Zayn Malik? He loves the sex, he does. Like, really loves it! Loves chucking it up and in every hole he sees. ‘Every hole’s a goal’, he says. All day long, he’s like: shag, shag, shag, shag, shag. ‘Zayn Shaggik’ he calls himself, even though it doesn’t really scan, he just wants to make it absolutely clear how big a fan of the old shake and whack he is. Loves it. Loves sex

+1

Sex on vaginas! Oh, God, he can’t stress that enough! Definitely on vaginas! Sex on girls’ pulsating vaginas as he pokes their boobs. Their massive boobs. Not that there’s anything wrong with the bum sex, Zayn stresses, it’s just that he used to be in a boy band and for some reason wants to make it very clear that he only has eyes for vaginal intercourse.

+2

He loves the vaginal intercourse

+5

Like, he doesn’t even wipe his bum after going for a poo, less he accidentally poke his anus. Not his bag, y’hear? Not for Zayn!

+3

I once saw a movie where a man and woman engaged in what I can only assume was the ‘heavy petting’ that mother had always stressed to warn me about, and enjoyed it to such a degree that I felt confident in describing my profession as ‘Copulation Devotee’ on the last government census, but next to Zayn O’Mac Daddy I feel like such a casual fan of the sex: he’s been a fan of sex since before it was cool, before all those teenage girls got into it and ruined it for the proper fans like the ancient Greeks

+1

‘Mind of Mine’ is perhaps the most successful album of 2016 in terms of what it sets out to do: it utilises absolute top shelf, million dollar pop writing and production, and achieves in positioning Zay-Zay as a credible ‘adult pop star’, convincing the listener that Zayn has had consensual vaginal intercourse with literally loads of women, and doesn’t even know the meaning of The Kinsey Institute’s ‘Prevalence of Homosexuality Study’.

+4

It’s inevitable that such a categorical attempt at constructing Zayn’s new ‘brand’ is often a little artificial sounding, and obviously most jagged edges of potential interest are sanded off at first opportunity less they don’t play well on Radio ASDA

-13

….so it has some pretty gash tracks…

-19

But there are moments, like the first single Pillow Talk and Rear View (y’know, like an arse… a woman’s arse!), where despite the cynicism of the project it’s impossible to not be taken on board.

+1

There are encouraging glimpses of Shaggik’s potential though (yeah, I’ve accidentally changed the font, get over it, gosh): perhaps inspired by Bill Maher (rated at an impressive 36 in The Economist Magazine’s 2016 list of ‘World’s Biggest Absolute Cock-Monkeys’) hilariously stating how he resembled the Boston Marathon bomber- because Bill Maher has evidently only ever seen two people with lightly brown skin and figured Muslims don’t get told they look like terrorists enough- ‘Mind of Mine’ contains a pleasant amount of confirmations of Shaggik’s religion. From him frequently thanking ‘Allah’ for a particular woman’s particularly pleasant vagina, to one (disappointingly short) album highlight sung in that language what all them Arabs use…

These allusions are minor, but they lend ‘Mind of Mind’ enough personality and variety to save the album from more comprehensive indistinctiveness, and suggest Shaggik may grow into something far more interesting

+10

Metacritic: +69

Length 45 minutes.

Good boy, Zayn, keep it brief and then put it away

+1

Best Lyric: ‘I always keep the top tier, 5 star/Backseat lovin’ in the car/Like make that wood, like make that wood/Holly like a boulevard’ +1

Is the last song just the first track but played on Ukulele? No -1

Total 52

Pics stolen from:

http://sportsmockery.com/2015/11/former-white-sox-player-turned-his-car-into-the-shaguar-from-austin-powers-on-accident/

https://www.armedforcesentertainment.com/performer/shaggy/

I adore Mogwai. Like, love them at least as much as your puny human brain has convinced you that you love your mother, just because she once let you suck milk from her breasts

+1

Look what you did to that poor woman’s breasts. You call that love? You sicken me

-5

Look at them!!

