to claim that a recent piece of work in fact pales next to inferior older examples. Because the older ones are classics and are legendary and have stood the test of time and was made by men with beards. You can’t just say that a new release is one of the greatest albums ever, nostalitosis that a record is only officially ‘great’ after Q Magazine has released a special issue to commemorate it’s 50th anniversary and one of its songs has been covered by Pixie Lott for the new John Lewis Christmas commercial.

So ‘Twin Fantasy’, barely a year after its release, may well be being slightly underrated due to nostalitosis demanding that it’s far too early to wantonly declare it one of the greatest albums ever. We perhaps haven’t lived with it long enough, the sex is amazing but would declaring our love just make things weird?

Ask me in 2029 what the best album of the Tennies was. It may well be this.

Follow-up Album: Jesus Christ, give them a chance to catch their breath

 

4 Manic Street Preachers: Futurology

(2014’s best album)

You make a very incisive and extremely worthwhile point. Maybe I wouldn’t like it so much if wasn’t by the Manics.

Or, what if the album was called ‘Manic Street Preachers’ and it by an artist called Futurology? Maybe I wouldn’t like is as much then? Or would I still like it because of the album title still providing a Manics link?

Or, what if it was still by The Manics, but rather being a genius Welsh rock band on their 12th album, The Manic Street Preachers were actually three fighters in the military wing of Hezbollah and this future that they’re all so keen to triumph is actually one that includes the dissolution of the state of Israel and complete annihilation of the Jewish race? Would I like it so much then? Maybe I would like it more. Hey, don’t assume my politics.

Or! Or or or! Or what if it was by The Manics, it was still called Futurology, but rather than being a devilishly handsome late 20s British man, I was actually a Kiwi? No, I don’t mean someone from New Zealand, I mean what if I was an actual Kiwi bird? Pretty unlikely that I’d have time to appreciate any music at all- being so knackered after spending all night using my sense of smell to nocturnally hunt small invertebrates, seeds, grubs, and many varieties of worms- never mind a UK rock band that never made any particular waves down under. Especially not in the scrubs, rough farmland, exotic plantation forests, sand dunes, snowy tussocks and mangroves that I would be hanging around in. I would particularly like places with wetland vegetation, and where trees run down to a river’s edge, but all in all this sounds more like a Nick Cave kind of place, doesn’t it? With him living close by as well, I’d likely bump into him while I’m out looking for female Kiwis to tap on the back on the neck in the hope of mating.

Ooooooooooor, what if ‘Futurology’ wasn’t even an album at all, but actually the name a drunken Serbian postman gives to the foot he uses to kick the head off his neighbour’s pet ferret in 1746 because of an unsubstantiated belief that it was planning to commit election fraud? I wasn’t even born in 1746! I’ve never even been to Serbia! How could I possibly have even heard of this incident, never mind name it fifth best album of the decade??

 

What I’m saying is, you’re very clever for theorising that if things had been different then things might have been different. Everyone wants to have sex with you.

To be honest, in the five years since The Manics took the ‘W’, I have kinda accepted that might be true myself. I never once doubted the stone cold motherfucking fact that ‘Futurology’ is an almighty, throbbing hard cock of a masterpiece album- I don’t just hand out these gongs to artists I like, the record has to be really fucking good– but I also began to almost question the subconsciousness behind the decision. Yeah, it’s an amazing album, but was it really all that? Was it a better album than the mindblowing Young Fathers’ debut? Or the riveting and stirring dissection of relationships that was Sharon van Etten’s ‘Are We There‘? Or, knowing that the Greatest Band Ever® were getting older and- let’s face it- would very likely all be dead before we knew it, was I just subconsciously worried that they’d never win Necessary Evil and this was very probably their last effort likely to be good enough?

