Shhh…
Do you hear that?
That distant thunder rumbling? Rumbling hungry like a beast? The beast it cometh, cometh down?
Yes, it’s November, which means we’re just a month away from Necessary Evil 2024. That annual highlight of every year when all of you sad, fat, middle aged, lonely, fat (did I say ‘fat’ already? Well, you really fat, so it’s fine) finally learn the objective truths about the year’s music and perhaps become aware of some albums released after 2004.
Firstly though, we need (we need) to look at the stats behind Necessary Evil 2023. Why? I’m not so sure anymore. I’m also not so sure why I’ve started doing these stats as an introduction to the next year’s list, rather than posting them close to when I do the actual list they’re about. Well, I do: after I spend a month constantly writing on this dumb blog that nobody reads, I never want to write about these stupid fucking albums ever again. This might be the last time I do this statistical break down. Might be.
Having said that nobody reads this dumb blog though, 2024 has actually seen the most amount of visitors to Necessary Evil ever. Like, 43% more visitors than last year. And I haven’t even done the one thing this blog does this year yet! I honestly appreciate every reader this blog gets, and you all make me possibly think it might be worthwhile to continue this piece of shit.
Eugh, enough sincerity, let’s make dick jokes and stuff:
Album Length (chortle!)
Yeah, ‘length’, geddit? Like a penis.
Christ, Prince, you fucked this up in 2022 as well. We all love your Ultra Deluxe Massive Schlong editions, but I do worry that you threaten the legitimacy of this list. Can we do the longest actual album, please?
Lololololololol! That’s fucking insane, Ethel, and just makes me love you more. I hear January’s new album ‘Perverts’ – which I’m so excited about I could just skweam – is apparently close to two hours long, and the first single Punish suggests that they may be less Barack Obama endorsements on this record.
Yeah, fair play.
OK, the number of tracks is the next statistic, and as long as Prince doesn’t play silly buggers again we can see…
God dammit, Prince! Wipe that stupid grin off your face and stop fucking with my journalistic credibility!
Erm… OK, that doesn’t really count either. I made that album up. And, evidently, created something of a monster. Can we please give this another try?
Yes! That’s the one! That album has tracks, y’know?? Lolololololololololololol!
Snakes and Ladders
A great man once said that life is a roller coaster, and friend sometimes you just gotta ride it. It’s also been said that my anaconda don’t want none unless you’ve got buns, hun. And finally, someone else observed that, actually, everybody’s looking for the ladder, and how everybody wants salvation over soul. Life’s full of ups and downs, is what I’m saying. And also there was some stuff about snakes and ladders in there. Basically, some artists went up on the list, and some went down. Are you following?
Notable Climbers
I did not rate the tedious identity obsession of 2018’s ‘Room 25‘. I absolutely did rate the far more class conscious and revolutionary minded ‘Sundial’. Also, both Peej and Noname clearly benefited from the days when there even was a number 79 and a number 69 (dude). There will only be forty records on the list again this year. I hope…
Notable Falls
Kind of feel bad for these guys. These are literally the only five artist who finished lower on NE23 than they had previously. I don’t want to pick on Prince for ‘dropping’ from number two to number three! Poor Yeule dropped from a top ten place to another top ten place and is the third biggest failure of the year?? And I like that awakebutstillinbed album! It was just a slightly more challenging experiment than their debut that I’m not sure worked 100%! The records that were really a drop-off from the previous one usually just didn’t make the list at all.
Yeah, fuck that album though. From number one, to number nine, to number two, to number fucking thirty fucking seven. Borderline catastrophic.
You hang names on your wall
Then you shoot them all
Hey, Mr. Writer(s), I know all of your little reviews are silly little pieces of subjective fanfic that pale in comparison to the Stone Cold Facts™ of Necessary Evil, but it would at least be a bit of fun to see which albums the sheeple liked the most, wouldn’t it?
Highest Metacritic Score
Great album. Ridiculously overrated. And anyway:
So, fuck you, yeah? And yes, it is possible to get 100 on Metacritic.
Lowest Metacritic Score
Yeah, even the lowest rated albums were still generally quite highly rated. And a respectful ‘lol’ at The National being in the ‘worst’ list twice. If you’re wondering, critics generally thought ‘Laugh Track’ was ever so slightly shitter than ‘First Two Pages of Frankenstein’.
Yeah, motherfuckers still ain’t ready for Yachty. You’ll all get there eventually, I promise.
Date of Release
November 2023: 0
October 2023: 5
September 2023: 4
August 2023: 2
July 2023: 3
June 2023: 2
May 2023: 1
April 2023: 4
March 2023: 3
February 2023: 4
January 2023: 3
December 2022: 2
Earlier in 2022: 2
2021: 0
2020: 0
2019: 0
2018: 0
2013 – 2017: 0
2010: 0
2009: 0
2008: 0
2007: 0
2006: 0
2005: 0
1996: 0
1995: 0
1994: 0
1993: 1… no, sorry, 0, that album I was thinking of was actually released in 1992
1991: 0
1990: 0
1989: 0
1988: 0
1987: 0
1986: 0
1985: 0
1970-1983: 0
1969: 0
1968: 0
1967: 0
1966: 0
1965: 0
1952-1964: 0
1951: 0
1950: 0
1949: 0
1948: 0
1947: 0
Before 1947: 0
Numbers Behind the Legit Bosses
Mmmmagic Mmmmoments are those heavenly parts of a song that make you feel like an angel has touched you both inappropriately and very appropriately. You’d understand if you’ve read the list.
