Yeah, that’s right, I’m going to start my post on the Scientifically Proven™ third greatest album of 2025 by slagging off Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’ for the thirdfucking time.
Both Beyoncé’s 2022 critic stupefying event album and FKA Twigs’ third proper record were heavily influenced by dance music. Beyoncé referenced a lot of post 70’s black dance crazes – with close attention paid to early 90’s House music and Detroit’s best -while Twigs was enchanted with the techno music she heard when she relocated to Prague to – don’t laugh – film ‘The Crow‘.
OK, OK, OK, first of all, let’s chill out a bit, OK?
There have been people reacting to the (absolutely fucking incredible, but we’ll get to that shortly) fourth album by Rosalía like the Spanish singer had uncovered a completely new form of making music and ‘Lux’ represents a stylistic shift in the artform akin to Worcester Fragments being compiled in the 13th century. She’s doing music influenced by opera and with a full orchestra!! My mind is literally blown!! I’m dead!!!!!!
I’m sorry, am I actually losing my fucking my mind here? Is this some bizarrely specific psychotic hallucination that I’m suffering? Is everyone else suffering mass psychosis here?? Is it a mind virus or something? Did all you idiots catch it from TikTok? Everyone else seems to use that apart from me, so that might explain this apparent lunacy.
Hey, I don’t want to sound like I’m not open to debate: if you want to argue that I’ve actually been far too harsh on this modern rock masterpiece, and that it should rightfully be far closer to the number one spot. I hear you, I really do, and can only defend myself by arguing that there have been three albums released this year that are even greater pieces of genius. Also, erm, spoiler alert but there’s a Prince album to come and all. In the interests of BBC-like ‘Both Sides‘ bullshit, I will also listen to even the most insane and backward opinion that suggests that ‘The Scholars‘ would merely be a top ten album, probably delivered while the questioner dribbled out of the side of their mouth and softly pissed themselves. But to suggest anything lower than that is akin to suggesting that not only does man made global warming not exist, but it’s a huge conspiracy thought up by a still living Elvis Pressley as he controls the narrative from the same studio that he faked the moon landing based in the outer reaches of the flat Earth. I’m sorry, sir, but you are obviously an imbecile whose opinions are flimsier than drunk ape’s attempt at Jenga.
And yet, ‘The Scholars‘ received pretty good reviews and was barely mentioned when general discussions of the year’s best took place.
Fucking hell, liberals, enough with the purity tests!!
[EDIT: Sorry, but I went to bed last night hating this post. I just feel it was all over the place, undecided on what to focus on, dipped its toes into saying something more important but wimped out of it when I was worried that it wouldn’t come across how I hoped it would, then the post just garbled about nothingness. I wanted to say things that were thought provoking and interesting, but just ended up with milk toast nothingness. I’ve left the final couple of paragraphs, plus the amazing lyrics, but the rest of this post can get to fuck. I’ll take another swing at the topic I chickened out of another time in the future. Fucking incredible album though]
In late 2022, Hallelujah the Hills announced an absolutely ludicrous idea: DECK. A 52 song project, with each song representing a playing card in a traditional… well… deck… Although it was announced in 2022, Ryan H. Walsh said that it was an idea that he first thought up the concept 20 years earlier, likely as some nonsense pie in the sky fantasy that would never likely be completed. It would be made up of four thirteen song albums, one for each suit. The diamonds suit would be the band’s a proper studio follow up to 2020’s ‘I’m You’ – the real diamonds in the rough. The club deck would be more punky and direct – clubbing you over the head, if you will. The hearts deck would be more slowed down and acoustic sad boi songs – that hit the listener straight in the heart…s. And then the deck of spades would be the project’s more experimental and looser songs – songs that… call a spade a spade…? Are influenced by David Spade…? Ah! A spade spade! For digging! So the spade suit would be the band digging into their creativity to express themselves more freely? Yeah, think that’s it.
Whatever, it doesn’t matter, this whole idea’s a fucking disaster.
May they multiply you May the river guide you You won’t always be here To be tricked and lied to May you always have a fight Be it wrong or be it right Shed a raindrop when you cry But beware of sedatives and passing time
Namy-namy-namy-namy-namy-namy-namy-namy-namy-namy-way we go! Yeah, I’ve got no idea what that sped up voice is saying. But I love it.