Listened to it again for this list, and… well…

Jesus, shut the fuck up, all you gimps that don’t exist that are daring to question the validity of my affection*! ‘Futurology’ is an abso-crapping-lutely amazing album! I’m not saying that as a Manics’ fanboy, but just as a freaking human with motherfucking EARS, yo! Far from being ever so slightly overrated by my desperate need for them to take home at least one Necessary Evil trophy, the slight assumption that might have been the case had lead me to retrospectively underrate this masterpiece in the previous 5 years. I had forgotten quite how many high points this record has. I had forgotten that it’s not just about the perfect pop rock blitzkrieg of Walk Me to the Bridge  and Let’s Go to War, but the delicate beauty of Divine Youth, the new wave blasts of pristine Manicness such as Black Square, and the joyful silliness (nobody does ‘silly rock’ anyway near as good as The Manics) of Sex, Power Love & Money. ‘Futurology’ is simply a perfect album, and perhaps the most varied and complete of the band’s career. Fuck! And I’m underrating it again!! This is probably The Manics’ 2nd best album (so, yeah, that countdown I did is already wrong). There, I said it.

(*that doesn’t just apply to my views on ‘Futurology’. Yeah, I’m talking to you, Gareth. Just because you don’t enjoy what we do together doesn’t mean that I don’t very much! It’s absolutely a valid form of showing how much I love you, and there was really no need to get the police involved)

Oh and booooooooo! Brexit! Waaaaaaaaah! After such a pro-European album!! Waaaa…!! Come on, get over yourselves, that barely even qualifies as a ‘take’.

Follow-up Album: ‘Resistance is Futile’ (2018) no.55

Christ, lads, I went easy on you last year, but in comparison that album really fucking stinks

 

3 Janelle Monae: The ArchAndroid

(2010’s best album)

“Has there been a more astonishing debut album… than Janelle Monae’s released in the past 5 years? The past decade? It’s ‘Songs In the Key of Life’ meets ‘Ziggy Stardust’ with ten times more glamour and style than the former and twenty times more eclecticism and invention than the latter; it’s the second side suite of ‘Abbey Road’ recorded by ‘All Around The World In A Day’ era Prince; it’s… Erm… Elvis Presley… On acid…”

Some Genius, 2010

In terms of the quality of this undeniable masterpiece and legitimate pop music highpoint, near enough nothing has changed since and not much could be added to these wise words of some random sexual Catherine wheel, writing around the time of its release. Almost a decade later, Janelle Monae’s spectacular debut album of insanely lofty ambitions somehow fully realised still sounds astonishing. It’s essentially 68 minutes of your finger hovering over the telephone keypad ready to alert the emergency services to the surely fatal amount of drugs you’ve just consumed, but never being able to bring yourself to dial because it feels so freaking good and you don’t want to risk it stopping. That hunk of hot, bubbling and abrasively undiluted sex writing above speculated whether ‘The ArchAndroid’ may have been one of the most astonishing debut albums released in the previous decade. Now, with the benefit of an extra decade’s hindsight, and considering how despite its lofty pretensions and experimental ambitions it was still aiming to be a successful mainstream pop album, I’m not sure I can think of a more astonishing one released in the 21st century. Apart from that one that I’ve obviously forgot. Which album was Whip My Hair by Willow Smith on?

I think the most incredible thing about ‘The ArchAndroid’ looking back, and something that’s easy to disregard and forget, is how amazing it is that this wasn’t all there was! Janelle Monae announced herself with a explosion of ideas and personality that was so obviously impossible to maintain. The follow-up to ‘The ArchAndroid’ would be rush released in 2011 an would have obviously been dozens of times more commercially successful as her label makes note of her critical success and gives her a suitable push. While it would still be a decent effort the cracks would obviously be starting to show as she struggled to align her provocative ambitions with the whims of her label. Her third album would come out in 2013 to unanimous shrugs of disinterest. The first single is also the title song of ‘The Lone Ranger‘, her label believing any association with the predicted smash movie would ensure her popularity goes through the roof. She’d continue releasing records to even less fanfare, being dropped by a string of labels after each release manages to underperform even the already disappointing previous record. By this point, she is most well known for finishing third in 2018’s edition of Dancing With the Stars. She’s currently planning to release ‘The ArchAndroid part 2’ in 2020, which more generous reviews will claim to be a return to form, but… no… no, it… it really isn’t…

Or best case scenario, she just ‘does a Weeknd’, becoming way more successful but artistically gradually less interesting. And yeah, sure, she can shag Selena Gomez and then write an album whinging about her like Gomez was a real adult person.

