Necessary Evil 2025: The Ragin’ Climax

The stage curtains open, revealing 40 lovely ladies in bathing suits, wearing sashes that denote which of 2025’s greatest albums they represent, blinding the front row with quite how dazzlingly white their full toothed grins are, in danger of taking someone’s fucking eye out with quite how resplendently squeezed tight their open cleavages are.

I come out through the floor on an elevating platform, full suit and bow tie, hair slicked back and microphone in my hand:

“There she iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis, Miss Necessary Eviiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil…!”

Considering this will be the seventeenth time that I’ve collated the Scientifically Proven Best Albums of the Year™, I’m pretty sure I know what I’m doing by this point, yeah? I had only just graduated from university when I started writing this dumb list that nobody reads, and I’ll be freaking forty two when I finish the 2025 vintage! Considering my physical health (which, in 2025, has definitely started to take on a whole ‘end of days’ start of feel), it’s looking more and more likely that I will die before I ever retire this list. Mate, I would love to stop, this is a massive pain in the arse that ruins Christmas and my birthday for me every year. But if I go, then who seriously is there to take my place?? Pitchfork?? Give me a break. Fantano?? Bald fraud. Smash Hits??? Mate, I don’t like having to break this to you, but Smash Hits Magazine shut down in 2006. To quote a far less talented (but bizarrely more feted, which is often how it goes) personality who has been able to actually retire this year: I’m still here because you can’t do your job!

2025 was actually the first year for quite a while where I never once seriously considered jacking in this piece of shit. Mostly because there was so much amazing music released this year. Probably the best year for albums since maybe 2018: the top ten are all guaranteed future classics; numbers 10-20 would have easily bagged a top ten or even five place in previous years; numbers 20-30 in previous years would… well, you probably get the idea. So many artists have released the best work of their career; so many acts decided to cut loose a little bit and released amazing work that gloriously breathed under the pivoted expectations; and there are so many debut records (or NE introductions) that could become Necessary Evil stalwarts.

Such increased general quality means that competition for places on NE 2025 was probably more fierce than ever before. This is partially down to that the fact that. for the third straight year, we’re also limiting ourselves to 40 albums, which is probably going to become the norm going forward: far less holiday period insanity for me, and it will mean that artists still hanging on to a place in the Gold Star Artists hall of fame will be an even bigger achievement when they’re not able to coast off the odd ‘meh’ #76 placing. The quality needed to ensure one of those 40 places this year was pretty intense.

Well… 39 places… The Manics are aways getting in, aren’t they?

Having Said That:

• Man, Backxwash hurts. Three previous entries in Necessary Evil in 2020, 2021 and 2022, but her 2025 far more approachable record ‘Only Dust Remains‘ didn’t quite make the cut. It was in the conversation all year, and (noncanonically) ended up finishing 44th. A great album with fantastic lyrics that I felt didn’t quite connect with me as well as her trilogy of terror did.
• After Bon Iver’s incredible 2024 EP I was moved enough to exclaim on last year’s Legit Bosses that – and I quote – “We are so back!!”. ‘SABLE, fABLE‘ came out and… No, apparently we’re not, unfortunately.
• Destroyer are perhaps the most harsh victims of that old “Same Old (amazing) Shit” curse: their brilliant latest – ‘Dan’s Boogie‘ – is a more than worthy addition to an incredible discography, but expected brilliance is actually so dull, and they cruelly (noncanonically) finished #41.
• Debby Friday is fucking awesome. ‘The Starrr Of The Queen Of Life‘ might not have made this year’s album list, but she’ll be gracing the Legit Bosses multiple times and we definitely haven’t heard the last of her.
• I loved ‘Perverts’ by Ethel Cain. That is all.
• ‘Earthstar Mountain‘ by Hannah Cohen is more fabulous, 70s tinged singer songwriterisms, but in 2025, frankly, fabulously accomplished isn’t enough to cut it. Cohen can’t follow up a top 20 place in 2019 and a top ten place in 2015, (noncanonically) finishing at #43.
• There are no favourites here, and even though I’ve interviewed Elle Gilliam twice, and she released albums as Efficax (‘Junebug‘) and – excitingly – Helltown/Elizabeth666 (‘i once was happy‘) in 2025. Both brilliant, both deserving of your attention, neither quite making the list in 2025.
• Luke Haines and Peter Buck are still doing their thing on ‘Going Down To The River… To Blow My Mind‘, and we should be very grateful for it.
• Pulp had their big comeback this year, definitely the greatest Brit Pop band to do so. They were extraordinary live, as you’d imagine, and while ‘More‘ is a pretty great album, it suffers slightly from being the one Pulp album where they’re just trying to sound like Pulp, rather than taking their sound somewhere.
• Rico Nasty‘s latest is a massive ‘Meh’.
• Princess Nokia‘s ‘Girls’ was easily their strongest set for quite a while, and would have walked a #26 spot or something in a different year.
• Self Esteem misses the chance to be elevated to Gold Star status with ‘A Complicated Woman’, which despite a handful of great songs is mostly 2016 era performative feminism. Considering her last album finished 7th in 2021, it’s quite a drop off.
• I have made my thoughts on Spellling‘s latest very clear…
• Parts of ‘Something Beautiful’ by Miley Cyrus are, honestly, incredible, and it just misses the top 40 on account of maybe 50% of the track still being unable to take off that Flowers bag,

Sigh… You want me to talk about Taylor Swift, don’t you?

