In their 1972 book ‘Psychology of the Arts‘, Hans and Shulamith Kreitler tried to explain the reasoning behind why certain people react in certain ways to certain pieces of art. However, they deemed that to fully explain it, your knowledge of each person would need to “extend over an immeasurably large range of variables, which would include not only perceptive, cognitive, emotional and other personality characteristics, but also biographical data, specific personal experiences, past encounters with art, and individual memories and associations”. Sounds like a lot of work, right? Well, luckily, I’m here to just tell you what the best music of 2023 was, so all that effort behind your own personal psychosis can be sidestepped altogether. Think of it as my new year’s present.
And there’s one hundred and sixty this year. Maybe one hundred and sixty one. Because there was a lot of great tunes released in 2023. While limiting the Necessary Evil list to just 40 albums still meant there was space for at least one ‘meh’ album and one absolute stinker, over the past week I’ve actually had to really edit this list down to prevent it being ridiculous. And yet here we are: 160. Maybe 161.
I’m also going to be giving shout outs to particular golden moments in certain songs – similar to what I did in 2018 – and for each of those I’m going to be using a picture of one of the greatest moments in the short history of All Elite Wrestling, because… well… I get the horrible feeling that company is cooked and I hope to look back on this list in five years time and laugh at how pessimistic I was.
Can I finish this before 2024 and maybe have some days off before I go back to work?? Let’s seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!
[Edit: No. No I cannot. Not even close.
You’ve got some playlists though, will that make you happy?? Here’s the countdown on Spotify and on YouTube, minus the unavailable songs on whatever platform]
Last year I included the Adam Cole theme at the bottom of the list, hoping the good vibes would somehow heel his injury and manifest his return. It worked, because I am a fucking shaman.
This is different though: this is Mercedes Moné, this is the former Sasha Banks, this is the original Legit Boss herself! A truly groundbreaking and influential figure, who left WWE* and American wresting to take a gamble on proving herself in Japan in January 2023. Possibly the biggest name in female wrestling (and one of the biggest full stop), her next move could have business wide repercussions. Not seen in the ring since injuring herself in May, I’m hoping my voodoo magic will do its magic once again… and maybe bring her back to American wrestling that I can watch more easily… 😳
(*losing the ‘Legit Boss’ trademark in the process, which is why I own it now)
Oh, and it’s also different because Adam Cole’s theme is an absolute banger. And Mercedes’s theme is pretty fucking shit. But it’s, like, the really good kind of crap? Easily the best shit song of the year, entirely due to its links to one of the most significant wrestlers of the last ten years. So 160th, yeah?
159 Sharon van Etten: When I Die
Our Sharon’s in a bit of an imperial phase at the moment, with their last three new albums finishing 3rd, 8th and 9th on the Necessary Evil countdown. Even the scabs they idly pick off albums and flicks across the room while grunting are supernova. When I Die wasn’t even included on her last album, only emerging this year as part of its deluxe reissue, so imagine how good that album needs to be??
158 Let’s Eat Grandma: From the Morning
I was ridiculously into Nick Drake when I was a young teenager, as most teenage boys go through a stage where being a prodigiously talented hermit whose only interactions with the outside world is to awkwardly record some of the most beautiful guitar music ever conceived, before closing your long fringe shut and hibernating for the winter, is seen as the height of cool.. They were so me fr. NE Gold Star Artists LEG do a lovely if unspectacular job with one of Drake’s many gorgeous tunes.
I’m gonna throw you a party
Though I know you won’t go
Busy with some new love
Or sittin crying at home
And everybody is wasted
Ready to go home
Got a mouth full of teardrops
For the sheepskin wolf
Don’t worry! I’ve no fucking idea who these people are either! A highlight of the final Z Tapes compilation released in February (Start-Track is now the go to place for discovering amazing underground independent artists), this Texas duo have a website and all that, so I’m like 88% sure they exist, and Pity Party is a gorgeous and delicate little gem/
Frankie Valet! ‘Member them? Milk is an absolute mini-epic about milk going sour, which, I dunno, is probably a metaphor or something fruity like that. Also absolutely the only song on this list with lyrics that contain the word ‘nemluvím’, which I think is ‘I don’t speak’ in Czech, but might be a fucking anime character or something, you know what these people are like.
Noted crowd crusher and – let’s be completely honest now, we’re all friends here – pretty dull rapper Scott is quite bafflingly one of the biggest stars in the world despite having less personality than a pigeon and having a less distinctive rapping style than Taylor Swift. They’ve actually had a Legit Boss before – #66 way back in 2016 – and should have also probably got s bit of love for Sicko Mode. He’s such a blank slate that genuine geniuses can occasionally work magic with his beige building blocks.
And those geniuses on My Eyes include Justin Vernon and – Holy Shit! – Dua Saleh! Saleh confirmed on TikTok that the first half of the song is them and Justin Vernon and… Awwww! I feel proud, y’know?? I’ve tried to support Saleh for years and this is their closest brush with the mainstream yet. Yeah, good song etc, but most importantly: Go Dua! Dua! Dua! Dua! They will come out triumphant in that ugly war with Lipa over who’s the best Dua in music.
154 feeble little horse: Pocket
The kind of people who lose their fucking shit over fey and unobtrusive tinny indie went fucking nuts for feeble little horse and their feeble little lack of punctuation in 2023. And fair play to them, I imagine if you’ve listened to the entire Belle and Sebastian discography that day and fancied something a little spicier to soundtrack your evening’s Stardew Valley marathon, then feeble little horse might be for you. Remember to take those iron tablets that your Mum gave you though, yeah? She’s very worried that you might be anaemic.
I joke, I joke, it’s good stuff, it’s not really for me, Pocket kinda rocks though.
Like Beyoncé, their body Bootylicious, and they’re gonna pop that thing like it’s bubble gum. DAWN: still doing it, still amazing.
152 Soccer Mommy: Losing My Religion
Feuding with Japanese Breakfast over the title of Gold Star Artist I care about the least, but a cover of a early to mid 90s alternative rock song?? Come on in, Ms Allison, take a seat. Christ, the (superb) Blondshell album is essentially covers of early to mid 90s alternative rock songs and I said that was the 2nd best album of the year! Sock Mom’s version of the REM classic obviously loses a lot of the bite and rabid energy (because it’s fucking Soccer Mommy), but is an interesting enough interpretation to merit its place here.
151 Hallelujah the Hills: 1979
Seriously, when I just did that big spiel then about Sock Mom covering 90s alternative rock, I had no idea that the next song would be…
Anyway, I’m far more engaged with HtH’s artistic credibility and way around a banger than I am Ms Mommy, and they take one of their biggest artistic risks ever on their cover of The Pumpkins (when they were good): can you do 1979 without that doodle-oodle-oodle-doop-dap guitar line?? And, by jove, I think they pulled it off!
Wednesday were #147 with a cover of Perfect last year, so if anyone can do another Pumpkins cover next year to keep the run going that would be really appreciated, ta. Cherub Rock with a trap beat? No, sorry, I shouldn’t be giving you ideas, it should be organic,
150 The Lemonheads: Being Around
If I was in the fridge, would you open the door?
If I was the grass, would you mow your lawn?
If I was your body, would you still wear clothes?
If I was a booger, would you blow your nose?
Would you keep it? would you eat it?
I’m just tryin to give myself a reason, for being around.
Jesus Christ. OK, I promise we’ll be leaving mid 90s American alt-rock soon. Surely…?
2023 was the thirtieth (!!!) anniversary of ‘Come On Feel the Lemonheads’, which got a lovely reissue that I am just now remembering that I pre-ordered and never arrived. Guys, is Evan Dando in charge of your shipping or something? I don’t want to judge, but you do realise that he gets very absentminded and will just open any package he sees assuming it’s full of black tar heroin? It’s like, muscle memory or some shit.
I can’t explain why I’ve always loved The Lemonheads. They’re the type of fey, indie boy bedwetters that I usually spend my time making fun of. They were like the OG feeble horses. And they were feeble, mate. Imagine how elfishly weak your average indie boy is, imagine how that cardigan is just enveloping him as he can barely muster the strength to keep his thick rimmed specs in place. Now imagine giving that fey little indie boy a heroin addiction. That’s how feeble The Lemonheads were. And have you seen the lyrics to this song?? “If I was a haircut would you wear a hat?/If I was a maid, could I clean your flat?”?? The fuck is this nonsense?!
I dunno, they’re just so… lovely, y’know? And I honestly think Evan Dando is one of the greatest ever pop writer. Imagine him with a backbone, a few guitar solos and a JDB-esque scream?? Oh, and a ghost writer for the lyrics?? Bangers, mate, bangers.
Nah-nah, nana-nana-nana-naaah naaah…
Love Big Bill, me.
148 SZA: Forgiveless (feat. Ol’ Dirty Bastard)
Get used to seeing Solána Rowe’s nom de plume a lot on this list. ‘SOS; had about four dozen tracks and a lot of them are bangers.
147 The Answers In Between: Mindfuck!
Seriously, who is this person? They barely have 200 Twitter followers, I know nothing about them aside from the fact their Bandcamp says they’re from New York. And yet they’re obviously some 21st century pop savant. They made last year’s list with the astonishing epic Hotel Room and they have more songs to come on this year’s list! Mindfuck! (“about the fear of losing someone to the rigid ‘traditional’ expectations of a het relationship in a patriarchy. Okay, it’s also about wanting to be kissed”. Heard) is a far more restrained piece of pop beauty, and further proof of an incredible talent.
146 Bard Company: This Machine Kills Fascists
He was the dust bowl troubadour
A Socialist down to the core
Resist the rich protect the poor
This machine Kills Fascists
Dylan, Ochs and Johnny Cash
Seeger, Strummer, Billy Bragg
All of them would raise his flag
This Machine Kills Fascists
He was never a communist
He was simply an activist
He just asked you to raise your fists
This Machine Kills Fascists
Absolutely banging Woodie Guthrie tribute. Saw them live at the Wigan Diggers festival. It’s free, it’s awesome, it’s class conscious, be there next summer (and donate if you can).
My celebrity crush and certified Gold Star Artist Sarah Tudzin just releases a great little song. What, is that against the law or something? Geddafuckouttahere!!
Chambea, ¡jala!
Cabrón, ya no te quedan bala’
Chambea, ¡jala!
Cabrón, ya no te quedan bala’
A belated release for this pretty banging 2017 release. Yes, in consideration solely for how spectacular it sounded when Bad Bunny made his entrance at WWE Backlash this year.
A spectacular, sub two minute example of the kinds of places that Efficax are taking their music into.
142 The Answers In Between: Won’t Leave
Yeah, them again. Hannah Jocelyn! That’s their name! Won’t Leave is a stupendously produced, layered and lush piece of heroically epic pop songwriting. I’m tempted to interview them, but I’ll probably find out they’re 20 years younger than me and it will be really depressing.
141 Blondshell: Sober Together
“You’ve been in the bathroom/Perfect for an asshole”
Yeah, this won’t be the only time Sabrina Teitelbaum will make this list. Sober Together is an often incisive look into the problem of trying to quit an addiction together with someone you’re starting to believe is a bad influence – “I wanna be there for you/But not in a way that let’s you take me down with you one”. It’s one of the less spectacular bangers on the box of bangers that’s Teitelbaum’s debut – and contains some unusually flat lines like “Part of the disease is giving up” or “I know with drugs there’s never enough” that make it sound like Blondshell learned all they know about addiction from daytime PSAs – but it still hits hard in places.
140 Carly Rae Jaap Stam: Surrender My Heart
It’s Carly bitch.
From a late 2022 album that was considered as a belated 2023 entry. A decent if unspectacular record, with a killer opening track.
139 The Rapperchicks: Rules and Regulations
My review of Psalm One’s autobiography inspired me to search out the all girl punk-rap group The Rapperchicks that consisted of Psalm, their close associate and partner to this day Angel Davanport, the sadly deceased Henny and… One other person whom Psalm doesn’t even like talking about and has blanked their face out of all the photos in their book. It’s complicated. Read the book. Or my blog. Buy the book, read my blog, everyone’s happy.
