Hey, look, I’m getting better at this. Recently, I went on a massive cull of the 2024’s greatest songs to make this list as tight and as concise as possible, so that it would be sure to represent the absolute best of the best and would be as brief and easy to write as possible. And look! There are only one hundred and forty three tracks this year!! That’s a whole seventeen less tracks than last year! This post is going to be a breeze!
OK, three weeks laternow, and I’m almost done! This post will be longer than most books you read, but to be fair most of the ‘books’ you read are Dr Who fanfic.
So, yeah, these songs are really good. And they get better as the list goes on. That’s how these lists work.
Here’s the YouTube playlist, which I know is the only thing most of you care about.
How much of an intro do you need, seriously?
“I’m through with music from dudes!”
Yeah, RIP Steve Albini. You produced ‘Journal for Plague Lovers‘. And maybe some other stuff as well… The Auteurs’ ‘After Murder Park‘ as well! I fucking adore that record! I think that’s all of them, but that’s not a bad couple of records, you have to say. And 2024’s final Shellac record was absolutely, undeniably, overwhelmingly pretty OK, I guess, with the cockrock belittling of Chick New Wave a highlight.
Albini was also, let’s not forget, a massive enjoyer of child pornography. Here’s his published Black Flag tour diary from 1988, when the connoisseur sand the praises of the kind of pre teen porn that he was able to purchase while in Hamburg:
Jaded as I am, I can’t help but flip seeing a girl and guy of twelve or thirteen, tops, ramming Martel bottles up each other’s asses. These are not the Dutch equivalent of abused trailer-park kids, either. They look to be in excellent health and seem to be honestly enjoying this. Makes all the conventional arguments against this kind of thing seem really silly. They’re kids. Kids like to play with their own and other people’s privates. They’re just being photographed at it. Now, people who get a voyeuristic charge out of watching them, like me, I guess, well, we’ve got some grip-on-reality problems
And Albini’s support of their lifelong friend Peter “child abuse is a sublime pleasure” Sotos seemed to continue to the end of their life. Despite Sotos multiple counts of possession of child pornography, and the friend’s production of the – shall we say – ‘problematic’ magazine ‘Pure‘ (“The cover of PURE 2 is a guy holding open a toddler’s puny hole so his spuzz can dribble out. The girl is past crying. She is destroyed. […] Like I said, I like that sort of thing” – Albini).
Great producer. But It’s just a bit weird how we’ve all decided that’s OK in their case.
142 ANOHNI and the Johnsons: Breaking
Oh, thank God, this is far less problematic, and so will take me far less time to write about: a simply gorgeous song that didn’t make it onto 2023’s incredible ‘My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross‘ album.
The formally-frequently-but-currently-occasionally-brilliant Kid Cudi actually released a record in 2024, but they were never really threatening to achieve their fourth Necessary Evil entry with it. Because – can we be honest? We’re all friends here. This is a safe space – it’s a bit of a fucking mess. Overlong, unfocused, completely musically incoherent, and not at all apparent what Cudi was even aiming for. However, it is still Cudi though, so there are moments of fantastic pop rap ingenuity, like Blue Sky’s giddy celebration of “A nigga with some new dreams and a sexy mama”.
140 It Lives, It Breathes: Elevated
WHOAH-OH!
Ospreay, Ospreay!
Yeah, I know, technically this song was technically first especially written and released as Will Ospreay’s theme back in 2017, but that was back when the Essex bruv was doing shit in Japan and stuff, so there was literally no way for anyone to hear it.
In February though, Ospreay signed with AEW. What started out as an intriguing question of how one of the most celebrated in-ring talents of the modern era/all time would translate to weekly American wrestling, ended up with Ospreay’s 2024 being talked about one of the best years a wrestler has had in the modern era. Ospreay is one of the most talented and mindblowing wrestlers to ever slap on a pair of Spandex, and this writer at least would argue that they have finally taken the crown of best British wrestler ever away from Giant Haystacks. The recent return from injury from the other claimant of best wrestler of the last decade – Kenny Omega – at least ensures AEW will continue to be the flagship show for in-ring quality even if a lot of the company’s product still circles the drain.
And Elevated isn’t a good song by any means. It sounds like it Semisonic attempted to have an emo phase. But it’s Will fucking Ospreay’s theme, son! And if you are a connoisseur of the Sport of Kings, it starts to produce a Pavlovian response that amazing shit’s about to go down!!
But, erm, let’s not forget the Pollyanna stuff, OK?
Feelin’ right, feelin’ perfect, mm-hmm (yah)
Surfin’, got my wave, cowabunga, ooh-wee (yeah)
Movin’, I’m on ten, ain’t no less, no way (yeah-yeah)
We party in my bedroom (uh)
This song is so fucking dumb.
But I fucking love it.
The semi– brilliant fourth record by the French born Sudanese American Abbas Hamad – ‘We Only Talk About Real Shit When We’re Fucked Up‘ – was close to making the 2024 Necessary Evil list. The highs are extraordinary, like this breezy and attentive low-key braggadocio of Black Jedi (“Bitch, I’m headstrong, that’s what the winds do/Black Jedi, Mace Windu’ – that’s canon). However, whenever you feel yourself being won over by Bas, they’ll throw in some gross and laughable shite like Passport Bros to make you scramble to smash the speakers less your brain turn to mush and leak out of your ears.
Why I’m gettin’ punished for my melanin retainment?
Apologize for what? I got the right to be upset
I think the world should be ashamed, I hope the world will make a change
I hope it starts soon
This one’s for Khartoum
…and yet the next song after some more tedious boasts about how big Bas’s willy is and how many sluts they bonked will be something like this! An amazing and impassioned plea for more attention to be paid to the plight of Sudan, as the country is torn apart by a civil war between the Sudanese army led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the horrific and vicious militias of the Rapid Support Forces/RSF (part of the murderous Janjaweed coalition of violent land gougers) led by Hemedti. Back when Bas first released this song in October 2023, becoming one of the very few songwriters to highlight the atrocities in Sudan, the humanitarian crisis had been escalating for around six months and I imagine Bas was already horrified that it had been allowed to continue that long. Fifteen months later, the competition for resources mainly between Russia, China, Turkey and Iran on the side of the Sudanese army and the US, European Union and United Arab Emirates on the side of the RSF, the struggle for wealth and power and serving foreign interests at the cost of the people, still goes on. Despite the apparent ’embargo’, arms companies in France and the UAE are making bank while financing the country’s annihilation. I touched on it briefly in my Dua Saleh review, and I understand that most people (like me, admittedly) are rather more focused on the other huge humanitarian crisis taking place at the moment, but with estimates of 150’000 dead so far, it’s a little galling that the conflict only gets referenced by a rapper who earlier in the album was talking about how “She gon’ make the block woke when she get her back broke“.
“The worse thing on any Prince album up to that point”, Matt Thorne, really?? Sure, it’s a tad inconsequential, and a bit obnoxious how He spells the title without a ‘U’, but Tamborine is a deliciously silly and inventive little track that, while hardly one of His best, is still a gorgeous little splash of pure creativity.
HOLY POWER!
AUTO HYMN!
I AM A FAGGOT!
I AM DAMAGED!
I AM A WEAPON OF GOD!
I AM A WEAPON OF GOD!
Madam, this is a Wendy’s…
134 Hallelujah the Hills: Alone in Love
“From the forthcoming 52 song project entitled DECK coming in 2024“, the band said in December 2023. It’s now 2025 but – you know what? – I think I’m going to cut the band a bit of slack: Nicky Wire took a decade to record the 12 track ‘Intimism’ and that was a piece of shit.
On Alone in Love, HTH do the classic, T-Rex/Chuck Berry ‘chang, chang-ah, changa-chang-chang, cha-cha-chaaaaaang‘ riff for seven minutes and I am motherfucking here for it. Also, produced by Seth Manchester again. Cannot wait for ‘Deck’. I’ll probably hate at least half of it. But I can’t wait for that.
133 Charli XCX: Guess feat. billie eilish
Yeah, Billie’s name is stylised to be in all lowercase like that. Classic big time move my Charli, making sure Billie is buried as they put themselves over. This song is basically Hogan kicking out after three in the Wrestlemania VI main event, when you think about it.
OK, keep up: the original version of Guess wasn’t actually on the proper version of ‘Brat’ that was scientifically named greatest album of 2024, but on the later ‘Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not‘ deluxe configuration of the album. And this Billie Eilish version was actually released on the (deep breath) ‘Brat and it’s completely different but also still Brat’ remix album, which is actually under consideration for Necessary Evil 2025.
Hope that’s clear.
This song has four hundred and fifteen million listens on Spotify.
This is so beautiful that it could, will, and has made a stone pigeon cry. Initially a vinyl only final track of Richard D James’s 1994 album ‘Selected Ambient Works Volume II‘, the track occasionally referred to as Stone in Focus was included on the 2024 reissue of the album, and was able to melt hearts more widely and comprehensively for the first time.
Five million listens on Spotify, which, yeah, is hardly Guess numbers but it’s not bad!
Guns up!
Bah-ba-da, bah-da-bah-ba-da, bah-da-bah-ba-da, bah-da-dare-up, dare, dare, dare-up…
No big wrestling take with this one, I just fucking love this theme. Also, I am saying all of this in my head in an enormously offensive New Zealand accent, just so you know.
130 Vritra & Her 72Demons: GEMA UR A PEARL
129 Vritra & Her 72Demons: DESTROI
OK, I’mma keep it a buck fifty with you: I don’t really understand how Vritra & Her 72Demons works. I think it’s a solo project by Vritra (Hal Williams), the former Odd Future member who previously made the Necessary Evil top 20 when teaming with Wilma Archer. But the guy just releases stuff! Stuff that’s really hard to ever find context and/or explanation for. I think they released two albums in 2024 – one solo solo, and then whatever the hell this darker, more rock based 72Demons record was in October. Hey, it’s good stuff, it just makes my head hurt a bit.
Stuck in this paradigm
Don’t believe in paradise
This must be what Hell is like
There’s got to be more, got to be more
Sick of this head of mine
Intrusive thoughts, they paralyze
Nirvana’s not as advertised
There’s got to be more, been here before
Life’s better on Saturn
Got to break this pattern
SZA releases a light, summery outtake from her ‘SOS’ album in February, no big deal. Ends up being the 19th biggest song of 2024 in the US. I’m considering entering the December released ‘Lana’ bonus tracks into NE2024, but I’m not sure if I can take all the feels.
126 Manic Street Preachers: Leviathan
I remember the original ‘Help Album‘ in 1995 being a pretty big deal. Sold to raise money for the War Child charity, artists would come in to record tracks on Monday, the tracks would be mixed on Tuesday, and be released on Saturday. Presumably, they chilled on Sunday. For indie nerds such as myself, the project included a lot of notable inclusions. Radiohead turned up and recorded the spectacular new song Lucky in five hours, which then became the sonic basis on what the monumental ‘OK Computer’ would build upon a couple of years later. Oasis having Kate Moss and Johnny Depp feature on the plodding Fade Away gave early sign of how far up their own arses the band were shooting themselves through a cocaine caked straw. Stone Roses’s rerecording of Love Spreads – making it uniquely inferior for the project, which was nice of them – is the only recording the band ever did with Robbie Maddox on the drum after the once in the lifetime talents of Reni had left the band. And The Manics’ cover of Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head was the first music the band had released since Richey Edwards’s disappearance that last February.
When a tenth anniversary album was released in 2005 – ‘Help: A Day in the Life‘ – the limits were even more stringent: recording would start at noon on Thursday 8th September, and the album would be released as a download at 6pm Friday the 9th September. It would become the fastest selling online album ever, as more than one hundred thousand tracks were downloaded!! I didn’t even know numbers went that high! The Manics also decided not to wimp out with a cover this time (what’s that?? Your childhood friend and close bandmate has been missing for four months?? Boo fucking hoo! Get over yourselves and give us some new material!) and recorded/released the breathless Leviathan. After the previous year’s solemn and (perhaps over)thoughtful ‘Lifeblood‘, this was a brilliant example of what magic the band could still produce when they worked only on their gut instincts, and was the first sign of where the band would be heading for 2007’s ‘Send Away the Tigers‘. “Reprobates, and MPLA/Patty Hearst, oh, they’re all the same/Baader Meinhof and Medusa touch/Leviathan, I am your son”? Yes please. More of that.
A bit of a cheat, admittedly, as it isn’t actually on the ‘Lifeblood 20’ reissue (it was actually included on 2017’s ‘SATT’ 10th anniversary reissue) that was released in 2024, but I feel any discussion of that album and its place in the band’s discography is incomplete without also including Leviathan‘s official closing of the era.
125 Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Long Dark Night
This is totally the Bad Seeds on autopilot, isn’t it? Like, I know infinite monkeys and infinite Shakespeares will eventually have infinite amounts of sex and produce infinite Super Babies, or however that phrase goes, but if you just left around ten Bad Seed members in a room for maybe a couple of hours they’d likely just accidentally record a song this gorgeous without even noticing. It’s fucking beautiful, of course, but still makes you yearn for the not to distant past when being merely beautiful wasn’t enough for The Bad Seeds.
This video has two views on Youtube. They may well both be from me. I dunno, maybe Elle herself watched it once as well, but would that even count if she herself posted it? I posted Monomirror by Collider on Youtube in 2023, and that currently has 66 views. Again though, they might all be me, so this doesn’t solve anything.
Whatever, the general public is fucking idiots, and Pulse is a semi-masterpiece. Elle released the followup album ‘Junebug’ – which she teased in our October interview – so buy that now to show you’re not one of the stupid ones.
123 South Port: Quit Dancing Alone
We all need someone when were alone
To get lost inside our minds
To be alone together
I know you’re tired of dancing alone
35 views for this song on Youtube, so we’re edging closer to Guess numbers.
OK, full disclosure, I have no fucking clue who South Port are, and the band is kind of impossible to look up without being given endless examples of bands from Southport (‘member Gomez? They were pretty good, weren’t they?). However, Quit Dancing Alone featured on volume four of the (always essential) Start-track.com compilations, and it’s an absolute motherfucking bop.