-13

So, ‘Atomic’ isn’t really a ‘proper’ album, just like Stuart isn’t really your ‘proper’ Dad, but you can enjoy them both if you just gave them a chance and maybe buy him a Christmas gift this year? I don’t think he’s going to buy that you ‘didn’t think he’d be coming’ for a fourth consecutive year

+1

After ‘Rave Tapes’ was a full on hummer in the middle of the afternoon when it’s not even your birthday as Mogwai stuck their left finger rapidly in and out of your bum hole (which they know you like but have sworn to secrecy, though you swear that Mogwai’s friends Arab Strap and Godspeed You! Black Emperor giggle at you when you enter a room these days), ‘Atomic’ is more of a wink from across the room while your building your Lego Deathstar: it reminds you of their qualities, but steps aside for now to let you concentrate on important business

+1

Does your Mum do those things to Stuart…?

-5

LOOK AT THEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEM!!!!!

-20

It’s epic, it’s inspirational, it’s stirring, it should probably be higher, but Mogwai don’t mind sitting this one out.

+8

Metacritic: 77

Length 48 minutes. -2

Is the last song just the first track but played on Ukulele? No -1

Total 43

Images stolen from:

http://www.pop-kultur.berlin/en/blog/tag/mogwai-en/

http://britishborntees.com/i-heart-mum-men-s-t-shirt

https://temporaryresidence.bandcamp.com/album/atomic

I had previously planned to make some hilarious joke about releasing an album called ‘2013’ in 2016, but considering that it’ll likely be 2021 before my list of the best albums of 2016 is actually finished <it definitely isn’t finished now, when you’re publishing this- Ed>, I have to cede defeat. You win this round, Mr Jones

+1

‘2013’ is a perfectly adequate collection of arch chamber pop that’s straight up lovely in places and impossible to dislike

+1

But it’s general amiability makes it difficult to garner any real strong reactions toward it

-13

It’s also 2013’s… I mean 2016’s

inaugural recipient of my One Track Mind award, bestowed upon albums that may or may not have more than one good song (nothing off ‘2013’ is any way substandard, as that would require inspiring emotive reactions, which is not its forte), but one song is so much better than the album surrounding it that you wonder why they bothered still turning up at the studio after it was finished

-20

How to Recognise a Work of Art really is bloomin’ marvellous though

+7

The other 11 tracks are far less interesting though, and seemingly evidence that Mr Jones is the only person alive who believes the world is crying out for a successor to The Divine Comedy (ask your Dad) or My Life Story (ask Jake Shillingford, the lead singer of My Life Story and a decent bet for the only other person in the world who remembers that band)

-12

Metacritic: +79

Length 49 minutes -3

Best Lyric: ‘You go to the bathroom to apply your mother’s lipstick/Somewhere no one can find you/You must wear it like she wears disappointment on her face’ +1

Is the last song just the first track but played on Ukulele? No -1

Total 41

Images stolen from:

http://bumpybrains.com/comics.php?comic=200

http://musicvideolyrics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/aqua-dr-jones-1997.html

https://meilyrjones.bandcamp.com/album/2013

20 Years of My Life Story’s ‘The Golden Mile’

I still remember the first thing my second wife ever said to me: our eyes met as she left the blood and feather strewn supply cupboard that she had been hosting that afternoon’s cock fighting event in, and she blushed slightly before shouting “Whassuuuuuuuuuup!” at me

+4

Now this was 1999, the Budweiser commercial was only in its infancy, so to see this young beauty so expertly reference high culture so topically rendered me immediately smitten. We were married later that evening, with the winner of that day’s cock fighting tournament serving as both the best man and the reception meal

+3

Unfortunately, it rather quickly became apparent that my second wife had never even seen the Budweiser advert that I assumed she was referencing, in fact she spoke next to no English and so could not possibly have utilised the citation accurately. What she was actually saying was “Hua saaaaaaaaarp!” which was a bizarre greeting in her native Moldova literally meaning “play my hula hoop like a harp”. We were quickly divorced, and I never loved her again as much as I did when she first introduced herself

-22

I was equally taken with my fourth wife, when I paid her administrator the agreed upon 1600 Thai Baht for her services for the evening and entered her office she greeted me with a similarly effusive “Whassuuuuuuuuuup!”

