I have a hope and though she’s blind with no name She shits where she’s supposed to feed herself while I’m away Sometimes I think it would be easier without her But I know nothing can hurt me when I see her sleepin’ face
Fuck it, right, Mitski? Fuck it! Might as well scratch that old dog at least one more time.
It seemed like the “21st Century’s Poet Laureate Of Young Adulthood” was so done with this shit after last year’s ‘Laurel Hell’. That album was the soundtrack of “what capitalism’s churn and enforced responsibilities can do to a person, how art is far from safe from being depressingly commodified and incorporated into the machine”. The relative ‘success’ that they’d so far achieved had done nothing and had meant nothing, so what was even the fucking point? Oh! And the last album their record deal required! See you later, losers! Peeeeeeeeeeeeeace!
But I’m not here to talk about gay shit like allegories. I know writers who use subtext and they’re all cowards. Can we all shuffle out of our Media Studies group wank for one second and just look at the actual film? Personally, I believe that all the films are about people with trenchcoats shooting shit up, which was extremely popular in 1999. Please, I beg of you, insert a bit of wider historical context into your media literacy. I’m joking, of course: if the Matrix was in anyway tied to US school shootings then we’d be getting more than twenty Matrix movies a year! And if the country were getting that many Matrix movies I’m sure the US government would declare a state of national emergency and quickly enact some sweeping and radical changes. I mean, twenty Matrix movies a year?? That’s just unthinkable! Imagine how broken and sick a society needs to be to allow that to happen?
Firstly, how fucking pissed much the band be that Netflix did that thing and it was such a big hit? Fucking decimated their SEO.
Secondly, if Jenna Ortega really did quit Scream VII (there are seven of those things now??) in protest over their co-star being axed after their support of Palestine, then good for them. It’s not much, but it’s something.
Thirdly, doesn’t ‘Jenna Ortega’ sound like the name of some fleet-footed Argentinian Boca Juniors winger that Atletico Madrid have shown an interest in signing?
Fourthly, the Argentinian footballer’s first name would obviously be pronounced with a really raspy ‘H’ sound, like ‘Hhhhhhhhhhhhhenna Ortega’.
Firstly: No, I’m pretty sure ‘consumerising’ isn’t a real word
Secondly: capitalism really won’t leave anything alone, will it? Won’t let anything just exist if it isn’t somehow commodified. And maybe I’m only really able to remark on this because no fucker reads this blog, it doesn’t make me any money at all, so I’m not even reaping the benefits of my own commodity. I’m instead producing excessive amounts on Content™ for WordPress and then sharing it on X (formally known as ‘X formally known as Twitter’) so it can be a small piece of those companies’ endless churn of millisecond flashes of dopamine hits. And then the lines of code scrolling past people’s eyes on the screen are commodified and sold to advertisers as proof of ‘engagement’. But only after these people have logged into the site using their name, address, phone number, bra size and blood type, ensuring that their very existence as a statistic can be commodified and sold to people who need to know the exact sample size of people worth advertising their new bracelet that’s designed to work well with a AB RhD positive blood type, as it cascades across it from a slice made on the wrist. It’s fucked up, is what I’m saying.
Life has been unfaithful And it all promised so so much I am a relic I am just a petrified cry…
I see liberals I am just a fashion accessory People send postcards And they all hope I’m feeling well I retreat into self-pity, it’s so easy Where they patronise my misery
One day I’ll stop doing this countdown. I’ll just have to. It’s been going since 2007. This is the fifteenth year I’ve ranked. The tenth on this blog. There have been 694 posts. Most chillingly, my blog posts have been shared on LinkedIn six thousand times. That really makes you think, doesn’t it? A decent amount of people read my year end lists, but it far from justifies the amount of hard work I do on them, or the fact that I sacrifice my Christmas every year just to write them. Do I enjoy doing this? Does it bring me any sort of validation.? I don’t have a therapist, so who knows? And I partially think that all the therapy worship is some elitist bullshit that fails to appreciate how most people have neither the time nor the money to seriously pursue it. And anyway, therapy is largely about medicalise a social issue. And I’m not convinced depression exists. It’s simply a rational response to capitalism that society demands is dampened. “Men will attempt to overthrow imperialist class structures before they go to therapy”. Yes. At least, hopefully.
And you want me to ask a therapist about why I write this dumb blog that nobody reads?? Pandora’s Box up there mate, trust me.
We thought we’d done an amazing job, and the first contract was coming due. Steve was with him in Atlanta, and I said, ‘Tell Prince we’re going to organize a contract with him for another five years.’ And Steve (Farnoli, co-manager) calls me and says, ‘You’re not going to believe this. The kid says he’ll sign if you get him a major motion picture. It has to be not from a jeweller or drug dealer but has to be from a major studio, and he wants his name above the title.’ I can’t tell you what an impossible task that was.
