The eighth Prince album ‘Parade’ was released in 1986. It has twelve songs on it. Is it any good? Mate, spoiler alert! You’ll find out if I think it’s a stinker when I list the 2025 Necessary Evil albums of the year!
Previously though, I have included tracks from Prince’s albums in my Legit Bosses countdowns of the best songs of the year. But that’s not really fair, is it? When He was listed as the joint best song of 2024 people were piiiiiiiiiiiissed!
So I’m going to give Prince His own dedicated countdown, at least in the near future, simply ranking all the songs that He recorded between His last album, 2024’s ‘Around the World in a Day‘, and 2025’s ‘Parade’. So, ranking ‘Parade’s twelve tracks, right?
Well… no… I could never settle on an exact number, but Prince recorded somewhere between 60 and 100 original songs in the eleven month period between the two albums. Eleven of them would appear on ‘Parade’; one would appear on His 1987 album ‘Sign ‘O’ the Times’; a handful would appear on future albums; some were given to protegees and other artists (including one that was famously taken the fuck back); and many are instrumental jams that were… maybe… never going to be released, but Prince was planning an instrumental jazz album at the time so it’s impossible to say.
We are now entering Prince’s most prolific period: in the next two or three years He would plan and then cancel at least four separate albums, countless side projects, a damn play, He would split up His band, start to question whether Warner Brothers were working in His best interests; and launch a near impossible to count number of failed protégées. It’s quite a ride.
Oh, and that 23rd April 1985 (when ‘Around the World in a Day’ was released) to 31st March 1985 (‘Parade’) timeline is occasionally loosely applied by a week or so (and, in one case, two fucking months). I’ve gone with the first recording of each song, as otherwise we have no idea (so, obviously, thanks a billion to https://princevault.com/.
I’ve always hated the concept of ‘desert island discs‘. So I’ve been shipwrecked on an island, marooned away from society, all amenities and all forms of human contact for potentially the rest of my sad and increasingly deranged life? I’ve not even got a beach ball to draw a face on and inevitably end up fucking by around week four as the loneliness drives me to sad, feral desperation? And you want me to choose eight songs to play on repeat for infinity to soundtrack my own mental journey into the heart of darkness?? I mean, I love Old Town Road as much as the next man, but by the hundred and twenty seventh time it’s played in the background as another angry parrot pecks at my arse hairs, repeatedly?? “Squawk! Can’t nobody tell me nothing! Squawk!”?? I’m going to learn to hate that song rather quickly.
But then I learned that perhaps it was just the number of songs that was the issue. Forty two songs to a desert island? Yeah, I reckon I could live quite happily for the rest of time. I’d still go crazy, obviously, but in a more earnestly satisfying and poignantly depressed sort of way. And those parrots will learn some bars.
Forty two songs. Two hours and twenty seven minutes. That is (as far as I can work out) the extent of Massachusetts group The Hotelier/The Hotel Year’s entire recorded output. And every emotional, artistic, intellectual and affectionate need a human being ever needs is here. Lead singer/songwriter/bassist Christian Holden is as accomplished a lyricist as there’s ever existed in the artform, possessing a poetic sensibility and unashamed earnestness that can fundamentally cleanse and then rearrange your very soul in a world of post-truth nihilism. More importantly though: their songs are almost always absolute fucking bangers. If you couldn’t speak English, The Hotelier would still be in your top ten favourite ever acts simply based on the sheer, bollock-splitting, rush of blood to the spleen of their immediate songcraft. Then you’d learn English from the lyrics, realise what beauty and genius underpins these bops, and would scientifically become a better person based on their teachings. You’d also learn words like ‘dichotomies’, ‘salutations’ and ‘chrysolite’ a lot earlier than most English speakers.
They are one of my favourite artists of all time. And the fuckers haven’t released a single piece of music since I first became aware of them
I can’t even remember how I first became aware of The Hotelier, can’t remember the first time I heard them, can’t remember the first time I felt their presence. It’s like asking me the first time I tied my shoelaces or became aware of my own mortality. I know there was a time where it wasn’t there, and now if most definitely is, but the changing of the guard was never noted. I heard their masterful third album ‘Goodness’ in late 2016, fell in love, named it the fourth best album of that year, fell in love even more and later retconned it to be the best album of that year (potentially the decade/century), saw them live and bawled my eyes out believing there was a God, and went back to assesstheir first two albums. In 2023, I named Soft Animal as the greatest song of the previous 10 years (spoiler…?). Goodness was released on May 27th 2016. I first started to become obsessed with them a few months after that. In the almost eight years since the fuckers haven’t released anything else!!