122 Taylor Swift: My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys
Yeah, obnoxiously spelling it without the ‘U’ again. I swear these people are only doing it to troll us. Pathetic.
Again, it’s Taylor, you’ve likely already decided whether you love her or hate her, so whatever this song sounds like or whatever I write here isn’t going to make a shred of difference. Whatever, Boy… is a deftly written, wonderful pop highlight from Swift’s far too often underwhelming 2024 album.
Uh, the definition of possession
The state of being completely under the influence of an idea or emotion
Broken open, to let the ghosts in
And go Gagosian with extra low end
OK, so I imagine you’ll be wanting the full synopsis of where this particular song places in the wider story of Amy Winehouse being magically changed into a battle rapper told through Lupe’s ‘Samurai‘: Well, in terms of the narrative, I’m pretty sure the song is a dream, with the protagonist being woken up by an alarm at the song’s close. Amy meets a old homeless person in the park, who grabs her and tells her that “‘Everything you do will now be in another art'”, before disappearing “like Superman abandoning the planet”. This gives Amy the power to rap like she has “split-second Smith & Wesson lips”, and becomes the inciting incident that the rest of the plot builds off. Yeah, happens in a dream, so minor plot hole there if you want to be all skeptical, but Bruce Wayne learned that Miranda Tate was Talia al Ghul when Ra’s al Ghul told him in a dream in ‘The Dark Knight Rises‘, and none of you chumps complained about that! Noooooooooo, you just wanted to cover your mouth with your hand and pretend to talk like Bane, didn’t you?? You people make me sick.
Outside of the narrative, it’s an ironically titled excuse for Lupe to flex some incredibly complex and layered lyrical and performance chops. I’m going to say it: there’s no way that Winehouse would have ever been anyway near this good at rapping, no matter how many magical hobos she met, so this all seems a bit disrespectful, really.
120 Quentin: Desolation Countdown
Quentin are from Indonesia.
OK, I’m out.
Alright, alright, not entirely out – Quentin have their own Instagram and everything – I can at least say that this is from the band’s first EP – ‘Hippocampus‘ – and that the band themselves claim to deal in ‘Cinematic listening therapy’. There isn’t much ‘cinematic’ sounding about the rousing indie rock of Desolation Countdown, though perhaps they’re just confirming that the chorus of “It’s done, it’s gone in 60 seconds” actually does refer to the 2000 movie starring Nicolas Cage and Angelina Jolie’s dreadlocks (Jolie was actually uncredited, only the dreadlocks), which would actually bump it up at least 25 places in this list. Quentin? Quentin?? Can you please confirm? Ah, sorry, Indonesian: “tinggalkan aku sendiri, dasar monyet putih bodoh”. Got my Indonesian neighbour to translate that.
Another gem from ‘START THE TRACK: VOL. IV‘. It’s pay what you want, come on, don’t be an arse.
119 serpentwithfeet: Rum/Throwback
That slash isn’t playing no games – this is actually at least two separate songs somehow fit into a 3:42 runtime. It starts as a gorgeously smooth and sensual love jam, with serpent crooning peak 80’s Prince come-ons like “You ain’t gotta gimme your number, number, number/Lemme just hold that waist”. Then, about two minutes in, the song breaks down as a club DJ aggressively reminding the club’s patrons that “We got that six-dollar verse paradise punch/For another 15 fuckin’ minutes/Make sure you tip your bartenders, you feel me?/Make sure you tip your fuckin’ bartenders”, before the song flips once again into a short, breezy Caribbean-coded love song with Mr feet extolling a partner that “Even when I changed my phone number twelve times that year/You’ve been there”. It sounds bonkers – and it is, don’t get me wrong – but it manages to sound so cohesive and work so beautifully as a song that you barely notice the hinges.
Hang on… So is this guy stalking serpent, or…?
118 Amanda Palmer: The Ballad of the New York Times
I don’t understand which part of me is kind
I don’t understand which part of me can be so goddamned unkind
I don’t understand why I’m tired all the time
All I know is that last night i wanted to go to bed by five o’clock
And I took off my necklace and I turned on the heater
And I couldn’t stop shaking so I put on a sweater
And I read the New York Times
On an app in my phone next to my sleeping child
And the headlines hurt my mind
Five thousand dead – Cher got an elephant back into the wild
And the light hit his face and his curly haired head
And I knew i should be reading a good book instead
I can’t fit all of humanity into this bed
With me
I know, a live performance! Groooooooooooooooooss! 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮 Believe me, I’ve looked, and I don’t think a studio recording of this fabulous song exists.
I find Amanda Palmer a little annoying occasionally: they’re a bit of a ‘Vote Blue No Matter Who’ wet liberal in the John Grant mould who probably believes the world would be saved if only John Kerry became leader of the Republicans again so that the Democrats had “valid opposition”. But at the same time they do at least seem very aware of the contradictions of liberalism (it’s hard to just hear about bad things happening while you’re ruthlessly supporting the status quo!) and The Ballad of the New York Times narrates those issues wonderfully.
Basically, give me Amanda Palmer and a piano and a really long semi stream of conscious and I’m sold. This isn’t quite up there with A Mother’s Confession, but still proof of Amanda being an absolute master of that one particular niche.
I originally wrote this entry before more, pretty sickening details of the Neil Gaiman sexual abuse allegations were published by Vulture, and before Amanda was put more into the spotlight as at best an enabler of horrific sexual violence and at worst a kind of Etsy Ghislaine Maxwell. I’m not removing the song from the list, but I just don’t feel right with the light hearted tone of the original entry.
Still, I felt bad (and maybe even lowkey misogynistic) calling Palmer “a little annoying occasionally”.
And now to Puerto Rico, and kate can wait, the moniker of Molly Kate Rodriguez (according to this one article I found from 2019) and an absolutely dangerous purveyor of irresistible earworms. The (almost) title track from 2024’s ‘Hrd Times‘ album isn’t the last time kate makes this list.
Again, information on the artist is hard to come across, but I can confidently say based on their Twitter background that they’re a ‘huge fucking lesbian’ and from their (still active) Tweets that they’re a wrestling fan! Be still my marking heart! Also, their pinned Tweet is advertising their 2019 album ‘Howl Youth’. Mate, you’ve released three records since then, I think you need to fire your advertising department.
116 Prince: Hello (Extended 12″ Fresh Dance Mix
I tried to tell ’em that I didn’t want to sing
But I’d gladly write a song instead
They said, “Okay”, and everything was cool
‘Til a camera tried to get in my bedHello, my bed, hello, hello
I was sittin’ pretty with a beautiful friend (oh, darlin’)
When this man tries to get in the car (ayy Prince, c’mon, give us a smile, ayy?)
No introduction, “How you been?”
Just, “Up yours, smile, that’s right, you’re a star” (star)You call ’em bodyguards, but I call ’em my friends
I guess I’m used to havin’ ’em around
And cameras by nature like rewards
That’s the trouble I get when I’m uptown…
We’re against hungry children, our record stand tall
There’s just as much hunger here at home
We’ll do what we can if y’all tryna understand
A flower that has water will grow
And the child misunderstood will go
Remember how I told you about the controversy around Prince not being involved in the artistically atrocious We Are the World song and instead contributing a completely new song to the soundtrack? Well, this isn’t that song, so chill out a bit, please, you’re making a fool of yourself. This is, however, Prince’s own side of the story. Unfortunately, both Twitter and the Apple Notes app were literal decades away from being invented in 1985, so all Prince could do back then was write a song about it. Which He did, releasing it as the b-side of Raspberry Beret on May 15th in the UK and of Pop Life on July 10th in the US.
It’s obviously a slightly biased take on the evening’s events – they absolutely did not say “Okay and everything was cool” – and Hello represents one of the first times that Prince was making music as a reaction to something and/or other’s perceptions rather than just surfing on the creativity of His own gut. And the “There’s just as much hunger here at home” line is a strange and underexplored suggestion that Prince even resented the idea of helping other country’s before His beloved Reagan era America (America, God shed his grace on thee, America, America, keep the children free). It’s possibly/likely/hopefully just a poorly worded off handed comment, and a result of Prince evidently writing this song through gritted teeth.
But what a song though, especially in its extended form. Irresistibly funky, musically restless and full of all sorts of creative twists and turns. In 1985, Prince was on such a hot streak that even his malicious snarky musical shitposts were still magical.
Hot dang, almost every track from the band’s triumphantly unfocused ‘Greif’ album could have made this list. I’ve gone for the funky and anthemic QOTSA homage of Disease, but seriously, mate, take your fucking pick.
Two views on Youtube again. Seriously, all you people are fucking embarrassing yourself.
113 Manic Street Preachers: Everything Will Be
The first example of one of the bonus tracks on ‘Lifeblood 20‘ exhibiting how the band seemed to be in a surprisingly rich era for b-sides. Thanks, as always, to Flint’s near peerless* Song-By-Song blog for pointing out how Everything Will Be was a surprising inclusion to the band’s 2003 Glastonbury set, being perhaps the first publicly aired preview of the direction the band would be taking on their next album. Moody, brooding, biting and almost nauseatingly funky – it promised that the band were about to go to some dark places.
(*near peerless. Where’s your 100 Greatest Manics songs, aye, Flint?? People are saying this heated rivalry is getting out of hand and can only end in violence, but I say bring it on! If this feud needs to be settled in a boxing ring, then so be it! People will spend £23.99 to watch me complain about ‘This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours‘ for three hours on PPV)
But fuck that, right? As wonderful a song as Everything Will Be is, it would never work on the ethereal yet warm synths of ‘Lifeblood’, so ended up as one of the b-sides of The Love of Richard Nixon. Yes, I know, you could argue that Nixon… suited the album equally as awkwardly, but we are not having that talk right now. These are topics you really should be talking to your parents about, it’s not my responsibility to explain to you the intricacies and controversies of The Love of Richard Nixon.
Sigh, OK: when a band really loves a song…
112 The Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter: Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet
Kristin Hayter released the ‘Index’/outtakes from their incredible 2023 album ‘SAVED!’ last year, committing even more deeply to the ‘bit’ of the evangelical rebirth they experienced on their first album after retiring the Lingua Ignota persona. Completely made up of hymns and choral standards that Hayter recorded for the project, including an astonishing eight minute version of the Jesus Blood… standard which – while not quite measuring up to Gavin Bryers’s 24 minute 1975 classic – is still an incredibly rich interpretation.
My iPad’s shuffle always seems to land on this song when I’m at work. My colleague described the song as “Barely qualifying as music”, if you wanted a second opinion. But also the first song so far too cool to be on Spotify, so that needs to be taken into account as well.
111 Psalm One & Optics: Stay in the Kitchen
Psalm One & Optics’s fabulous 2024 album ‘Is This a Safe Space‘ may not have quite made the top 40 for the year, but it’s still another pretty superb record that Cristalle Bowen has been involved in. And, shit, maybe I just fucking forgot to list it it. That has been know to happen in 2024. Multiple times, actually, as you’ll soon find out…
110 Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds: Cinnamon Horses
Yeah, sure this might sound like a stunningly beautiful piece of work, but then you learn that ‘Cinnamon Horses’ are a brand of miniature biscuits sold only in Australia and this was the theme song for the advert that Cave received three million Australian dollars (around £63.20) for writing and recording, the fucking sellout! The worst part is, Cinnamon horses are in the shape of dinosaurs. Then why fucking call then ‘Cinnamon Horses?? According to Randy Lichmitruch, the CEO of Branchosnax International – the distributor of the biscuits, “‘Horses’ just scanned better”. The second worst part is that they’re flavoured after Gary Cinnamon, not the spice itself. Seriously, mate, you can never trust that country.
The first taste of yeule’s upcoming follow up to their two consecutive Necessary Evil top ten albums. eko (oh-uh-oh-woah-oh, oh-uh-oh-woah-oh) occasionally nags me as a tad unambitious for someone of yeule’s incredible talents of sonic misconduct, but I’m happy for now to just accept it as a great little tune maliciously designed to trick unsuspecting punters into the bloodied aural slaughterhouse of their next record.
108 Billie Eilish: THE GREATEST
Listen, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but Billie’s 2024 record was a bit of a sonically and lyrically unadventurous snoozefest (which, most damningly of all, robbed Eilish of potential Gold Star status). The songs being so sonically similar may have been an artistic choice – and I do appreciate how it was made to be listened to as a full album – but that smacks of an artist not knowing how ‘cohesion’ works and so just makes every song sound exactly the same. And if you’re going to do that, instead of reproducing identical funeral paced anti-bangers, why not just make every song sound like Runaway Train by Soul Asylum?? I would love to hear that song ten times in a row! I listened to it fifteen times in a row already today!
There are standouts though. Not Birds of a Feather, which is almost a proof of concept of how lifeless Eilish intended this record to be, and whose continued success is simply another example of the general public acting against their own best interests. “Socialism and equality? No thanks, can we have Birds of a Feather and another Mrs. Brown’s Boys Christmas Special please? Oh, and fascism as well”. Sigh, anyway, GREATEST (all caps, in an obvious childish jab at Charli XCX) is pretty great: actually beautiful rather than just being slow, and featuring an incredible opening of wings in the finale that provides one of ‘Hit Me Hard and Slow’s maybe two or three exhilarating moments.
“Hidden away
Roots that find a way to
Return to
Cracked earth
Shoot a nail
Right through the brain
Now I’m counting clouds eternally
Slimy fish jump for eternity
Hidden away
Roots that find a way to
Wilt
Wilt
Wilt
Wilt
Wilt
Wilt
Wilt
Wilt
Wilt
Wilt
Wilt
Wilt
Wilt
Wilt
WiltWilt
Lol, yeah, no fucking idea who these guys are either, but this fucking rocks.