Rapperchicks burned brightly and imploded almost immediately in pretty spectacular fashion, but my God they really had something here! The three rappers’ chemistry and the way their explosive, confrontational parts intertwine with each other creates an anarchy of energy and noise, if they managed to stick together and get some label weight behind them they could have soundtracked every summer. Psalm themselves put it best when they say Rapperchicks were “Four women, all different ages, all different skin tones, all different rapping styles, creating synergy and sexual energy and knocking the dicks off everyone in the room”. I honestly consider them one of the great lost bands. And my dick has been comprehensively knocked off.
138 Faye Webster: But Not Kiss
Shit, this is Cheers Faye Webster?? No joke, all year I thought this was Phoebe Green. Like, I knew it was by Faye Webster, yeah, but I got Faye Webster confused with Phoebe Green. You get me, bruv? Good song though.
0:59 – That first round of “Yurh, yurh!!”
137 Coco & Clair Clair: Bad Lil Vibe
Dudes wanna hold my hand
When I say no they become a fan
Got dicks in the room expecting a handout
Got my old manager in my texts with his hand out
Dudes get horny when we come on
He got his bros singing our songs
He wanna sync up with my period
Meanwhile he’s saved in my phone as “Idiot”
Coco and Clair Clair’s November 2022 album ‘Sexy’ was seriously considered for the 2023 countdo… Oh shit, the next verse is fire as well:
Y’all dudes love talking y’all shit
Like some Golden Girls y’all old hags look hit
Rest in peace to Betty White though
I’ma keep swiping left on all these man hoes
How much they paying you to be a bitch?
How much they paying peons to talk shit?
Go build a house or go suck some dick
Your receding hairline is somewhere in a ditch
CC&CC are endlessly quotable, and two of the smartest, wittiest and – meant in the nicest way possible – bitchiest lyricists in years. The tracks backing their acerbic takedowns aren’t quite there yet, but at the moment their inventiveness, their energy and – yeah – their vibes are so off the charts that it can carry whatever it needs to.
I’m going back to him
I know my therapist’s pissed
We both know he’s a dick
At least it’s the obvious kindAnd I think I believe in getting saved
Not by Jesus validation in some dudes gaze
And I think I believe in getting saved
Holy water pull my hair right from the base
Some wonderful edging for three minutes or so before it all kicks in with LIKE SEPSIS and we all see God.
135 PinkPanthress, Ice Spice: Boys a Liar Pt.2
Yeah, I pretty much discovered Ice Spice. Really proud they’ve done well for themselves. If memory serves, they’ll be at least two more Ice Spice appearances. But which ones?? Start betting now.
I don’t think PinkPantheress should be allowed eyes like that. They’re a hazard, surely? What, we’re just supposed to look away? Or use toilet paper tubes and cardboard boxes like we’re viewing the eclipse? Fucking irresponsible.
Yeah, fuck it, Lava! Just do psychedelic rock song with immaculately replicated 1970s sci-fi B-movie aesthetics. Just fucking kill it, yeah?
Fuck, one day Lava La Rue is going to release a full length album and I’m already scared that I won’t like it because I’ve already built it up as a multigenre gamechanger and if it’s less than 11/10 I’ll fucking hate it. Listen, you should try living in my brain, you wouldn’t last a week, mate. Then you’ll stop laughing. Then you’ll stop laughing. Then you’ll stop laughing then you’ll stop laughing then you’ll stop laughing thenyou’llstoplaughinghthenyou’llstoplaughingthenyou’ll…
133 Denzel Curry: SKED ft. Kenny Mason
I think that’s ‘SKED’ as in ‘scared’, as the lyrics note – and I quote – “And I said what I said, bitch, you scared, bitch, you scared (scared)”. I doubt it’s ‘SKED’ as in short for ‘schedule’, as young Curry mentions the tightness of their schedule not once. They do remark that they “don’t go to sleep without a Glock by my bed”, which I assume is street talk for ‘glockenspiel’, so Curry is remarking how their schedule is so tight that all glockenspiel practice is confined to the bed? Perhaps, but unlikely. ‘Sked’ also means ‘spoon’ in Swedish. So a lot to consider there as well.
It’s Guns n’ fuckin’ Roses!!
It’s…
Yeah, I accept, it’s not an amazing song, but it’s by no means terrible! Which I believe is worth celebrating!
And Axl’s voice man! It’s not shattered and shanked beyond repair! Or at least there’s some autotune or shit to make him almost sound normal! There are some amazing “E-yay-yay-yay!” and”Euuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuyeah!” and “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!” classic Rose vocal tics, and Perhaps is definitely a song the band might have considered putting on one of the ‘Use Your Illusions’! I mean, they wouldn’t, it’s no way near good enough, but they’d consider it! It’s better than My World at least.
She a baddy. You know she a ten. She a baddy. With her baddy friends.
Ice Spice has something. Whether you like them or not, they’re a presence, they’re a cultural moment, and, yes, they’re a meme.
I’m not all the way here for them. I turned 40 a couple of days ago. I look at the cover of that ‘Like..?’ EP and think… ew… that’s kinda crude…
Because – and I can’t stress this enough – I’m a fuckin old man. But I can still feel Isis Gaston’s energy and their vibrancy. And if we’re judging them on the ‘silhouette test’ – that someone is only truly a star if you can recognise them just from their shadow – then Gaston’s size and hair of Annie (being around the height of most other rappers car wheels) plus the thighs of Roberto Carlos and dumps like a truck, truck, truck, means Spice passes with unconventionally attractive colours.
Yeah, there’s hate, because Spice is a woman in any sort of public spotlight. Maybe if they ever get an album on the Necessary Evil countdown we can discuss it at more length, but in short: well done to everyone for suggesting that they got preferential treatment because they look good, you’re the first person to ever suggest this and you’re very clever. Treated better because of their extremely light skin…? Erm…
…and we don’t have the time right now. What they do have is talent, they’re an incredible, lackadaisical rapper, with an unparalleled ability to spit out quote/memeable lyrics and phrases. Like, they invented the slang term ‘munch’! You know how hard it is to make a slang word ‘happen’?? I’ve been trying to make ‘OMT’ happen for years on this blog…
…
…
…
OK, so it stands for…
Bollocks. My brother got that button installed a couple of years back. Apparently I try to explain ‘OMT’ every time I bring it up. I keep trying to make it happen. It’s not going to happen.
Say happy birthday to Ice Spice on January 1st. Because she was born January 1st 2000. Could she be any more 21st century?
Sigh…
I was absolutely in love with White Lung back when this blog began. An absolute firebrand of 100mph angst screamed over thirty minute albums. They were so me fr. Top forty in 2014 and 2016 (that 2016 review is eternally useful for explaining my usage of ‘大胆子’), then… nothing. For six and a half years I would bleat on about how the next White Lung album would save us all. In 2019 I changed my middle name to ‘White Power’. The ‘power’ signified how powerful my anticipation was for their next album, though I did later accept that this may have had different connotations and did actually lead to a few misunderstandings. In 2020 I changed it to ‘All Power’. In the EU referendum I didn’t vote leave nor remain, I voted ‘White Lung‘. Again, people read this as ‘White Power’ so just assumed it was a vote for leave.
Then, late 2022 it was announced. It was happening. It was coming in December… And it would be White Lung’s final album. Shocking. To have them back only to lose them again. This final will and testament would be the band’s final scream into the void, final claw at the shreds of civil society and final tooth into…
Yeah, the album’s not great. You might not notice it so much these days because ‘scenes’ and ‘trends’ don’t really infect the superstructure like it once used to, but music actually moves on really quickly. Decades ago, basically everyone in the country watched the same TV shows, and a guy in a suit smoking a pipe would come to the front of the stage and announce “Ladies and Gentlemen, Happy Hardcore is now a thing”, and everyone at home would clap. Then, a few months or years later, that same suited man would step in front of the camera and state “Ladies and Gentlemen, I regretfully inform you that Happy Hardcore is no longer a thing. If you’d wait with us just a minute, we’ll be sure to get Big Beat ready for you in no time. Check it out now, you funk soul brothers”, and everyone at home would look a bit crestfallen and throw all their neon hoodies in the bin, but we were happy and we knew what was going on.
Now, when we’re all connected to everyone in the world, conversely we have no idea what’s going on with anybody. We can now build our own bubbles where we don’t ever have to think about what’s going on in the outside world. But trust me, a 2014 or a 2016 sounding record sounds horribly dated in 2023. And, unfortunately, ‘Premonition’ is some 2014 sounding shit. It’s good. It’s fine. The band made the correct decision to break up. Probably should have done it before this record.
Girl is good though.
129 Mannequin Pussy: I Got Heaven
2024 album alert! And this first single is banging!
Phew, so good to not have to write 2000 words on an entry…
128 Tove Lo: No One Dies From Love
‘Dirt Femme’, Tove Lo’s late 2022 album, was close to being included in NE 2023, and was actually on the list for a long time before I trimmed it. It’s a fantastic album and has some astonishing highlights (with more to come on this list).
We’re all aware of the break up album. Marvin Gaye’s ‘Here My Dear’; ‘The Boatman’s Call‘; every Fleetwood Mac album was soundtracking to a break up of some combination of members; that Blur one with the song about the ex girlfriend that was released after the guy had married someone else and had children – that’s weird, right? It’s not just me? That is weird? – and of course that Robin Thicke album that sadly outlined his break-up with Pharrell Williams and therefore any mainstream appeal. Princess Nokia released a breakup EP in 2023 though? Like, “It’s so sad that our union has to end and I will mourn the loss while also attempting to remember the good times… but only for seven songs and 18 minutes”.
The EP was perfectly serviceable, though the sad normalisation of Princess Nokia continues. Opener’s a banger though.
Yeah, good stuff boys. In the long term though, I do kind of worry about Z&A’s sustainability as a regular Necessary Evil artist. Sure, they’re Gold Star at the moment, but 2023 saw Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter kinda do one of their main things better than they’ve ever done. Now, Z&A might just be an extremely decent heavy metal band, and is that enough?
125 Midlake & John Grant: You Don’t Get To
This song fucks, and it’s got me really excited for where ma’ boy Grant is going to take their music going forward.
Sigh… Listen, the plan is always to include record covers of the songs that weren’t also on the top 40 countdown. The problem this year (and so far on this list) is that every freaking song exists outside the newly trimmed albums of the year so they’re all getting pictures! Don’t get used to it, is what I’m saying.
124 Caroline Polachek: Billions
Psycho. Priceless. Good in a crisis. Working the angles. Oh-uh-woah-ah-yeah. Billi- yens!
Say, say, saysay somethintomay…
See? Caroline had an album on the countdown, so no picture for you!
I think Polachek is ever so slightly overrated. Still great! Slightly overrated. Her vocal performance on this song though?? Chef’s fucking big sloppy dick kiss.
123 Kylie Minogue: Padam Padam
I mean, fuck me, respect due or what? Kylie must be in their seventies by now. Still looks amazing, of course, but that’s not what age is based on. Remember that red woman from Game of Thrones? She had a necklace or something that made her look young and sexy even though she was a million years old and…
Anyway, Minogue is a hundred years old, and yet they still have an unmatched ability to know exactly what the gays like. They’ve got loads of money, just relaxing around the world on tropical beaches and yachts and shit, and then once every decade or so they just say “You know what? Time to feed The Gays”. And she feeds them. And she gets it. I mean, I would never pretend to understand The Gays – I’m no way near understanding the straights so I’m not going to take on extracurricular work – but Kylie obviously does, and Padam Padam is the kind of absurd yet infectious utter bullshit that only Kylie can pull off.
122 Luke Haines & Peter Buck: 45 Revolutions
‘All The Kids Are Super Bummed Out’ – the second album from the slight ‘rub your eyes, throw away your drink’ pairing of the former Auteurs frontman and former REM guitarist – was probably the 41st best album of the year. A slightly more straightforward rock album than its predecessor, but still full of goodness as the strange (and, let’s be honest, scary) chemistry between the two random 90s rock icons continues to produce gold.
Yeah, I’ve tried to count to see if the song actually mentions 45 revolutions, but it is not easy. Like, are some revolutions mentioned twice?? Would you call the Arab Spring a ‘revolution’?? Did they just say ‘Young Turks’ again??