+3

Now, this was 2011, when such references to a naff decade old catchphrase were adorably ironic, and for my fourth wife to callback to it betrayed a keen sense of the ridiculous and a knowing sarcasm. We were married later that day, and her administrator also performed the ceremony as a kind added extra after I had paid him the appropriate money to release my fourth wife from her contract

+5

Alas, as we travelled back to Britain on a fishing boat it became awfully clear that my fourth wife hadn’t used the reference ironically at all, as she would reply to nearly everything I said with “Whassuuuuuuuuuup!”, obviously considering the phrase genuinely appropriate. As I slid her limp body into the sea under cover of moonlight, I sadly considered how she could never be as precious to me as she was when I first laid eyes upon her and she uttered those beautiful words

-18

I think of my second and fourth wives as I listen to ‘Hitch’ (which, again, I paid fucking money to have on CD!!): I love The Joy Formidable. I mean properly love them, not like the love you pretend to have for your husband because you know that attracting someone else since you let your looks go would be far too much hassle and you worry about how the seperation would affect the kids. They write sublime pop-rock, they never forget to be fun, and, like, dude, they rock

+5

However, I’d say roughly 78.6% of my love is down to The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie, the opening track on their debut album which is a seven minute and forty four second specimen of the absolute heights of humanity’s potential, and literally better than anything you or anyone you know has ever done, heard or thought about

+12

But… Everything they’ve done since that very first introduction has been * sniff * just that little bit more inferior each time

-9

And unfortunately ‘Hitch’ continues this sad trend, being just a little bit worse than their previous album ‘Wolf’s Law’, which was already a step down from their debut. A debut that, if I’m being completely honest, never quite matched up to its incredible opening track

-6

There are great songs here, though they’re sadly not as frequent as you’d like, and the production seems at time determined to sand off any interesting edges to render the album as indistinct as possible

-4

I still love Jo-Jo though, and will still buy their next album like a mug, though I dread how disappointed I’ll be to hear them somehow manage to step down from such already compatatively low standards

+1

However, they know their way around a good riff, so deserve at least

7 Guns n Roses Points

Metacritic: +72

Length 65 minutes.

See? This is why this forfeiture has to exist, there is no way on freaking Earth that a pop rock album needs to be that long! Even after, because I am after all is said and done such a nice guy, I considered the radio edit of Last Thing On My Mind a bonus track and so didn’t count it. This is why the world’s in the state it’s in

–19

Best Lyric: ‘I think of lovers as trees/Growing to and from one another/Searching for the same light’             +1

Is the last song just the first track but played on Ukulele? No -1

Total 40

Pictures stolen from:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-joy-formidable-reach-for-rock-heights-on-wolfs-law-album-premiere-20130116

http://lampshadesidea.net/

http://www.rockcellarmagazine.com/2016/03/25/the-joy-formidable-hitch-new-album-review-best-new-music-tour-dates-2016/

http://www.advertolog.com/budweiser/adverts/whassup-true-1796605/

Guitars: we done with them, aren’t we?

-5

I mean, sure, if it’s the middle ages- or whatever time The Beatles and The Who were knobbing about- and superior instruments haven’t been invented yet, then by all means strum your Cs and your Ds and your G minors while bobbing your head like a dick, but in 2016 I feel like we should be past the kind of music that B-Mount serve up

-8

I mean, I imagine Bla-Mo are those weird people you meet that are really into Led Zeppelin, which is, y’know, fine, but tacit approval of kidnapping underage girls to keep as your sex slave and becoming one of the biggest bands in the world by shamelessly pilfering the music of black Americans, and call me old fashioned but I just can’t get behind that

-7

Bee-Mo know their way around a riff though, and even though ‘IV’ has no interest in any musical evolution post 1972 it’s undeniably stirring in places

+5

The fortnight long guitar solos have to be worth at least

6 Guns n Roses Points

It’s their fourth album, they’ve named it ‘IV’. This is how it should be

+1

While Blacky-Mon undeniably rock hard, the lack of humour is sometimes tiring, ‘IV’ isn’t just po-faced in places, it’s Tinky Winky, Dipsy, La-La and Po-faced

-8

That line made a lot more sense in my head

-7

No, no, no, it’s, like, a portmanteau of China and tune, yeah? So, though it may look like…

…

…

Hey, I don’t need to explain my genius to you twats, go and suck a dick full of eggs.