106 Prince: Condition of the Heart
Easily the jazziest and one of the loosest tracks that Prince had released by that point, I can actually understand how some people have been known to find Condition of the Heart fucking excruciatingly frustrating. It takes a long time to do anything, and even what it actually does do could be considered a bit of a tease. The song doesn’t really even have any form at all for the first couple of minutes, sounding improvised and unintentional, before verses of delicate intimacy that often threaten to grown more tuneful and conventionally melodic before always pulling back. This atmosphere of restraint and of denial of release only makes that first chorus four minutes hit all that more effectively. It’s weird,it’s one of the most brazenly anti ‘Purple Rain’ tracks on the album, and it’s absolutely wonderful.
105 Tapir!: On A Grassy Knoll (We’ll Bow Together)
I can change, I can change, I can change, I can change for the worse.
That’s the spirit!
104 The Lemonheads: Fear of Living
Life is short and unforgiving
I only fear the living
Life is short and unforgiving
I only fear the living
What’s this? Another classic Lemonheads early 90s cut makes the 2024 list after two such tracks featured in the 2023 Legit Bosses??
No. No, this is a new Lemonheads song. No, not like “new unearthed demo from the ‘Car Button Cloth‘ sessions”, like an actual new Lemonheads song that they released in 2024. And you’ll have to trust me that it stands up alongside their very best. Actually, you don’t have to trust me, you could just listen to the song. It’s The Lemonheads, so you already know it will be three minutes out of your life at absolute most. I’d prefer it if you just trusted me though, this list is complicated enough without you bringing your own opinions into it.
And when I say “stands up alongside their very best”, you also have to remember that means it’s an impossibly catchy and succinctly yet masterfully put together two minute guitar pop song: The Lemonheads’ ceiling ain’t that high. But it’s still nice to know that after almost 40 years the band are still near peerless when it comes to producing low ambition but high quality uncomplicated vibes.
Where (most of) Radiohead embrace their intuitive ability to create unabashed beauty, a skill they too often attempt to deny. The miserable pricks.
I still remember the first time you said you l̴̡̨̨͕͙͎͙̼̱̗͉̬̣̠̓͊͜͠ₗₒᵥₑ ₘₑ BWₐWₐWₐWₐWₐWₐWₐWₐWₐWₐ
I thought Bnny’s 2024 album ‘One Million Love Songs’ (eleven tracks. Fucking bullshitting straight out of the gates) was fine, a lovely and well crafted selection of often fey indie mini-bangers. But, fuck me, when that bass kicks in a few seconds into Good Stuff?? Fuck me dead and bury me pregnant.
101 Angry Blackmen Magnum Opus
Fucking with my Psyche
Head full of paranoia
I’m like Daniel Plainview
Treat this music like it’s oilIndustry a Gargoyle
And a soul sucking Succubus
Homunculus, tiny little niggas cannot fuck with usI swear the game stuck with us
They can’t get rid of me
Cockroach bars, I’m a pest like it’s 10 of me
I mean, big props to ABM for stalking me online just to thank me for buying their album. I really wanted to include their great ‘The Legend of ABM‘ debut in the 2024 top 40, basically because I’m a massive slag and wanted to acknowledge them validating me. I’m a lonely, lonely man. But while it’s a great post-Death Grips, Fantano baiting debut, I still consider ABM to be a fantastic prospect right now, rather than the finished article. Magnum Opus actually shows how effective ABM can be if they slow it the fuck down a bit once in a while.
(Also… don’t want to say too much about unproven allegations… but ‘reaching out to fans’ might turn out to be a bit of an issue for them…)
100 Prince: 4 the Tears in Your Eyes
Top hundred! Some casuals don’t even start counting until this point!
OK, so this is the song that Prince gave to the ‘We Are the World’ project. And it’s the original version that’s the 100th best song of 2024, even if it’s probably far more well known for the acoustic version that would Prince performed live to tape to play during the Live Aid concerts. It’s that version that would later be collected on the essential ‘Hits/B-Sides’ collection in 1993, and it actually the only version of the song on Spotify.
I went over the ‘We Are the World’ controversy in my ‘Around the World in a Day’ post. After declining to spend the evening of the 28th January 1985 rhythmically sway between James Ingram and the drummer from Huey Lewis and the News (“He wasn’t snubbing the idea, but I think He felt he could give something better” – lighting designer Roy Bennett), Prince instead recorded a completely new track five days later, on the 2nd February, at the New Orleans Superdome the day after playing there.
While the ‘We Are the World’ team at A&M reportedly got through some $15,000 during their recording session, Prince put together his track with just some salami and cheese leftovers and a can of warm Coke that (engineer Susan) Rogers managed to scavenge from the Superdome’s staff.
Per Nilsen – Prince: Dance Music Sex Romance: The First Decade
Is 4 the Tears in Your Eyes? One of Prince’s best songs? No. Is it better than We Are the World? By several furlongs.
Lyrically, it’s lazy biblical stuff, just telling the story of Jesus’s resurrection and more evidence of Prince’s cack handed religious obsession during the ‘Around the World in a Day’ period. However, it’s also evidence of His increasing interest in experimental sounds and open minded musicality, combining new wave guitar stabs with the lush arrangements found on the record He would release in a couple of months.
More of a curiosity and a piece of trivia than a truly compelling song? Possibly. But more evidence of how Prince could still conduct magic even when He was opening his own musical Spite Store. And his productivity was about to go haywire going into 1986.
The We Are the World album that contained 4 the Tears in Your Eyes went No. 1 on Billboard‘s album chart, where it stayed for two weeks, before being replaced by Phil Collins’ No Jacket Required. Two weeks later, Prince went number one with Around the World in a Day.
It was eventually knocked off the top spot by the ‘Beverly Hills Cop‘ soundtrack, but… I don’t know what that means, narrative wise…
99 Bolis Pupil: Completely Half
Yeah, this is pretty good, but where’s that laughing chick? Partial credit.
Oh shit, the ‘100%’ song was almost number 100! Bollocks, I fucked that up. can I change it now?
No, I’ve tried to work out how I’d do that and I don’t think it’s possible. Ah well.
98 kate can wait: trigger warning suicide
Thought about killing myself
Last night
Under the weight of my own
Expectations
Thinking about killing myself
Today
All of my insecurities gone with the wind
In my eyes
There’s a longing
To see this through
Even though it’s hard to stay
Baby
Let’s fucking make it through
Christ, this song came with an actual trigger warning on YouTube! This video has FOUR views! YouTube, chill the fuck out, yeah? Also, this is going to mess up my YouTube playlists like I Can’t Breathe always does.
Just a lovely little song. ‘Lovely’ might seem like an odd word to describe a song explicitly outlining how much the singer years for self destruction, but there’s such a beautifully morbid message of hope underneath it all. Sure, kate wants to kill themself, but we all do! Death would be so fucking awesome! Oh, I’m sorry, so you don’t want an easy fix that would literally fix all of your problems and guarantee that you never need to struggle in the despair of late stage capitalism ever again?! Shut up and take my wrists!
But we don’t kill ourselves. We knuckles down. We appreciate those closest to us. And we see it through.
Sheer, unadulterated beauty. Four views on YouTube. Again, possibly all me.
96 Manic Street Preachers: The Soulmates
The soulmates
They last the distance
They make promises
They feel like misfitsThe soulmates
They need each other
They’re faithful warriors
They want for nothingThe graffiti
You left on me
Means every part
Is still bleedingNo souvenirs
No symphonies
No dead feelings
Listen, I know I give Nicky Wire a lot of shit. Firstly, Wire has to take some of the responsibility for that on account of them so often being so shit. But secondly, Wire in 2004 was still capable of penning such a delicately devastating lyric as The Soulmates. Plaintive, sparse, but emotionally cognisant, it’s the sort vulnerable yet encompassing masterclass that Wire was once so in mastery of. And musically the song’s intensely mournful emotion belies the lyrics so well. I would point to it as further example of the quality of the band’s b-sides during the ‘Lifeblood’ period, but motherfucker wasn’t even a b-side! Only released on the Japanese version of the album, and getting its first wider release on the ‘Lifeblood 20’ reissue.
It’s songs like this that I can listen to and think Yes. That’s my favourite band of all time.
And don’t give me that “Oooooooooh, is it about Richey??” crap. Every Manics song recorded since 1995 is about Richey.
The sweetest actor
Beats his wife behind closed doors
And the great innovators
Are boys just frozen at the core
Of daddy’s anger
And mommy’s trauma
And there we drop unto the floor
Where pain has reigned
Where fear’s the product these boys soldThe Man of the Year is here
The Man of the Year is here
Speaking of great lyricists: John Rossiter, ladies and gentlemen and others
Nigga, you 40, still doing this shit?
The chorus of the opening and title track of Brown’s brilliant sixth album succinctly offers the elevator pitch for the entire project.
Lava’s debut album proper is too long, its hit rate is noticeably less than 100%, and its incredibly wide breadth of influences often comes at the cost of real cohesion. But it’s still a more than worthwhile project, partially because its ambition and wide eyed enthusiasm means it’s never close to being dull, but mainly because the highs are extraordinarily high.
Lava will be featuring numerous times on this list, and Humanity scrapes the bottom of the top 100 with the dubious honour of being the worst essential song on the album. Musically, melodically, vibeswise, it’s truly magical, it’s just the eye-rollingly basic “Drugs are bad/Mmmkay” lyrics that prevent it from reaching the heights of ‘Star Face’s absolute best.
92 Magdalena Bay: Image (Grimes Special)
Yeah, yeah, one of the highlights of ‘Imaginal Disk‘ stanked up a bit by Claire Boucher, but there will be other opportunities to talk about Magdelena Bay, can we talk about Grimes for a second?
I really like Grimes. Sure, their last album wasn’t an immediate promotion to their best of (even if it contained Violence so basically fuck you, yeah?). Sure, they’re almost impossibly cringe and it’s sad that such and technology and electronics centred artist really should have the internet removed from them until they learn how to behave. And, sure, they married Elon Musk and has in all probability likely touched his penis, and then by divorcing him will potentially cause the downfall of human civilisation by proxy. But can we at least separate an artist being embarrassing from the art?
It seems like culture has already decided to forget Grimes as the most influential artist of the 2010s, like we chose to forget that the first film to feature talking was about a guy singling in blackface, or that Jarjar Binks was the first fully CGI character*. Yet while far less films feature blackface these days (instead, suburban US white kids just pretend to be black online y’all, fr) and Jarjar Binks hasn’t been seen for years – despite there now being roughly 24 new Star Wars properties released every week so you’d think they’d be desperate – Grimes’s is still everywhere. Grimes was an originator of the Hyperpop sound that can be explicitly heard in both critics’ favourite joke band 100 gecs and in the biggest album of last year. Their embracing of both high art and ‘low’ pop massively influenced both the musical stylings of around 90% of music in 2024, and also in the culture’s new openness to previously disregarded genres. I truly believe that Grimes first influenced the current intersectionality of faves where it’s no longer absurd to name both Death Grips and Carly Rae Jepson as your go-to artists. Without Grimes, no way is Pitchfork naming Mariah Carey’s Fantasy the best song of the 1990’s in 2022. They’d be horrified by the thought. When Pitchfork did the list in 2010 (soon after Grimes had released their largely ignored debut album) they gave the award to fucking Pavement! It’s easy to laugh at Grimes’s continued ‘Tumblr Girl Reads Lewis Mumford’ feet constantly in mouth (fun too), but it’s impossible to escape the fact that, if you’re a Westerner, you’re currently living in Grimes’s world.
And, come on, it’s a lot of fun how cringe Grimes is. I enjoy Azealia Banks’s online insanity, and they’re a lot more problematic than Grimes. I wouldn’t want to be within a country mile of Grimes, and I can imagine that Claire Bucher would be able to explain how everything I’ve ever done and said is far more offensive and damaging than her silly flights of fancy. We live in an age where we can enjoy artists’ incredible, world changing art and also their shitty, ridiculously sheltered personality from a safe distance. What a time to be alive!
91 Caroline Shaw and Sō Percussion: Slow Motion
Lay it all down
Search party for a noun
While they run around
Little vowels on the playground
Hands outstretched for a sip
Just a drip
One small taste of the missing adjective
Clap clap clap, clap clap clap, clap-clap clap-clap clap-clap…
Yeah, mate, I’ve no fucking idea either, but this song is an absolute menhir of a tune.
So is this actual country?
I do not, in the slightest, give any sort of shiny shit, and the only people who do are people nobody gives a fuck about. And, guess what, Beyoncé didn’t receive any nominations at the 58th Annual Country Music Awards, which was apparently all they cared about. So, in brief: you were bending over backwards to achieve something nobody gave a shit about and failed anyway!
Ah well, this is a lovely song.
89 David Holmes and Raven Violet: When People are Occupied Resistance is Justified
I really wanted to give David Holmes an almost ‘Les Savy Fav Like‘ gap between Necessary Evil entries in 2024. ‘Blind on a Galloping Horse‘ was technically released in November 2023, but I considered entering Holmes into NE2024 and giving them their first entry since finishing eighth in 2008. In the end though, their collaboration with singer Raven Violet doesn’t quite consistently hit the heights necessary for inclusion on a newly cropped list. However, the opening ten minute explanation of why all actions are merited by an occupied people against a violent power that is crushing their very people, is a certified banger.
“Crazy that they released this just weeks after October 7th!!” – quiet your mouth, it’s been true for all of history and the song was likely written and recorded long before then. “Resistance is justified if people are occupied” has been a big pro-Palestine slogan for longer than your great uncle’s girlfriend has been alive.
Do I condemn Hamas?
Again, no. But I’m sad it had to happen this way.
The b-side of Pop Life in Europe and America in the US, and in edited form once again on the essential ‘Hits/B-Sides‘ collection. Girl is a gorgeous and lyrically near unique song in Prince’s catalogue. In it, He professes love for a woman so intense that it frightens Him “Cuz I’ve never wanted anyone like this before”. It’s a sexually charged song, of course, we’re not talking about Daniel O’Donnell here (“God, all I have 2 do is think about U and I can have an orgasm”), but it also betrays a vulnerability and fear of loneliness that is rare in any Prince song and especially unheard of in His sex jams.