Join in anytime, these are good topics.
121 Death Valley Girls: Sunday
SUNDAY! I gotta make a change, I gotta… make my way…?
Love this song, and here’s me thinking that they’re some unknown band I happened across, but motherfuckers have a Wikipedia page!! They’re doing alright.
120 Miley Cyrus: Violet Chemistry
You heard Flowers, right? The fuck is up with that? I think it’s now officially the biggest song of all time. It hit number one in 225 countries. Weird, right, considering there UN only recognises 195 countries. Well, the song was so big that the UN allowed disputed areas to become independent just so they could make Flowers number one. It was number one in The Cook Islands, Northern Cyprus, Somaliland, Transnistria and others. Shit, China granted Tibet, Taiwan and Xinjiang independence, just so Flowers could be number one. In fact, even Palestine was allowed to…
Ah. No, sorry. Israel just bombed every record player in the Gaza Strip. Oh, and they’ve announced that any Palestinian caught listening to music will be shot. Oh, and they’re also slicing off babies’ ears. It’s only fair though, Israel has the right to defend itself.
But it’s such a nothing song. Did it ignite The Gays ala Kylie? Serious question. I don’t understand how a song with so little going for it sparked such a reaction. It sounds like a ready made 1980s wedding song, and maybe that’s the charm: Miley is a genius for creating a classic decades old ‘crap but I remember the words so I’ll sing it drunk’ 11:20pm classic that people have known all their lives but actually released in 2023. It’s some real ‘Blade Runner 2049 shit and I’m not sure if I’m OK with it.
Violet Chemistry though? Yeah, that fucks, stick that on.
Tell a bum bitch she can kiss my bum-bum
I’m in the back drinking Dom Perignon
You can look at it, but no you can’t touch
And if you get too close, I’m throwing bottles in the club
Yeah, it’s these two again, talking about the back, the front, the back, the front. A relatively rare occasion of the the song matching up to the quality of the lyrics and… Oh! The next bit too!
Pull me by the waist, we might have a problem
Knock a bitch out, now she puffy, pollen
Booty game cheerful, other bitches solemn
Some girlies wanna flex with no spinal column
Yeah, it’s all good.
118 PJ Harvey: Inside the Old Year Dying
Seriously, Peej has another song on this list with almost exactly the same title. It’s super confusing.
This song though is, like, super Peej, yeah?
117 RobinPlaysChords: The Dream
I sometimes play this song at work and my colleagues will go and inspect my iPad because they think it’s broken.
Feel the beat of the drum and go numb. Have fun. Go on.
Seriously, Young Fathers are national treasures and should be protected at all costs. They’re the best argument against devolution.
115 Lost Girls: Timed Intervals
01:11 – “With tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimed intervals…”
Bitch I’m a cow. Bitch I’m a cow. Bitch I’m a cow. Bitch I’m a cow. I go “Mooo”. “Mooo!”
Honestly, that’s the only Doja Cat song that I knew before this year. At least the only one that I could name. I realised that they went on to much (commercially) bigger things after that, but I was happy with Mooo!. “Got the methane, I’m a farter/With my farmer, MacDonald”? Motherfucker had bars! I didn’t think anything they released afterward deserved much attention. Apparently, I was right to think this! According to no less of a source than Doja themselves! They declared that their last two albums – ‘Planet Her’ and ‘Hot Pink’ – were cash grabs that we all fell for! Not me, Doja! I didn’t even know they were names of your albums! I’m Mooo! till I motherfuckin’ die! Still, they’d sold approximately 72 squazillion records and been nominated for nineteen (artistically worthless) Grammy awards by the time they sent out that Tweet formally known as X in May 2023, so what they came out with next would have to be pretty artistically splendid otherwise they were going to look pretty fucking dumb. Oh, and they also announced that their name was no longer Doja Cat, but Emcee Flapchunks the Third, so I for one was looking forward to music released under that new epithet.
I didn’t listen to the album, because I’m a very busy man, but Attention is really good! And Doja is a committed troll anyway, so whatever they might have farted out onto their socials at any point should perhaps be disregarded. Yes, I know, I’m as disappointed as you that this record wasn’t released under ‘Emcee Flapchunks the Third‘. It’s like back in February when they simply tweeted “Fart in my cock”. Were they actually farting in their cock?? I feel lied to…
Well this is quite sweet, isn’t it? yeule takes snippets from her old journals, works the classic little teenage paens of sadness like “Some days I can’t believe that I’m still here/Some days I feel like I have no more tears to shed” into a nostalgic early 2000s alt-rock shoegaze homage
I felt like I was talking to a younger version of me, stopping her from crying, looking back at the ways I betrayed and neglected that innocence from myself. I failed to protect her and I felt like I needed to go back in time and fulfill what she was starved of. So that she could return to my side. So that I can smile like a little kid again. The song gives quite vivid descriptions of depression I felt with almost a burning passion, yet I tried to give it a light-hearted tone
yeule
I dunno, that’s just sweet, ain’t it?? I don’t know how they do it, but yeule somehow invents nostalgia for teenage suicidal ideations and makes it sound so lovely!
112 Dean and the Weenies: Fuck You
2023 saw the release of (deep breath) ‘Blacklips Bar: Androgyns and Deviants — Industrial Romance for Bruised and Battered Angels, 1992–1995‘. The Blacklips Performance Cult was formed in 1992 by your friend and mine Anohni Hegarty, along with Johanna Constantine and Psychotic Eve. It grew into a notable collection of 13 or so avantgarde performers, artists and drag queens that would perform at New York’s Pyramid Club each Monday at 1am, and this compilation is an essential overview of the type of magic that they were able to create.
As long as only adults were present, of course. 1am on a Monday? At the Pyramid Club?? No! That’s only a mile and a half away from my eight year old son’s favourite gun club, and that stays open all night!! Stop queering my kids!!
Yeah, this album’s release was obviously very pointed, and Dean and the Weenies have a perfect response to the latest GOP attempt to move attention away from the contradictions of capitalism.
111 Sharon van Etten: This Is Too Right
Left off the original version of ‘Tramp’!? Left off?? What, are you an idiot or something??
Hey. Hey, Sharon.
Hey.
No, look at me.
Look at me!
Are you an idiot or something?
110 Amanda Palmer & The Righteous Babes: The Last Day of Our Acquaintance
But noooooooooooooooooooothing compares…
On one hand it’s a shame that an artist as talented and an activist so committed as Sinead O’Connor will always be tied to one song. An amazing song, don’t get me wrong – it’s a song that Prince Himself was never able to do a version anywhere near as good as – but a song so huge and so inescapable is going to overwhelm pretty much every career. On the other hand, if they never had the fame that ‘Nothing Compares 2U‘ afforded them, then maybe Sinead would have never had the chance to highlight police violence against black citizens, LGBT issues, or just expose the American cultural state’s discrimination against hip-hop. Or, biggest of all, effectively end her career by daring to suggest that the Catholic church was protecting child abusers. Listen, if you’re younger than maybe thirty then you’ve probably grown up in a world where that’s been widely accepted and even the Catholic Church itself has offered many “I really am so very truly sorry” mea culpas, but I’m old enough to remember it and Sinead daring to suggest that the Catholic Church is a worldwide child sex ring was enough to get them cancelled and be widely branded a dangerous weirdo for the rest of their career.
A lot of people say or think that tearing up the Pope’s photo derailed my career. That’s not how I feel about it, I feel that having a No. 1 record derailed my career and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track.”
‘Rememberings’
They were brave enough to accept the obvious hatred that would bring upon them. They just had to expose what was going on, they couldn’t just silently accept if it meant being culpable. Them tearing up a picture of the pope on Saturday Night Live is mentioned by Wikipedia as one of the notable moments that lead to the abuse being uncovered. It was also the only good or in any way interesting thing to have ever happened on Saturday Night Live It was a win/win for Sinead: they exposed the Catholic’s proud history of child abuse, and also removed themselves from the gross money making machine of popular culture.
What I’m saying is: they did loads of great songs, such as the one from that career derailing number one album covered beautifully by Amanda Palmer & The Righteous Babes.
100 gecs are a collective psychosis. They make novelty songs, sometimes with decent beats, and the way they’re fellated by all is some mass scam that I’m going to uncover one of these days. There’s something going on here. Something dark. Is it all to cover up child abuse, ala the Catholic Church? I’ve found no evidence of that yet, so I’ll have to unfortunately answer that question only with a ‘maybe’. It’s music for people who go to those ‘cheesy’ club nights and pretend to ironically be getting down Ice, Ice Baby because they can’t bare to admit to their cool friends that they actually like shit music. And here are 100 gecs making shit music it’s somehow ‘cool’ to like.
Yeah, 757 is a bit of fun, ala Who Let the Dogs Out, I guess. The album also contains Frog on the Floor. Are you arguing that you actually like listening to that and would intentionally put on? Unironically enjoy?
Ah yes, the song that’s near impossible to Google:
“Ah, you mean ‘Bonnie “Prince” Billy‘??”
“No! I mean the Prince song ‘Billy’!”
“Ah! A song by the artist Prince called ‘Billy’??”
“Yes!”
“No problem! Here’s ‘Billy Jack Bitch’!”
“😣”
OK, admittedly, it’s no surprise that Billy is so difficult to locate: never officially released, not even included on the ‘Purple Rain’ deluxe (recorded in 1983, which is why it’s included this year) or on the super duper pooper deluxe ‘Sign O’ the Times’ reissue (it came together when Prince was trying to teach the band the chords to Strange Relationship, which ended up on that 1987 album). Which I get: what the fuck do you do with this song??
Arguably, it’s not even a song: the full version is a 50 [FIFTY] minute jam session that somehow, given the generational talents of the players involved (Prince and the full Revolution) somehow turns into an amazingly funky rock track. It shows how Prince could literally just make up better songs than almost all of His peers on the fucking spot.
The canonical version that’s officially the 107th best song of 2023 is the 16 minute edit, which seems to capture best the part of the jam that most closely resembles a straightforward ‘song’. Though if you want to say it’s actually the 50 minute version, go ahead: they’re both great. With Prince ad-libbing lyrics about how Billy’s glasses are the funkiest He’s ever seen over a killer guitar riff, it’s a thrilling look into what the recording studio would have felt like with Prince and the Revolution at their most imperial.
I don’t like nobody, I don’t feel guilty about it
I just got my body done, ain’t got no guilt about it
I just heard your opinion, I could’ve did without it
All these bitches is minions, despicable like, ooh
This song is a scientifically proven bop.
106 Velvet Negroni: Never Said Peep
Dum-dum-dum-dum, dumdumdumdumdumdumdum, DINK-DONK-DONK!
This song is a scientifically proven bop.
105 The Answers in Between: Cigarette
She’s outside in a cigarette! I’m outside in a respirator!
Man, the way that chorus spanks into life! So yeah, third entry Hannah Jocelyn, and means both the A and B side of their ‘Cigarette/Mindfuck!’ release make the list. Pretty good 2023. Pretty, petty, pretty good.
You know what? Maybe this was all conceived, born and educated on the spot as well, as Richard James is definitely that level of genius. I’m pretty sure they’re, like, 70 years old by this point, but there are just hardly any other artists in 2023 making electronic music sound this good.
103 Alice Longyu Gao & Oli Sykes: Believe the Hype
I’m a meat eater, I’m a beat maker
I’m a MIDI player, you’re the gatekeeper
You don’t have ears, you are all lies
You love to talk, you pray to God
You’re listening to the future of musicBELIEVE THE HYPE
You hate to see, but I’m poppin’ on RedditBELIEVE THE HYPE
No, seriously, believe it. If you’ve never heard of Alice Longyu Gao before, then consider this ‘the hype;:
HYPE! HYPE! HYPEHYPEHYPE! THEY’RE FUCKING AMAZING!
Good? Well, they have other songs on this list so hopefully you’ll believe it soon.
102 Don’t do it, Neil: Sugar Candy Sweet
My mate Mabel actually released the album ‘I’ll Keep Your Secret if You Swear to Keep Mine‘ back in October 2022, where the banging, R&B style and Soft Cell cribbing Sugar Candy Sweet lives. The album was good, not great, but Sugar… is a certified banger.