I love a good long song. And opening track Mothers of the Sun is the best track on the album by some distance, justifying every millisecond of its 8:34 run time

+8

…however, as the album chugs on they also demonstrate how not to do it, with two further 8 minute plus songs offering little but tears of painful boredom as the guitars chug along endlessly

-10

Metacritic: +75

Length 56 minutes,

which surprised me, as trust me when I say it feels a lot longer

-10

Best Lyric: ‘I smell your secrets, and I’m not too perfect To ever feel this worthless’            +1

Is the last song just the first track but played on Ukulele? No -1

Total 39

Images stolen from:

https://blackmountain.bandcamp.com/album/iv

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/shows/teletubbies

After I had climbed the sacred tree of Conceit and blew my throbbing trumpet of self-satisfaction four times into the western wind to alert all the musicians within earshot of the upcoming end of year list, as is tradition, I was aware that I’d already left it shamefully late, and had in my hands far too many albums to consider, painfully slicing the skin between my fingers as they sifted through, creating a ghastly red porridge as it mixed with the endless tears I could not help but shed, and so started my brutal cull.

+1

Sure, the top 117 albums may seem already excessive to your untrained and- if we’re being honest- unacceptably ugly eyes, but that was a number only reached after the ‘Night of the Long Knives’, where I ruthlessly ejected any album I felt was either too average or that I simply couldn’t even imagine voicing a coherent opinion on.

+1

This was made the more difficult by the Long Knives I decided to use on the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ being altogether far too long: I had trouble getting them in through the door, never mind swinging them sufficiently. In Necessary Evil 2017 (which I promise will arrive before the Qatar World Cup and only cause half as many migrant worker deaths) I have decided to instead hold a ‘Night of the Appropriate Length Knives’ if I conduct a similar exercise

+1

Mø-Mø seem to have slipped through the cracks though: this is an absolutely fine album, if disappointingly inferior to its predecessor

-10

The opening track is the best one…

+1

See? Nothing

-20

Metacritic: +66

Length 56 minutes,

and by the end you’ll have forgotten every single one. Mind you, soon we’ll all be dead, and have forgotten everything, so this album is no less depressingly pointless than the reality that contains it

-10

Best Lyric: ‘Are you aware you’re my lifeline/Are you tryna kill me?’ +1

Is the last song just the first track but played on Ukulele? No -1

Total 29

Christ, that opening track’s really good. I may have been too harsh on this album…

I don’t… But… It’s… But… If it’s… I think…

+1

I know people like you fear change, which is why you still listen to exactly the same music you did when you were 15 so you can pretend that you never got fat and ugly, but I welcome it: I change my underpants more than three times a month on average and I’m proud of never once defecating in the same room twice for coming up to eight years now. So the utter volte face performed by Immature Leg on his third/fourth/fifth/tenth/twentieth <can you Google this? It’d literally take two seconds- Ed> album can only be applauded. It’s depressingly rare that artists take such risks and completely turn their entire sound and style upside down and Etch-a-Sketch the fuck out of it

+3

‘Volte Face’ comes from the French meaning literally ‘facially similar to a vole’. The French have long considered voles to be uncommonly inconsistent animals

+1

I think that’s a mole, not a vole…

-10

It’s not like Chilly Gambo was ever that great a rapper anyway. Sure, he did that brilliant song once called…

erm…

Sunrise, which I honestly think is one of the best songs of recent times in any genre (not just urban ones), but him singing slower is no great loss to hippity hop

+1

Honestly, it took me literally 15 minutes to find the name of that song…

-10

And, initially, it really works: opening track Me and Your Mama (fnnarr!) is a brilliantly bonkers and exciting riot of a track, and you’ve already got your underpants around your ankle and presenting yourself to Mr Gambino, begging to be filled with his Genius

+1

Unfortunately… That’s really about it…

-1 –

The rest of the album collapses quickly into prosaic jazz parody, that given Donald Sutherland’s day job you can’t help but worry that it’s supposed to be somehow funny, like if Chevy Chase forwarded a plan to the United Nations to cut down on carbon emissions by banning plastic bottle tops despite obviously misinterpreting the data on how much damage they actually do. Like, the plan’s obviously shit, Chevy, but is it supposed to be…?