Marry me
Yeah that’s right, marry me
Girl, don’t U ever get lonely sometimes? (Girl)
Gir… girl, don’t U ever…
Don’t U ever want someone…
Don’t U ever want someone just 2…
Don’t U ever want someone just 2 talk 2?
Well, U can talk 2 me, baby
I’m… I’m a good listener
It’s a song where the protagonist is sure to enjoy a bit of slap and tickle and admitting that “If I was anything else I’d be the water in your bath, darling” – y’know, standard Prince fare – but also admitting a crushing loneliness and wanting to marry this Girl just to have someone to talk to. It’s both extraordinarily sexy and incredibly sad (as well as being an absolute banger) which is a combination that only Prince at His peak could pull off so successfully.
Oh, and if you play the 12″ version backwards, you get Vanity singing Boy, a response to Girl, which is pretty fucking cool, you have to admit.
It’s not on YouTube though, so I’m going to have to try and both make and upload it myself, which is going to take forever…!
[EDIT: You’re welcome. Seriously, the things I do for you clowns)
I grew up fast without you
Did my lashes in the bathroom
And some things you’d like to skip
16 sucking dick in the bathroom
We now know that the typically ferocious, typically infectious and typically early 90’s altrock influenced single released in August was the first taste of Blondshell’s upcoming follow up to 2023’s second greatest album. There’s no noticeable evolution from their debut’s sound, so will Blondshell be able to pull the same trick once again?
Mate, I’m not sure. They already hoodwinked me by basically rerecording songs I remember from when I was kid, but doing it expertly well. If they release the exact same album again I’ll probably name it number 1 this time.
Only joking. Prince’s ‘Parade’ is next year. Ain’t nobody beating that…
Sundriieed, sundriiiiiiiieeeed, hoooooooooooooooooot looooooooooooooooooooooove!!
Yeah, I’ve no idea who these people are, even after releasing the 23rd best album of the year.
85 Mannequin Pussy: Nothing Like
Mannequin Pussy are a very good band, and this is an extremely good song. I’ll admit though, the praise they get baffles me.
84 Justice: Saturnine (starring Miguel)
Justice finished three places below Les Savy Fav in 2007, and I was so ready for the big comeback this year! Give me those big French beats again! Make me feel young!!
However… the album was… fine… I guess… However, when they get NE fave Miguel involved, sparks fly. Miguel has an album coming out this year though!!Make me feel like it’s 2017 again!!
83 Les Savy Fav: Somebody Needs a Hug
Aw shit, you guys! I was just talking about you! No, no, it was all good. I was just saying how Justice… No, no, you’re right, not that important, Anyway, take off your trousers and wait for me in the next room.
It might be down to me not being too knowledgeable about the band’s pre-2007 work for comparison, but I think ‘Oui LSF‘ is an incredibly underrated record in many circles. And, hey, I’ve been listening to ‘Inches’ a lot recently, and as far as I can tell so far there ain’t anything on there in the same dang league as the euphoric release of somebody Needs a Hug!
Sigh… once again, it’s proven that everyone is wrong except me…
82 Cindy Lee: All I Want is You
Yeah, so I’m not completely ignoring this album…
A fantastic, tender, lovelorn track. A bizarrely overpraised album. Like, yeah, it does sound like it was recorded a long time ago, but so what? ‘Diamond Jubilee’ is a beneficiary of the idea in some critical circles that paying homage to something is equally as valid and worthy of praise as actually being something.
Old sensation
Don’t let them in
Let go, hold that vision
Hung up, I’m headed for your condemnation
Wait up, I’m heading for your complications
Your mutations
Watch this
‘My Method Actor’ was an incredible album. While it didn’t blow me away quite as much as Yanya’s previous album ‘Painless‘ – possibly because my expectations were far lower that time around – but at least arguably their finest record yet. Combining more raw and stripped back instrumentation with a more confident and assured presence, both as a performer and as an existential being.
And yet it didn’t make the top 40? Wha’ happen?
I forgot to list it. Seriously, that’s it. I just forgot to add it to the list I have on Google Sheets after it’s September release. I always just assumed it was on their somewhere – like, maybe #16? It’s very #16 coded – and just went on with my life, posted the whole top 40, apologised to Chappell Roan (very #6 coded) for an identical mistake, and felt happy with the world until somebody expressed surprise at Nilüfer’s omission. I fucked up. I honestly can’t describe to you how mortified I am.
Mutations is great though. Because all the album is fucking great and I can’t believe I forgot to list it for ⳨ⳙⳙⳙⳙⳙⲥⲕ’⳽ ⳽ⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲁⲕⲉ!!!
Ahem.
That is to say: it’s a shame that the science wasn’t on Nilüfer Yanya’s side this year. Bad luck, buddy, there’s always next year 👍.
And when the time is right
And when the end has come
Maybe you can’t-, maybe you can’t be arsed
For half a million
A Gaza ceasefire has been agreed. Because Donald Trump asked. Does this prove that Trump is a master tactician and living up to his claims as the most peaceful president in history? Of course not, Donald Trump isn’t even a smart enough tactician to work out that he could buy his McDonald’s burgers, fries and Cokes much cheaper if you buy a meal deal. Guy hasn’t even worked out that you can order the three things at once, he’s been walking in and out of McDonald’s three times per visit for years because he simply can’t comprehend how you’d be able to make all three things at the same time. All it is is proof that America could have ended the genocide whenever it wanted and yet chose not to. Biden vetoed four previous ceasefires because he, at his heart, is a raging Zionist and committed racist who, underneath it all, considers the Gazans to be a lower race of people that would make his presidency more straightforward by being completely wiped out. In America, people were shamed for not voting for Biden, using the scare tactic of Trump as it’s the only policy those lame duck Democrats have left, while these very same people shamelessly directly voted for the continuation of a genocide.
Will Trump be any better? Fuck no! I dread to think what monstrous promises he’s offered to Benjamin “Articles 18 and 19 of the Rome Statute” Netanyahu, but you know how you could have prevented this? By stopping the genocide yourselves at some point over the 13 month period before your sack of shit party was voted out you fucking bloodthirsty ghouls!
John Grant can fuck off as well, the fucking ‘Vote Blue No Matter Who’ Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferer.
Sorry, I’m in a bit of a bad mood now.
The ‘Radical Optimism’ album was a bit of a disaster, all told, badly failing to build on the proper breakthrough success (Breakthrough = chart hits and a Necessary Evil entry) ‘Future Nostalgia’ and featuring far too many songs that fall embarrassingly (and often loudly) flat. It’s not a bad album, per se, just a unimaginative and unambitious slightly lifeless effort that sounds like it was rush released to cover gambling debts.
Oh, and it’s also not a bad album because it contains two absolutely stonking singles.
Houdini is truly injected with the sort of charisma, star power and sheer umpth of personality that Dua had previously promised to be full of but that is lacking on the rest of the album (except one other song). It oozes both class and cooly reserved high drama, and if Dua doesn’t do the next Bond theme I’m canceling my Bond subscription. Fuck it, if Dua Lipa doesn’t play the next James Bond I’m canceling my Bond subscription.
Y’know, a Bond subscription? You pay £9.99 a month and you get access to the library of every Nigel Bond snooker match ever? You’ve not heard of it? It also gives you access to all Nigel Bond PPVs, but considering Bond retired in 2022 I’ve been starting to wonder if that’s a scam.
Oh! Premium Bonds! Yeah, maybe I should have made that joke instead. Ah well, no going back now, Nigel Bond it is, hope you enjoyed it.
OK everyone, congratulations for getting this far. Been almost 10’000 words so far, which is roughly the amount of words in the English translation of Sun Tzu’s original ‘Art of War‘, so aren’t you glad you spent that time with this blog rather than wasting it on that piece of shit! We’re not even into the top 70. If it makes you feel any better: no matter how much of a pain in the anus this is to read, it’s far worse to write it. You don’t need to finish this! I do! As a kind of show of appreciation, I’ve decided that you deserve to enjoy numbers 77-75 in our dedicated Sister Section. Please enjoy 2024’s top three sister songs, You might want to grab a drink, maybe give your own sister a call after so long (was that swastika that she painted on your garage really that bad? The paint’s almost half off by now), maybe put on a feelgood movie about sisters on in the background like ‘The Virgin Suicides’, ‘Melancholia’ or ‘The Mafu Cage’. You can probably guess which artist features most prominently.
Ba-nawa-na, ba-da-ba-nawa-na…
Sufjan has three sisters, and he basically won’t shut up about them. You could possibly argue that even this whole brilliant Sister Section idea was inspired by the 2024 rerelease of Sufjan’s incredible fourth album ‘Seven Swans‘, but I’m telling you right now you’re going to struggle to find evidence for that hypothesis. Is this top three just made up entirely of songs from Sujan Steven’s? No. So wash your arse before you speak to me, and maybe put a bit more trust in the whole Sister Section enterprise.
Sister is an absolutely stunning piece of work. An amazing elongated introduction leading into a constantly evolving and building mini-epic. Apparently about Sufjan’s sister Megan who, according to the lyrics, “has black hair and small hands”. Like, gee bro, thanks.
How small are these hands, exactly? Are we merely talking ‘petite’ here or is it what the doctors refer to as a ‘Double Beadle’ situation?
Oh, what’s that, Sufjan? You’ve got three sisters and you’re going to do a little song about one of them? That’s nice. Here’s Waxy’s song about three motherfucking sisters all at once!!!
A bit of a cheat by Crutchfield, admittedly: they are one of three sisters, so they actually have two sisters, so if this esteemed Sister Section was simply based on number of sisters the singer has, then Waxahatchee would lose out to Sufjan. Luckily for Waxy, the Sister Section is actually based on number of sisters in total. As that puts Waxy and Sufjan tied on three, the Sister Section table is then based on a secondary characteristic: quality of song. By this measure, Waxy just about pulls clear of Sister, though the Sister Section judges were a near split on the decision.
1 Sufjan Stevens: I Went Dancing With My Sister
Yeah, but you don’t come into a sister battle like the Sister Section and expect to beat Sufjan Stevens. Some people have accused Sufjan of Taylor-like chart manipulation, only including another sister song on their ‘Seven Swans’ reissue to cynically ensure they came out on top in the Sister Section rankings. Listen, I’m not here to speak on that: the Sister Section isn’t a moral judgment, it is merely a scientific study of which sister song is the best (if the entrants are unable to be separated by total number of sisters).
I’ve been unable to discern exactly which sister Sufjan is dancing with. It won’t be Megan though, obviously. With those horrifyingly small hands? You’d never be able to get a grip on them. No, Megan, you be the coat stand tonight as usual, you fucking freak.
You don’t believe anything you read in the good book
That’s not a good look for you
Your spirit animal’s a bulldozer
You’re shining the machine but you wanna be a closer
‘Cause Jesus wants you rich
The art of the lie, the old bait and switch
Aw, you guys! This song is so beautiful that I’m not even going to talk about your tacit endorsement of Israeli war crimes for this entry. But please be forewarned that I reserve the right to resume the war in necessary.
Yeah, I know, Michael Stipe gets their first ever Necessary Evil mention by finishing 83rd on 2023’s Legit Bosses, now I’m going mental.
It’s not a completely random shoutout for the most influential rock band of the 80’s, biggest rock band of the 90’s not from Ireland (trust me, you weren’t there, The Corrs were fucking huge), and amongst the most existing rock bands of the 00’s: 2024 was the 30th anniversary of the band shitting the bed so comprehensively with ‘Monster’ that their career never truly recovered.
I was never a huge fan of REM growing up. Their incredibly influential debut album ‘Murmur‘ (another obnoxious spelling) was released eight months before I was born, and hopefully I can be forgiven for not really connecting with their classic run of 80’s albums. By the time I was old enough to start paying attention, the band had already released Losing My Religion, already released and sold seventy two billion copies of ‘Automatic for the People‘, already become the biggest band in the world, already become the elite, already become the kind of band that people who buy two CDs a year like. They did very decent music. But they weren’t cool. And they were also more of my brother Johnny‘s band. Johnny’s two year’s younger than me. It’d be embarrassing if I was into my kid brother’s music.
And then, not long after I’d become aware of and accepted REM’s position as the world’s biggest rock band, they released ‘Monster’ (a month after Oasis had released their debut and own successful application for biggest rock band status) and quite quickly weren’t. I was ten years old when ‘Monster’ was released, and I was still aware of the running joke of how much of a flop the album was. Maybe Andi Peters was talking smack on it on Live & Kicking, I dunno. People will argue against Monster being referred to as any sort of career killer or ‘Trainwreckord: it still sold nine million copies, and the band would go onto release seven more albums, many of them selling in their millions. But it sold significantly less than the band’s previous two blockbuster records, and much like ‘Be Here Now’s eight million sales, the album’s true success would only be able to be properly measured if stats for how many of these copies ended up in second hand shops were able to be counted. Considering that REM’s next album (‘New Adventures in Hi-Fi’ – artistically one of the band’s peaks) sold roughly six million less copies, perhaps that’s the answer. The band’s sales would descend rapidly, until finally 2011’s ‘Collapse Into Now’ sold barely half a million. ‘Monster’ was definitely the inciting incident that changed REM from ‘the biggest band in the world’ to ‘a band’.
The artistic quality of ‘Monster’ is up for debate – I think it’s largely a drab and unimaginative record that at one time tries its best to rock hard with its cock out but can’t stop second guessing itself or decide whether it’s ironic or not, but many people consider it underrated – but it definitely was a line in the sand in terms of REM’s musical importance. The band’s position as the most influential rock band of the 1980s is challenged perhaps only by The Smiths, and in the early 90’s they became the model example of how an alternative band could become squillion sellers while still maintaining their artistic integrity and influence. However, for ‘Monster’ the band realised that they would be setting out on a huge world tour with music that wasn’t necessarily stadium ready, so consciously decided to do a raaaaaaawk album to pop the shows. It would be the first time that REM were trying to be something, the first time, the first time they attempted to follow musical trends rather than set them. After ‘Monster’, the band would try to be Radiohead, try to be early REM, or try to be who-the-fuck-knows as literally nobody has heard these albums. Seriously, ‘Accelerate’?? What the fuck even is that??