Shit, they released the follow up album in October 2023! I am so far behind!
101 Unknown Mortal Orchestra: The Garden
Fair play to UMO, ‘V’ was probably their best record since ‘Multilove’ (though at the same time not in the same league as the record that finished #2 in 2015) and would have definitely finished between 50th and 40th if such a place existed this year. I’ve long accepted that UMO are no longer willing to take their music into the more electronic and interesting places that they took it to on ‘Multilove’, and that’s fine. As psychedelic 70s rock pastiches go, ‘V’ is about as good as it could be, and opener The Garden is an absolute stormer.
100
Top fucking 100!! This list is starting to get to an almost normal length! I wonder what bop we’re opening up this party with?!
Awwwwwwww shoot. Now I’m saaaaaaaaaaaaaad.
Lanno’s gorgeous cover of the Bert Jansch song was originally released as a limited edition 7″ (backed by Duke Garwood’s version of Fresh as a Sweet Sunday Morning) back on Record Store Day 2015, and was added to Lanno’s Bandcamp in 2023. Hey, I love it, and in future I would always love there to be a reason to feature Lanno on the Legit Bosses.
99 Sufjan Stevens: Will Anybody Ever Love Me
This is a great song. A flipping brilliant song. One of the best songs of the year?? Top 10 even?? Not even close, the fuck is wrong with some people?? I get the context around it, I guess, but it still sounds to me like Sufjan doing (extremely good) Sufjan karaoke, and people lapping it up because it remembers them of fey, pathetic house parties full of pasty Sufjan bumboys back when they were at uni. It’s extremely good, but I can yell you right now that a couple of songs from 2023’s 20 year anniversary reissue of ‘Michigan‘ are ranked higher.
98 Caroline Polachek: Welcome To My Island
The same people who think Will Anybody Ever Love Me is the greatest song ever released also love Caroline Polachek, trust me.
97 Olivia Rodrigo: ballad of a homeschooled girl
Now this – this! – is where it’s fucking at.
96 Luke Haines & Peter Buck: Waiting For the UFOs
The final track on the duo’s “double album/manifesto, monster-piece and masterpiece” of a second album is possibly the most perversely optimistic. Yeah, this world’s a fucking mess, it states, and the kids may be super bummed out, but at least they might get taken off to another planet!
95 Alice Longyu Gao: Hëłlœ Kįttÿ
Go to therapy or else you are gonna go to jail – JAIL!
You don’t need a Grammy, you need therapy right now – RIGHT NOW!
Do yourself a favor, keep my name way out your mouth – YOUR MOUTH!
If I was your neighbor I set fire to your house – YOUR HOUSE!
0:51 – Ciao bella, ciao bella, bellisimo
A friend recommended a few artists that she’d seen at Reading Festival and… yeah, pretty much hated them all. They did tell me about ZAND though, and this ode to a toxic relationship with an abusive partner whose “tongue tastes like battery acid” is a great little track.
93 Prince: Our Destiny/Roadhouse Garden
Youse all ready for some heavy Prince Lore? Youse are all sat down? Then we’ll begin.
My Destiny and Roadhouse Garden were two separate tracks, but made their live debut at a June 7th 1984 gig to celebrate Prince’s 27th birthday (Jesus Christ…) where they were segued together. While working on tracks for ‘Purple Rain’s follow-up (more on that next year) in September 1984, Wendy and Lisa decided to have another punt at the My Destiny, which by now had its live version overdubbed and cleaned up. Lisa had a go recording new vocals. Jill Hones also took a swing. It’s Lisa’s vocals that remain on the track included on the 2017 ‘Purple Rain’ deluxe edition. It’s the first official Prince release with Lisa Coleman as the lead singer.
To match that famous live debut, it’s paired with the euphoric Roadhouse Garden, where Prince enters to sing of a utopian where He can feel fully content and safe: “This is the house where emotions grow,/Give ‘em love, open your soul/it’s alright, it’s alright”. Perhaps about the Revolution band itself, which by that point was obviously going to last forever and ever and ever until He broke them up in late 86. If it was ever considered for the next album, it would have likely been bumped for the thematically similar (but probably far superior) Paisley Park.
Was it ever seriously considered for ‘Around the World in a Day’ though?? Jill Jones claims that Roadhouse Garden was planned for an aborted musical of the same name. In late 1998, Prince (or the Ƭ̵̬̊ symbol at that point, which WordPress no longer lets me type!!) announced via His website that a ‘Roadhouse Garden‘ album would soon be released and credited to ‘Prince and the Revolution’. It was going to be made up of songs that the band recorded before their 1986 dissolvement. Of course, that never happened either.
So we’re left with Our House/Roadhouse Garden, a true product of The Revolution and a perfectly conceived opener to a musical, or an album, or maybe another album 15 years later, or maybe nothing.
Sweeter the pie
Deeper the dive
I’m freaking out
In the dead of the night
Figure it out
‘Cause I’m gonna cry
Fucking me up
In the dead of the night
That’s definitely something sexual, and all power to Dua.
Dua announces signing to Ghostly International with perhaps their most commercially viable song yet and… maybe… their best?? Whatever, it slaps.
SZA pushes you past your own capacities, boy.
Another track from ‘SOS’, because that album is wall to wall bangers. Is this the last we’ll see of SZA on this list? Lol, yeah mate, lol, who knows?
Lol.
Well
We-e-eh-ell,
We-e-eh-eh-e-eh-ell,
I’m ba-e-ya-e-yad!
Yeah, love this, and Sharon actually did put it on ‘Tramp’.
Pour yourself out of the sea
Softest syrup over me
Sipping a sparkling tumor
Wish me courage, strength, and a sense of humour
Hot.
The Maggers followed up their supoib 2022 debut album proper in 2023 with their third collection of minuscule mixes, which they deemed to name ‘Mini Mix Vol.3’, and the general quality of the seven tracks is so good that it’s actually offensive. Fuck off, Magdelena Bay, release a duff track or two some time, yeah? Leave some fanny for the rest of us. EXO is a highlight, and though its literal meaning is a tab oblique (“Love in the air/There’s air in the bag/A violence in me/Singing hello”), I dunno, I just seems like a really horny song to me. Does anyone else get that? Isn’t this song just the horniest little thing you’ve ever heard? No?
Actually, I’m pretty sure you’re the one with a problem, mate.
87 Prince: Katrina’s Paper Dolls
Not as lore-heavy as the previous vault selection included on the ‘Purple Rain’ deluxe edition. It’s just a effortlessly perfect little pop song that Prince apparently recorded on a day off from His 1999 tour in 1983. One small lore nugget is that Prince polled fans in 2000 to vote on which previously unreleased tracks would make it into the upcoming ‘Crystal Ball II’ compilation album, and Katrina’s Paper Dolls was one of the tracks selected. Well, I say ‘upcoming’, but ‘Crystal Ball II’ never actually… Ah, you know what I’m going to say don’t you?
Dehumanising me,
Romanticising me,
Art, artificially
You’re so fucking specialLove, lover, love her
Think of me when you fuck her
Lose, loser, lose her
She is him and her is me
As in ‘for you I want to’, granddad! And, yes, I believe that is a Creep reference.
When I haven’t listened to ‘softscars’ for a minute, I start to misremember it as a bit of a early 90s alt-rock homage, perhaps because every other fucking album is a fucking early fucking 90s fucking alt fucking rock fucking homage these days. Fucking. But then I hear a song like 4ui12 and remember, no, this doesn’t really sound like anything else apart from yeule.
“Everybody’s good/No one is”. Never has moral relativism slapped so hard as on this ‘Water Made Us‘ highlight.
Well at least The Hives are having fun. A band I have previously afforded so little attention to that I have literally only just found out that ‘The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons’ is their first album in more than a decade. I just always assumed that they released an album exactly like that one – i.e. exactly the same as all the other ones they’ve released – once every 18 months or so, it’s a good time, everyone has a a lot of fun, then we’re all done. But eleven years it took them to make this album that just sounds like another Hives album?? We’ve all got bills to pay, I guess.
My friend ended up going to about a dozen Hives gigs last summer – I’m not going to explain why, mostly because I’m not sure myself – and was keen for me to listen to their new album to see if it made my list. I did. It’s a lot of fun! It didn’t make the list. But the opening song absolutely fucks.
83 Michael Stipe (feat. Gaelynn Lea): Give Me a Hand
There have been fifteen Necessary Evil album of the year lists. This is the ninth Legit Boss list of the year’s greatest songs. This is the 736th post on this blog. Finally Michael Stipe makes their first appearance. Jesus, Michael, Peter Buck has had a whole album! Give Me a Hand is a lovely, plaintive ballad released as part of EarthPercents Earth Day 2023 compilation and – get this – there’s a bit more Michael Stipe to come!
Did you know that apparently Casey Spooner from Fischerspooner was working on Michael Stipe’s debut solo album at some point?? Did you know that Spooner says that Stipe was their first love when they met in 1988 when Casey was 18?? Michael Stipe would have been 28. That’s a bit weird, no?
I didn’t adore ‘Fountain Baby’, the unanimously adored – 19th best of the year on average – second album by the Ghanian American Amaarea. It’s easier to admire than to truly love: the sheer width and vastness of its influences and sounds are undeniably impressive, but the finished product too often seem lightweight and superficial, casual sonic flows when I want a few fucking tsunamis here and there.
Disguise is the nearest the record gets, hints of gritted teeth and more searing emotion amongst a record that too often sails into easy listening.
81 Kansas: Carry On Wayward Son
Listen, no listen, no hang on, listen, no, no, no, listen, no, hang on, no, shut up!
This song was on repeat for me all year, after The Elite returned after their CM Punk-related suspension at Full Gear on the 19th November 2022, they decided to shell out for this Kansas classic and it was amazing. Like, tearjerkingly amazing, which you will never understand because you’re not a wrestling fan and therefore have no concept of love, romance and passion…
Sigh… We were so happy back then… So positive…
The Elite returning that night was a joyous celebration of how AEW didn’t need CM Punk! We could go back to how it used to be! 12 months later, CM Punk has come back, fucked shit up again and left to join the competitor. Kenny Omega has fucking diverticulitis now! The Young Bucks are… God knows, but they’ve not been happy since they were continuously overruled in favour of CM Punk at the company they co-founded. And AEW itself? Mate, it fucking sucks right now, and has done for the majority of the last 12 months. Last week was by far the worst PPV the company has ever put on, the product has never felt colder, the wrestlers obviously aren’t happy there, and the reason I’m highlighting AEW’s best moments on his countdown is because I’ve got a horrible feeling that it won’t be around to see the 2024 Legit Bosses.
…
…
…
*plays the YouTube video again*
“Once I rose above the noise and confusion, just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion…!”
80 Prince: Electric Intercourse
Cuz baby, U shock my wild
With a sexual electricity extraordinaire
Come and take advantage and undress me
I don’t even know U, I don’t even careI feel some kind of sexual courage
Tell me do U feel it 2?
Our bodies wanna be 2gether
Girl, I wanna be with UElectric is my body, baby
I’ll shock U with my lips
Darling, don’t U know
Your Technicolor climax is at my fingertips?
Hear me, baby
On August 3rd 1983, Prince and the Revolution played a benefit show at Minneapolis’ First Avenue. You might not have heard of this show before, but you will have definitely heard it. The last three tracks from the ‘Purple Rain’ album – I Would Die 4 U, Baby I’m a Star and the – still inescapable 40 years on – title track – are actually live recordings from that gig, with minimal overdubs. It was the gig where the band would debut many tracks from their forthcoming record, such as Let’s Go Crazy and Computer Blue. It would also be The Revolution’s first official performance as a band. As ‘Dig’ writer Jason Draper remarks: “As far as pop culture is concerned, history-making moments rarely come bigger than this“.
Of course, Prince is the greatest live performer of all time, the gig wasn’t just all new material: he’s gonna play the hits! So the crowd were also treated to stone cold classics like When You Were Mine and Little Red Corvette, but the main aim of the gig was to start acquainting audiences with the songs that were going to rule the world in around ten months time, songs that were going to appear on the next album and on the upcoming movie. Songs like Electric Intercourse.