 

But, incredibly, improbably, Janelle Monae didn’t just keep this exquisite madness going, she kept finding ways to reinvent herself, new and fulfilling directions to pull the music into, and just kept generally getting better!* ‘The ArchAndroid’ probably just about still stands as the least sane and most outrageous album of her career, but it’s also probably the weakest. Her later records are far more cohesive and contain much more impressive songwriting craft. They, obviously, can’t compete with ‘The ArchAndroid’s glorious shock of the new, but otherwise Janelle Monae is the extremely rare (near enough non existent) example of an artist ‘maturing’ without completely losing the spark that made them so special in the first place. I mean, I’ve ‘matured’ recently, and do you know what that means? I get tired at 8pm, have frequent hospital appointments to discuss my genitals at length and can no longer eat red meat because my wife says it makes me ‘apprehensive’. ‘Maturing’ just means being old enough to appreciate that life is a never ending series of disappointments and crushed dreams and just making your peace with it. Ms Monae is, like, the one exception.

(*yes, the albums that were released in 2013 and 2018 are better than this one, but the albums by other artists that were better albums in 2013 and 2018 are actually not as good as this album. My work is extremely complex and confusing and I don’t expect you to understand.)

Janelle Monae’s ability to preserve 100% of what makes her special probably has a lot to do with her possibly being among the biggest and most well regarded musical artists who actually sells fuck all records. She sells just about enough that her record label obviously believe dropping her from the label would probably work out being 0.4% more expensive and 2.5% more work, but she doesn’t sell anywhere near enough for them to properly care about her, so they just leave her alone to do her thing. This includes taking around four years to make a record because, sometimes, that’s just how long it fucking takes. Janelle Monae is an inspiration. She’s still here. She’s still outstanding. Still tips on alligators. And little rattlesnakers. But She’s another flavor. Something like a terminator.

And yet still, to be honest, the reason she was able to win in 2010 was that I hadn’t heard ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ yet.

The Follow-Up: The Electric Lady (2013) no.9

Followed by coming second last year. She’s doing alright

I didn’t talk much about the music because I honestly think that “the second side suite of ‘Abbey Road’ recorded by ‘All Around The World In A Day’ era Prince” simply can’t be beaten as an accurate description of its contents. All discussion of this album really should have been closed off after that.

 

2 Sufjan Stevens: Carrie & Lowell

2015’s best album

Argh… man… shit… fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck… all the… all the fucking… all the fucking feels…!!!

I’ve nothing more to add on this album’s perfection. In the four years since the record’s released, there hasn’t been any great reinterpretation of the eleven most beautiful songs you’re likely to come across in this or any other decade. There’s been no almighty jolt of retrospective that demands some sort of reappraisal of this masterpiece. In 2015, this was an absolutely peerless example of an artist at the top of their game managing to make such superficially slight and insignificant arrangements sound so fucking huge! Maybe in 2020 Sufjan will be caught up in some controversy involving stitching his pet Dachshund’s eyes open and forcing her to watch him masturbate rhythmically to Hold My Hand by Hootie and the Blowfish, forcing us to re-evaluate ‘C&L’s musical merits through the lens of the person we now know Sufjan to be. Oooh! And maybe his pet Dachshund is called Carrie!! God, I can’t wait to write that post, get on with it Sufjan. It has to be Hootie and the Blowfish though.