So perhaps I’m writing this list to tempt fate, to harness the dark power of Sod’s Law. Wouldn’t it be awful if I spent all this time and more than 10’000 words writing about the band’s complete discography only for them to release a new album and make the whole thing redundant?? Oh no, you guys, that’d be terrible! Absolutely don’t do that! That’d be the worst! Spank me, Daddoes, I’ve been naughty!! In terms of writing about the importance, majesty and genius of the band, Zac Djamoswrote a perfect piece for Stereogum to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the band’s most widely regarded second album ‘Home, Like Noplace is There’, which I’m not sure is humanly possible to compete with. So instead I’m sticking to what I do best: borderline autistic listicles! I was also blessed enough to have my longtime yaoi fixation Seth Manchester to answer a few questions about their bone rattlingly good production on the band’s (at time of writing!) final album.
Seriously though, the band have promised not to record another album before the revolution, so that’s yet another reason for all you workers to unite and break free of your chains (and join your local Communist Party branch, obviously). This list is basically a quick cheat sheet to the band, and forty two reasons why you should be as obsessed with them as I am!
The Manic Street Preachers are the greatest rock band ever. That’s not an opinion, it’s a conclusion that I’ve reached and am now saying it loudly and not listening to any dissenting voices, which in 2021 counts as a ‘fact’.
Their greatness is… complicated… and not easy to explain in a simple intro to a blog post… These 100 tracks aren’t necessarily the greatest songs ever. Even as a pathetically dedicated Manics stan*, even I would argue that they’ve only ever released one indisputable, stone cold classic record from front to back (see if you can guess which one after you read the list!). They may have supernatural control over melodies and how best to ensure a chorus hits just there, but at the end of the day they’re just a rock band. They have never really challenged the very boundaries of music, never pushed things forward or necessarily introduced anything new sonically. I would argue that only one of their albums is truly challenging and experimental, rather than just being a break from what the band usually produce (yeah, it’s the same album…). I mean, Jesus, they once shamelessly released a song including the lyric “The world is full of refugees/They’re just like you and just like me“. That’s unforgivably bad, isn’t it? They can’t come back from that, artistically.
“You stand there and you think about what you’ve done”
(*I may occasionally use cool, groovy, young person lingo like ‘stan’ so you think I’m a hip young gunslinger. Not, y’know, old enough to be a Manics fan)
I’m not able to explain their magic here, but over the next one hundred (!) entries you’ll hopefully all have a better idea. It’s not as dominated by the 90’s as I was worried it might be, and every album is represented (apart from one. Because their tenth album is worse than Hitler). I’ve been wanting to find the time to do this for ages, partially inspired by the great What is Music podcast covering their entire discography and reminding me of how many big veiny stonkers this band had bulging out of their collective musical swimming trunks. They’re talking about Muse on that podcast now, a band for morons, so you only need to listen to the last season. My major blind spot is I don’t think they’ve done a decent b-side since 2001. Now, I’m sure I’m wrong, so please correct my ignorance in the comments. Tell me how wrong I am. Post your top tens. Your top hundreds. The Manic Street Preachers’ fan community is one of the greatest in the world, and no other band are as connected with their fanbase and feed off their adoration as much as The Manics. So let’s celebrate that by calling me a fat slut in the comments because I didn’t choose Little Baby Nothing.
Yeah, I’m in a good mood, what of it? Wanna fight about it? Bring it on, I bet I’ll have you kissing me before the first punch lands, because how can you stay angry at this face?? My good mood mainly arises from three reasons. Firstly, longtime reader Beryl got in touch to tell me how she enjoyed the last post, and only made the polite suggestion that this series could be improved if it…
…incorporated more hardcore scat pornography?? Jesus fucking Christ, Beryl. Honestly, whenever I’m that close to relaxing that restraining order, you come out with something that sends us back to square one. Maybe I’m at fault here for expecting more from someone I met on the online scatological fetish dating app ‘ScatrBraind‘, but I just always assumed she was interested in the person around the fecal matter, y’know?