I have been a defender of Taylor Swift since ‘1989’ gloriously embraced the possibilities of pop music back in 2014. Since that broke the seal, Ms. Swift has had featured on the Necessary Evil countdown a further six times. The only artists who have had albums featured on the countdown more times than her are motherfucking Prince and the Manic Street Preachers!! Generally dogshit albums like ‘Reputation‘ made the list. Generally (and rightfully) forgotten albums like ‘Lover’ have made the list. I recognised the massive issues on ‘Midnights‘ and ‘The Tortured Poets Department‘ (two albums that critics generally salivated over, for reasons best left to speculation), but could still see that the perfect pop highs were still undeniable. And of course I rightfully praised the career highlights of her lockdown albums of ‘Folklore‘ and ‘Evermore’ (the latter’s #12 placing being by far her highest ever). I didn’t touch her early country stuff because

In 2025 she released ‘The Life of a Showgirl’, and I suddenly felt like a huge idiot who’d been scammed for a good decade now.

‘The Life of a Showgirl’ felt like a true curtains falling moment. I’d put up with the endless stream of music and merchandise. I’d managed to justify the fact that Taylor’s marketing and release schedule was obviously designed to overwhelm the market, to make it extremely possible that you could have casual music fans who exclusively listened to her, enough Content™ to only ever need to listen to Taylor Swift while you saved every penny you earn in order to afford a ticket to her neverending tour and to drop £1000 at the merch stall. Yeah, that’s gross, I internally argued, but you can’t deny that she’s obviously dedicated to making great music that connects with a lot of people. “You’re not Dylan Thomas/I’m not Patti Smith/This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel/We’re modern idiots“?? I unironically love that! And Antihero is… Holy shit, that was two albums ago already…? Whatever: Antihero is another amazing song, she still has that talent in her!!

Maybe it was that “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married” engagement announcement in August that began the reveal, because

but to weigh up all that debit in the moral/gross/cringe bank and to then comeback with an album as ghastly as ‘The Life of a Showgirl’??

Firstly, let’s just het it out of the way: Taylor is obscenely rich. Sorry, ‘obscene’ doesn’t really cut it: she is disgustingly rich. No, that still sounds like I’m potentially being in the slightest way positive or speaking in a somewhat whimsical tone: Taylor Swift is abhorrently rich, her wealth comes almost exclusively through exploitation of human beings and the numbers on her bank account are actually indicative of a world broken perhaps beyond fixing. In an age of declining wealth and increasing costs of life, she’s not rich despite of everyone else’s circumstances, she’s rich because of it.

I still feel like I’ve gone too easy on her.

The reason I bring this up, is that Taylor doesn’t need to bulk release album after album in multiple formats in order to fleece her most devoted fans, she does it for the sheer love of the game.

I also mention it because, at this moment, Taylor could release whatever music she wanted. She could introduce literal millions (billions?) or people to some of the most interesting and artfully enriching music imaginable. She seriously has the power to write a song calling for Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions and it would bring down the state of Israel! Instead she releases this. Low effort, completely artless, and imbued with an incredible sense of emptiness. The songs are bad, the lyrics are atrocious and at many points it feels as if the ‘production’ only extended to pushing ‘record’ in the studio. It’s such a pisstake that it’s made me feel like an absolute fucking idiot for ever believing that there was a real artistic heart beating within Taylor Swift, never mind for seven straight albums.

And the ‘response’ to Sympathy is a Knife?? Charli XCX’s best song of 2024 is an extraordinarily honest exploration of a self-consciousness and self-hatred that’s especially encouraged in female celebrities, using the example of how inferior Charli felt next to Taylor Swift? Oh my fucking God! Taylor responds by saying… lol, haters gonna hate, you’re probably a dyke, yeah?

I heard you call me “Boring Barbie” when the coke’s got you brave
High-fived my ex and then you said you’re glad he ghosted me
Wrote me a song saying it makes you sick to see my face
Some people might be offended…
It’s actually romantic
I really gotta hand it to you, ooh
No man has ever loved me like you do

I… I… I honestly don’t know what to say. Or rather I don’t want this slagging off of Taylor to take up considerably more words than any of the following entries about albums I actually like. Either Taylor is intentionally misunderstanding the lyrics in bad faith in order to manufacture a ‘beef’ and gloam onto some of that sweet, sweet Girl, So Confusing cred. Or, she’s really, really, really. Really. Really stupid.

Whatever. I’ve been scammed.

The rest of this list it positive though, I promise!