-18

The rest of the album would be pretty much disposable if it weren’t for Redbone, which is a lovely track, and one I saw performed live twice by a woman called Nadia at a couple of live events for Refugee Week this summer, which was great

+4

Yes, I am far better than you. What have you done to help refugees recently? You’re practically Katie Hopkins

-24

I mean, Nadia even changed the lyrics to ‘Stay woke, people creeping’…

+1

9 Prince Points

Any worthwhile music is either like Prince or like Guns n Roses, so I will attempt to judge all albums of 2016 on how much they adhere to either side. An unexpected and experimental album that’s still borderline unlistenable at times despite very occasionally scaling lofty heights? Yep…

Metacritic: +77

Length 48 minutes -2

Best Lyric: ‘Blindly in love, I fucks with you ‘Til I realize I’m just too much for you I’m just too much for you’      +1

Is the last song just the first track but played on Ukulele? No -1

Total 27

Honestly, we’re still in the rubbish stage of me trying to remember how to write, it gets better than this nonsense…

You have to appreciate Pri-Scem, who are comfortably one of the most ridiculous bands to have ever boogied across the Earth. Priz-Scrum, the sound of the interstellar nuclear Armageddon constantly playing out in their drug addled minds that has kept them from sleeping since 1986 is embarrassingly underplayed, they swear that subtlety is a Zionist conspiracy, and have been governmentally ordered to be carefully monitored at all times unless they lock themselves in the studio for thirty minutes and record ANOTHER ridiculous 70s southern rock boogie woogie pastiche while earing glittered jumpsuits.

–14

It’s not that P-Scree don’t care how awful they frequently sound, it’s that they honestly believe they’re making impossibly cool music, and that it’s the rest of the lame world that is too dumb (or perhaps the victims of another Zionist conspiracy) to come around to their genius.

-16

The frustrating thing is that sometimes they’re right!!

+5

Three times in the past, after admittedly ceding a lot of their creativity to much more restrained geniuses, they have actually put their names to undisputed classics: 92’s ‘Screamadelica’, 97’s ‘Vanishing Point’ and 01’s ‘XTRMNTR’

+2

It’s that last classic that did the most lasting damage, as they first chanced upon the idea of recording themselves drilling holes in their own testicles, over dubbed with the screams such an exercise naturally elicit, filling up 64 tracks with similar noises, launching drone strikes on the studio and then setting it on fire before kicking it to Neptune for good measure. By way of some bizarre celestial joke, the album ended up being amazing. Nobody in the band knows quite how, so they decided to record every album in similar fashion just to be safe

+1

So they would have finished recording ‘Chaosmis’ without a single one of their members ever questioning whether it sounded a bit too much like the music a secondary school’s drama unit would have been forced to throw together after Andrew Lloyd Webber refused them the rights to ‘Starlight Express’, or in parts like the music a CBeebies show would use to soundtrack evil space rabbits, because their music’s sounded far crazier before, and people fucking loved it

-10

‘Chaosmis’ starts with the delightfully daft Tripping on your Love, which is at least a lot of fun in its inherent naffness

+8

…but aside from Golden Rope’s glorious coda of ‘I know that there is something wrong inside of me’ the album all to rarely deliverers on its gloriously nutty promise

-10

Metacritic:

Even though this is a subjective exercises, I will still consider the opinions of the great, smelly, unwashed, plebeian masses to be of some relevance to the final mathematical grading, so I have taken into account metacritic.com’s broad numerical summarisation of the general critical consensus. Unfortunately, I’ve had to start here, as Damian Lazarus is judged not to exist

+65

Length 37 minutes +9

Best Lyric: ‘Lord forgive me/I’ve been running/Running blind in truth’    +1

Is the last song just the first track but played on Ukulele? No -1

Total 25

Remember how good ‘Smoke the Monster Out‘ was?