Bob Cavallo, Prince co-manager 79-89
They really had done an amazing job with His first contract. Back in 1977, they’d somehow manage to successfully argue that one of the biggest production companies in the world bow to this snotty little, precocious 18 year old midget’s ridiculous demand that He be given complete creative and production control over His own music when signing His first ever record deal. Now He wanted a movie made. A major motion picture. And not one made by jewellers or drug dealers either. I imagine he initially demanded it not be made by cocaine addicts or rapists either, but this was Hollywood in the 1980s and some things are just literally impossible.
“Tell that little cunt to wipe that smirk off his face”
It can be easy to be fooled by retrospect nearly 40 years later. Of course Prince had a movie made about Him! He was one of the biggest stars of the 80s! That album sold twenty five freaking million copies! ‘Purple Rain’ was one of the highest grossing movies of the year! Motherfucker was a sure ticket! And, yeah, sure, now we know that, but remember that at the start of 1984 (omg this is literally 1984) Prince had released five albums: two commercial nonentities, followed by one of the most critically adored and influential albums of the decade... and hat trick of commercial nonentities, one decent seller and finally the breakthrough with ‘1999’, his first top ten album and first real suggestion of longterm commercial viability. He was hardly some unknown Minneapolis bum trying to convince bingo halls to give him fifteen minutes before the midnight game, but these five albums had spawned two top ten singles in total. Giving Prince a movie in 1984 wasn’t like giving Beyoncé a squillion dollars to race-wash Disney while she pretends her skin colour doesn’t make her a crucial part of the capitalist machine that’s exploiting Africa. It would almost be like if the success of Heatwaves lead to the next Glass Animals contract included a ten part HBO series starring the band playing themselves in a fictionalised biography of their upbringing in Oxford. It’s insane that this movie was made. It’s insane that one of the biggest companies in the world simply trusted in the intuition of one of their midlevel artists due to their simple trust in His artistic legitimacy. It’s insane how Prince just said “Trust me”. It’s insane that Warner Brothers just greenlit a seven million dollar movie. Its insane how right He was.
“If you make this movie, I’ll become the biggest star in the world and make you millions of dollars”. And he did. And they did.
I hate this idea that you’re the best. Because you’re not. I’m the best. I’m the best in the world. There’s one thing you’re better at than I am and that’s kissing ass…
I am the best wrestler in the world. I’ve been the best ever since day one when I walked into this company. And I’ve been vilified and hated since that day.
I thought I’d already written the final eulogy on CM Punk’s wresting career. His firebombing of goodwill and petulant kicking of the pricks surrounding his cot in the aftermath of All Out 2022 sounded the death knell of his comeback to the ring. Surely now, he had burned too many bridges, shown himself to just be too unstable a livewire, for any federation to continue to employ him, and likely for many major wrestlers to want to work with him.
So I look at it like this: November 13th 2022, Punk left this blog.
Remember when I used to do these posts right after I did the albums of the year? So it’d be the Necessary Evil albums of the year, the scientifically proven best album fawned over at length, the stats, and then we’d be officially done for another year?
Boom! You just been Mandela Effected, boyeeee! I actually only think I ever did that schedule once, for Necessary Evil 2019. I’ve always been far more often waaaaaaay late with these statistical breakdowns. What I actually used to do really early is (pfff!) do the stats just before the number one album! I could never (be arsed these days! These days the writing of the list itself is such a huge emotional toil that it takes me a long time to even consider thinking about these fucking albums again. Also, it’s getting harder and harder to think of puns on the word ‘stat’.
But these posts are basically just pictures, so I may as well just freakin’ do it. Let’s glance back at the wonderful year od 2022 when we all collectively thought, as always, “Well at least the next year can’t be as bad as this one…”.
All albums featured on the Necessary Evil best of year countdown
I’ve been doing this dumb blog that nobody reads since my first post on the 1st December 2014 called the latest Pixies album an “especially grievous dirty protest”. 2024’s list was the tenth I’ve written in excruciating detail on the blog. The intelligent thing to do would be to call it a day after that. But then again the really intelligent thing to would have been to never start it in the first place. As a stupid person, I’m definitely conflicted. My (recorded) albums of the year go back to 2007. I’m not wanting to put too fine a point on it, nor am I at all pompous enough to ever overexaggerate my importance, but I think it’s fair to say that I am objectively the paramount and most respected voice on music of the last 15 years. And before that too, I just didn’t have a blog then.
But what about the artists themselves? They sometimes play a part in the psychosexual agitprop magic of this blog. We can obviously consider the artists whose work has appeared most in my year end lists, but that’s obviously going to be the Manics (eleven + one very decent JDB solo record and one dreadful Nick Wire one), Prince (eleven, and eventually all 42 of the fuckers) and Nick Cave (I think around eleven, over a variety of projects). Like, duh much? We can all agree without any argument at all that these are the three most important musical artists of all time. It’s like if someone says their favourite food is “crisps”. Like, of course it’s crisps. Crisps are amazing. Everyone loves crisps. But what does that tell you about them as a person?? No, we need a different gage to work out the real stars of Necessary Evil.
Necessary Evil 