Played between Delirious and Automatic and not at all wilting in the company of those two absolute behemoths, Electric Intercourse must have sounded like one of the more immediate hits of the new material. Next to slightly bonkers experimentation like Computer Blue and more straightforward glam rockers like Baby I’m a Star, the gorgeous, sultry ballad Electric Intercourse, with its heightened emotions and irrefutable piano line, would have sounded like the natural evolution of Do Me Baby, Prince’s next radio devouring smooth jam. There wouldn’t have been a dry crotch in the place, no matter what gender it belonged to.
So what happened? Well, about six weeks after that famous gig, Prince just happened to record The Beautiful Ones and thought “Nah mate, that’s the natural evolution of Do Me Baby and my next radio devouring smooth jam!” Because that’s Prince: even if you record a 9.5/10 song, you’ll record a 10/10 a few weeks later, and that first almost perfect song can now fuck right off.
79 Ingrid and the Ministers: Porcelain God
Oh I like this a lot. Ingrid and the Ministers are a Kiwie band that go hard. Plus the last track on their debut album suggests the listener “Get your tits out, tits out, tits out at my funeral”. What’s not to love?
0:38 –
Looking good
Looking fine
No one would think that
You’re cheating on your wife
78 Nourished By Time: The Fields
A lot of people are under the impression that Daddy is the best song from Nourished’s debut album. They’re wrong. It’s The Fields.
77 Lil Yachty: Reach the Sunshine
OK, so I once claimed that Kendrick’s How Much A Dollar Cost was the 2nd best rap song to sample Radiohead’s Pyramid Song after Plan B’s Missing Links. Well, apparently, that Kendrick song doesn’t sample it at all. It just rips it off… sorry, Kendrick’s a genius… It just interpolates it!
Ok, alright, but Reach the Sunshine definitely samples it! Yachty even repeats the “Jumped in the river/What did I see?” opening line.
And it’s amazing.
Not as good as Missing Links by Plan B though, obvs.
An delicately pained and gorgeous tribute to lost youth/innocence/gender, that the great pervert of youth nostalgia Nicky Wire would kill for. When I spoke to Elle in early 2023 I asked why Boyhood was the only track off their original few EPs to be rerecorded for inclusion on the debut album proper. Truthfully, I was a bit surprised as it never struck me as one of their stronger songs. However, over the past 12+ months the subtle genius of the song itself and the sheen added by it’s ‘Destroyer‘ retooling has become clearer, and it ranks among their greatest work yet.
02:20 – “Cause I’ve done some bad things…”
(the music drops out)
“I’ve done things I regret…”
(music comes back in with backing vocals)
“Like writing all those words…”
Goosebumps.
75 PJ Harvey: I Inside the Old I Dying
Ah yes, the chalky children of evermore, is it? So good to hear from them.
74 Unknown Mortal Orchestra: Layla
Midnight and I’m
Drying your tears on my sleeve
Let’s leave the unread messages on ice please
How many burgers you wanna turn?
How many times you wanna get burned?
They just don’t understand
This isn’t the place you end up
Hey
Lay low, Layla
Let’s get outta this broken place
Lay low, Layla
Let’s get outta this town
UMO’s Ryan Neilson may not be one of the best lyricists in the world – not that they’re bad at all – but their ability to wrap unlikely words and phrases around melodies that you’d never imagine working is perhaps unmatched. Like, I know this song, and I still can’t picture how that opening verse fits the tune. And to resist throwing in even one “Ya got me on ma knees!”?? Made of sterner stuff than most.
73 The Hold Steady: Grand Central
I do love The Hold Steady. They make music for seedy Minneapolis cops to play in bars after they’ve come of shift. Sure, it’s all fun and games and alcohol and spousal abuse, but every now and then the cop will look off into the distance as a lyric like “Our silence was stretched between nerves and the knowledge/The ring that she wore wasn’t mine/Because people get tired and they turn on each other/And the rivers run from the divides” will hit deep into their soul. Then they’ll smash the bottle they were drinking from and go out to arrest some black teenagers to get over the feeling of dread.
72 The Lemonheads: Into Your Arms
Just shut up, yeah? I fucking love this song.
0:06: “Dow, dow-da-dow…” The way that baseline comes in, it’s just maaaaaaate…!
71 The Streets: Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Are you at all aware that the Streets are apparently still really good?? I’m a bit wary of such big comments and hot takes, which is maybe why I’m being extra slow in coming around to accepting it. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a killer track released back in 2022, and introduced to me by my good friend mynameisblueskye’s best of 2022 playlist. Do I dare consider The Streets’ 2023 for NE2024?? Tell me what you think in the comments.
(always wanted to say that. No fucker ever leaves comments)
Where Noname dares to call out rap’s biggest cultural and critical names for engaging in US War Machine propaganda, before wilting slightly to say that them playing Coachella is somehow comparable?? Listen, Name, I understand you wanting to use your ‘nobody’s perfect’ outta jail free card, but stand by your convictions! These artists somehow getting away with supporting genocide is not the same as your silly liberal worries about playing shows to white people!! Christ. Noname is almost there, almost understands Marxism and what being revolutionary and class conscious means, but too often messes up the landing.
Go, Rihanna, go
Watch the fighter jet fly high
War machine gets glamorized
We play the game to pass the time
Go, Beyoncé, go
Watch the fighter jet fly high
War machine gets glamorized
We play the game to pass the timeGo, Kendrick, go
Watch the fighter jet fly high
War machine gets glamorized
We play the game to pass the time
Heeeeeeeeeeeey!
Stand alone single!
Stand alone single!
Stand alone single!
CHVRCHES signed a new record deal with Island in last year – which, honestly, I’m not sure what that means in 2023 – and in… celebration…?… released the stand alone single Over.
It’s a pretty wonderful pop song, because that’s basically all CHVRCHES do by this point, and you congratulate them for releasing a wonderfully crafted and joyously catchy tune like this would be like congratulating me on taking my morning dump. If anything, because creating pp wonder like this just comes naturally to them, it would actually make more sense if we celebrated them releasing clangers, as that’s way more difficult for them. They’re just being lazy, if anything.
Cam Cole released their third album in 2023. While I remain unconvinced by their laddish, retro pub rock (especially when their lyrical themes revolve around how they hate feminists), but Vibes is the best thing they’ve ever ever done by a country mile and actually rocks the socks off any feet within a ten mile radius.
67 Taylor Swift ft. Ice Spice: Karma
The Ice Spice hat trick! Yeah, maybe this was just an excuse to keep listening to Taylor singing about their cat (sitting in their lap because it loves them). But it only finished #68 last year, so that Spice bit had to have done somethin’, no?? “Karma is your check’s ’boutta bounce/Karma is a fire in your house/And she ’boutta pop up unannounced”? That’s gold, mate, gold!!
Only in me
I am the coil, I am the spring
Only in me
I am the ghost in the machine
Only in me
Recount confession, give no release
Only in me
Only in me will your stain ever live to be
Yeah, I know, this might appear like it’s only on this countdown to pay tribute to Bray Wyatt. One of the most creative wrestling minds of the past decade (regardless of how successful you personally believe those creations were). Wyatt was unlucky enough to rise to prominence during one of the most creatively bankrupt periods in WWE’s history, where the company’s near two decades of monopoly would dissuade them from taking any unnecessary risks that could anger the stockholders’. Wyatt died in August 2023 after an heart attack related to COVID. They were 36.
OK, so this is my tribute: Bray was one of the most creative minds to ever work in wrestling, and though it never lead to the success it should have during their lifetime, Wyatt’s influence on the business and on future wrestlers will be near infinite.
This isn’t a tribute: Shatter, the new theme composed by Code Orange for Bray’s comeback in late 2022, is an absolute banger, whatever the context.
Dar-dar-dardar!
MAKE WAY!
MAKE WAY!
And so it goes on.
64 Sufjan Stevens: Oh God Where Are You Now? (In Pickerel Lake? Pigeon? Marquette? Mackinaw?)
Yeah, back in 2003 Sufjan was paid by the word.
Seriously? Listen to Will Anybody Ever Love Me, cited by some lesser critics as the best song of the freaking year (#99 in truth). Then listen to this gorgeous nine minute epic from his rereleased 2003 classic ‘Michigan’. Like, am I going insane here? Is it because I was introduced to this album for the first time this year, yet all these other fey, bespectacled white softbois take this album’s beauty for granted?? How is there even a comparison?? ‘Javelin’ is a great album (some weirdos even said it was album of the year!?), but it’s just a very successful attempt by Sufjan to retread old glories. ‘The Ascension’ wasn’t widely loved, but it was new, it was challenging, it was brave.
And, put simply, nothing on it can match the lilting beauty of this song swelling with the lines “There’s no other man/Who could raise the dead”.
Jesus, so many songs, so many segments, so many lyrics, so many line deliveries (“From under here, all you can hear is/The distant boom of the hell’s angels” is nothing on the page, but Samia delivers it like it’s scripture from the mount) on the superlative Samia album just destroy me, and the title track is one of the biggest offenders.
Psychedelic shit
Everything I know is irrelevant
now that you mention it
Horny and celibate
My dick is irrelevant
FaceTime is the closest
That we will ever get
To tell you the truth my brain got no room
For a pink ass elephant
Twisted like good rope
Hung like good folk
It’s all relatives
Swinging from the branches of the government
Woah
Hey, i’m so woke I forgot to dream
It was something about the top of a mountain
Shit, tighten the noose, it slips my memory.
Black blood is raining like it’s entertainment
And it’s all a nightmare to me
The future called, it wants 20/20 back
If we can Nazi
Hold on…
…
…
…the fuck is this?
This is…
…amazing…
Who is Alex Ebert? No idea. This was actually on mynameisblueskye’s best of 2022 playlist, and I’m actually too scared to investigate further. This song is just so perfect, so beautiful, so banging. I’m imagining it like if I never followed Jamie T’s splattering career after the monumental Sheila, and just had that for the rest of my life. I don’t want to tarnish my love of Ebert by listening to them failing to match this majesty.
Also, RIP Bob Hoskins.
Fuck, mate, Young Fathers’ main problem is that they’ve been, like, a 10/10 band consistently for their whole career now, so when another 10/10 album comes out everyone just kind of goes “Yep. I should think so”.
There’s a bug like an angel stuck to the bottom
Of my glass, with a little bit left
As I got older, I learned I’m a drinker
Sometimes a drink feels like family
(choir comes in)
FAAAAAAAAAAAAA-MAAAAAAAAA-MAAALEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Jesus, Mitski, you’re not content with putting every Millennial’s therapist out of business?? Now you’re going after Alcoholics Anonymous??
59 The National (feat. Bon Iver): Weird Goodbyes
It finally hits me, a mile’s drive
The sky is leaking, my windshield’s crying
I’m feeling sacred, my soul is stripped
Radio’s painful, the words are clipped
The grief, it gets me, the weird goodbyes
My car is creepin’, I think it’s dying
I’m pullin’ over until it heals
I’m on a shoulder of lemon fields
Hey, Israel, you wanna completely devastate the Gaza Strip? Just send them this song!
No, my mistake. The indiscriminate and bloodthirsty genocide campaign is probably a better option. Yeah, this song is really a smack to the feels, but I think the way you’re irradiating an entire group of people probably works better.
I’m top dog
And I like to swim in the dark
And if you know the movie Wild at Heart
Yeah, I can be like the girl in Wild at Heart
At heartI’m always happy because
I only do what I want
Yeah, I can be like the girl in Jurassic Park
At heart, at heart
Strong words, but if you want them to be like that girl from ‘Wild at Heart’ (Laura Dern) or that girl from Jurassic Park (Laura Dern), then Mica Tenenbaum has you covered.
57 Sufjan Stevens: For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti
“Ooooh, I love that new Sufjan Stevens album, it has banjos on it!”
Mate, sit your skinny arse down!
56 Unknown Mortal Orchestra: Drag
An instrumental. An infectious, inescapable, funky instrumental. Yeah, I know on the last UMO entry I made a big deal out of the voice of frontman Ryan Neilson. They’re multifaceted, alright?