 

As it is though? No. Nothing more need be mentioned. ‘C&L’ is still as devastating and as uplifting a master work as it was in 2015, as it will be in 2029 and 2119 (save a brief discussion over its merits after the whole ‘masturbating on dogs’ thing comes to light, saved when Todd Philips uses Fourth of July in his 2025 Kite Man movie). This is timeless beauty, and like other timeless beauties such as Linda Lusardi and Jo Guest, we’ll all be happily masturbating to this until the end of time.

The Follow-Up (kinda): ‘The Greatest Gift’ (2018) no.38

Leftovers and shit from this album, still fucking great in places. The Hidden Rivers of My Life, anyone?? Ammi right?? Fuck me dead and bury me pregnant, yeah?? He also did some wonderful nonsense about planets with a bunch of his mates that reached no.31 that year.

 

1 Beyoncé: Lemonade

(the best album of 2016, or indeed any year you care to mention. Come at me, bro)

It just… is, I’m sorry. Listen, you’re entitled to your own opinion, free speech and all that, maybe you think the best album of the Tennies™ is ‘Crosseyed Heart‘ by Keith Richards or ‘Teenage Emotion‘ by Lil Yachty. That’s brilliant! I’m glad that this debate has sparked such engagement! You know how much I value your suggestions! Your mother will be so pleased that you’re making far more productive use of your spare time! Remember what she said, not making your mother cry every night is a far better feeling than any drug!!

I respect your opinions. Just remember that’s all they are. Opinions. ‘Lemonade’ is the greatest, most culturally significant and- God damn it!!- most important album released this past decade. That is a fact. It’s a free country, argue against facts all you want. Maybe you’re a climate change denier who is ‘skeptical’ about whether Africa actually exists. That’s cool, if we didn’t let people believe in the dumbest shit imaginable then religion wouldn’t exist. It’s just that we’re having serious, grownup talk here, so if you don’t mind…

In the noughties, any sort of political statement by pop and musical acts was frowned upon and even aggressively discouraged. People in power managed to frame September 11th’s unfortunate events as an explicit line in the sand. And don’t worry, that line in the sand was in some poor sandy foreign country, so nobody in the West needs to get hurt. In the aftermath of 9/11, global politics and war was pushed as being black and white. You’re either on our side, or you’re on the side of those crazy brown people who scream while firing AK47s in the air. As George W Bush famously put it: “You’re either with us or you’re a smelly poo poo head with no MySpace friends”.

So, George W Bush and his cronies spent much of the decade committing war crimes and waging illegal wars and musicians couldn’t say anything or they’d be labelled ‘unpatriotic’ and ghosted by the entire country. In 2003, onstage in London The Dixie Chicks said “We don’t want this war, this violence, and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas”. Don’t want this war?? What is this, Communist Russia?? Their career was finished. Thom Yorke might have said a few things, but he would have done so while his voice was being fed through a burnt Speak and Spell covered in chinchilla vomit, so not many people caught it. Green Day released ‘American Idiot’ in 2004 and… Really? That was as good as it got? The whole planet should be deeply ashamed.

 

Thankfully, in the Tennies™ making a political statement stopped being career suicide. Zayn Malik supports the freedom of Palestine. Cardi B films videos with Bernie Sanders. Justin Bieber supported Black Lives Matter. Myleene Klass bravely fought against paying taxes. Katy Perry has long called for violent reprisals against the governing class for the crimes they have committed against the poor. Taylor Swift wholeheartedly supports whatever cause research has shown will lead to more album sales.