Anyway, the second reason is that this will definitely be the final part in this series, allowing me to abandon my blog again to return to my three real loves (masturbating, crying, and masturbating while crying. Mainly the third, if I’m being completely honest). Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, we are now actually into the years where I made a point of listing the best albums, so this part should be an absolute piece of piss! Look at the header of this blog- I’ve already got my best albums of 07-19 listed! I just need to copy those albums down again for this entry! It’s 8:53 now, and I’ll have all this done and dusted in time for my traditional 9am cry! Let’s do this shit!!
You want an intro? You got that in part one! Let’s get down to the dirty, sticky and dangerously unhygienic business:
1997
This was an important year for me, this was when shit got real. Yeah, Labour won the election, which I was aware I was supposed to celebrate but not yet conscious enough to know exactly why, just that ‘our team won*. Princess Diana died, inspiring a nationwide reaction that even 13 year old Alex Palmer recognised as being a bit fucking much**. All that was meaningless background noise though, as most importantly 1997 was the year that I became really switched on to new music. Before this point, most of the albums I’ve listed would have been discovered by me later and posthumously lusted after in the kind of nostalgic necrophilia that I would later grow to despise. Yeah, sorry if you’ve already imagined me as an incredibly cool seven year old bopping his head to Soonby My Bloody Valentine. From this point on, these important albums in my life and personal development were pretty much all discovered as contemporaries. Seriously though, ‘It’s Great When You’re Straight… Yeah’ was the first CD that I ever owned. Yeah. I’m that cool/weird.
“Dad, this is why you’re only allowed to see me one weekend every other month…”
Yeah, sorry, no more Bumble Rumble. Possibly… ever…? Listen, I’ve pretty much decided that I hate Zero Hour dating- I happen to still believe that I’m relatively attractive, so to have an app on my phone that frequently reminds me that I’m actually not is not good at all for my already inflated yet easily pricked sense of self-esteem. For now, my official stance is that I know that I’m a highly fuckable piece of hunky man meat who could grind genitals with pretty much any woman he wants, but I just choose not to, OK?? The official stance is that I’ve decided to concentrate on the more important things in my life, such as this blog- which has never been more popular- and my actual job- which I’m technically supposed to be doing now*. Remember this blog? It used to be about music, didn’t it? I mean… kinda… Let’s do that again. Basically, it’s time for:
Just wanted a photo with my eyes in it. Have they always been that colour? More after the jump!!
OK, first off we all have to admit how ridiculous it is to rank The Bad Seeds’ albums, chiefly because of the fact that the form demands that certain albums need to be ranked toward the bottom of the list and be therefore deemed the band’s ‘worst’ albums or in some way ‘substandard’. Albums you or other weirdos like you might deem their favourites may well prop up the list and you may receive a jolting shock to your cultural sacks that you likely won’t recover from. The reason this list is likely to offend more than similar ones is because over the course of their nearly 30 years career The Bad Seeds have never released a bad album. I’d argue that they’ve never released even a subpar one. No, that one you’re thinking of? Get over yourself, that has brilliant moments and is number thirteen. The worst/least brilliant albums by The Bad Seeds would still be career highlights of lesser contemporaries like Pearl Jam or The Cure or The Beastie Boys. Just see this as 16 Bad Seeds albums ranked in order of their amazingness. If number 16 is your personal favourite, then your personal favourite is still an amazing album. Just be aware that ‘your personal favourite’ is subjective, while this list is official and objective. So it’s the 16th best. As long as you’re cool with that.
Perhaps my own personal perspective has to come into this. I first encountered Wavey Cavey and his Stinky Eggs as a precocious and hormonally operated thirteen year old with 1997’s The Boatman’s Call. This has probably meant that my entire idea of Nicholas and his Naughty Nuts has been through the frame of an achingly beautiful smack addict singing delicate odes to PJ Harvey (and probably, let’s face it, smack). If you’re disgustingly old enough to first come across The Bad Seeds when they first set sail in the 1980s- or even through Cave’s previous band The Birthday Party– then…
Well, then first of all you really are too old and decrepit to possess any worthwhile opinions. Your should be ashamed of your advancing years and retreat into functional alcoholism. I’m not explicitly saying that you should kill yourself, I’m just making sure that you’re aware that your death will have no real impact on the wider world and on a functional level you may as well kill yourself. OK? Good. Glad that we all understand.
