Aaaaaaaaaaaaaw sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!
There were only 121 of these bastards last year!! Extraordinarily poor planning on my part. There’s a lot of work to do, so I am not going to spend a lot of time on this intro. I will just say though… This list was named after a Sasha Banks catchphrase in WWE, and now she’s left that company… can I just have it?? Is it 100% mine now??
Anyway: Ladies, gentlemen, and everyone else: 2022’s 154 best songs.
YOU KNOW IT’S ALL ABOUT THAT…
OK, let’s try and put this in some sort of perspective: I have always considered my three favourite artists of all time to be Prince, Manic Street Preachers and Nick Cave. Between all three of them they have all had a combined thirty records make the Necessary Evil end of year list and out of those thirty, two have been named the year’s best. If I wanted to throw in some faves – both problematic and less so – from the last 15-20 years I might throw in the names of Janelle Monae, The Hotelier, Kanye West, Let’s Eat Grandma, CHVRCHES or Yeasayer. Twenty three entries between them. One winner. Oh, and Radiohead have never finished first, but
Thirteen different artists have won Necessary Evil since it first started in 2007. Maybe fourteen, depending on your take on 2013’s infamous Arctic Monkeys/Hjaltalín controversy. No artist has ever finished first twice. Until now. 070 Shake’s ‘Modus Vivendi’ was the greatest album of 2020, and the 2022 follow-up is unquestionably the greatest album released this year, with its only viable contender being a 1982 masterpiece widely regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time. These are the only two albums she has released.
I’M IN YOUR WORLD FOR THE NIGHT, YEAH
For a Christmas present, he sent for me to come out on the road to see him, all expenses paid. It was New Year’s Eve in Dallas for the 1999 tour. That’s when I totally got it. I had never seen anybody give so much to an audience. I got weak in the knees. I was by the soundboard and the soundman got me a chair. Then I was literally up screaming with the crowd and dancing, and it was like, ‘Oh, my God. This guy’s incredible.’ That’s when I realized who I was working with.
Audio engineer Peggy McCreary
Oh, I’m sorry, did you forget about my Prince Journey? Did you think that albums on the journey couldn’t possibly finish this high? I regret to inform you that we’ve already entered the greatest run of albums in music history, so we’re likely to see Prince albums populating Necessary Evil’s top five until likely ‘Batman’ in around 2028. Also, it’s my (29th) birthday today, and you’re not going to let me talk about one of the greatest albums ever??
Back in 1982, this must have felt like it. Prince’s fifth album must have sounded like the ultimate and crowning masterpiece of His career. Not just ‘to date’, either, as ‘1999’ is such a comprehensive set of searing yet succeeded ambitions that it would have seemed unfeasible that Prince had anywhere left to go. He seemed to have finally perfected his mission statement: combining His formative ‘Minneapolis Sound’ with rock, reggae, electro pop, and heavy metal guitar screeches to create something entirely new, and to combine it with perfectly crafted pop songs to appeal to the mainstream. Prince had a one off hit song back in ’79 with the peppy I Wanna Be Your Lover, but as He’d grown as an artist and expanded his palate with more experimental and ambitious albums His commercial success had’t matched his critical one. Now, promoted by pop hits like Delirious, the inescapable title track and Little Red Corvette – legitimately one of the most perfect pop songs ever crafted – ‘1999’ provided that proper breakthrough. Despite being a double album, it entered the the US top 10, sold a million copies in only a few months and – despite being released in late 1982 – it’s staying power was enough for it to be the fifth biggest selling album of 1983.
Of course, this was no surprise to Prince, and only exactly what He had planned for.
WE NEED A PURPLE HIGH
We’re never really taught about friendships. I’m not arguing that we get bad information, or problematic role models, just that we get none at all. Your parents show you what to expect from relationships, what sexual love looks like, and what your expectations should be. Yeah, almost entirely wrongly, and that will likely ruin your whole life, but at least an archetype exists. They fuck you up, your mum and Dad, but at least that’s something.