55 Velvet Negroni: Pop Song 2 & 1
Oh. OK. This was originally just going to be Pop Song 1, but Negroni has put them both together on this video, so I’ll take that please. Oh, Pop Song 2 is the first song on the record, Pop Song 1 is the second. Because Velvet is a wild and crazy guy.
Olive oil! See me die! Check that out! Check that out!
I think I’m just about ready for The Smile now, y’know? I feel like Bending Hectic is the slow, eight minute soft launch for their new album, coming out the end of this month. I’m ready for them now. I have officially opened myself up to receive them.
Or I’ll just do the usual shit again. You know what I’m talking about:
Seriously, mate, that was like the first meme I ever made. It’s older than your last girlfriend.
‘Cause my past can’t escape me
My pussy precedes me
My, my, how the times change
You still talkin’ ’bout babies
And I’m still taking the Plan B
10/10, no notes.
52 Lauren Auder: 730kingfisher
Lord, fan my cheeks. Drama. Tragedy. Passion. Pain. Dragon slaying.
0:38: Auder’s voice cracks as they launch into the chorus with a roar through bared teeth: “Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell! Hold me closer!/Don’t let me get older!/Don’t let me get wiiiiiiiiiise to this!”. Just take my heart out of the pot and drop it in the Bento Box: it’s done.
51 Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter: All of My Friends Are Going to Hell
Brother who knows what goes on in the night
He won’t lift his voice to speak up for what’s right
Silence may let you to sit for a spell
But when you die you are going to HellAll of my friends are going to Hell
None of them know from what I can tell
I’m getting up from the place where I fell
Jesus, please save me
I don’t want to live like my friends
Who are going to Hell
Never before has a piece of art so perfectly captured that bittersweet, terrified adulation of religious rebirth. I’ve seen the light! I will be saved! All my friends though…? Ah shit, fuck them I guess?
50 Sleep Token: Are You Really OK?
Top motherfucking fifty! WE ROLLING!
And what a start to the top fifty! Fucking Sleep Token, mate! With all the sleeping and the tokens and the… And. erm… think about it… Are you really OK…?
OK, I can’t for the life of my remember what this is, hang on…
Yeah, cheat code. It’s basically another early 90’s coded alt-rock shimmer, only this makes the top 50 because the lighters held high potential is immense.
Ooh, when’s the last time somebody told you that they love you
And meant it?
Ooh, when’s the last time a nigga told you that he needs you
And you felt it?
OK, so this has to be the line. A song this good? This low? This must be the point where shit starts getting serious.
Because Last Time is an absolute gem of a peach of a pearl of a dog’s bollock of a pop song.
dvsh’s October 2022 album ‘Working On My Karma’? Oof, no thank you, that is a rough record, with gross, problematic lyrics that suggest dvsn are aiming to be the Toxic Crusaders of unhealthy relationships. Every song is about how they’ll get right back to their partner after they’re done shagging dozens of other really fit birds (because they’re a legend!), or how they’re sad they lost their partner because they were shagging dozens of other really fit birds (because they’re a legend!), and anyway: “Sometimes a man’s gotta be a man/Sometimes we’re stuck in our head about things that women never understand/Dreams, ambitions, and people in need of money/I don’t always wanna talk about how I feel, the world’s sleepin’ on me“. Oh my God, what is this decaying capitalism bullshit? You chicks just don’t understand us men. We really like money.
Ah, but the first track though? Such a beautiful, sweet and simple paean to the classic “No, but seriously though, I’m the only one who really gets you, yeah??” teenage thought process. And the way that question “When’s the last time somebody told you that they need you… and you felt it?” lands, just – eesh – I feel it, alright! I feel it every dang time.
And if I tell you, “I love you,” then I mean that shit
Let’s fuck, but make it quick, I got a meeting at six
My time is way too valuable to lose
I hope that you’re not forcin’ me to choose
My heart, it been domestically abused
Yeah, it’s not all perfect I’ll admit, but damn that chorus! dvsn, honey, when you fill my heart that much you can domestically abuse it all you wa…!
48 Young Fathers: Be Your Lady
Hey, you
Shaking up the bag
I wanna be your lady
Forgetting I’m the man
Old flames
Coming back
Now that is slightly shady
All I have is crazy
All I have is mad
All I have is crazy
All I have is
All I have is bad
10/10, no notes
47 Laura Jane Grace: Dysphoria Hoodie
When it says adidas on my chest
All day long I dream of sex
When I’m not thinking ’bout Jesus
Help me, Jesus
Save me, Jesus
At school, we used to say that Adidas stood for ‘All Day I Dream About Sex’. KoЯn even did a song about it, because that’s the general mental level they always operated on. No, I don’t expect praise for typing out the backwards ‘Я’ like that. I demand praise for it.
We also used to say it stood for ‘A Dirty Indian Does A Shit’. Anyone fancy turning that into a song?
This is the best song that LJG has released as a solo artist, which bodes extremely well for the February 2024 album.
Yeah, I know, it’s just Waterloo Sunset with added scoliosis, even dirtier old rivers and – presumably – added gun crime. Second amendment baby! Whooooooooooo!
02:40 – The intense fuzz rock intensifies then suddenly… drops out:
Somebody called the cops on Mandy and her boyfriend
When they busted in they found that her house was a front for a mob thing
Pulled guns and cocaine from the drywall wrapped in newspaper
We gathered in the tall grass and watched unblinking as they cuffed ’em and hauled ’em away
…before the chorus kicks in one more time (OMT Award 2023) and you accept that, yeah, there’s nobody doing it quite like Wednesday are doing it, is there?
…’are’ there??
Fuck…
45 [e]choism: Tracking Distant Transmissions
OK, where to start with this…?
Actally, let’s just start by confirming that Tracking Distant Transmissions is one of the best indie rock I’ve heard in years. No wheels are reinvented, far from it, you might even describe the five minute riff-a-thon as ‘retro’. Hell, it’s a bit freaking Britpop! So you know that this is a track with no illusions of being anywhere close to ‘cool’. What it is, however, is a simply perfect, fun and expertly crafted piece of slightly heavy guitar pop. It’s undeniable.
But… who the fuck are [e]choism??
There’s that name for a start, but we don’t have time to dwell on that. The artist’s name is apparently Rob, they’re from Cambridge – up The U’s – they haven’t Tweeted anything since 2021, their Insta is private, their YouTube is a handful of shorts… Maybe I’ll upload it myself (and pretend that I wrote it, sell it for a Nescafe advert, etc)…?
And Rob created this song. Ain’t music amazing? Isn’t art magical? Isn’t the world wonderful sometimes?
Looks like a bloody mess,
Leave it like this, leave the rest
Honeybee, honey please
Fight my demons, demon please
Drink honey, drink blood,
You look like an angel god,
Don’t you feel so pure
When you don’t have a body anymore?
Bloodbunny, pierced tummy
Softscar, data
I love you 4evr, 4evr, 4evr
Trauma, blue car
Drink your nectar
Bite into you, you bite me too
This song is like the saddest… but hottest… kinky sex you’ve ever had.
No! You’re a pervert!
I am disturbed. Gimme shelter.
Do you see? Do you see how well Sabrina Teitelbaum combines crunching noise with overwhelming melody and overlays it with wonderfully sardonic lyrics to create fucking magic?? Do you see?? Sir! Do. You. SEE?!
0:51 – We get the central verse, with Sabrina relates to their childhood appreciation of the adult themes of the early 2000s TV show. Then – holy shit – the song kicks in, and we get it again. But louder: And Blondshell also perhaps discovers where their attraction to toxicity comes from:
Veronica Mars
2000 aughts
Logan’s a dick
I’m learning that’s hot
The aching ballad starts slow, builds up slowly as Anohni explains how their identity as a trans woman damns them to an existence consisting of forever being the receptacle (“I can say just what I want/I can use you like a toilet”) for those in power to shit upon in an attempt to distract from the failings of imperialisms and of the capitalist state. Before, eventually, holy shit!:
3:42 – Fuck me dead and bury me pregnant! What a guitar solo! Prince has risen!!
No joke, no exaggeration, when I saw Little Simz perform this song live in 2023 I actually left my body and experienced God. No biggie.
We all start off so pure
Do it for the love, nu’in more
Nah, maybe to cop Mum a house, but nu’in more
Maybe to sort my cousin out, but nu’in more
Maybe I’ll get the new coupe and nu’in more
Fifteen to a hundred shoes, nu’in more
Once you hear how Simz wraps their voice around the word ‘nothin’ you will be convinced that they might deserve to be included in the ‘Best of All Time’ conersation.
Kiss city
Just look me in the eye when I’m about to finish
Kiss city
I think my kink is when you tell me that you think I’m pretty
Love, infatuation, need, desire: they have all rarely been presented to believably, so sweetly.
Even when it’s dark out
I still can see your bone structure
I can see the liiiiiiight in you, ooh
Yeah, my baby was in a black dress
When she married me
I’m the reason that you walked that way
In your two-inch heels
Nowadays motherfuckers act like they forgot about Shake.
In my view – so, in the scientifically correct view – the greatest and single most exciting music maker of the 2020s, the only artist to win Necessary Evil on two occasions, and she’s still cooking. And word on the street is that she may make another appearance.
Good work. Originally released back in 2019 with Future and (lol!) Post Malone, Halsey just took them bozos off!
02:06 – “Know you fucking love it on the looo-WAH!!”
“Not the best idea”? Nah, sounds cool to me, go with it. Follow your heart, SZA.
36 Queens of the Stone Age: Carnavoyeur
The latest QOTSA album was decent. Very good in places. Oustanding in one particular place.
00:21 – Quiet, atmospheric opening, stabs of the organ, ambient noises. Then the wall of sound crescends for a split second.
Then drops silent…
“Nothing
Nothing
Nothing inside”
🤪
Listen, I know. The National have essentially been doing the same album – the same song – for roughly two decades now. I should quit them. It’s not good for my own credibility, and it’s not healthy to encourage them…
But…
Then they give you moments like…
02:28 –
That “Fair… ai-air, a-eh-ee-air” gets me pregnant.
The greatest sing Elora Faith has ever done. Is there such a thing as a subtle, underplayed, multipart epic? Like if Bohemian Rhapsody were too shy to announce itself? PROMISE RING is a simply outstanding piece of musical composition.
The 2023 album from Katie Gately – who produced the #1 Legit Boss in 2020 – didn’t quite make the Necessary Evil countdown this year, but this album highlight is still one four minute examole of an immense talent.
02:20 – “And here might beeee a good place to stop…
My head will noooooot…
Shut the fuck up!”
31 Lauren Auder: City In a Bottle
Plink-plink-plink-plink-plink-plink-plink-plink-plink-plink!
These things creep up on you, they’re never done with you!
It all crept up too soon, leaves you too-little-room!
I love Lauren Auder because they’re an incredibly expansive and boundary disregarding artist, and their 2023 debut is some of the year’s most artistically satisfying music.
But they can also break out a Billy Joel style boogie when they want!
30 Lil Yachty: I’VE OFFICIALLY LOST VISION
I’ve officially lost vision
I’ve been sent to a mental prison
I’ve been forced to make some terribly bad decisions
All these voices in my head, I need an incision
I could see the sky falling, a illusion
This lil’ tiny sheet of paper could change your life
It’s chemically proven
The artistic leaps taken by Yachty on his 2023 album distilled into one five and half minute serving. Sure, this distillation makes it purer, but I should warn you that it also makes it dangerously effective.
“I’ve been tempted to go clone my seed/I just think there should be more like me”. That… sounds weird. But OK.
The ‘SPELLLING and the Mystery School’ album was a bit of a trip. ‘Reimagining’ much of the certified genius’s back catalogue with their new full band, it’s a pretty essential record that SPELLLING themselves explained “really opened up new exciting visions for the future of the SPELLLING sound“. Some songs are less interesting to hear done this way – hey, I kinda know what ‘The Turning Wheel’ songs would sound like with a full band, I kinda funded a Kickstarter so you could do that on the original album! – but it’s an absolute treat to hear already classics like Under the Sun – originally on the 2018 album ‘Mazy Fly’ – get the butter upon bacon treatment.
Maybe you still prefer the original. I generally do. Well those still exist. In fact, they all exist just as much as they did before these fascinating new versions were released. So maybe chill out, yeah?