Also, approaching The Bad Seeds from an ‘OG’ perspective may lead you to rate his earlier none more goth albums- the ones that are occasionally punctuated with distorted screams of “THE ORGAN GRINDER’S MONKEY FUCK’S THE VIRGIN MARY BLOODY CUNT WITH A RUSTY CRUCIFIX!”, and the like- a lot higher than I have. That’s cool. We’re all friends. But, scientifically, I’m correct and you’re wrong. And horrendously old. Seriously, what’s that smell? Oh. It’s you. That’s just what old people smell like. Ew.
Y’know what? This really didn’t need to be a two parter. Sure, Part One spilled over 4’000 words, but’s that’s just because Arctic Monkey’s shameful behavior presented me with the chance to go off on a wrestling tangent, and that’s a guaranteed extra twenty five hundred words right there. I reckon I’ll bang through the rest of these in around 2’000 words, as I’m almost certain The Sport of Kings is unlikely to make an appearance. 6’000 words is a not at all ridiculous length for an entry. My ‘50 Song Memoir‘ entry was, if memory serves, 7,296,586 words, and that’s one of my most popular posts of all time. You. Whores. Love. Length.
But, twice the content, yeah? Twice the clicks, twice the sweet, sweet advertising dollar. I mean… technically, yeah… Double zero is still zero, maths fans. Could be worse, I could be giving each entry it’s own individual page and forcing you to click ‘next’ each time, like those fucking awful lists you see on the internet, like… like… well, like this dumb blog that nobody reads every year end, I suppose. We’ve got some motherfucking stonkers coming up, mind, so ready your tiny minds to be blown like you were the window cleaner’s penis and this list was your mum (oooooooooooooooh!!). This pointless intro only exists because I hate the entries being scissored by a page break. Besides, I couldn’t let you know what no.5 is before I’ve got your delicious clicks. Clickety-click!
Has this even been a decade? Like, other decades were definitely decades, weren’t they? The 70s were definitely a decade, I’ve seen pictures. It was all flared jeans and Ashton Kutchers. I remember the 80s, it was all primary colours and He Man toys. Except I’m 29 years old, which now unfortunately means I was born in 1990, so I don’t actually remember the 80s. Shame.
Yeah, I know, the Megadrive version was better…
The NINETIES though! Remember the NINETIES?! That was an unarguable ‘decade’! There was a undeniable vibe to the 90s. The 90s was the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air doing the Macarena after scoring the winning penalty against Ginger Spice in the Euro 96 quarter finals. Remember that? It definitely happened and was definitely 90s!!
I turned 16 (or possibly 10) three days before the year 2000, and since then life doesn’t really deal in decades or conveniently distinct periods of time anymore. Every decade, every year, every day is now a seemingly unending trudge through hideous adulthood. Life and popular culture just trundles off in a different direction and your major marking points become all the more onanistic and self-centred. I started getting fucking old. And when you’re fucking old you’re beaten down by capitalism’s endless rat race that you don’t even fucking care what year it is.
You might not believe this- considering it sounds so much like a slogan that would have been scrawled over the shirt of an awkward looking Sean Moore in 1991*- but the Manic Street Preachers haven’t actually released an album (or even song) called ‘resistance is futile’ before!
thankfully, it says ‘broken algorithms’ on the inner sleeve
(*some classic Manic Street Preachers t-shirt slogans from the early 90s:
You’re the Spitting Image of Your Father When You Make That Face!
(poo emoji)!
Mao That’s What Zedong Music!
Rick and Morty Reference That I Honestly Believe Makes Me Smarter Than You! Seriously, What The Fuck Is Up With That Shit?! It Makes Me Want To Hate the Show Because Its Fans Are Such Cunts!
USSR! Fuck Yeah!
OK, we’re done here…)
‘Resistance is Futile’ is absolutely a treading water, ticking boxes, Manic Street Preachers album. And that’s absolutely fine, not just because the absolute riproaring success of ‘Futurology‘ means the band are allowed to put their feet up for an album or two (you Millennials don’t appreciate how much doing something decent really takes it out of you at a certain age), but also because the lack of talking points means it’s given me a chance to finally rate all the Manics albums!!
Necessary Evil 