Tag: Beyoncé: Cowboy Carter

Staturday Night Fever: The Best Music of 2024 In Numbers

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

Have I done that pun yet? Mate, I am struggling, honestly…

So here we are again, a round up of the hot stats of the best albums and songs of 2024, which I have bizarrely fallen into the habit of doing doing eleven fucking months after the Necessary Evil list of the best albums and songs of the year is actually published. Why do I always leave it this long? Because, quite simply, after writing 40+ blog posts and a gargantuan song list in little over a month, my brain seriously doesn’t want to even acknowledge the previous year’s music again for at least a thousand years.

I almost didn’t do it this year. But – but! – then I realised that 2025’s list might have some extremely notable points! So maybe I’ll retire this dumb fucking tradition once I get round to that in winter 2026. Until then? Yeah, we gotta do this.

I do like making these purdy pictures though…

Stats in the cradle and a silver spoon

#8 JPEGMAFIA: I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Ebrahim Raisi in the heli’, feelin’ foggy
Money, money, money, it made me feel like I’m targeted
Blowing up like I’m IDF, Netty warrants ain’t stoppin’ shit
Is you Harvey, Jeffrey, R. Kelly, or is you opposite?
Say that shit, say that shit
Say that shit, say that shit

Exmilitary

Despite the arrest warrants, the IDF is likely to keep getting away with its atrocious horrors while they still have support of the world’s most powerful people, similar to Harvey Weinstein, Jeffery Epstein and R Kelly. Maybe that should be the last word on the Gaza Genocide?

Except it obviously isn’t going to be – wait until you see what album is in 5th place!

Nisreen Mohammed Mohammed Al-Najjar

#16 Magdalena Bay: Imaginal Disk

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

Too much watching TV
It’s gonna rot you from the inside out
If you wanna reach me
Just leave a message and we’ll work it out

…

If you wanna be clean
You gotta scrub until blood comes out
Get the spots in between
Slip your skin right off and hang it out

Watching TV

It’s another concept album, kids!

I told you, there’s a lot of them this year! Remember a few years ago when you weren’t even sure if you’d ever seen an Archie’s before, and now you can’t fucking move ten metres without seeing another one of the cunts? Well, that’s concept albums on Necessary Evil! Wait, do they have Archie’s in other places other than Manchester? And if they do, are there also a comparable amount of the cunts? Whatever, I will not be censored, I’m not going to lessen my artistic ambitions just to pander to the idiots who live in dumb places.

Misk Yusuf Zuhair Al-Qanousi

#20 Tapir!: The Pilgrim, Their God and The King Of My Decrepit Mountain

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

It’s cold, it’s dark
Throw your bones in the ancient water
It’s cold, it’s dark
Throw your bones in the ancient water

The Nether

Top twenty bitches! Ain’t no more fucking around now, we are – as a great poet once said – about to enter pound town, this list about to dick a bitch down. This list’s coochie pink but its bootyhole brown. And we enter the top twenty with another concept album!

“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!”

As concepts go, it’s definitely more apparent than Dua Saleh’s vague allusions, but a lot less more batshit insane that Lupe Fiasco’s Amy Winehouse fanfic, so I can’t really place it higher than second in the list of 2024’s best concept albums at time of writing. At time of writing because there’s a shitload more of these things to come further down the list. I might seriously be able to do a top ten, and that’s without including borderline examples like ‘Cowboy Carter’ (CONCEPT: Billionaire Celebrity Makes a Quasi-Country Album to Impress People Nobody Else Cares About’), Danny Brown (CONCEPT: ‘Rapper Gets Old’) or Hinds (CONCEPT: ‘WE’RE MOTHERFUCKING HINDS!!!!!’). Moor Mother though? Yeah, might count that if I’m desperate. Break instead of emergency.

Aisha Mohamed Ibrahim Abu-Matw

#31 Beyoncé: Cowboy Carter

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

Looka there, liquor in my hand
The grandbaby of a moonshine man
Gadsden, Alabama
Got folk down Gavelston, rooted in Louisiana
They used to say I spoke too country
Then the rejection came, said I wasn’t country ‘nough
Said I wouldn’t saddle up, but
If that ain’t country, tell me, what is?

American Requiem

I’m going to say this right out the bat, less you start reading this under false expectations: I do not give one shiny shit about what fucking genre of music you say you’re a part of. This is Beyoncé’s country album. Is it real country though?? Well, she’s wearing a cowboy hat on the cover and she mentions whiskey a lot. The title of the album has the word ‘cowboy’ in it, for fuck’s FFS! What more do you people want??

“Pew pew pew!”

Listen, do you know which comedy series now holds the record for most Emmy wins? The fucking Bear! Have you seen that show? It’s 30 minutes of stressed Catholic Americans shouting “BEHIND!” at each other and having emotional breakdowns to the soundtrack of 90’s REM songs. I think that show has had about two jokes in its entire run so far. Well, ‘Cowboy Carter’ features Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus – literally the only three country singers I could name and the three undisputed geniuses of the genre – so by my maths it’s at least 50% more of a country album that The fucking Bear is a comedy show. Case closed, move on everyone.

‘Abd a-Rahman Mahmoud ‘Abd al-Fatah ‘Abd a-Nabi