Tag: best albums of 2023

Legit Bosses – The 160 Best Songs of 2023

~ Lex Leeson ~ 30 Comments

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

#1 Fever Ray: Radical Romantics (Greatest Album of 2023)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

This is for our careers

Putting my kid in high school

Even it Out… sort of

All year I adored the opening lines from ‘Radical Romantics’ fifth track. I loved the angry, vicious attack of the commodified work of an artist. How the work is no longer about inspiration or true artistic integrity, but just a career. Under capitalism it has become just another desperate attempt to ensure safety, housing, food and education for your family. And what does such a system force you to do with your artistic inclinations? Or maybe the social safety nets?? “And then we cut, cut, cut, cut/Cut, cut, cut, cut/Cut, cut, cut, cut/Cut, cut, cut, cut/Cut, cut, cut, cut/Cut, cut, cut, cut/Cut, cut, cut, cut/Cut, cut, cut, cut”. Comrade Karin Dreijer! Give those capitalist pigdogs what they deserve!

There’s no room for you
And we know where you live
One day we might come after you
Taking back what’s ours

Workers of the World unite!!

SUNSET IN THE MAZE (YOU’RE ASKING ME MY SYMPTONS, DOCTOR, I DON’T WANNA FEEL)

2 Blondshell: Blondshell

~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck a big part of me wanted to put this at #1.

Did I enjoy any other record in 2023 as much as ‘Blondshell’? Probably not. Did I listen to any other album in 2023 more than I did Sabrina Teitelbaum’s debut? I’m guessing ‘no’. Can I sing any other 2023 record back to back like I can this one? Absolutely not. Do I sometimes catch myself wandering around the house and muttering killer lines like “I think my kink is when you tell me that you think I’m pretty” under my breath? You can’t prove that, but yes. Does Teitalbaum simply rock harder than any other rock rocks in 2023? In years? Affirmative. Is it my favourite album of 2023?? Mate, probably…

SO YOU’LL RUN, YEAH, BUT YOU’ll NEVER ESCAPE

3 Prince: Purple Rain (Deluxe)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

In 1984, there was only one man in America more popular than Ronald Reagan. His name was Prince, and he was funky.

Had Prince run for president that year, he would have certainly carried his native Minnesota—the only state Ronnie lost—and he probably would’ve cleaned up most other places. The reason: “Purple Rain,” his groundbreaking, genre-blurring, utterly genius sixth album. It was a massive seller wherever there were radios and people with pulses.

Kenneth Partridge for Billboard

So, this is it. Our annual trawl through Prince’s albums reaches 1984 and His sixth release. His place in eternal pop culture, His position as music’s most influential figure of the past 50 years, His most abiding songs, His eternal iconography and His cultural footprint. They all come from this era. One of the best selling records ever. Prince said that ‘Purple Rain’ is what people shouted at Him in airports rather than His name. For forty years afterwards, if pop culture was going reference Prince, it would be this era, This album.

If you only own one Prince album, it’s this one. It was the first one I bought, as a spotty teen in Glossop Woolworths back in the early to mid nineties. It’s also your favourite Prince album. If you’ve only heard a couple more. It’s the non-Prince fans’ favourite Prince album. It’s massively overrated. It’s massively underrated. It’s impossible to rate at all. It’s just a bigger deal than almost every other record ever released. I was born six months before the album was released. It’s impossible for me to properly assess it because I can’t remember a reality before this record was released. And that isn’t too big a claim: for the last 39 years and six months we have all absolutely been living in a world, a reality where ‘Purple Rain’ exists. Me being expected to critically analyse it is like you asking my opinions on my own liver. I don’t really have an opinion. It’s just there. I can’t offer any opinions on it because I can’t picture life without it.

TOAST UP, SO WHAT? STREET SMALL BUT IT GO BOTH WAYS

4 SZA: SOS

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

This ain’t no warning shot, in case all of you hoes forgot, they know we’ve been more than lost. Us punk-asses tried to replace them but the stakes were too high, we weren’t able to live off some SZA mini-me. In December 8th 2022 they dumped this album like a press squeeze, they were horny like “Suck these”, daring like “Touch me”. They just want what’s theirs, after spending more than five years watching countless people try and fail to replicate the magic of their debut album.

And it’s hard to be a SZA mini-me. Their incredible 2017 debut album felt like a true moment in the history of recorded music. It’s one of the handful of 21st century records – as our tastes become more and more individualised and the latest stage of capitalism involves eliminating community and creating more dividing lines along identity – that is near unanimously considered an all-time classic. It spent more than 300 weeks on the Billboard top 200, selling millions of copies. You gotta rip that off, right??