Oh, and this whole “May you always have a fight/Be it wrong or be it right”? Listen, I get it, that whole “If You Don’t Stand for Something, You’ll Fall for Anything” job? Yeah, all good. Only, don’t stand up for wrong things, yeah? I get where you’re coming from, and that not believing in anything just means you’ll allow yourself to be just swept up by the majority. And if you believe in the right things, we’d love to have you! But if you believe in the wrong thing, then maybe just pipe down and get on with your life, we’ve got this. And don’t “Fine people on both sides” me with this – there are people whose beliefs are literally scientific; there are people (the fascists) who always support capital because they’ve been told God wants them to; and then there’s people (the social fascists) who also support capital because they saw it on the fucking West Wing: Fight for what’s right, yeah?
“Beware of sedatives”? Well… I mean… what sedatives are we talking about, exactly…
Oh, wow, white collar crimes on the company dime Couldn’t catch a break on company time Life on the clock’s like, eating with your eyes Might find God, and go for a hike More brown liquor, I chase my pain I’m bitter by the hour, I state my claims I’m hanging by a nail, my body’s on a scale And work is really jail
The grass ain’t greener and the fare ain’t cheap Give me salt and lime in the land of the free Hate is in the air, getting harder to breathe
Here in the UK, we hear a lot about America’s role in the slave trade. We hear a lot the perhaps most brutal and masochistic period in human history. We hear how a total of 12.5 million human beings were stolen from Africa and shipped over the the ‘New World’ in conditions not suitable for factory farmed hens. We hear how around two million simply died on the journey on account of the horrendous conditions that they were forced to live in. They might have been the lucky ones, rather than the 10.7 fucking million shipped off to the New World as slaves and brutally forced to live out their lives as someone else’s property. We are sent films like ’12 Years a Slave’ and think “Gosh, wasn’t the USA just ghastly, as we sip on our tea, toss a fag and spell ‘moisturiser‘ correctly. We watch films and TV shows about the American Civil War and think “Hmmm, yes, I know what that is” as we shove aubergines into our fannies.
Oh, wow, OK, to have such an honest admission on your album’s opening track is quite a statement! It sounds wrong to call ‘Virgin’ sex positive, per se, but it’s definitely Lorde’s most ‘sex aware’ record (counter to its title, I guess), and to ensure that it opens like this definitely warns listeners to leave their kink shaming at the door.
I fear that some of my oversees readers might not get the reference here, so think of this post as a bitesize educational supplement as well as the usual incisive musical journalism. Canal Street is about a kilometre walk away from my house, so I feel a degree of closeness to it to the extent that explaining the history and significance of the reference would actually be something of a pleasure.
I did it with integrity and niggas still try hate on me, just wait and see More blood be spillin’, it’s just paint to me Dangerously, nothin’ changed with me, still got pain in me Flip a coin, want the shameless me or the famous me? How annoying, does it angers me to know the lames can speak On the origins of the game I breathe? That’s insane to me It’s important, I deserve it all because it’s mine Tell me why you think you deserve the greatest of all time, motherfucker
Yeah, could not be arsed with this album last year. It was released on November 22nd, which was already pushing it very tight for the December 1st deadline for inclusion on Necessary Evil 2024. The circumstances and context really made it feel like it was a bit of a rush release to capitalise on all the publicity surrounding the feud with Drake that we’ll likely be telling our grandchildren about.
yeah, I guess we’ll go back to speaking olde time language in the future. And writing in script. I dunno, man, that meme’s all over the place
I also heard how ‘GNX’ was, rather than an expansive and hugely intellectualised dissection of the black male psyche and how that very identity is being exploited by capitalism to be sold back to those very same people – the type of Kendricking that meant ‘Mr Morale & the Big Steppers‘ was very much on-brand – it was a more back to basic, West Coast infused straight hip-hop album, I decided it probably wasn’t really worth the intense study it would require to see if it would make that year’s list. I’ll probably give it couple of spins after Christmas, I thought.
Necessary Evil 