Who shows you what friendship should look like? Your siblings?? Either you have such a difficult relationship with your siblings twisted by hierarchies subconsciously solidified within your family’s dynamic that friendship should be an escape from those relationship, or your connection with your siblings is so strong that no unrelated person could ever compare with the history you share, and no friendship can clear the prerequisites. I love my siblings (but also: fuck them, right?), you love your siblings (but also: fuck them, right?), you might wish you had siblings (but also: fuck that, right?), but that is not friendship.
JUMP IN ANY TIME, THESE ARE GOOD TOPICS
My name is Nat Ćmiel
I am 22 years old
I like music
Dancing balletCrushing up rocks and snorting them
And genderless people
I like to eat
But I don’t like it when it lingers on my bodyI like to take up as little space as possible
I like pretty textures in sound
I like the way some music makes me feel
I like making up my own worldAnd the people who live inside me
I like to dress up and not going out
I like my cat, Miso
I like touching myself
I CAN HEAR THE VOICES TELLING ME TO DIEAnd I like being far away from my own body
I like sweet things
Physical and consumable
I like short sentences that say everything I felt at one goI like obsessing over people
And then throwing them away
I like being a boy
I like being a girlI like getting fucked
My Name Is Nat Ćmiel
And I like to fuck
I like to be pure
I like believing there’s a cure
But, most of all, I…
I’m back, bitches!
Oh, my God, Britt
OMG BRITT
They gon’ have a fit when they hear this shit
So, yeah, first of all this achievement is out of the window, so I’m naturally a bit bitter about that.
But I had to really slow down and take stock as I entered the top five, as these five records are so close together in terms of absolute genital bursting incredible quality that I felt I needed to take a step back and really evaluate the order that I’d placed them in. Despite what that insolent little prick Shawn might say, this is important. Also, I really didn’t want my number one album to still be number one, for reasons that will become clear.
ONLY BAD BITCHES IN MY TRELLIS
I’m always slightly unsure of my love for Alt-J, considering I joined their bandwagon very late on – this is only the second album of their’s I’ve heard – and way after their true critical peak.
Ah shit, ma dudes, I won’t be able to argue my way out of this one. This is definitely emo.
And this isn’t just emo, it’s a concept album about the meaning of death itself. Ma dudes, have I just named ‘The Black Parade’ as the seventh best album of 2022?
POETRY THAT NEVER CLICKS WITH ME
When I become in charge of the UK – I am more than happy to kill the 50.48million people ahead of me* in the line of succession to become king and then declare an absolute monarchy – I like to think I will be a fair and benevolent ruler to the 15 million or so remaining residents that I didn’t need to slaughter in order to become leader. The death penalty though? Yeah, bring that shit in straight away. Only for the most heinous crimes (parking on bike lanes for example), but chiefly for what my reign will consider the Original Sin: complaints about how ‘easy’ people on benefits have it. Yeah, any version of that and it’s Who Wants to be Beheaded?! live on ITV presented by Declan Donnelly (I can’t explain it, but I feel that Ant McPartlin will have been executed pretty early on).
(*yeah, worked it out. I accept that I’m pretty low down on the list, but I am white, so the Royal Family will still automatically choose me ahead of a certain section of the population. So there’s that.)
PAIN IN MY MIND, BRAIN, BACK, LOWER SPINE
Ooooooh, that title is an open goal for renowned and celebrated political satirists such as myself, isn’t it?? ‘We’ve been going about this all wrong’, aye? What biting topical references could I make here??
OK, OK, let me just get my satire iron. I’m about to take you to a satire ground. Like higher ground, yeah? You got that? Allow me to put on my satirish dancing shoes and perform for you a satirish jig, Remember that Jim Carrey film, ”Satiar Liar’?? Well, that’s me.
THIS IS SOLID GOLD CONTENT
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