‘Monster’ has a lot of songs on it though that are great enough to successfully battle through the turgid production. Strange Currencies might be the band going back to the essentially the same arpeggio guitar line that made them bank with Everybody Hurts but crafting a far more interesting and far superior song out of it. It’s also an undeniable example of one of REM’s main calling cards: the unique power and rousing emotion of Michael Stipe’s voice. Stipe’s “THESE WORDS!!” to announce the oncoming chorus absolute electrify the soul.
I can’t write that much about these fucking entries. I’m not even in the top 70. This list is unsustainable.
A great, funny, sexy song, abnormally exciting on the album it appears on. Featuring a video where Billie Eilish continues to dress as if Notorious B.I.G were a homeschooled Evangelical.
70 Manic Street Preachers: Everyone Knows/Nobody Cares
And with that sick burn we enter the top 70.
Everyone Knows/Nobody Cares is another killer b-side from The Love of Richard Nixon, and one of the most spiteful, cold and dismissive songs that the band have released this century. So I am here for that.
69 (dude) Hallelujah the Hills: Here Goes Nothing
I remember almost dying at expensive hotels
pathetic whimpers followed all my rebel yells
I could check out if I wanted, guess I finally did
Now I’m back to make my rivals all hate me again
Here goes nothing
I’m gonna witness all the weirdness and wild
No one can turn me around
Here goes nothing
I’ll make every single weakness a win
Stand there and watch me begin
Fuck, I’m starting over again
HTH again, a preview of that upcoming ‘DECK’ album again, a killer fucking track again.
Beneath the curse words and the insecurities
Here lies a sorry little soul
And she doesn’t even know what to pray for
Still just a heart-broke bitch
But I traded the back of the nightclub, I did, for the bathroom floor
She a sad littl’ sinnaaaaar, in the miroooooor, the devil works hard, like ma’ livaaaaar. Raye’s accent is just amazing here.
I think, regardless of how you feel about the song, we all have to at least acknowledge Raye’s ambition. While Genesis isn’t quite Raye’s second consecutive Legit Boss winner, it’s an admirably loopy attempt at an epic that kind of spectacularly fails to be added to the Paranoid Android/Bohemian Rhapsody/Day in the Life pantheon of multi-part songs, but at least goes balls deep into the premise! The first two parts of Genesis are actually pretty fantastic, going from a sad and mournful ode to a life falling apart, before shifting seamlessly into a dark hymn about how the devil is enveloping in the form on anxiety and “He grips you at the neck as you prepare to be screwed”. It kind of completely falls apart in its final third though, as the song awkwardly attempts to transition into a big band standard that ends the song on an almost laughably inappropriate note.
However, two thirds brilliant, and I am officially setting a precedent that that is sufficient for a top 70 Legit Boss.
I apologise for nothing this song fucking rules.
Aight, where the swamp is?
Flyest bitch up in the room, I need a cockpit (Need a cockpit)
I need some PETA for this pussy, they want the croc’ print
I’m finna air these DL niggas out the closet
I let it in (Let it in), I let it out (Let it out)
I’m a bi bitch, but I need that pussy now
If he is gay, then I am gay, and we are nouns (We are nouns)
Me and Tyler finna take your bitch down
Jesus H Christ, Doechii is so fucking fire here.
65 serpentwithfeet: Damn Gloves
Uh-huh.
Why would a serpent need gloves? Massive plot hole that makes the song unlistenable.
64 Groupthink & Abra: Gold On Me
While not quite up to the standard of last year’s incredible gut punch of industrial dance FKA Mess (#11 in 2023), Abra’s collaboration with Groupthink is another incredible example of their extraordinary powers. Seriously, if Abra keeps featuring on standalone singles like this, I’m not sure I ever need a follow up to their 2016 album.
And IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIi…!!!
No, not that one. Wasn’t that a country song originally though?? Quick, Beyoncé, do a cover of it! Maybe Merble Haggins will feature it on his Tootin’ Tuesdays run down of the latest country hits on WNK69 Spittoon FM!
Christ, who gives a shit?
No caps, Björk?
No, I’m not saying anything, I’m just asking a question! I’m not allowed to ask questions anymore??
We lost an absolute legend in 2024. I don’t have anywhere near enough time here to try and explain the wonder of Psycho Sid/Sid Vicious/Sid Eudy, as his was an undeniable aura that would make little sense to non wrestling fans. Sid was never a draw, he never pulled in big crowds, and was generally only ever employed by companies circling the drain and just hoping that someone the look and size of Sid would pull in some crowds. He never did. But inside the venue, when he was present, he always managed to be the most over wrestler that night. He never convinced a single soul to buy a ticket, but to the fans who had already bought tickets he was a megastar.
Because of how good a wrestler he was? Absolutely not. Sid – with all due respect to the recently deceased – was a fucking horrendous wrestler. Able to managed a handful of moves, his one calling card was that he’d occasionally be able to make those two or three moves look impactful. So the eternal affection for Sid must have been down to the quality and drama of his matches.
Also no. His matches were awful. My friends and I debated it after his death, and perhaps only his Survivor Series 1996 and Royal Rumble 97 match with Shawn Michaels could be considered essential viewing. Or even recommended viewing. Guy headlined two Wrestlemanias. And both matches were dire.
Ah, so it must have been his promo ability on the mic!? Kinda, but Sid’s promos are almost ironically beloved, and remain far more iconic for the times he hilariously messes up.
It was just his innate Sidness that people loved. His presence, his adorable goofiness, the way he’d flick his head to the side to pop a crowd, his love of softball... Wrestling fans usually resent the part-timers, the cynical politicians, the wrestlers who obviously value getting a payday above any love for business, but Sid’s renegade money grabbing is somehow part of the reason we love him. His innate Sidness would allow him to con failing promoters out of millions of dollars despite never warranting that as either a draw or a talent. We knew he wasn’t worth that, he knew he wasn’t worth that, and we knew that he knew he wasn’t worth that. But Sid played the game perhaps better than anyone else (save potentially Kevin Nash, but at least Nash had the charisma and personality to make up for his lack of in ring talent). Those two Wrestlemania headliners that stunk the place out? The only two Manias that Sid ever did. Sid didn’t care if you thought he was shit, you’re going to pay him to be shit, and you’re going to pay him to be shit in the main event.
RIP, you fucking baller.
Oh, and his 1997 WWF theme is a banger,
60 Self Esteem: Love Second Music First
You ask me to come over
I am not your placeholder
I look in the mirror
And I see what I wanna see
Wouldn’t it feel better?
Isn’t being younger
I look in the mirror
And I see the real me
Let me be gorgeous in peace
Let me be gorgeous in peace
Let me be gorgeous in peace
Let me be gorgeous in peace
Let me be gorgeous in peace
Let me be gorgeous in peace
Let me be gorgeous in peace
(Love second music first)
So longtime Necessary Evil fave and one of my closest friends, Rebecca Lucy Taylor, released a pretty amazing single in 2024. That’s still to come on this list, here’s the almost equally brilliant b-side. As all time A/Bs go, it’s not quite up there with 17 Days (#6 last year)/When Doves Cry (=#1), but it’s not bad.
#59 Prince: Around the World in a Day
Open your heart, open your mind
This year I think I eventually came to peace with the fact that – despite it being a record I have long held great affection for and that undeniably contains some of His greatest ever songs – the ‘Around the World in a Day‘ album certainly isn’t one of the absolute top tier Prince records, and might actually be the weakest of His insanely definitive ‘Dirty Mind‘ – ‘SOTT’/’Lovesexy’ (to be properly determined in 2027) 80’s run of albums. But that certainly isn’t due to a lack of focus or cohesion: Prince knew exactly what He wanted to do with the record and accomplished that vision spectacularly.
And this mission statement is outlined on the opening title track as expertly as any record has ever done. Prince’s last record had closed with a nine minute rock opera with impassioned screams and Grand Canyon sized guitar solos successfully designed to crumble stadiums, but less than a year later the follow up begins with a woozy, druggy, Middle Eastern tinged slice of psychedelica.
58 Magdalena Bay: Tunnel Vision
I loved ‘Imaginal Disk‘, obviously, I got two ears and a heart don’t I? The main reason I’m perhaps not as hot on it as a lot of people are is the strange complaint that it’s too often a little too successful in its goal. The album’s goal of creating an hypercommercialised synthetic world in which the struggles with self actualisation occur can often lead songs sounding a little too clean and sterilised. I know that’s what they’re going for, but it doesn’t mean that’s always the most enjoyable experiences. The album really flies on tracks like Tunnel Vision (and other songs coming up) when the band release a bit of their crazy and pepper the tracks with discordant and spasmodic jolts of experimentation.
OK, yeah, but having said that, don’t you someone just want to sit inside almost ten minutes of beautifully constructed and orchestrated guitar folk? Yeah? Seriously, until I was collating this list I thought this absolute gem was, like, four minutes long, and now I wish it lasted for an hour. It puts me on a trance. I’ve just listened to it a couple of times and four people broke into my house, stole all my stuff, and set fire to everything on the way out to destroy any evidence. Like, seriously, I’m burning alive right now. Didn’t even notice. They took my laptop, so I’m currently writing this on my chest with a Stanley Knife. If this is published then I guess someone found my body and continued my writing, I dunno, whatever. Did not notice. All four of the people took turns violently raping me as they stole my stuff. It was very traumatic. Or would be, if I’d noticed. Totally didn’t.
Dugga-dug, dugga-dug, dugga-dug, dugga-dug, ooh-weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaar…!
This rocks so plucking hard. Who the pluck even are these guys?
55 Weekend Lovers: The Beaters
More incredible stuff from an artist I know next to nothing about, an infectious powerpop banger that might be about domestic abuse, but at the same time has lyrics vague enough to mean pretty much whatever you want.
And, Weekend Lovers, mates, I really appreciate the lyric video you’ve made for this song, I really do, but you’ve marked it as ‘made for kids’, which means that it can’t be included in playlists such as my definitive Legit Bosses 2024 one. Stop kidding yourselves, no kid is watching your underground pop punk videos, they’re watching weird shit about Spiderman getting Coco Melon pregnant or whatever, so change that tag.
Oh, and since it’s now not made for kids, you may as well add some more gore and skat porn, yeah?
On which, as the kids say, Tierra goes hard.
Two brothers wake up in the night
To help Dad use the bathroom
Yeah, to help him try
To fall asleep when he used to be their shelter
True love is a little bit like hell
True love is a little bit like hell
An emotional highlight of an album that sees John Rossiter unexpectedly become a perverse 2020’s Billy Joel.
And face it, everyone, it partially depicts a scene we’re all going to face up to at some point.
Not me: I’m one of three brothers.
Oh, and also my Dad is going straight into a nursing home as soon as he drops a fork denoting the first signs of dementia. Mate, I’m a millennial, I need to sell his house just to pay my rent for next year. Not a close by nursing home either, I’m shipping him out to Argentina. They’re surely going to find out what he did in the war eventually, so it’s more for his own safety.
I can’t sleep, I can’t eat
I feel small, so petite
I act strong, but I’m weak
Ha, ha, ha, ha (livin’ is difficult)
I was born to survive
See the pain in my eyes
I been stressed and deprived
Ha, ha, ha, ha (livin’ is difficult)
On which, as the kids say, Tierra goes feels.
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!
I might have sounded too harsh on ‘Monster’. For REM, sure, it was largely a bit of a step back creatively, and the first time the previous artistic rock vanguard really struggled to live up to the reputation they themselves had built. But there are some amazing songs on that album: we’ve already had one at #72, and I’m not even going to mention What’s the Frequency Kenneth?. I’m not even going to mention What’s the Frequency Kenneth?!
All together now! 🎵 What’s the frequency Kenneth, gotcha? Thing’s a choom, uh-hur… 🎵
Only joking, literally nobody knows the words to that song.
Then there’s Let Me In. An emotionally devastating, crooked ballad featuring little more than Stipe’s voice and distorted guitar. As much of ‘Monster’ is the band attempting (and mostly failing) to recreate the energy and rawness of grunge – a genre that was currently dying out for obvious reasons – it’s fitting that the album’s centrepiece and most affecting track would be a tribute to Stipe’s friend Kurt Cobain, who killed himself during the record’s recording. Also played (by Stipe, uncommonly) on Kurt Cobain’s guitar, gifted to Stipe by Courtney Love. Because it’s not what you know…
50 Future Islands: King of Sweden
Yeah, if you’re banging some Swedish actress who’s eight years younger than you, you’d probably write a song about it. And if you later fumbled that chick, you’d probably write a whole album about it.
Weavo’s 2024 release ‘Love In Constant Spectacle‘ didn’t make the 2024 cut, and I’m not sure whether they’ll ever reach the heights of ‘Modern Kosmology‘ again. But Motif is such a motherfucking delight! A barely two and a half minutes long gem featuring Weaver imploring someone to “Don’t be the light/Just see the light”, it tickles my deepest of holes and that’s always going to earn a place in my heart and on this list.
48 Manic Street Preachers: All Alone Here
The Bethlehem radio is crystal clear and beautiful!
No, I don’t know either. But All Alone Here is yet another example of an amazing b-side collated on the ‘Lifeblood 20‘ reissue. This was on the first CD of Empty Souls, the second and final single released from a hastily aborted album push.
47 Laura Jane Grace: Mercenary
Need a hole in my head head head head head, need a hole in my hea-ee-yed!!
That’s not this song.
But that’s the name of Laura’s second solo album, released in 2024, which is perfectly decent. Very good, even.
But I think we’re done here. I obviously massively appreciate everything Laura has done for music and culture over the past decade or so, and will definitely be curious if Against Me release another album. Now though, they’ve settled into a groove of adult, Green Day adjacent punk pop which they’re likely going to stick to. Which is fine, I just think they’re no longer going to be troubling the Necessary Evil albums of the year, nor ever releasing anything truly incredible again. Which is fine. They deserve the rest. This song’s really good though.
46 Big|Brave: not speaking of the ways
See this? This is how artists who truly matter make music.
