How bad does it have to hurt to count?! Does it have to hurt at all?! I’ll come back if you put me down two times! You try hard to make me yours! But once you get me I get bored! I’ll come back if you put me down two times!
Aaaah mate, buddy, pal, 朋友, amicus, amiga! You might have dropped a pretty massive 24 places since I was charmed enough to name you the second best album of 2023, but – bah Gahd! – can you still ignite those cursed feels when you feel in the mood??
OK, step back, hold it up now, back it up – beep beep beep – re-rewind, when the crowd say Bo Selecta…
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…
Listen, boys and girls and others, I’mma keep this relatively brief. I feel like my words are pretty irrelevant here, I’m not sure that it’s easy or even possible to explain the beauty, the power, the genius of one of the greatest albums released during my lifetime. My short lifetime. I am young. I’m basically a baby.
1997 was the best year for music, don’t @ me. There wasn’t even a Manics album that year, so I’ll let that sit in just how powerful a statement that must be coming from me. British music, at least. I was in Britain at the time, you see, and though we were still obviously pathetically in awe of the USA – all the cool kids hated Friends, while every movie at the cinema starred Will Smith or George Clooney or… erm… Robert Carlyle…? – the world wide webification hadn’t yet taken over. What’s big in the US is now just big in the UK, because we’re all hooked up to the same companies’ propaganda machines, but back in ’97 we still kinda did our own stuff. Fucking Full Monty was the biggest movie of 97 (and, for a short time before Titanic, of all time in the UK*), nine of the top 10 selling albums of 1997 were by British acts. Trust me, bro: Jewel? Third Eye Blind? Tim McGraw? Notorious motherfucking B.I.G?? We had no idea who these people were. And you know what? We were happy.
Jesus, everyone, Jordana was twenty one years old when she released this incredible record back in December 2020 (Making it. Eligible. For this year’s. List. So sick of having to explain how this works), isn’t that just terrifying?
For her, I mean. This isn’t one of those “Whaaaaa! They’re so young and I’ve comparatively failed in life!” takes. Partially because – Jesus fucking Christ – those mournings are so boring. We’ve all failed in life, that’s what connects us so beautifully as people, and even the ones we assume haven’t still think they have, let’s not create divisions by imagining any one of us is making a better go of this shitshow we call existence. Mostly because, seriously, you eventually get to an age where fucking everyone is younger than you (except Caroline Shaw, of course), you stop being such a big baby about the whole thing (“Malala Yousafzai was only fifteen years old when she was shot in the face by Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan gunmen?! Lucky!! What had I done by that age??”) and instead switch to being in constant mortal dread of your own imminent demise. It’s honestly a cool transition.
You want an intro? You got that in part one! Let’s get down to the dirty, sticky and dangerously unhygienic business:
1997
This was an important year for me, this was when shit got real. Yeah, Labour won the election, which I was aware I was supposed to celebrate but not yet conscious enough to know exactly why, just that ‘our team won*. Princess Diana died, inspiring a nationwide reaction that even 13 year old Alex Palmer recognised as being a bit fucking much**. All that was meaningless background noise though, as most importantly 1997 was the year that I became really switched on to new music. Before this point, most of the albums I’ve listed would have been discovered by me later and posthumously lusted after in the kind of nostalgic necrophilia that I would later grow to despise. Yeah, sorry if you’ve already imagined me as an incredibly cool seven year old bopping his head to Soonby My Bloody Valentine. From this point on, these important albums in my life and personal development were pretty much all discovered as contemporaries. Seriously though, ‘It’s Great When You’re Straight… Yeah’ was the first CD that I ever owned. Yeah. I’m that cool/weird.
“Dad, this is why you’re only allowed to see me one weekend every other month…”
Blur’s first album for 12 years (and first with Graham Coxon for 16) is far better than it has any real right to be, only really veering off into the embarrassingly crude approximation you might have feared it’d turn out like when they attempt to ape the music they made while at the height of their mid-90s relevance (you’ll be glad to hear Danny Dyer isn’t called upon to perform Phil Daniels duties). It can occasionally veer too clumsily between the sombre moroseness more associated with Albarn’s solo records and more throwaway attempts at flippancy, but mainly it’s clear the band still retain an uncanny ability to craft beautiful music.
‘Fun’ Fact: Alex James was once in the catastrophic yet mercifully short-lived ‘super group’ Me Me Me. He should never be allowed to forget that
If the band are about to attempt to break into the Chinese market, do you think they should push ‘My Terracotta Heart‘ as their main single? Oh no, I think ‘Pyongyang‘ is far more suited.
Necessary Evil 