28 Lonnie Holley – Oh Me, Oh My (feat. Michael Stipe)
Again with your Michael Stipe!
04:04 – “I thought about how grandmama
Used to be down on her knees
How mama used to
Not be able to get up off her knees
After giving birth to
Baby after
Baby after
Baby after
Baby!”
27 Wednesday: Chosen to Deserve
We always started by tellin’ all our best stories first
So now that it’s been awhile, I’ll get around
To tellin’ you all my worst
Just so you know what you signed up for
What you’re dealin’ with
Just so you know what you’ve been chosen to deserve
I’m the girl that you were chosen to deserveI used to drink ’til I threw up on weeknights at my parents’ house
My friends all took Benadryl
‘Til they could see shit crawlin’ up the walls
One of those times, my friend took a little too much
He had to get his stomach pumped
They took him over to the hospital
And told us he was lucky to survive
I’m the girl that you were chosen to deserve
Perversely, one of the greatest songs I’ve ever heard about true love. When you’re past having to work hard presenting the absolute best possible version of yourself, and have reached an area of trust where – fuck it – you’re way past caring and just want the person your with to hear the funniest stuff. It don’t matter, you’ve already chosen me with the parental advisory sticker removed.
And after this song, I am deeply in love with Karly Hartzman.
I was out late, sneakin’ into the neighborhood pool
Then I woke up early and taught at the Sunday school
If you’re lookin’ for me
I’m in the back of an SUV
Doin’ it in some cul-de-sac
Underneath a dogwood tree
I’m the girl that you were chosen to deserveI went to school about three days out of the week
Watered down all the liquor
And then pissed outside in the street
Now all the drugs are gettin’ kinda borin’ to me
Now everywhere is loneliness and it’s in everything
Thank God that I was chosen to deserve you
‘Cause I’m the girl that you were chosen to deserve
26 Olivia Rodrigo: Get Him Back
This is just a classic pop song. Count your blessings. You’ll be able to tell your grandchildren about living through this song’s release.
It’s a genius pop song premise: Olivia’s ex was a piece of trash and Rodrigo wants to ‘get him back’ for how he broke their heart, but also… aw shucks! They can’t help how they feel about this lemon and want to ‘get him back’ in their life because they miss him so! “So I miss him some nights when I’m feeling depressed/’Til I remember every time he made a pass on my friend”. It’s a simple, funny, smart and – yes, come on now – relatable three minute masterpiece that would really tick all of the boxes when future philosophers are debating the 20th/21st century healing power of pop music.
Olivia Rodrigo is really fricking good, mate! And this isn’t the last we’ll hear from them!
I wanna key his car
I wanna make him lunch
I wanna break his heart
And be the one to stitch it up
Wanna kiss his face
With an uppercut
I wanna meet his mom
Just to tell her her son sucks!
25 awakebutstillinbed: bloodline
Despite being a huge fan of the ambition and the desire to take the music to new places, I didn’t go coocoo bananas over ABSIB’s second album. This might have been because I was spoiled early on: the opening track bloodline actually sees the band set themselves ridiculously high ambitions and hit it out of the fucking park, which the rest of the album pales next to. I mean, what even is this?? Prog-emo??
24 ANOHNI and the Johnsons: Sliver of Ice
A friend of mine expressed to me in the final months of his life that the simplest sensations had begun to feel almost rapturous; a carer had placed a shard of ice on his tongue one day and it was such a sweet and unbelievable feeling that it caused him to weep with gratitude. He was a hardcore kind of guy and these moments were transforming the way he was seeing things. I wrote “Sliver of Ice,” remembering those words of his.
ANOHNI press release
That friend was Lou Reed, by the BTW. This song is so beautiful that I can’t wait to die.
02:44 – Where there’s an upward key change:
I love you so much more
I love you so much more
I never knew it before
…
…
…
Then the key changes upward again!!
I love you so much more
I love you so much more
I never knew it before
Well shit, I must have died already, because this is heavenly.
Shit, fist Sliver of Ice and now six minutes of this? I’m dying here.
Boompth!
Boompth!
Boompth, boompth, boompth!
Sorry, but that bassline though??
Yeah, technically released in October 2022, but as you’ll soon have to accept, I’m kinda considering October 2022 songs if they were included on 2023 albums…
Alright, yes, since it was released in December 2022 I guess you could argue that technically ‘SOS’ wasn’t even a… just shut up, alright?
Blood stain on my shirt, new bitch on my nerves
Old nigga got curved, going back on my word
Damn, bitch, you so thirsty
That’s you, that is.
Da, da-da-da-da, da, da, da!
Alright, so technically released in November 2022, but…
You know what? I don’t need to explain myself to you freaks.
Save your teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars! Save your breath for me!
Jordana’s greatest ever song, one that I never got tired of singing in the shower despite doing do for more than 12 months, and a simply humongous pop song.
20 Janelle Monae: Float (feat. Seun Kuti & Egypt 80)
When this showstopping banger arrived in February, it struck me as an amazing little curio, a one off single that future Janellologists would debate. That strange but beguiling standalone single that suggested Caribbean and African influences. We would all debate alternative histories where Monae would actually do an entire album in this vein, and excitedly talk about what that might sound like.
Mate, that hypothetical album sounded amazing.
Shame the actual album was such a dud. Just leave us with Float, Janelle, and leave the rest to imagination.
01:20 – “I’m light as a feather, I’m light as a feather, yeah baby I float!
It’s hard to look at my resume – hoooooooooo! – and not find a reason to toast!”
19 Samia & papa mbye: Mad At Me
This song redefines what pop music can aim towards and scientific studies need to be conducted on precisely the reactions that music (this song specifically) can inspire within the human brain (my brain specifically).
Some people say you find the one, you make it work
Some people say, some people say
Some people say you ‘pose to love yourself headfirst
Some people say, some people say
Some people say you find the one, you make it work
Some people say, some people say
Some people say you ‘pose to love yourself headfirst
Some people say, some people say
The final paragraph on ‘Water Made Us’, Jamila’s thoughtful, mature and rational thesis on what love really means (“Can’t help what I say/Can’t help what I don’t say/You give one word too much power/I love you in my own way”). The whole essay’s final judgement is that we as adults shouldn’t be wasting time defining love: I’m here for you, and I’m not going to leave you, let’s accept what we have.
It’s good to have adults speaking sometime.
You’re disturbed.
An exposed… neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerve.
Have you been counting the amount of entries from Blondshell’s debut album? There’ve been a few, haven’t they? Joiner is maybe my favourite, being the perfect encapsulation of their ‘Our life is so dramatically depressing but I can’t pull myself away’ vibe. The result of the toxiic relationships that occur with the interaction of two people who “watched/Way too much/HBO growing up” Oh, and the tune’s a killer.
Now you got one arm cut
And when you eeeee-heeee-eeeaat you throw upBlegh!
Apollonia was not a singer, she was an actress. So the poor thing was thrown into the studio: ‘Here, you have to sing this.’ She was like, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know how to sing.’ And she did the best she could. I doubled her vocals on ‘Take Me With U’ to make it sound a little better.”
Lisa Coleman
Originally intended for the debut (and only) album from Prince side-project #471, Apollonia 6, when first recorded in early 1984. The ‘Purple Rain’ movie director Alfred Magnoli had also requested that the movie feature a duet sung between Prince and His co-star Apollonia so… let’s just see if this works??
Holy shit! Yeah, that works really well! Far too well for that Apollonia 6 album in fact, so –yoink! – having that for the soundtrack, thank you very much! It was originally sequenced as the opening track on the Apollonia 6 debut, but In April 1984 Prince moved it onto the official ‘Purple Rain’ soundtrack. Don’t worry though, you still have Manic Monday, which is a guaranteed hit and… No, actually I’m giving that to The Bangles instead. We good?
He did that occasionally, He’d give a song away and then take it back. He did it with Kiss. We never knew what anything was for. It was all part of His master plan… I mean, all of it was His stuff. They were all His songs and He could do what He wanted with them
engineer Peggy McCreary
Which, rationally, I of course understand. You probably don’t get to be angry that Prince doesn’t just give you a song you liked.
But at the same time, emotionally, imagine losing a song as good as this!! Imagine having one of the most perfect pop songs ever conceived (and I’m saying that without a hint of exaggeration) and then it just being taken away! “Take me with you!”, you’d say, in a very clever reference to the song itself. It’s like if the bank accidentally credits £84 billion to your account, but then takes it back. Like, you know that, under the rules of Capitalism, that money was never yours and you have no right to it, but… Fuck, the things you could have done with that £84 bill!
Take Me With U is so perfect I refuse to believe that dumb, simple, human beings were involved in its production. Also, if you ask me, I will destroy this song at karaoke.
My biggest complaint about this song is that it pussies out and only goes to nine minutes and twenty eight seconds.
I spoke about how I wasn’t always going to include Cain’s 2022 album on this year’s Necessary Evil. But this epic piece of Americana storytelling was always going to be in the Legit Boss list.
And you said:
Hey.
Do you wanna see the West with me?
14 Prince: Erotic City (Make Love Not War Erotic City Come Alive)
If we cannot make babies
Maybe we can make some time
Fuck so pretty, you and me
Erotic City come alive
Prince was well aware of how much credibility His explicit move into the mainstream might alienate His fans in the black community, who might feel that He had lost a lot of the edge that people had felt so drawn to. An edge he had built especially with the ‘Dirty Mind‘ and ‘1999‘ albums. Prince, as I may have hinted to before, was an extremely canny operator, and unlike almost every other one time ‘cult’ star who is later justifiably rewarded by a move to the top table, He would never forget the people and the communities that got Him there in the first place.
So, on the b-side to Let’s Go Crazy… Listen, I might have said that Darling Nikki was the weakest song on ‘Purple Rain’ on my album review – while accepting that every track on the album is at least a 9/10 – but on second thoughts the weakest song is definitely Let’s Go Crazy. It’s a goofy, incredibly dated 80s rock pastiche that might even be a seven out of ten. It was also, by some measure, the whitest song that Prince had ever done, and the one most likely to convince his hardcore fans that He might have lost His connections to them. That He might have… sold out…
Prince knew that, so He chucked out Erotic City on the b-side to keep the streets sweet. Pathetic pandering, really.
And it worked a fucking treat. Black radio stations ate it up, it was a massive club hit, and apparently still gets played at clubs – including strip clubs – to this day. Because it is freaking undeniable: I think we could truthfully say it was tied to one of the hottest and most influential beats of all time, with dirty synth stabs, chip-tuned voices (the recorded debut of Camille, Prince’s female/androgynous alterego, who we will become a lot more invested in going forward) and filthy lyrics, it’s actually impossible to comprehend how this track will be forty years old this year. And you’re asking me to worship 100 gecs for doing comedy, Al Yankovic style tributes to it?
Widely accepted as Prince’s best ever B-side. Incorrectly so, as we will soon discover.
Fuck me, Tove, you’ve actually burned my whole neighbourhood down with this vocal. And we’re happy.
12 Ebony Jet: Satellite of Love
Back to the Blacklips Performance Cult, and to Lambert Moss, who performed in drag as Ebony Jet. Sure, the Blacklips performance were all about avantgarde performances, biting satirical drama performances and simply ravishing drag performances. But they could also do intense beauty. This performance of the Lou Reed’s classic by just Ebony and a piano will leave you speechless. Ebony owns this song now.
Oh, and every parent in the world, sit your dumb, ugly children down and force them to listen to this drag performance. It will teach them what beauty is far better than you fat heteronormative pigs will ever be able to.
I’m sorry, what?
I was pleased to see ABRA return to releasing music back in 2021, and was happy enough to state Unlock It was the 113th best song of the year. But where did this come from?? A six minute, electroclash meets Krautrock banger that sounds like a serious attempt to update the vibes from Prince’s ‘Dirty Mind’ sound. It’s a piece of rhythmic genius that reminds everyone that ABRA remains it.
00:24 – As soon as that beat kicks in. Take a seat, you’re here for the ride.
No joke, no ‘bit’, no ‘hot take’: this 97 single is actually one of the greatest songs of the 90’s and needs to be appreciated as such.