+5

Well, no, obviously you don’t, because you’re an aged philistine whose only musical purchase in the 21^st century has been a CD of ‘Stadium Arcadium’ you keep for the car for when a programme about rugby starts on Talk Sport, but trust me when I tell you as your intellectual and cultural superior that Damo Lazzy’s 2009 debut was one of the best dance records since cavemen first realised that their evening rituals worshipping the disappearing sun would be infinitely improved by rhythmically smashing rocks against peoples’ heads

+4

A.J.P Taylor would later theorise in his 1975 thesis ‘Prehistoric Bangers’ that this was the first historically recorded instance of ‘putting a donk on it’

+3

Christ, that’s a dated reference…

-1

So I so dearly wanted to adore ‘Message From the Other Side’ (awful, hackneyed title -1) that I actually went to a shop and bought it on CD!! Which in 2016 is like paying for porn

-1

I’ve force fed the album now for longer than I’ve worked at any relationship and, much like my second, fourth and fifth wife, if there’s any subtle depths and nuanced artistry that I’m missing it’s buried far too deep beneath banal noises, unimaginative aesthetics, and a horrible hairy mole on its lip that it just refuses to shave

-1

It’s not a bad album by any means, it just makes me weep salty tears that a man who once wrote orgasmically brilliant dance tunes that freaking sampled Red Right Hand can somehow manage to produce 2016’s most depressingly average record

-1

Length

The side of a tape is 46 minutes, and I feel that any album that feels the need to go longer than that is unforgivably flagrant.

Unfortunately, ‘MftOS’ is exactly 46 minutes, so is the worst possible example to start the list off with. I’m giving him

-5

just for being so difficult

Is the last song just the first track but played on Ukulele? No -1

Total: 1 Point

(NOTE: Wow that’s a… that’s a really rubbish score… Like, we’ll be in the hundreds pretty soon, y’know? Oh, and the writing gets much better as well, this was my first try back, gimme a break!)

‘Better later than never’ the kids are fond of saying, but really though? Really? I mean, my mate Paul- y’know, Paul– said that he was going to post dog faeces through my letter box on Monday, and though it finally arrived three days late this morning I’d still have preferred it if he didn’t do it all.

I wrote two books in 2016, the first one of which I to this day struggle to convince people is a daringly obnoxious work of borderline genius that I honestly believed would create a new style of fiction writing. Unfortunately, it was not an easy read and I know for a fact that nobody I know ever reached the end of it. So, I quickly wrote another one that was a thousand times easier to read and about a hundred times less a explosion of unrefined inventiveness. Nobody even started to read that. The reactions hurt me, because I am a Delicate Snowflake Social Justice Cluck, so I deleted all the titles from the Kindle store.

It was then around the glorious;y suitable bygone era of October 2016, so I started writing Necessary Evil 2016. However, I realised I couldn’t do it, struggling under the fallacy that I was a proper music writer, rather than a guy who made nob jokes for 400 words before telling you that the new Pixies album is terrible. I jacked it in and decided to write my third book, as I’d begun to find fiction writing so much easier. It depressed me greatly when I discovered that I could no longer do that either. All I listened to were 30 year old Prince records, becoming the kind of person I have always correctly hated

Just before Christmas, because the government are such dedicated trolls, it was decided that I was no longer disabled and my Employment and Support Allowance would be stopped. I was talentless and moneyless, and music ceased to give me joy. I began wondering what the easiest way to commit suicide would be, but because guns are illegal in this country and I’m an especially unimaginative sort, I couldn’t think of anything appropriate.

BUT! But but but! But! I recalibrated my brain and kissed myself in the mirror repeatedly, and early in 2017 I began to consider myself worthwhile again. Then the Magnetic Fields released a new album in March, and listening to it convinced me that I should do these lists again.

Of course, you’ll have to wait until next year to hear my response to ’50 Song Memoir’, as I couldn’t let a year as musically important as 2016 not be garbled on and so it’s important I get all my affairs in order. So, yeah, I’m going to always be a year out in future, but just… just… shut up

So, yeah, NE2016 has grown to be fucking ridiculous: there are 117 (one hundred and seventeen) albums, and that’s after I decided it was getting a little excessive and began harshly trimming the herd.

It is, however, fucking brilliant, and emboldens my claim as perhaps the greatest living essayist. It’s definitely the best Necessary Evil so far because, y’know, it would have to be, wouldn’t it?

It might actually be the greatest year end list of all time, as I have always considered the shameless subjectivity inherent in many similar undertakings a real affront to science, and so the list you are about to receive is based on points and maths and shit

It’s also about 70’000 words, because I hate myself and the reader

Now leave me alone…