But, in the wise words of Ms Swift herself, “Say it in the street, that’s a knock-out/But you say it in a Tweet, that’s a cop-out”. While all of the biggest musical artists of the Tennies™ are falling over themselves to prove how gosh darn conscientious they are by Tweeting about how smelly Donald Trump’s pits are or how much they love women’s football and so could never commit a sexual assault, next to none of them have ever put any of this into their music. Y’know, the stuff that a majority of their audience only knows them through. Because, you can send out all the InstaGram stories calling for the immediate removal of Isaias Afwerki that you want, the fact is that most people still only really know you best for that banging hook on your last single about your significant other’s anus. Saying it in a Tweet is a bit of a cop-out, because you know you’re mostly Tweeting to the converted,

 

With Beyoncé though, these ideas and statements are always right there. Her way with political statements and her celebration of less heralded things like the power of black womanhood is like her way with radical and challenging and experimental musical ideas. She wraps them up in perfect pop songs with amazing hooks and manages to smuggle them into the highest echelons of mainstream music almost without anybody noticing. Yeah, maybe that’s a cop-out too, but it’s my list so get fucked.

Now, I staunchly believe that the infidelities laid out in ‘Lemonade’ are entirely fabricated, but whether that’s true or not to launch a surprise release entirely hanging on this suggestion of reality is still a monumentally daring marketing strategy. We could be looking back on it now as cringeworthy example of a pop star predicting that the reality of their own relationship troubles are intriguing enough to hang an album on, alongside Robin Thicke’s ‘Paula‘. Could be. If the album wasn’t so fucking perfect.

Context be damned, wider ‘cultural significance’ can go and suck an egg, the reason ‘Lemonade’ is the decade’s best is simply because the music on it is better than the music that’s on any other album. The stylistic breadth is breathtaking, the ambition and experimentation is outstanding, the arrangements are effervescent and the hooks fucking stomp!! Also, I’m trying to stay away from saying this album is the album of the decade because it defines that movement or illustrates that idea, because whenever you name the artist that is the most significant [THING] or the best example of [THING], then the answer is always ‘Charli XCX‘. Sorry, but that’s just another fact. But the production of this album, the way it manages to encompass so many ideas and the genius of so many different contributors, could not be a better example of the kind of utopia out current ultra-connected world could result in. The story of how Hold Up came to be alone is a tale that might convince you that the internet might be a force for good sometimes.

The best album of 2016 though? I dunno, I think I’d put ‘Goodness‘ by Hotelier top if I did it again. Like I say, it’s a confusing business.

The Follow-Up: hasn’t happened yet. No, I’m not counting that Capitalist nonsense she released with her husband

 

Or, If You Prefer Statistics

Album Length

10. Arctic Monkeys: ‘AM’ (41:43)

9. Perfume Genius: ‘No Shape’ (43:14)

8. Sufjan Stevens: ‘Carrie and Lowell’ (43:35)

7. Beyoncé: ‘Lemonade’ 45:42

6. Manic Street Preachers: ‘Futurology’ (47:05)

5. Hjaltalín: ‘Enter 4’ (47:34)

4. The Weeknd: ‘House of Balloons’ (49:34)

3. Frank Ocean: ‘Channel Orange’ (62:18)

[OO LONG. BREAKING: THIS ALBUM IS TOO LONG. BREAKING: THIS ALBUM IS TOO LO]

2. Janelle Monae: ‘Archandroid’ (68:35)

1.  Car Seat Headrest: Twin fantasy (Face to Face)’ (71:16)

An average of 52:03, but if those top three albums didn’t decide to get all silly, then I think this is further proof that all the great albums should last between 40 and 49 minutes.

Not that I’m mad at Janelle or Mr Headrest, those albums are perfect and are precisely as long as they need to be. Frank Ocean though, seriously? Have a fucking word with yourself.

‘Lemonade’, with 12 tracks, is close to perfect again

Metacritic

10. Hjaltalin: ‘Enter 4’ (too cool to be rated)

But I reviewed it and I liked it, so can’t we just say it’s 100% from an admittedly small sample size.

