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…!”
“…and I said ‘Lady, that ain’t no gear stick!!!’ Seriously though, if you don’t let me videotape me pissing on you then I’ll eject you from the competition
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!
Have I done that pun yet? Mate, I am struggling, honestly…
So here we are again, a round up of the hot stats of the best albums and songs of 2024, which I have bizarrely fallen into the habit of doing doing eleven fucking months after the Necessary Evil list of the best albumsand songs of the year is actually published. Why do I always leave it this long? Because, quite simply, after writing 40+ blog posts and a gargantuan song list in little over a month, my brain seriously doesn’t want to even acknowledge the previous year’s music again for at least a thousand years.
I almost didn’t do it this year. But – but! – then I realised that 2025’s list might have some extremely notable points! So maybe I’ll retire this dumb fucking tradition once I get round to that in winter 2026. Until then? Yeah, we gotta do this.
Arise ye pris’ners of starvation Arise ye wretched of the earth For justice thunders condemnation A better world’s in birth! No more tradition’s chains shall bind us Arise, ye slaves, no more in thrall; The earth shall rise on new foundations We have been naught we shall be all.
1984’s ‘Purple Rain’ was an incredible – and completely illogical – success. That film starred an at the time moderately successful pop star in their first acting role; an ensemble cast that was essentially made up of people that moderately successful pop star was either in a band with, was mates with, or was shagging; a script that had gone through several rewrites and rejections until eventually being shaped by a television writer building on that moderately successful pop star’s own bonkers ideas; and was also directed by an unknown debutant who’s recently edited an absolute flop. And who was far from the first choice.
The film made $70 million off a $7 million budget, picking up an Oscar as well for its troubles. Shit, thought Warner Brothers, We don’t understand it at all but this guy just shits money, maybe just do whatever He wants in future? When Prince said to Warner Brothers in 1985 that He was thinking of making another film, they greenlit the idea without even seeing a script. ‘Purple Rain’ was a monster hit when it starred a moderately successful pop star, now we’re getting the same shit again only now it’s by the biggest star in the world?? We could be talking Rocky IV numbers!!
Necessary Evil 