45 Nilüfer Yanya: Like I Say (I runaway)
Aw, man, the science fucked up real bad…
44 Taylor Swift: The Tortured Poets Department
You left your typewriter at my apartment
Straight from the Tortured Poets Department
I think some things I never say
Like, “Who uses typewriters anyway?”
But you’re in self-sabotage mode
Throwing spikes down on the road
But I’ve seen this episode and still loved the show
Who else decodes you?And who’s gonna hold you like me?
And who’s gonna know you, if not me?
I laughed in your face and said
“You’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith
This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’re modern idiots”
And who’s gonna hold you like me?
I know, I know, don’t you think I can appreciate how teeth gratingly twee and adorkable those lyrics are?? I have two eyes and a brain, don’t I?? But, fuck all y’all, I love this song. It’s fun, it’s funny, and the melody and delivery of that trite/witty (delete as appropriate) Dylan Thomas and Patti Smith chorus is just undeniably joyous. Would you think she’s be able to come up with a better phrasing than ‘modern idiots’? Of course! But that’s not the point! I really think this artist deserves to be a bigger deal.
But then they go on to say “We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist” and describe their partner to be a (🤢) ‘tattooed golden retriever’ aaaaaand… Yeah, you’ve lost me, I fucking hate this fraud.
But then you get the verse end of “At dinner, you take my ring off my middle finger/And put it on the one people put wedding rings on/And that’s the closest I’ve come to my heart exploding” and that’s such a joyous piece of writing with an admirable bluntness used to portray the singer being emotionally stunned and it’s amazing and anyone who slags off that line is an artless fucking idiot!
#Swiftie4Life
Oh, babes, Iver the Engine is so back.
Remember Bon Iver’s last album in 2019? No you don’t, nobody does. What was the name of that last album then? ’22, a Million’?? That was the album before the last one, you absolute cretin!
Yeah, let’s just forget that ‘i,i’ ever happened. Iver released a pretty outstanding EP in 2024. We are so back!!
42 Magdalena Bay: That’s My Floor
Yars! The Bay go hard into the freaky shit! No clean synthesia here! Instead, we’re taken to a film made in about 1991 set in the year 2011, and when the main characters (played by Pauly Shore and Alex Winter) go to a futuristic cyber punk strip club this is the song playing. Contributed to the soundtrack by Bikini Kill, who tried their drug addled best to imagine what music in 2011 would sound like.
If you think this is one of the most knuckle chewingly irritating songs you’ve ever heard, I can kinda understand where you’re coming from.
You’re wrong, of course, it’s an absolutely joyous little thing that should make you recognise how beautiful the world can be. But I understand. I’m not ablest, some people are just born stupid.
I take the best one off of the shelf and what else
I got a problem only one helping myself
And you my problem yeah I won’t have no one else
Yeah the pain that I sell know I sell to you well
Bells ring bow bells you my lil whirlwind heart cold melting loving in this hell yeah I don’t wanna hear no more about selfish please don’t talk to me no more about selfishOr you can have a little more yeah
Lifestyle moreish abundance is all I do it for
Need foreigns and raindrops falling on goretex
Know we in the city where it’s pouring acid rain in my brain dagger in my rib cage
Get up out my business
Everyone wanna stick an oar in
Heading upstream think the boat need mooring
Hold up think another movie need scoring
Disconnect!
I see you in jest
We watch the sky turn to black
Like amy in that dress
I see the truth through the cracks
The world sat on my back
I saw their eyes roll back
I saw their eyes roll back
BRRRRRRRUUUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!
The first taste of Jeshi’s ‘forthcoming’ (it came out yesterday as I wrote thisand I’ve already heard it, but I’ve decided to pretend that I wrote all of this on the 31st December 2024) follow up to his top ten 2022 debut album is a motherfucking rush.
[Fuck, I’ve been working on this list for a long time…]
Paradise takes a little patience
Give it time, get up in the morning
That’s alright, never mind what we said last night
I realise it takes communication
Throwing knives, burning down the kitchen
Kiss goodnight, never mind what we said last night
We get it right
Every single day but once or twice
Some shit gets in the way
But it’s alright, never mind what we said last night
Oh my fucking God this is so fucking good why is Ravyn Lenae not one of the biggest stars in the world her songs could stop wars.
38 Manic Street Preachers: Spectators of Suicide (feat. Gwenno)
I finally finished writing my 100 greatest Manics songs in September 2021. I named the original, Heavenly version – and heavenly version – of Spectators of Suicide as the 29th greatest Manics songs of all time. More than three years later, I can only imagine regretting it not being high enough.
The band had actually already released a rerecorded version of that song in 2020 to coincide with Heavenly Records’ 30th anniversary, with Welsh singer (and frequent support act) Gwenno on backing vocals. And I had no idea that version existed until this year.
A lot of people (embarrassingly incorrectly) consider the 2020 version to be the definitive version of the song, smoothing out the flaws and improving the production of that original b-side , and also improving on the bizarre synthesised AOR version that somehow made it on to the debut record by not being an utter pile of shit. However, part of the charm and genius of the 1991 original lies in its scrappy, lo-fi attempts at creating a November Rain sized rock epic, and the song still sounds a lot more alive and urgent than it does in its perhaps overproduced 2020 version. Plus, it’s the only version that starts with the voice of one of the founding member of the Black Panthers, so there’s that…
This 2020 version is still great though, the second best version of the track. It kinda beats the album version by default, but I’m also a fan of the House in the Woods Demo. I still consider the song to be one of the great ‘lost’ rock anthems of the past few decades, so if the band want to keep rerecording versions until it’s finally and widely accepted as the classic it is, then I’d be fine with that.
Bore whips and bricks and mortar
Healed crips and walked on water
But now I’m down and drowning
I don’t see no holy orderI’m looking for some kind of savior
But no one’s coming around
I’m guzzling the blood of Jesus
But Jesus, man, it’s bringing me down
Wooooo, weeeeeeeeeeeh!
Absolutely stunning stuff, and I can already feel that in a decade’s I may look back on the incredible (and shockingly undervalued) Les Savy Fav comeback album as one of the records of 2024 that stuck with me the most.
Strap yourself iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin!!!
This song. That’s where I got that bit from.
Fair play to Square Circle, they released a 49 minute video on Radiohead’s continued artwashing of Israel recently which I had to watch because I was convinced they’d have ripped off at least some of the things I wrote! No, used different quotes and everything, even resisting the urge to use the ‘retard’ one to unfairly belittle one side of the argument, which suggests that Square Circle hasn’t been doing this a long time, as that kind of shit is day one stuff! Were you even in your debate club at school, bro?? Seriously though, never heard of the channel before and it’s a good video (but they really should have read my piece, as it would have added more to their arguments. I’m really proud of that article).
I was actually going to start this piece by stating how Wall of Eyes was such a beautiful piece of music that I didn’t even feel like mentioning Israel again, but then I remembered that video I watched last night. Sorry, Smile, but as always you have the right to defend yourselves.
35 Dawuna: A Prayer in Support of Palestine
Oops! Back to the genocide again! Not on YouTube or Spotify, so I guess you’re just going to all have to buy the ‘RESIST COLONIAL POWER BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY‘ compilation, the proceeds of which are split 50/50 between organisations supporting Palestinian and Sudanese liberation.
Also, kudos to Pitchfork (and you know I hate saying that) for this May article and guide to different records supporting the Palestinian cause.
34 FKA Twigs: Drums of Death/Eusexua
Listen, I guess the history books and the Spotify playlist will record the 34th greatest song of 2024 to be Eusexua – and that song is outstanding, don’t get me wrong – but I actually want this place to be taken by the video version with the Drums of Death intro. Because I kind of want to include both songs. That new album is ‘going to be extraordinary’.
(Again, the Kayfabe is that I’m writing this in December 2024. In reality that album’s been out for a week and it is extraordinary)
33 And So I Watch You From Afar: Mother Belfast pt.2
Bum!
Bum!
Bum!
Bum!
Do-do, da, do, do-da-do-do…
An absolutely extraordinary piece of music.
She’s got those lips, she’s got those hips
The life of every fuckin’ party
She’s talented, she’s good with kids
She even speaks kindly about me, ha-huhAnd I know you love me, and I know it’s crazy
But every time you call my name, I think you mistake me for her
You both have moved on, you don’t even talk
But I can’t help it, I got issues, I can’t help it, babyI’m so obsessed with your ex
I know she’s been asleep on my side in your bed
And I can feel it
I’m starin’ at her like I wanna get hurt
And I remember every detail you have ever told me
So be careful, baby
Fuck you, I don’t care that I’m the world’s oldest Olivia Rodrigo fan.
You’re telling me that not one of those four or five skippable ballads on ‘Guts’ could have made way for this pop punk perfection? Honey, people need to be fired for this.
She asked me “Aren’t you exhausted?”
I said, “That’s what they make drugs for, isn’t it?”
I don’t know if there’s a better opening to a song in 2024. OK, one better, but that’s it!
Oh, it’s lonely, I’m holdin’ strong, I keep it calm
‘Cause they love me, I’m Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam
Look I’m in control, Napalm in my soul
I bomb let it burn, how long ’til my turn come?
Who gon’ bleed with me in a war of one?
Who my enemy? I’m the only one
I told you this guy is fucking amazing when they want to be!
Also, this song is two minutes and twelve seconds. Triple that length, you’re going top ten, son.
It sounds insane to say, eighteen years after their second album ‘Untrue‘ legitimately changed musical production and marked Burial out as one of the most important artists of the 21st century, after releasing numerous and extraordinary EPs and standalone singles over the past decade and a half, but Phoneglow just might be the best thing they’ve ever done.
I am actually, literally, dead.
This Childish Gambino featuring overwhelming monolith of beauty concerning Lenae’s struggle to maintain a relationship with their father is actually dangerously gorgeous.
I can’t forgive you
No matter how hard I try
I wanna love youTried to go out of my way
But couldn’t find the words to say
Left a message with your mama
Oh, she gave me drama
I hope that your one wish does come true
I miss youI can’t spend this one wish on you
You’re my reflection
How could I break you?
What would I do
With all these
Pieces of you, pieces of you
Pieces of you in my hand?
Judging by the (incorrectly) muted critical response to their third album, I believe that I can now say with confidence that I am the world’s biggest 070 Shake fan. And I accept this mantle. Honestly? If ‘Petrichor’ was released a little earlier in the year than November and I’d had more time to allow Shake’s multilayered high drama to infect my very soul, they may have had their hat trick of number one albums (a reminder that no other artist has had more than one).
It’s an astonishingly brave, intensely emotional and as open and jarring as an open wound pumping an excess of blood. Pieces of You is perhaps both the record’s best song and the most succinct exhibition of the album’s themes of intense (almost painful) affection; its melodrama; and the insane amount of ideas and directions Shake takes the music into.
Shit, should I have named them number 1 again…?
‘Cause I don’t know where to start
Can’t say where I begin
Just know I’m twenty-four, small to the world I’m in
As I pull my world apart
Can’t say where I fit in
I just know I’m twenty-four, small to the world I’m inPay me no mind, I’m just a pilot roaming
Look to the sky, you’ll see a pilot soaring
It still astonished me that stupid, dumb, human beings can create things as beautiful as this.
I like black coffee and cigarettes
And flowers from boys that I’m not sleeping with
I like trees when they let go off their leaves
They’re so wise, they get rid of their shit
OK, so that’s the best opening to a song this year.
In terms of the run of singles they’re currently on – from the 10th best song of 2020 Riding Solo; to this absolute masterpiece; to another song higher on this year’s list – Hinds simply have to be considered one of the great pop acts of the last half decade, and their eventual singles collection is going to be mega. Yeah, they play guitars and rock hard when they need to, but they’re talents at crafting absolute pristine pop hits like Coffee is near unmatched.
“Begging Venus for a shag”?? You’re spending way too much time in the UK.
That city sewer slut’s the vibe
Internationally recognized
I set the tone, it’s my design
And it’s stuck in your mind
Charli told us what was going to happen in 2024!! Anyway, great album, and I’m sure this is the last entry Charli will have on this list? Thanks for coming, Charli, maybe see you another time?
You still satisfy my appety-ee-yite…
It would be foolish of me to ever doubt serpentwithfeet’s talent but after the haunted dark laments of their debut, and the sweet paeans to a loving domesticity on ‘Deacon‘, I did nor have Jonathan Wise releasing one of the greatest horny/devoted sex jams of the 21st century on my 2024 bingo card.
23 Les Savy Fav: Don’t Mind Me
I’m praying, you’re playing
A game that’s much too rough
I need you, you need to
Keep kicking me down so much?The world’s so hard, but we’re so soft
We try so hard to stay aloftBut Babe, we’re falling so fast it blinds me
You used to love me, now you just don’t mind me”
Ha, ha-ya-ha-ya!
OK, but let’s talk about my lifetime bingo card that I’ve got. Ticked off a few of those in 2024: Henry fucking Kissinger’s dead, so that’s a big, happy cross there (I suddenly wish that hell is real); I had England reaching a major tournament final but playing football so dire that nobody felt they were able to enjoy it; and, obviously, I had someone finally having the balls to shoot Donald Trump. Guys, guns are legal in that country! Why aren’t you just always shooting all of these motherfuckers?? My bingo card didn’t specify that Trump had to die, which is good news for the bingo game I’ve been playing for 41 years, but bad news because… y’know…
But Les Savy Fav releasing an achingly beautiful ballad featuring Tim Harrington’s heartbreaking falsetto?? That’s never been on anyone’s bingo card! Bookies wouldn’t even take bets on that! They’d close the shutters and call the police!
Yeah, I keep saying how much of a damp squib the last Lipa album was, but I keep warning you that some of the songs are absolute bottled magic!
That
“I hope…
It hits me like an…
arrow…”
bit actually opens my third eye and forces me to look upon the face of God.
And, no, I’ve never once heard anyone in the world use the phrase ‘training season’.
Very possibly His worst ever music video video. Definitely one His greatest ever singles. OK, like, top 100 maybe, but that competition is fierce.