9. Arctic Monkeys: ‘AM’ (81)

Their score takes a bit of a hit after Metacritic controversially also counts reviews from outside the UK

8. Manic Street Preachers: ‘Futurology’ (83)

Hold your congratulations, Metacritic only gave ‘Send Away the Tigers‘ 69 and have the balls to only rate ‘Know Your Enemy’ as 57, so they obviously have no fucking idea what they’re talking about #FakeReviews

7. Perfume Genius: ‘No Shape’ (84)

His four albums are rated 82, 81, 87, 84. That sort of consistency has got to be a bit dull, hasn’t it? Let’s hope his next album is a stinker

5= The Weeknd: ‘House of Balloons (87)

5= Car Seat Headrest: ‘Twin Fantasy (Face to Face)’ (87)

Remember at school when you always had fights with your friends over who was better, The Weeknd or Car Seat Headrest? And your Mum always had to pull you apart shrieking ‘Hey! Hey! Hey! Check Metacritic, they’re both exactly as good as each other!’

4. Sufjan Stevens: ‘Carrie and Lowell’ (90)

We’re into some real shit now, as the big nine zero is breached. I spell Mr Stevens’s name correctly every time I write it now. To think my Mum didn’t think I’d amount to much

3. Janelle Monae: ‘ArchAndroid’ (91)

I’m about to blow your mind with how few albums this masterpiece actually sold

1= Frank Ocean: ‘Channel Orange’ (92)

1= Beyoncé: ‘Lemonade’ (92)

Stoked to see Queen Bee claim her rightful throne with a near unanimously declared piece of absolute genius, and…

Wait… Spanky Ocean is here too…?

Guys… come on… I mean… just… come on…

Album Sales

This involves a lot of estimations. Album sales are really hard to find, especially nowadays when we’re not sure how many album sales getting your own emoji on SnapChat or soundtracking more than a dozen TikTok Hashtag Challenge videos counts for. I searched high and low for any information on what units these ten bad boys shifted, and ended up having to make a few ‘educated’ guesses. And even so, there are two albums that I really don’t have any fucking idea how much they sold.

10. Hjaltalín: ‘Enter 4’

(?????????????)

No fucking idea how much this sold, but considering that they had to crowdfund the follow-up I’m guessing next to fucking nothing. Although if every person in Iceland bought a copy, they could shoot up to 4th place on this list.

9. Perfume Genius: ‘No Shape’

(??????????????)

Haven’t the foggiest Scooby, but I think it’s safe to assume it sold more than that weird Icelandic band that nobody’s heard of

8. Car Seat Headrest: ‘Twin Fantasy (Face to Face)’ 20’000

That is, all things considered, about as many copies as a rock band is ever going to sell

7. Manic Street Preachers: ‘Futurology’

50’000

I mean, come on, this is one of the UK’s biggest rock bands, and that’s fucking nothing

6. The Weeknd: ‘House of Balloons’

60’000

Now it gets even more complicated. ‘House of Balloons’ was released as a free mixtape, but was then released physically and was certified silver in the UK, meaning 60’000 sales. Fuck, this was given away for free and still sold more than The Manics…

5. Sufjan Stevens: ‘Carrie and Lovell’

150’000

I’m old enough to remember when 150’000 album sales was fucking nothing, but in the Tennies™ numbers like that seem like Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’

4. Janelle Monae: ‘The ArchAndroid’

200’000

Two hundred thousand fucking records?! That’s not even enough to be certified platinum in the UK alone!! Seriously, is it even worth the bother?

3. Arctic Monkeys: ‘AM’

500’000

Took awhile to work this out, but I managed to come to this figure by combining the 500’000 copies the album sold in the UK, plus the one copy that Doug in Idaho purchased by mistake when he was meant to by ‘Arctic’ by The Monkees. Then rounding it down

2. Frank Ocean: ‘Channel Orange’

1’000’000

Bit of a wealth gap on this list, isn’t there?

1. Beyoncé: ‘Lemonade’

3’000’000

And there you go. ‘Lemonade’ sold the most, so is therefore the best. Debate over

Alright, I’m done here. Necessary Evil 2019 coming soon, which is just… horrifying…