OK, that’s actually a little bit arbitrary, I just happened to name that one sixteen minute clip that someone happened to edit and post, but I could have just as easily chosen to rank the 50+ minute version and put Him completely out of sight (and probably raise the average song length by roughly 30 seconds). Can we try and bring this under control a bit, please?
Now that’s more like it! In a lot of senses. Holy shit, I forgot how freaking incredible that song is. Not even top ten?? You’re a mad man, Mr. Franchise… Also thankfully beat out Oh God Where Are You Now? by Sufjan Stevens by four seconds, as that was originally released in 2003 and would have opened another can of worms.
Yes, I know that ‘Preacher’s Daughter‘ was technically (and literally) released in 2022, but how about you suck on my nuts?
Including the number one song. Well… joint… number one…
Wow, a lot going on in that picture…
My former faves UMO finished second in 2015, followed that up with a drab piece of nonsense that finished #63 in 2018, and finalised their fall from grace in 2023 by not making the list at all. They were kind of a victim of the shortened list though, as ‘V’ is a far, far, far stronger album than ‘Sex and Food’ and would have landed just outside the top 40. This is evidenced by the album still producing three Legit Bosses (albeit all outside the top 50).
Three Legit Bosses was largely the best that any artist could hope for, with only three people breaking that particular glass ceiling:
A number two album with a nine song tracklist that includes five Legit Bosses. Few people have ever had as good a debut year as Sabrina Teitelbaum. We’re talking Kurt Angle in 1999/2000 here.
OK, so considering the amount of tracks on the (incredible) ‘SOS’ record, these six tracks probably make up around 2.4% of the album’s runtime, but the amount of quality still needs to be applauded.
Congratulations to SZA for an astonishing six Legit Bosses, a number that was obviously impossible to beat and…
Hmm…?
What’s that…?
Oh, for fuck’s…
If it makes SZA feel any better, only two of those Legit Bosses are actually on the studio release of ‘Purple Rain’. However, it might make it worse that Prince is still shitting on them from beyond the grave with His b-sides and unreleased tracks.
Nationalism
OK, the big one. The UN actually uses this list to decide which country should still be considered the imperialist global leader and be allowed to sanction all the genocides it feels like, so it’s a pretty big deal.
Aaaaaaaaaaaand that’s your lot when it comes from albums outside the UK and the US. Five. Two from Asia, three from Scandinavia, not a bean from anywhere else. In 2022 there were fourteen other nations involved. And that’s without even counting whatever the fuck is going on with Superorganism. And, sadly, there’s clearly one main reason behind this…
Well, yeah, that reason being that the 2022 list was double the fucking size of the 2023 list. Other than that though, I am going to take inspiration from the liberals’ reaction to Kamala Harris’s loss recently and say the problem evidently lies with the artists themselves. If you wanted more inclusion, then why weren’t you just better? I write a flawless blog, it’s the foreign artists who are guilty of failing to meet my expectation. Also, they’re probably uneducated and working class. And Muslims.
Now the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the two heavyweights: the reconised leader in global imperialism and violent capitalism versus… some shitty little country that envies the former to an embarrassing degree and just wants them to notice them. The main difference is that one of the countries still doesn’t know what ‘chips’ or ‘football’ are. But they all have guns so nobody dares correct them. Football’s a game where you dress up as Mardi Gras Transformers and throw a rugby ball at each other until you win by giving the entire other team chronic traumatic encephalopathy? Sure, America, whatever you say, we’re all friends here, just stay calm.
Such disparity in size, importance, military strength and knowledge of Alan Titchmarsh is reflected in the scores over the years:
2015 was a pie chart, so our team of researchers have still yet to figure it out.
Sure, the current run of zero wins and eight losses doesn’t look great, but now the list has been condensed to the top forty only, it’s going to feature only the best of the best. And although the UK can compete with America’s numbers, we can fucking smoke those jabronis when it comes to concentrated quality! Sure, we don’t have the capacity to pump out endless Soccer Mommies to die fighting in the Necessary Evil Wars, but the fact is that the very peak of the pyramid is going to be mostly British.
Ooooooooooooooooooooooh fuck the lot of you!!
I used Mogwai’s photo for the UK’s number because they were the highest British band. They finished 12th. With an album first released in 1997. Luckily, we have half of Anohni at #5, but if you decide to consider her American then 2023 was the first time ever no British artists made the top ten. Grim.
Hmmm, has any British artist made some sort of world conquering album in 2024…?
Guess we’ll find out very soon
Necessary Evil 
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