20 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Wild God
The one song from the album that could potentially end up being regarded among Cave’s alltime canon, the Wild God song is a delirious, impassioned and witty rush of kineticism that marries wit, lyrical density and good old fashioned Bad Seeds lunacy in Edgar Allen Poe glam rock.
It’s fucking tits, is what I’m saying.
19 Charli XCX: girl, so confusing featuring lorde
You’d always say, “Let’s go out”
But then I’d cancel last minute
I was so lost in my head
And scared to be in your pictures
‘Cause for the last couple years
I’ve been at war with my body
I tried to starve myself thinner
And then I gained all the weight back
I was trapped in the hatred
And your life seemed so awesome
I never thought for a second
My voice was in your head
“Girl, you walk like a bitch”
When I was ten, someone said that
And it’s just self-defence
Until you’re building a weapon
In all the furor and excitement/lore that surrounded this song’s June release, why is nobody asking why Lorde was walking like such a bitch when she was only ten years old? It’s crazy how someone so young can already be giving off such trampy vibes.
Firstly, I want to make it abundantly clear: the original Girl, so confusing that appeared on the ‘Brat’ album released on the 7th June was and is already an instant classic, and one of the standout moments of genius on 2024’s scientifically proven best album. One of the greatest showcases of Charli’s new blunt and emotionally vulnerable lyrical style that ended up connecting with millions of fans – Charli narrates the awkwardness, the insecurity, and the… erm…
‘lather’ of navigating adult friendships. Many people would segregate the message more (and perhaps go off the title) by stating that it refers exclusively to female friendships. But, fuck, I’m a big* dumb bloke, as are a lot of the people I know, and I think everyone can relating to questioning if people close to them actually hate them, or if they have much in common, or if we’re happy for their success or jealous, or if they are more jealous of you…
(*’big’ meaning ‘fat’)
I was tempted to be a bit of an arse – I am always tempted to be a bit of an arse – and place both the original and the remix on the year’s best. But, come now, ‘twould be rather excessive. The list is getting one, and it has to be the Lorde remix.
As soon as ‘Brat’ was released and immediately became the Western World’s entire cultural touchstone for next few months – creating what I have termed a ‘Charli Solstice‘ – the identity of the maybe-friend-maybe-not-who-fucking-knows that the song was aimed at became the topic of massive speculation. It’s Marina, surely? Same hair? Check. Writing fucking poetry?? Cheeeeeeeeeeck! And there has been an apparently fractious, up and down relationship between the two over the years. Also, slight aside, this is literally the first time I’ve learned that they did a song together. I know I was in hospital for most of 2013 but for fuck’s sake, Alex, get your game together!! However, the lyrics didn’t include a reference to how the subject’s fourth album fucking suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked, so maybe it ain’t that.
It seems insane to me that a remix was released featuring Lorde just two weeks later. It felt like the debate raged on for months, and yet Charli had sent Lorde a voice note the day before ‘Brat’ was released detailing their feelings on their relationship, probably wanting to get ahead of all the speculation. Lorde immediately understood where Charli was coming from, and offered to collaborate with a response.
There was such a rawness and an immediacy to what I was saying. I love that we truly did work it out on the remix. There’s something very brat about that, something very meta and modern. Only Charli could make that happen. She had opened up a channel between us, and it made me say things that I had never said. I was articulating things I’d never said or maybe even things I’ve never even heard said. This whole thing has been such a huge honor
And with that, the track was elevated from being merely one of the greatest songs of recent memory, to being absolutely iconic. The Lorde addition to Girl, so confusing made it a cultural moment of the entire year. It became not just a central part of the Charli Solstice cultural domination of 2024, but provided an artist whose success a decade ago Charli admitted to being jealous of their biggest and most relevant hit since – 17th best song released since 2013 and 2023 – 2017’s Green Light. The best song of 2024? No. It’s 19th, are you illiterate or something? But the song of 2024??
Also probably no. That’s definitely the number 14 entry, so look forward to that. But it’s definitely second!!
You know who didn’t ‘work it out on the remix’ though?
Occasionally brilliant, far too often queerbaiting singer Rina Sawayama – who has been a member of this parish since 2018 – had long been a close associate and friend of Charli, featuring on their 2022 album’s Beg for You. Then, in Rina’s 2023 Glastonbury set, they called out the permaprob Matty Healy – “a white man that watches ‘Ghetto Gaggers’ and mocks Asian people on a podcast. He also owns my masters. I’ve had enough!”. Unfortunately, Charli was engaged (and later married) to the drummer in Matty Healy’s band. Mega awks. So, when Rina called out Mr. Healy’s restrictive management and gross personal predicilictons, Charli had no choice but to… unfollow Rina on socials over a “personal disagreement”… I’m not making any judgements here, but Charli cutting off contact with Rina after they called out her husband’s mate’s grossness is a bit weird, no?
Like, girl, a bit confusing?
18 Future, Metro Boomin, Kendrick Lamar: Like That
As weird as it might sound to say about the 14th biggest song of the year in the US, but I feel like, amongst all the drama, we might be forgetting precisely what a banger this song is.
Got two T’s with me, I’m snatchin’ chains and burnin’ tattoos
It’s up, lost too many soldiers not to play it safe
If he walk around with that stick, it ain’t Andre 3K
Think I won’t drop the location? I still got PTSD
Motherfuck the big three, nigga, it’s just big me
Nice little line, sure that won’t have any ramifications…
Fake bully, I hate bullies, you must be a terrible person
Everyone inside your team is whispering that you deserve it
16 Kendrick Lamar: Meet the Grahams
Him and Weinstein should get fucked up in a cell for the rest their life
He hates Black women, hypersexualizes ’em with kinks of a nympho fetish
Grew facial hair because he understood bein’ a beard just fit him better
I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I hate the way that you dress
I hate the way that you sneak diss, if I catch flight, it’s gon’ be direct
We hate the bitches you fuck, ’cause they confuse themself with real women
And notice, I said “we, ” it’s not just me, I’m what the culture feelin’
14 Kendrick Lamar: Not Like Us
Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young
You better not ever go to cell block one
To any bitch that talk to him and they in love
Just make sure you hide your lil’ sister from him
…
Certified Lover Boy? Certified pedophiles
Wop, wop, wop, wop, wop, Dot, fuck ’em up
Wop, wop, wop, wop, wop, I’ma do my stuff
Why you trollin’ like a bitch? Ain’t you tired?
Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor
Yeah, so this is the way I’m doing this. Songs are in order of quality, not chronological, but I’ve put them all together because – as previously explained – I’m a bit of an arse.
I guess technically the most prominent and merciless public execution of modern times – a modern public shaming of Drake akin to the Canadian being caged in a Scold’s Girdle and paraded through the streets of 17th century London -didn’t truly start with Kendrick’s verse on the fabulous Like That, but with Lamar openly and angrily admitting that he was out to murder Drake, along with many other rappers. After that, shit was bound to fly off the handle!
I’m usually homeboys with the same niggas I’m rhymin’ with
But this is hip-hop, and them niggas should know what time it is
And that goes for Jermaine Cole, Big K.R.I.T., Wale
Pusha T, Meek Millz, A$AP Rocky, Drake
Big Sean, Jay Electron’, Tyler, Mac Miller
I got love for you all, but I’m tryna murder you niggas
Tryna make sure your core fans never heard of you niggas
They don’t wanna hear not one more noun or verb from you niggas
Except… That was more than a decade ago… on Kendrick’s verse on Big Sean’s 2013 Control. Before 2024, Kendrick and Drake were hardly best friend, and there had always been something of a feud between the two. This was heightened and exemplified by the fact that Drake seemed to embody the ultra commercially successful, pop-adjacent, mainstream brand of hip-hop, while Kendrick always seemed to pride himself of being the thinking person’s, Pulitzer co-signed peak of the very artform. Yet it somehow boiled over in 2024 based on far lighter barbs than had gone previously. And also, as future historians will be keen to point out, it actually started with J Cole. It’s like it the Second World War started with someone casually stating that they’d never found Mel Brooks that funny, and that it wasn’t Hitler who said that, but Boris III of Bulgaria.
Love when they argue the hardest MC
Is it K-Dot? Is it Aubrey? Or me?
We the big three like we started a league, but right now, I feel like Muhammad Ali
First Person Shooter is some pretty typical rap braggadocio, with Drake and J Cole taking turns to say who’s the GOAT. Then J Cole comes in and, rather strangely, brings up K-Dot’s (Kendrick) name alongside him and Aubrey (Graham aka Drake). Kendrick’s the only other rapper mentioned by name, and even then it’s in a celebratory “Awww, aren’t the three of us amazing? I think everyone would agree that us three are all great. Let’s take a while to bask in the talents of the three of us” way. Sure, J Cole states that he’s the ‘Muhammad Ali; of the trio, but it’s a rap song, do we expect him to say “We the big three like we started a league, and I’m really confident of mid table security this season but I am wary of the fact that if I don’t make a couple of signings there’s a danger of me flirting with relegation come May”?
OK, yes, you actually can imagine J Cole saying that, but only because he’s a pretty ridiculous individual.
Anyway, Kendrick heard that, and responded with his verse on March’s Future & Metro Boomin’s song by saying… Essentially the same thing that J Cole had said? “Motherfuck the big three, nigga, it’s just big me”? Yeah, I know that there’s this whole ‘Big Three’ thing, but I’m the Muhammad Ali here. Standard, “I’m better than you” stuff. J Cole responded by releasing 7 Minute Drill a couple of weeks later, stating that Kendrick “fell off like the Simpsons/Your first shit was classic, your last shit was tragic/Your second shit put niggas to sleep, but they gassed it/Your third shit was massive and that was your prime“. Then, in a move that seemed pathetic at the time but in retrospect was a smart case of self-protection, J Cole retracted everything he said and removed the song from streaming services just two days later.
I actually have a lot of respect for J Cole. They very quickly realised how silly and childish these rap feuds are, that they’re a grown ass man making schoolboy jokes about other grown ass men that they have a lot of respect for in reality. Cole was confident enough in their own masculinity and mental health that they were brave enough to publicly apologise and just remove themselves from the shitslinging before it became a real mental health issue.
The other two? Ha! No, they were about to make shit so silly and childish that they’d provide the year’s defining cultural moment.
On April 19th, less than two weeks after Cole had declared themselves far too much of an adult for this baby rattle throwing bullshit, Drake (officially) released Push-Ups and Taylor Made Freestyle. Drake made the actually decent point that supposedly ultra principled artist was always happy to jump on tracks by Maroon Five and Taylor Swift if the price was right, so could hardly curl their lip as Drake’s supposed ‘pop’ leanings. Drake also made the very good point that Lamar is tiny. Have you seen that Not Like Us video?? Guy’s a fucking munchkin. Taylor Made Freestyle also featured AI vocals pretending to be Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg. This is, firstly, very weird; secondly, lead to a legal challenge from the Tupac estate which forced the song’s removal from streaming platforms; and thirdly, for someone who admires Tupac as intensely as Lamar does, this was Kendrick’s excuse to take things up a notch.
Kendrick released Euphoria on April 30th, then 6:16 in LA three days later. Still largely centred around often biting but not legally accusatory barbs: Lamar explains how they hate Drake, they hate the way that Drake walks, talks, dresses, “I even hate when you say the word ‘nigga’, but that’s just me, I guess/Some shit just cringeworthy, it ain’t even gotta be deep, I guess”. But the song was also something of a warning from Lamar: Mate, trust me, you should bow out like your boy Cole right now, this is all fun and games, but remember I could destroy you if I wanted. “We ain’t gotta get personal, this a friendly fade, you should keep it that way… But don’t tell no lie about me and I won’t tell truths ’bout you”.
Drake did not bow out. So Kendrick destroyed them.
By the time Kendrick released 6:16, Drake had already released Family Matters earlier on that same day (“I’ve emptied the clip over friendlier jabs/You mentioned my seed, now deal with his dad/I gotta go bad, I gotta go bad”). Drake raps that Kendrick beats their wife and that not all of their children are biologically theirs, indicating that the gloves were truly off now. Unfortunately for Drake, Kendrick already knew that was where the beef was going, and was able to release Meet the Grahams twenty minutes later. Rather than merely mentioning family members, Meet the Grahams is directed at Drake’s son in one verse (“And you’re a good kid that need good leadership/Let me be your mentor since your daddy don’t teach you shit”), Drake’s parents in the second (“You raised a horrible fuckin’ person, the nerve of you, Dennis/Sandra, sit down, what I’m about to say is heavy, now listen/Mm-mm, your son’s a sick man with sick thoughts, I think niggas like him should die”), Drake’s alleged daughter in the third (“Dear baby girl/I’m sorry that your father not active inside your world/He don’t commit to much but his music, yeah, that’s for sure/He a narcissist, misogynist, livin’ inside his songs/Try destroyin’ families rather than takin’ care of his own”), before finally slaying Drake dead on the spot in the fourth (“Dear Aubrey/I know you probably thinkin’ I wanted to crash your party/But truthfully, I don’t have a hatin’ bone in my body/This supposed to be a good exhibition within the game/But you fucked up the moment you called out my family’s name/Why you had to stoop so low to discredit some decent people?”). And once it was made clear that nothing was off limits, Kendrick also chose to allege that Drake had even more secret children (“You lied about them other kids that’s out there hopin’ that you come”), that Drake was a sexual predator (“And we gotta raise our daughters knowin’ there’s predators like him lurkin'”), and that Drake was actually running an underrage sex trafficking ring from his private mansion (“I been in this industry twelve years, I’ma tell y’all one lil’ secret/It’s some weird shit goin’ on and some of these artists be here to police it/They be streamlinin’ victims all inside of they home and callin’ ’em tender/Then leak videos of themselves to further push their agendas”. No biggie.
Then, just a day after when the world was still reeling, Kendrick dropped the biggest hit of the summer: four minutes of jokes about Drake was a nonce.