Top ten bay-beeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
9 Olivia Rodrigo: bad idea right?
Mate, everything I said for that #26 entry but, like, even more so. The certified pop genius Rodrigo hilariously and expertly outlines those moments where you’re drunk, a but depressed, think of all that sweet, sweet validation your ex used to give, and you brain just goes ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah…’
YesIknowthathe’smyexbutcan’ttwopeoplereconnectIonlyseehimasafriend!! (the biggest lie I ever said)
OhyesIknowthathe’smyexbutcan’ttwopeoplereconnectIonlyseehimasafriend!! (I just tripped and fell into his bed)
8 Victoria Monét – Smoke ft. Lucky Daye
Little fireworks that light up for me
In my fingertips I burn my worries
Do it somethin’ like that eight track shorty
Keep it in rotation, it’s a celebration every time we smoooooookeSmooooooooke
Hot damn.
Samia is the seriously unchallenged 2023 master of producing wonderful pop music that reminds you exactly what pop music can do. This song improves my mental health. It shows me what love can feel like. It’s essentially just about going out with your mates and Samia makes it sound like a pilgrimage to Mecca. We must protect Samia at all costs
01:23 – “I’m like ‘How’d you get your leg so hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh, fuck!”
…
…
…
…but also:
01:45 – Everything drops out… then comes back in:
Walkin’ into the middle of the party
I’m writing a pooooo-em, somebody stop me!
And, shit, probably also:
Yeah, so this is His greatest b-side ever. This is maybe the greatest b-side ever. The a-side? When Doves Cry. There has to be some superlatives related to that as well, surely?
The copywrited full title is actually (deep breath now) 17 Days (the rain will come down, then U will have 2 choose. If U believe look 2 the dawn and U shall never lose), but can we just look away from the encroaching religious morality in Prince’s music/life for one second and appreciate that motherfucking trembling bass for a second? Thanks.
And, guess what? This song was originally intended for Prince side project #292 Vanity 6’s second album. Then He broke up with Vanity, she was replaced by Apollonia, the group became Apollonia 6 and… Prince kept this banger for Himself. Because… Because fucking LISTEN to it! We are not in side project territory here, Dorothy.
You’ve been gone seventeen days
Seventeen long nights
The main drag is knowing that
You’re holding someone else tight
Of course, Prince would return to the beautifully poignant idea of counting days since the break of a relationship the year after 17 Days‘ release when he wrote Nothing Compares 2U for the debut album of Prince side project #518 The Family.
But not as successfully! Yeah, that’s right, this is the Hot Take: 17 Days shits all over Nothing Compares 2U, including the Sinead version. In your face, Connor!
Being pwned so comprehensively is probably what killed her, when you think about it.
5 Hitkidd, Glorilla: F.N.F (Let’s Go)
Every year, Todd in the Shadows video about the best songs of the previous year introduces me to one song that I completely missed but that I am completely down with. Last year it was Meet Me At Our Spot by the Anxiety, which ended up at #4. When Todd did their best songs of 2022, I was introduced by this aggressively awesome track by Glorilla. Todd hasn’t done their best of 2023 yet, so I’ve no idea what songs will be my favourites of 2024.
And what does ‘F.N.F’ stand for? Erm… I’m not sure I’m allowed to tell you…
Ayy, we hopping out in red lights, twerking on them headlights
She say she can’t come outside today, that mean she scared, right!?
May Glorilla be forever be outside hanging out the window with their ratchet-ass friends
🙌🏻
Killer skies, thick thighs… Have you ever noticed how some girls will make you blush but some girls wll make you shiveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer?
I named this 73rd best song of the previous ten years back in May!
…
…
…
YOU?!
I put my hand by yours, so you know I wanna hold it
I say my prayers at night, but I know who controls it
I’m falling hard for you, but I know I don’t show it
I’ll take your love for me, but I know I don’t own itIt’s not gonna be a big production
It’s not butterflies or fireworks
Said it’s gonna be a tiny garden
But I’ll feed it every day, I’ll feed it
Quiet now, the adults are talking.
You wanna be sure that I’m sure, that I want you
Not just someone fun to do, someone to hold in zero below
You ask why I’m so cold?[very fittingly, Jamila then proceeds to melt the listeners’ hearts]
Iceberg heeeeeeart…
…But look below
Iceberg heart, but look below, I’m sure
🥺
I was hearing, like, I dunno, it sounds monstrous, it sounds boisterous, it sounds… it’s giving ‘gorilla’!
Little Simz discusses the lyrics
This song felt like an event. Something about the song and the accompanying video felt like Simz’s own multimillion dollar Hollywood production, released just in time for Christmas. There have been few four minute songs in recorded history that have felt so powerful, so strong, so affirming. It’s a statement so powerful that it makes its own contents superfluous. Simz, mate, you don’t have to tell us anything, we will all die for you after hearing this.
Sim Simma
Who got the keys to my bloodclaat Bimmer?
Big time driller, monkey to gorilla
Who is this woman that I’m seein’ in the mirror?
Drink ’42 and smoke cigar
Name one time where I didn’t deliver
It’s essentially one long boast track, but of such quality and hitting so hard that I can only really think of Django Jane as a modern (ish…) comparison. I could just list the entire lyrics here and you’d immediately throw your hands up and agree with me how good it is. Every line goes hard, it’s passionate, it’s angry and it’s funny. I’m in love, and now you and me both are.
But Inflo’s production, mate. Aware that Simz is such a powerful MC that any amount of backing is always going to be overshadowed, it’s stripped back to its bare minimum, a looped Ramsey Lewis sample made famous by Jurassic Five, and just lets Simz go!
Beatin’ on my chest, goin’ apeshit
Just a heart broke bitch, high heels, six inch
In the back of the nightclub, sippin’ champagne
I don’t trust any of these bitches I’m with
In the back of the taxi, sniffin’ cocaine
Yeah, Shake is here again. But, though their contribution to the song is brilliant, I want to make it clear that it’s not the reason that Escapism. (check the full stop in the track name! That’s pretty gangsta…) is the most Legit Boss of 2023. That’s pretty much all RAYE, the 25 year old (at the time) songwriter who was stuck in record company purgatory for a long time but finally got their debut album out in 2023 (which they’d finished two years earlier) and with it released absolutely the best song of the year.
I mean… kinda… No, I’m calling it: Best Song of 2023. Yeah, sure it was technically released in October 2022, but I’ve already told you that month gets special privileges. It first charted in November 2022 (also Shake’s first UK charting song, which seems like a lowkey hate crime), it first hit the top 10 in December 2022 – so we’re into the official qualifying period now – before becoming the first number 1 single of 2023. It’s also on a 2023 album. It’s a 2023 song. It’s the best 2023 song.
And what a song. RAYE sings about how self-destruction and substance abuse can be triggered by emotional trauma, as Escapism. narrates a night out following a breakup that’s at once celebratory (“Not twenty-four hours since my ex did dead it/I got a new man on me, it’s about to get sweaty”) and deeply depressing (“Mm, lipstick smudged like modern art/I don’t know where the fuck I am or who’s drivin’ the fuckin’ car/Speedin’ down the highway, sippin’/Mixin’ pills with the liquor ‘cah fuck these feelings/I left everyone I love on read”). RAYE tells it like a Tarantino movie, skipping between timelines and situations (“A little context if you care to listen”) to show the rabid highs and the debilitating lows of an epic leap off the wagon. And eventually it all comes round to the same morning after cry for help:
I don’t wanna feel how I did last night
I don’t wanna feel how I did last night, oh
Doctor, doctor, anything, please
Doctor, doctor, have mercy on me
You’re askin’ me my symptoms, doctor, I don’t wanna feel
03:07 – “You’re asking me my symptons, doctor, I don’t wanna feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel…!”
You’ve been there. You have to have been, surely?? I refuse to accept that any adult human being has never replayed this story at least once. It might not have been a break-up, it could be any emotional blow. And you might not have dulled the pain with liquor or cocaine or pills. But you used something. You couldn’t quite face suicide, so let’s try a soft suicide. Let’s at least kill our brains.
I’ve certainly been there. On multiple occasions. The tiny suicides. What the French call ‘let petit suicious‘. Probably. I can’t speak French (I generally let the funky music do the talking) but you can generally just guess most of that language, French people are cool with that as long as you’re trying your best.
But this song isn’t about me. Well… it kinda is, because every song on this list is about me, but then in another way it isn’t. When talking about the lyrics to the song, RAYE explained the other, deeper, meanings:
Substance abuse discussed amongst women is such a, like, taboo subject to discuss. I mean, because it’s deemed unattractive or messy, and it’s something that I’ve battled with personally in my own way, and poured into this album and this music, expressing candidly… and explicitly! Because it’s medicine for me, I guess.
And Escapism. is messy and unattractive to its core. But it’s also beautiful. And perversely empowering, Fuck you, Mitski, this is my therapy!
I remember nothing, so there’s nothing to regret
Other than this 4-4 kick drum poundin’ in my head
Oh, erm, but also:
I’m sorry! I know, I know, and I usually stay away from naming the obvious Prince songs in the Legit Bosses – there was no Little Red Corvette last year, no Purple Rain this year etc. – but there was a bit of a ‘Road to Damascus’ moment for me this year. I’ve always loved When Doves Cry, obviously, but this year I realised that – oh shit – this is actually the best song that Prince ever did. It might be the best song that anyone’s ever done. I couldn’t just ignore that!
The first single from ‘Purple Rain’ (with the 6th best song of the year as its b-side!), His first US #1 (at the same time the album was #1 in the charts and the movie was #1 at the box office), one of the most innovative and ambitious songs to ever be a hit single, and a song I might have listened to more than any other track ever recorded and that still surprises and amazes me every time I listen. A true momentous achievement for the human species.
00:18 – When that enraged opening guitar solo splutters to a close and those iconic keys come in
Oh, but also:
00:54 – “Animals strike curious poses! They feel the heat… The heat between me aaaaaand you…”
Oh, but also:
01:19 – “Maybe you’re just like my mother/She’s never satisfied” Where one of the biggest selling songs of the 80s gets into some real Freudian shit.
Oh, but also:
01:39 – “Whoop! He-a-yee. Uf-woah, huh-uh-hur…” Grunts and yelps after the first chorus, either from gratification or pain.
Oh, but also:
02:02 – “Don’t make me chase you/Even doves have pride” That’s… funny, right? Like, an actual joke that never gets appreciated.
Oh, but also:
02:10 – “Alone in a world so cold – a world so-ho cold!”
Oh, but also:
03:02 – After the chorus comes back in a lower key: “You know-uh-woah-uh-wo he’s too bold!”
Oh but also:
03:20 – When the song is stripped back to little more than a drum machine, an ambient synth string and Prince’s pleading, only to crash back in at…
03:35 – With that piano line again and another Godlike guitar solo.
Oh but also:
04:13 – “CR-AYE! AYE! AYE! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYE!!!”
Oh but also:
04:36 – A strange “Ooh-wo-uh-whoah, Ooh-wo-wo-wa-yo“, first quietly from the back, then repeated by the main vocal. What even is that??
Oh but also:
04:51 – The song breaks down and a choir of vocals takes lead – “Whoah! WhoahI Whoah! Whoa-yo-yo-yoah” – followed by a furious synthesised violin.
Oh but also:
05:28 – “Don’t Cry!… Darling… Don’t Cry…!”
Oh but also:
05:45 – That crazed final synthesised violin epileptic fit
Oh but also:
“He had just said, in a Rolling Stone article, that without [me], he’d strip bass from his music. Then the next thing you know, here comes ‘When Doves Cry’ with no bass! It was weird in the moment. I was like, ‘what does this mean? You getting rid of me, dude?’
Revolution bass player Brownmark
Yeah, I know you’ve got complaints about this list. Some people just won’t accept science, you know?
In 2024, the Gold Star Artists will need to be updated, and I’m planning to rank every Hotelier song in the hope it evokes Sod’s Law and they release their fourth album. NE2024 is going to be a much smaller affair: I won’t have as much time off in December to concentrate on it, so we’ll see what it looks like when we get there. And, oh God, there surely won’t be 160 (+1) Legit Bosses because this was just insane.
I love you all very much.
Necessary Evil 
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