OUT OF REACH, OUT OF TOUCH, TOO NUMB, I DON’T FEEL NO WAY

5 ANOHNI and the Johnsons: My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

“For me, there’s no heavenly respite; creation is a spectral and feminine continuum, and our souls are an inalienable part of nature.”

Anohni Hegarty

There are those who argue that the sex/gender divide is just a socio-political
construct. Certainly this is not true for those individuals with gender dysphoria where
there is a mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity. It is also the case
that class society has nurtured an ideology of femininity and masculinity which fits the
profit motive rather than peoples’ lived experience. But all of this this does not
invalidate the fact that the vast majority of humans (unhelpfully labelled ‘cis’) do not
experience a mis-match between their biological sex and their gender. This does not
mean that all is well for women who are, by virtue of both sex and gender, historically
and currently oppressed in patriarchal class societies.

SO YOU MIGHT AS WELL STICK IT IN

6 Noname: Sundial

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth

proverb of unknown origins, likely African

We could scapegoat everything
We could penny-pinch the homie for defendin’ the dream
A simpler thing, by any mean
Niggas will kill they team
Say the gun did it, run with it
White man or frontman, a whole vision

We just see self in his image
Won’t be a self-critic, burn up our whole village
That wasn’t us, that was colonialism
We keep our babies fed, we don’t beat and rape on our women, we good
We is Wakanda, we Queen Rwanda
First black president and he the one who bombed us, yeah

hold me down
AND I’M ALREADY ACTIN’ LIKE A DICK, KNOW WHAT I MEAN?

8 Ethel Cain: Preacher’s Daughter

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Fucking hell, first today I have to write about a black kid born into Jim Crow Alabama (like, literally Jim Crow, not just modern Alabama, which may still be accurately described as ‘Jim Crow Alabama’), now I get to Hayden Anhedönia, raised in one of those creepy Southern Baptist communities (Hayden was literally the preacher/dean’s son, and when their Daddy would visit they’d come along, while Mummy sung in the choir) and was home schooled. Home schooled!! You know that they’re fucked up. Why am I covering all of America’s weird and traumatic – but always buttressed by religious belief – traditions today?? Oh, and before you ask: no, there isn’t a song here as good as Olivia Rodrigo’s ballad of a homeschooled girl, so let’s nip that in the bud straight away.

I talked to this hot guy, swore I was his type
Guess that he was makin’ out with boys, like the whole night

I don’t get religious people. Hayden told their Mum that they liked boys when they were 12 and, yeah, I get how religious people don’t like unrepressed homosexuality (“I was the spawn of Satan to most people. The first person who told me that I wasn’t going to hell when I died was my therapist that my parents forced me to get when I was 16.”). Hayden left the family home aged 18, shaved their head for a while to try and be as masculine as possible (““I’m going to be a boy, and my family is going to love me, and I’m going to make them proud”), but that didn’t last long. On their 20th birthday, they came out as trans. What I don’t get is… Won’t their family accept them back now?? I get how they need to repress homosexuality – that’s kind of their ‘thing’ and it would be culturally insensitive for me to criticise that – but now Hayden is a woman who likes boys! They’ve come back around the other side! They’re straight again! Show me the part in the bible that disproves what I’m saying, you bunch of freaks. Didn’t Jesus come out of that cave three days after being crucified dressed as Trinity from The Matrix while praising the positive effects of their recent top surgery? Dude, look at that gorgeous flowing hair! You’re telling me a cis guy takes that much care over their hair routine?? Also, a carpenter?? So obviously a lesbian.

IF I TAKE A STEP BACK TO SEE THE GLASS HALF FULL

9 Lonnie Holley: Oh Me Oh My

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Lonnie Holley is one of those people whose very existence is a bit awkward for the United States of America. He’s a good looking guy, a few months older than my Dad but healthier looking than even me. He’s not some crinkly, confused, 112 year old veteran of the first world war, baring a toothless smile to the camera on the arm of his minder. A minder he needs to remind him to put his underpants on in the morning, and works overtime changing him considering the amount of times each day he pisses himself. He is still plugged in, still 100% articulate, more creatively engaged now aged 73 than he’s ever been. He didn’t become an artist until he was 29. He didn’t even begin releasing music until he was 62. There’s no rush.

Which all means he has pretty vivid memories of being born in Jim Crow era Alabama.

THAT YOU’LL MAKE IT BACK TO MY BED, GET ME HOT AND SIZZLIN’