Legit Bosses – The 160 Best Songs of 2023

In their 1972 book ‘Psychology of the Arts‘, Hans and Shulamith Kreitler tried to explain the reasoning behind why certain people react in certain ways to certain pieces of art. However, they deemed that to fully explain it, your knowledge of each person would need to “extend over an immeasurably large range of variables, which would include not only perceptive, cognitive, emotional and other personality characteristics, but also biographical data, specific personal experiences, past encounters with art, and individual memories and associations”. Sounds like a lot of work, right? Well, luckily, I’m here to just tell you what the best music of 2023 was, so all that effort behind your own personal psychosis can be sidestepped altogether. Think of it as my new year’s present.

no spoilers on what number this particular classic finished

And there’s one hundred and sixty this year. Maybe one hundred and sixty one. Because there was a lot of great tunes released in 2023. While limiting the Necessary Evil list to just 40 albums still meant there was space for at least one ‘meh’ album and one absolute stinker, over the past week I’ve actually had to really edit this list down to prevent it being ridiculous. And yet here we are: 160. Maybe 161.

I’m also going to be giving shout outs to particular golden moments in certain songs – similar to what I did in 2018 – and for each of those I’m going to be using a picture of one of the greatest moments in the short history of All Elite Wrestling, because… well… I get the horrible feeling that company is cooked and I hope to look back on this list in five years time and laugh at how pessimistic I was.

Can I finish this before 2024 and maybe have some days off before I go back to work?? Let’s seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

[Edit: No. No I cannot. Not even close.

You’ve got some playlists though, will that make you happy?? Here’s the countdown on Spotify and on YouTube, minus the unavailable songs on whatever platform]

I REMEMBER NOTHING, SO THERE’S NOTHING TO REGRET

31 awakebutstillinbed: chaos take the wheel i am a passenger

Fucking yes! Fucking yeeeeeeeeeeeeeees! Three and a half fucking years I’ve held on to this screenshot!

People laughed at me when I saved that Tweet from 2020. Laughed at me! Of course, back then it had only been two years since the release of their incredible debut album ‘what people call low self-esteem is really just seeing yourself the way other people see you*’, a furious and intoxicating powder keg of intense self-hatred infectiously narrated. All us ‘Bedheads’ ate it the fuck up, because we are all reprehensible vultures. We had tasted the blood of Shannon Taylor as they eviscerated themselves for our entertainment, greedily sucking it down as they slit their wrists above our mouths and let it flow so beautifully down our gullets. Yum yum yum yum. Please, Mommy, can we have some more?

IN FACT, I DON’T WANNA FEEL, SO I STICK TO SIPPIN’

The Biggest Moment of 2022

“I’m here to try and elevate everybody”

With no thought of the massive psychological damage it would cause to middle aged children and the dread it would impose on their already suffocating sense of mortality, with no consideration given to the fact that it was Christmas 2021, like, yesterday, 2022 is soon coming to an end. In previous years I have trailed the year’s Necessary Evil’s list of the year’s best music by naming the year’s best in comparatively unimportant sectors such as films and video games. 2022, however, saw an event so momentous that it renders all other debate on art or even the wider human condition comparatively meaningless, and so I owe it to my legions of fans, I owe it to the internet, I owe it to the culture itself to mention it. Not only that, but I’ll have to try and explain its importance to non wrestling fans, which might actually beyond my ability.

I’m not saying that this was the only thing that happened in 2022, just that all other stories pale somewhat in terms of significance and longterm repercussions. We all enjoyed the Conservative Party exposing the Capitalist lie that money indicates real value as some of the richest people in the country incompetently accused each other of being incompetent with such incompetence that it’s likely to freeze and/or starve a large section of their constituents. Lol! I am literally rolling on the floor laughing. I am a ROFLcopter. This isn’t new though, and of all the talk about opinion polls and potential general election losses, the ruling class fighting amongst themselves while the lower classes suffer is hardly new, will result in no revolution, and the best possible scenario in this country’s broken political system is the other party get in and basically continue the same shit. Sure, The Queen died, and in doing so revealed the longstanding lie that the UK is in some sense a developed country separated enough from its colonial history and repressed shame to be capable of rational thought. But will there really be any longterm ramifications of a gross head of a gross imperialistic state being replaced by a perhaps more gross son in a shamefully gross role? Come back to me when Charlie boy uses his accession press conference to bury the whole Royal Family and throw the whole system into doubt. In fact, have Charles Windsor come to me himself after that. I’d kiss his ugly face. Kings have press conferences, right? OK, we also had Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars, after which Twitter had so much fun that Elon Musk decided he had to stop it. Because of… a weed meme or something…? Honestly, it’s hard to know with that nincompoop, he has the brain development of a thirteen year old Trust Fund kid, and so is extremely hard to understand as an adult. These things also happened, and I’m not ignoring them. The war in Ukraine also happened, which I am ignoring, because it’s difficult to make jokes over. Not necessarily for taste reasons – when has that ever stopped me before? – more that it’s a conflict with absolutely no good guys that any glib comment is likely to support fascism and imperialism in some form if just by association.

Hey! Speaking of ‘no good guys’! Speaking of… fascism…? No, I stretched the segue too far, should have stopped after the first one.

Go into business for yourself

12 Taylor Swift: evermore

2020 #32, 2019 #45, 2018 #59, 2014 #24

Nanananananananana na-na-na, Taylor Swift, Tayor, Taylor Swift! Nanananananananana na-na-na, Taylor Swift, Tayor, Taylor Swift!

Fuck, man, It’s Taylor, you bunch of fucking cunts! Somehow, amongst all the brouhaha, amongst all the controversies and talking points, amongst all the will shes and the won’t she’s and the have shes and the would shes, Taylor fucking Swift has now snuck five consecutive albums onto the Necessary Evil list. For a bit of context, Young Fathers – one of my absolute favourite modern acts – have had three. Radiohead have had two. Her talents are seriously beyond serious debate now, aren’t they?

NO BLOG, NO CRIME