2022’s Statictus the Fitness: The Numbers Behind the Year’s Greatest Albums

Remember when I used to do these posts right after I did the albums of the year? So it’d be the Necessary Evil albums of the year, the scientifically proven best album fawned over at length, the stats, and then we’d be officially done for another year?

Boom! You just been Mandela Effected, boyeeee! I actually only think I ever did that schedule once, for Necessary Evil 2019. I’ve always been far more often waaaaaaay late with these statistical breakdowns. What I actually used to do really early is (pfff!) do the stats just before the number one album! I could never (be arsed these days! These days the writing of the list itself is such a huge emotional toil that it takes me a long time to even consider thinking about these fucking albums again. Also, it’s getting harder and harder to think of puns on the word ‘stat’.

But these posts are basically just pictures, so I may as well just freakin’ do it. Let’s glance back at the wonderful year od 2022 when we all collectively thought, as always, “Well at least the next year can’t be as bad as this one…”.

Watch me drift and watch me struggle, let me go

#32 Kronos Quartet, Rinde Eckert, Vân-Ánh Vanessa Võ: Mỹ Lai

God, the Vietnam war was so cool, wasn’t it?? Cool, young, handsome Americans taking drugs to the strains of The Doors?? Yes please! Gooooooooood moooooooorning the 1960s! Aww, but it made the American soldiers a bit sad though, so make some movies out of that as well. But it was still the coolest war, it had the best soundtrack and it made the best movies. Didi mao! Didi mao! Who were the Americans actually fighting again? . Were they fighting Marlon Brando? Because, trust me, you’re gonna need some heavy artillery to take down that sizable landmass. Doesn’t matter – they were fighting the bad guys, and it made them sad. The end. Pretty sure Mỹ Lai’ – the soundtrack to an opera of the same name – just tells that story. And tells it very well!

ARE YOU *SURE* THIS TIME?

Stats Through the Heart (and you’re to blame) 2018

Hooray for me. A winner is me. I’m the king of the world. I am a golden God. I put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp. I’m that star up in the sky. I’m that mountain peak up high. Hey, I made it. I’m the world’s greatest. I assume that allows me to enslave any underage girl I want, with occasional pissing privileges. What a time to be alive.

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That’s me, that is

This week 2019 officially outstripped 2018 on Necessary Evil, with the site getting more views and more individual visitors than ever before. This despite me not even starting the end of year list, which has always been the only reason any of you miserable cunts (love you!) ever visit this piece of shit site. This is, of course, an outstanding achievement which you no doubt would have heard on the news. Whatever it is that I do on this blog is more popular than ever.  Perhaps it’s due to me writing many more non-list entries this year. In 2019, I’ve written

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I’ve written a number of non-list entries, which beats my previous record of ‘a lot less’ at best and, more commonly, ‘fuck all’. I’m not going to waste much time trying to analyse why I’m so popular- just luck at that fucking face. Adorable- but such a momentous occasion deserves something of a celebration. And I couldn’t think of a better one than this. Or, more accurately, I could think of a million better ways to celebrate than this, but this is the only one I could be arsed doing. Good? Good.

You could probably guess what I’m aiming to do. As we edge towards the end of the year, it’s obvious what needs to be done, and the fact that we are about to close on a decade that has seen the arrival SnapChat, Pope Francis, Boko Harem, Transformers: Age of Extinction and Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz only makes things more imperative.

That’s right: a statistical breakdown of the best albums of 2018!!

Yeah, I know, I should have done this in January when I finished the countdown, much like I published detailed breakdowns soon after 2016 and 2017 finished. But you know what? I’ve just been busy, man, y’know? Did you not notice that it took me three entries to list the greatest Money in the Bank matches ever? If I’m spending so much time on bullshit like that how am I ever going to find time for bullshit like this? Are you going to be one of those people who doesn’t like it when things they don’t like happen?? Grow up, this is neoliberalism and you’ll accept whatever we tell you that you’re happy with.

Love you!

Continue reading “Stats Through the Heart (and you’re to blame) 2018”

11 The National: Sleep Well Beast

Write Poorly, Swine

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Erm…

Jeez.

Now, this album’s called ‘Sleep Well Beast’, and although I used to consider myself an insomniac, I actually sleep far better now ever since I was prescribed…

No. No, that’s really dull.

Beast. Beast. Beastbeastbeastbeast. Beast.

The Beast of Bodwin Moor! We all know about the Beast of Bodwin Moor, don’t we? Yeah, definitely, a keenly observed reference point that, aye? I may be about to blow your tiny minds, but did you know that actually the Beast of Bodwin Moor

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Probably… probably doesn’t exist. If you suggested it did you would be laughed out of the dinner party in which you are reciting the anecdotes by all surrounding scientists.  They will derisively reject your claims due to many factors such as the improbably large numbers necessary to maintain a breeding population and because climate and food supply issues would make such purported creatures’ survival in reported habitats unlikely. I mean of course it doesn’t exist. No ‘beast’ has ever existed: from the one on the Bodmin Moor, to those Fantastic ones that people are looking to find, to Adebayo Akinfenwa, to The Beast from the East that we heard so much about recently. Did you ever see this mythical ‘beast’?? No, of course you didn’t, probably because the bad weather ‘coincidentally’ happening at the same time made it difficult to so see much of anything recently.

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Continue reading “11 The National: Sleep Well Beast”

42 Pixx: The Age of Anxiety

Anxious Geography

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“Here me/Hear me cry out/Everything is weird in/America”

America is a different country from Britain. Like, completely different: it has its own laws and everything, and is entirely full of people who are very different from the people in the UK. Not only is there a lot more of them but, let’s face it, a lot of them are probably a lot fatter, so their combined weight of humanity would be so much more that it would render Britain’s almost inconsequential.

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Continue reading “42 Pixx: The Age of Anxiety”

21 Christine and the Queens: Christine and the Queens

Can you believe this is only the second (halfway decent) self titled album released (cough) this year??

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I had, like, a thing for self-titled albums, didn’t I?

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I think it was called Self-Titled Vindication or summat, but it’s been so long now that I can’t quite remember

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Did I use a picture or something?

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Continue reading “21 Christine and the Queens: Christine and the Queens”

35 Ital Tek: Hollowed

It has been said that Ital Tek is ‘the sound of Brexit’, which I’m not sure I agree with, but it offers me a good opportunity to waffle on about it

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For some reason, I thought that Ital Tek was European- perhaps it was the funny sounding name, and the desolate yet achingly beautiful soundscapes that always sound a little Scandinavian to me- so I was planning to introduce this wonderful album as the sound of the EU. The bastard’s actually from Brighton, so I had to make a late change

 

If your immediate response to Brexit is that it was simply racist, then you yourself are part of the reason for it

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Continue reading “35 Ital Tek: Hollowed”