Wop, wop, wop, wop, wop, Dot, fuck ’em up
Not Like Us is such a comprehensive character assassination that it feels like a snuff movie. Drake is a pedo, Drake is gay, Drake has fake street cred, Drake is a light skinned Canadian who is not a colleague, but a “fuckin’ colonizer”. And worst of all, Lamar made it into such a banger that the track became a huge hit, loved and chanted along to even by people who had never once considered the sexual misdeeds or racial politics of Drake. Drake actually released a response the next day (“If I was fucking young girls, I promise I’d have been arrested/I’m way too famous for this shit you just suggested”. Erm… OK…), but it was more of an historical piece of trivia: nobody gave a shit, and Drake was already dead. The whole silly, dumb saga was over. And it was insanely entertaining.
Because it was a silly, dumb saga. Let’s not pretend that this was some big, important battle between good and evil. It was two rappers with evidently paper thin skin got all up their feels about one another to such an extent that they started throwing completely unsubstantiated claims of domestic abuse and paedophilia at each other. It could actually be considered intensely embarrassing. The thing is: one of these ridiculously sensitive manchildren actually made it impossibly entertaining, and simply showed how much better they are at creating both lyrics and songs. Oh, and one of the combatants has an amazing sense of humour.
I know, we all hate Drake, but Kendrick burned them so hard that people now believe that Drake is canonically and legally a sex offender. This wasn’t some legally binding court document: this was one guy getting so riled up with another that they were moved to scrawl “NONCE” on the other person’s garage door in red paint. It just so happened that this hate crime was so dang enjoyable.
OK, thanks for reading my long post about the Kendrick/Drake feud, please like and share and…
Fuck! I’m supposed to be writing the year’s best songs!!
13 Self Esteem, Moonchild Sanelly: Big Man
Yeah, but, after all that, this song is just better than all those Kendrick diss tracks, y’know?
I am seeing online that some people think there are diss tracks on Brat, and I just want to come on her and clarify that there aren’t apart from Von Dutch which kind of is
God, seriously, Paul “HHH” Levesque is so fucking cringe that I can’t even concentrate on who this diss track might be about. J Cole?
Mhm, mosh pit smell like Chanel, hm
Yes, Microsoft, I’ma excel, hm
Mhm, nine, ten, eleven, fuck 12, hm
Yes, your house lookin’ like a motel, yes
Oh, I don’t play fair, well
Mhm, I don’t like to show you, might tell, yes
Oh, what is that shit I smell? Me
Mhm, I am that shit you smell, yes
God, this song is so dumb. But I love it so much. Listen, a lot of the best music is dumb. That whole Drake/Kendrick feud was dumb as shit, and at least Tierra reminds us that ACAB.
Collar crime
Year on a leash
It makes a nasty mind
I’m sorry Mr. Fister
If I bite
It’s just spite
I will bite
I will bite
Hit me hit me with that super baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaass!!
We’re in the top ten now, where the songs simply have to electrify your very soul, send liquid pleasure through your very veins, and make you believe in God as your nerves twitch to every beat. Black Eye is that, and now I need to put my laptop aside because I’ve got fucking shapes to throw.
9 Waxahatchee: Right Back to It (feat. MJ Lenderman)
Your love written on a blank check
Wear it around your neck
I was at a loss
But you come to me on a fault line
Deep inside a goldmine
Hovering like a mothI lose a bit of myself
Laying out eggshells
Holy fucking shitballs.
In my Waxahatchee review I struggled to pun down exactly what Katie Crutchfield even is anymore: they’re not pushing anything forward; they’re not doing anything new or particularly exciting; they’re just a fricking country act making fricking country songs like that was the most permissible thing in the world. And it’s not, Katie! Country music is weird! It’s a bunch of MAGA hats singing songs about how liberals aren’t allowed to drink whiskey and how their truck is a metaphor for their cock, or something! Yeah, Beyoncé is obsessed with it for some reason, but nobody else cares!!
But then I hear Right Back to It and realise I need to follow my own advice and
Why would you even question a talent who was capable of producing this? That’s like looking into the eyes of the person you love, that spectacular fusion of atoms that seems to have been put here by God to make your life worth living, and thinking to yourself “I wonder what the sex between their parents was like when they were conceived. How long did it last? Was it 100% consensual? I know it was a different time back then…”.
Don’t question these things. Just enjoy God’s work,
Also, dude, your partner was born in 2008, things weren’t that different.
My girlfriend has a boyfriend
He hasn’t met me yet
Don’t know if he knows I exist
It might make him upset
I don’t think Lava is quite up there as an album artist yet, but fuck me dead and bury me pregnant their singles have been absolutely incredible for a while now and they’ve managed to up their game on their debut.
LOVEBITES is an absolute work of genius, about “a gender fluid alien falling in love with a human girl who has a boyfriend” and an immediate queer anthem. Musically, it’s like if Prince collaborated with Slade, a thrillingly incessant glam/new-wave explosion of talent and creativity.
I amalgamated my own experiences with the love triangle you see in Doctor Who between the Doctor, Rose and Mickey.”
So tell me when you hear my heart stop
You’re the only one that knows
Tell me when you hear my silence
There’s a possibility I wouldn’t know
No, you see, this song is included because it’s the 20th anniversary of… no, that doesn’t work…
Yeah, but, I’m doing all of Lykke Li’s albums and… nah, I’m not, am I…?
Ah! But this wrestler started using Possibility as their entrance theme, so… No. No that didn’t happen. It’d be awesome, but it never happened…
Fifteenth anniversary…? Is that a thing…?
No, there’s no good reason for this song being here. I listened to Lykke Li’s back catalogue again in preparation for their induction into Necessary Evil’s ‘Gold Star’ Hall of Fame, and was just reminded what an absolute heart melting slab of beauty this standalone single was. Let’s just say that I want to remove the Twilight Stank from it and finally have it widely regarded as one of the most beautiful songs of the decade.
Also, I went searching for a copy of it and found that I’d already purchased it on iTunes in 2009.
Now I ponder on a self-reflective
Milly told me to be more selective
But I wanna be hugged and my abandonment love issues
Make a sticky situation so subjectiveFuck, now you disposing of
Threw me away like some rubber gloves
Use me once, wanna use me once
But me nah bother with no drama all this push and shoveWho I love
Who I love
Who I love
Who I love
I told you, mate, they killed it this year.
‘Cause I’ve been told in heaven
The rooms are filled with mice
There’s breadcrumbs in the bedsheets
And Jesus had head lice
Ctrl+C
Ctril+I
Ctril+V
Gymnopedie was always going to be on this countdown of the year’s greatest songs. As soon as I heard it, I knew it was a pretty special piece of music. However, when repeatedly listening to the album in preparation for writing its #20 entry, I began to truly appreciate that, no, this song ain’t just ‘special’: this is some next level shit.
What’s it about? I dunno, the Pilgrim goes up the Decrepit Mountain and bums Jesus or some shit. It doesn’t matter: let this majesty wash over you.
Feeling strange in the house of a mutual friend
I said, “Nope, thank you though, you know I don’t do cocaine”
My thoughts are boring
You can ignore meIf you wanna fall in love in a bar tonight
Do you wanna fall in love with a broken heart?
Do you wanna ride? Ride in my Mirage?
Do you wanna be the one that feels the boom boom back?
Another addition to Hinds’ near peerless run of near classic singles over the past few years. Like the absolute best pop music, it kinda sounds superficially dumb, but is actually layered with all sorts of deep ruminations on quarter life crises, attempts at self-actualisation, and meaningless relationships as some sort of attempt at self-worth. But, who gives a shit? This song fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks!
3 Chappell Roan: Red Wine Supernova
Well, back at my house
I’ve got a California king
Okay, maybe it’s a twin bed
And some roommates (don’t worry, we’re cool)
I heard you like magic
I’ve got a wand and a rabbit
So baby, let’s get freaky, get kinky
Let’s make this bed get squeaky
I like what you like. Long hair? No bra? That’s my type. You just told me that you want me to fuck you? Y’know what? Baby, I will. ‘Cause I really want to.
Chappell Roan is going to fuck up a lot of ‘best of 2024’ lists. The irrepressible, undeniable, life affirming Red Wine Supernova was first released way back in May 2023. And was the sixth single released from a debut album that nobody gave a shit about. Even at the start of 2024, no cunt gave a shiny shite about this weird Missouri Christian raised apparent drag artist. The fact that they ended the year as one of the biggest pop stars in the world is a rise to superstardom the likes of which I haven’t witnessed before, and will likely be studied in future sociology textbooks. While we can’t really call this some remarkable rags to riches tale (Chappell’s parents are rich, her uncle is a Missouri State Representative and Roan was signed to Atlantic records when they were 17 years old), it’s still an astonishing rise that seems so legitimately organic that I’m struggling to even point at a “Justin Bieber likes Call Me Maybe” singular turning point: Chappell just seemed to get bigger and bigger as the year went on. I’ve checked the statistics, and no artist has been responsible for introducing as many new karaoke standards in a calendar year since Black Lace in 1984. In fact, Chappell got so big that she apparently ended up handing the US election to Donald Trump. Thanks a lot, Roan! Now, because of you, the US president is a bad person who will hurt people!!
And that turn to open fascism (from America’s usual cryptofascism) is why I feel that we’ve already witnessed the end of Roan’s career. Their follow up album (which may take years to arrive) is never going to connect with the masses like this again. They can’t write songs as joyous and as life-affirming as these now they’ve gone to the top and looked upon the mass of decaying offal that lies there. And I just can’t see Chappell’s target audience being in a good enough mood to receive it even if they did release that second collection of odes to open sexuality and self-acceptance. Anyway, didn’t Trump just sign a law banning ‘Gender Fluidity’? Yeah, it’s pretty vague, but I imagine Chappell will fall foul of it. Oh, and that bill outlawing ‘Self-Acceptance’ doesn’t look good either…
Fuck’s sake, Democrats, you just had to stop genociding people…
So enjoy the Godlike wonder of Red Wine Supernova while you can. Enjoy the perfectly articulated rush of great sex with whomever you choose. Enjoy your wand. Enjoy your rabbit. And always remember that, no matter how dark things get, this piece of joy always exists.
Unless you’re American, in which case all good music will probably be banned by the end of 2026 at the latest.
There are no words in this twelve minute masterpiece. And I’m struggling for words to describe what a magnificent piece of art it is.
I have previously been close to furious with Mica Levi’s recent musical output. They could be one of the most notable and important artists of their generation, their film scores are always increasingly penetrating experiments with the worldly possibilities of music, and yet put them in a studio and they’ll release another 20 minute lo-fi garage rock album. Mica!! The fuck is wrong with you?! Why would you constrain your fucking talent like this you absolute numpty!
Well, that’s me told. Slob Air is everything that Mica has ever promised to be on record. It’s all that music ever promised to be as an artistic medium. One repeated riff for twelve minutes, drums, guitars, strings over and over again. Occasionally a bass will rumble your entire diaphragm. It’s ‘dream pop’ in its most literal sense: it sounds like music that could only ever be birthed within a dream, It is a dream: that repeating refrain will eventually spin colours in your head and make you look upon the face of God at around minute eight. It’s music at its purest, most artistically valid level, conjuring feelings and reactions that go way beyond language. Stop reading this rubbish right now: play Slob Air over headphones and transport yourself to a world where beings don’t even have the concept of Kendrick Lamar and lack the language for debating Chappell Roan’s politics.
Yeah, but I have to give it to the song about Taylor Swift though, don’t I?
#1 Charli XCX: Sympathy is a Knife
Wild voice tearing me apart
I’m so apprehensive now
Don’t wanna see her backstage at my boyfriend’s show
Fingers crossed behind my back, I hope they break up quick‘Cause I couldn’t even be her if I tried
I’m opposite, I’m on the other side
I feel all these feelings I can’t control
Oh no, don’t know why
All this sympathy is just a knife
Why I can’t even grit my teeth and lie?
I feel all these feelings I can’t control
Why isn’t this song 12 minutes long?
No, nobody has ever had the Necessary Evil best album and the #1 Legit Boss before in the same year. In fact, Janelle Monae is the only other artist with an album of the year and a Legit Boss in any year. It’s no biggie, let’s move on.
It speaks to the quality of ‘Brat’ that every person and every outlet seems to have their own opinion on what the central song is, and which song should fly the album’s flag in the best of 2024 list. It also blows the mind that they could say it’s any other song apart from Sympathy is a Knife how is it not this fucking song this fucking song is fucking unbelievable what the fuck is wrong with you cunts??
Musically, Sympathy is already an aural majesty incredible enough to stand above anything released in 2024. Overlapping synth stabs and intermingling refrains that manage to be superficially discordant and yet compliment each other beautifully until BOOM that chorus kicks in and all these disparate streams crash into each other to create a spectacular destruction of noise. It’s synthetic noise that manages to map the very human soul. Without lyrics, you already know that this song is the sound of a spiraling breakdown.
But, for the idiots in the back who wouldn’t pick up on that, Charli also added lyrics depicting a spiraling breakdown,
And, yes, I guess that it may well literally be about Charli comparing themselves to Taylor Swift – this seven foot tall goddess who is now the accepted paradigm of perfection – who would have been dating permaprob Matty Healy and so would have indeed been occasionally “backstage at my boyfriend’s show”. However, if you choose to take this song literally (her writing’s ‘surreal’, Taylor?? I don’t think you know what that word means) then Sympathy would hardly be the most relatable of songs: a boyfriend’s bandmate dating Taylor Swift would be a situation that less than 5% of people have been in.
It’s not about what Taylor Swift is though, it’s about what Taylor Swift represents. That nearby standard that will never be attainable. That societally agreed upon perfection that you will never be close to and that will eat up your anxieties and trigger your depression to ensure that you are never happy with who you are. The reason why. You. Wanna buy a gun. Why. You. Wanna shoot yourself. And this isn’t a diss track against Taylor, it’s a diss track against insecurities. It’s a diss track against sympathy. Don’t feel bad for me! That only makes me feel worse! I don’t want to even have a reason for you to feel bad for me! I just want to be perfect!
And Taylor, when she looks at Louise Nurding in 1996, feels that same crushing anxiety. She’ll never be that perfect.
Necessary Evil 
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