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
We leave our higher educations that we all ‘must’ get
Our Lives Would Make a Sad, Boring Movie
With a signature stamped paper and a mound of debt
The bank has got us by the throat and then we’re forced to settle
For the jobs we hate, 9 to 5, 40 hour, 40 years ’til the day
We are too weak to work, too frail to play
No friends or lovers because they all passed away
We’ve waited for this day all our lives long
And on our death bed the stereo plays our favorite teenage anthem song
And we sing along
We into the top ten, God dammit! With, another album was wasn’t actually released this year: The Hotelier’s 2011 debut album that I just needed to complete my set.
I KEEP CHOKING ON MY FEARS
Rerelease number two! By the way, I’ve also come to notice since I last wrote that Marina post signalling the Oncoming of the Rereleases, where I rather cerebrally and logically (some would say deeply sexually) explained how I’d been smart enough to collate the list’s three big rereleases all together just outside the top ten. Or maybe that was a complete accident. The point was: I’m a fucking critical genius. Well, afterwards, I realised that there were rereleases at numbers 14, 13, 12, then a completely valid 2022 record at #11… Then another ‘rerelease’ (not technically rereleased this year, but a ‘Legacy Release’ that I’d decided to include) at number ten. Honestly, I’ve no fucking idea what’s going on with this list. Or my life, for that matter. Please help me. Any clues on how to sort this shit out?
My life, I mean, I don’t want to hear about any perceived ‘improvements’ to this blog or the Necessary Evil year end list. Necessary Evil is a perfect little crystal and I’m very protective over it. My life? Meh, I’m not too fussed, so I’ll give everything a shot. Have I ever tried deeps sea crab fishing as a vocation, you ask? Why not!? Live out my days as a Dreamsexual?? That sounds pretty problematic these days. I’ll do it.
THERE’s NO USE PRETENDING THAT THIS LIFE IS UNENDING OR CRUEL
Ah fuck, this is jazz, isn’t it?
We’ve already learned what magic can be created by the combination of Los Angeles and Newcastle-upon-Tyne but, guess what? Yorkshire by way of the Nigerian Igbo ethnicity creates magic that’s just that little bit better! There is but one question on everyone’s lips though:
WHERE EXACTLY IS ‘TODMORDEN’?
(Firstly, this entry was originally just the outstanding LP ‘Shepherd Head’, until I remembered that the band also released a limited edition and equally fabulous EP ‘love for a new century‘, a one day BandCamp exclusive to raise funds for the Midwest Access Coalition, a charity providing funding for people who now -fucking ridiculously – are forced to travel to different states in the US as a woman’s right to her own body somehow went up for debate in that hellhole country in 2022. Didn’t buy it on May 7th?? Well sucks to be you. There’s nothing stopping you from just donating to that charity though, you lazy pricks)
Yeah, I know, it’s just ‘Bandcamp’, isn’t it? Not ‘BandCamp’ like it’s some internet 2.0 app allowing preteen marching band players share news about events (that later turned out to be a massive secret international pedophile ring), but I started calling it ‘BandCamp’ on the first sodding entry so now I have to either go back and change every entry – which will take, ugh, effort – or just continue doing so and hope nobody notices. I’ll change it in 2023, I promise. Resolution and shit, yeah?
#PROMISE
Troubled don’t count the ways I’m broken
Trouble
Your troubles won’t count, not once we’ve spoken
What troubles me now if I tear this open
Some people won’t have the faintest notion
OK, seriously though, not being funny, yeah? But where the fuck did this come from?
Nilüfer’s 2019 debut ‘Miss Universe‘ was… pretty dang good. Like, decent little record that, lots of good fun. Some absolute guaranteed bops, trust me. The album itself didn’t make the Necessary Evil 2019 countdown, but I liked it enough to include opening track In Your Head at #79 in that year’s Legit Bosses, admitting that I should have invested more time in the album.
THERE ARE CURRENTLY 186 2022 LEGIT BOSSES. NEEDS TO BE TRIMMED
Fucking hell, Denzel Curry and Wilma Vritra? I really am a fucking insufferable BandCamp edgelord white boy, aren’t I? You’re all waiting for Earl Sweatshirt now, aren’t you? I’ve definitely have a ‘Die Lit’ poster above my breakfast bar, don’t I? Because I absolutely have a breakfast bar.
My husband and I wake up every morning and bring our coffee out to our ‘Die Lit’ breakfast bar and sit and talk for hours. Every morning. It never gets old and we never run out of things to talk. Love Playboi Carti him so much.
God, I fucking hate me.
MUTUAL
Necessary Evil 