Tag: gold star artist

3 FKA Twigs: EUSEXUA

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

Yeah, that’s right, I’m going to start my post on the Scientifically Proven™ third greatest album of 2025 by slagging off Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’ for the third fucking time.

Both Beyoncé’s 2022 critic stupefying event album and FKA Twigs’ third proper record were heavily influenced by dance music. Beyoncé referenced a lot of post 70’s black dance crazes – with close attention paid to early 90’s House music and Detroit’s best -while Twigs was enchanted with the techno music she heard when she relocated to Prague to – don’t laugh – film ‘The Crow‘.

I’m a dog for you

6 Sudan Archives: THE BPM

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

Hey did you read my Ethel Cain post yesterday? No? Well, then I’ve got bad news for you.

Hello, it’s me
Did you miss me?
Just take this piece
The best of me

DEAD

But quit living in the past, man!! Quiet those things in your memory holding on for dear life!! Less of the recalling of the sting of all the tears when Ethel was gone!! There is never redemption, any fool can regret yesterday!! We are very much talking, as Quentin Leo Cook was in 1999, about the here and now!!

Waking up to find your love’s not rea

11 Lorde: Virgin

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Today, I’ll go to Canal Street, they’ll piss in my ears

Hammer

Oh, wow, OK, to have such an honest admission on your album’s opening track is quite a statement! It sounds wrong to call ‘Virgin’ sex positive, per se, but it’s definitely Lorde’s most ‘sex aware’ record (counter to its title, I guess), and to ensure that it opens like this definitely warns listeners to leave their kink shaming at the door.

I fear that some of my oversees readers might not get the reference here, so think of this post as a bitesize educational supplement as well as the usual incisive musical journalism. Canal Street is about a kilometre walk away from my house, so I feel a degree of closeness to it to the extent that explaining the history and significance of the reference would actually be something of a pleasure.

If I’d had virginity I would have given that too

23 Wednesday: Bleeds

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

We dated for six years; we were best friends; we watched each other grow up. We had broken up a month ago. I’m poking roadkill with a stick. Making it twitch.

Karly Hartzman in as essay in Vulture 25.10.08

Yeah, all you voyeuristic lovers of Fleetwood Mac style inter-band drama will love how singer Hartzman broke up with guitarist Jake “MJ” Lenderman during the making of this album. I’m not going to write about that, because I don’t know these freaks and I don’t want to speculate on what sordid, perverse shit that these big celebrities are into. Yet, if Jake Lenderman wrote a Tweet ten years ago that I really objected to, I’d probably get a good 2k words complaining about it? I’m difficult to predict, I’ll accept that.

(L-R) Jake Lenderman, Karly Hartzman

Hey, hey, hey! I didn’t post that photo to make a cruel joke! I have never made a cruel joke on this website, and don’t intend to start now! I have never made any joke! I take all of this far too seriously! If you’ve ever found anything on this website amusing, then that was entirely unintended, and what you’re actually doing is laughing at me struggling with my evidentially moribund mental capacity. So, way to be ableist, jerk.

In a bottle spit dip and tell dirty jokes

40 MARINA: Princess of Power

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

Incredibly, implausibly and – let’s face it – improbably, Marina Diamandis is still duking it out on the Necessary Evil countdown.

This was going to be it: This was going to be the year that an artist that had become a feature of this annual countdown since almost its inception finally fell off the list. An artist that first burst into my consciousness in 2009 with the almost impossibly good debut hat-trick of singles (The outstanding Obsessions!! The immaculate I’m Not a Robot!! The mmmmm-decent Mowgli’s Road!!) that I was even moved to declare them an “Almost impossibly good debut trio of singles from the Welsh/Greek singer who seems all set to become Britain’s most interesting pop star when her (inevitably crushingly disappointing) debut album is released early in 2010”,.

I’m vulnerable so vulnerable

Necessary Evil 2025: The Ragin’ Climax

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

The stage curtains open, revealing 40 lovely ladies in bathing suits, wearing sashes that denote which of 2025’s greatest albums they represent, blinding the front row with quite how dazzlingly white their full toothed grins are, in danger of taking someone’s fucking eye out with quite how resplendently squeezed tight their open cleavages are.

I come out through the floor on an elevating platform, full suit and bow tie, hair slicked back and microphone in my hand:

“There she iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis, Miss Necessary Eviiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil…!”

“…and I said ‘Lady, that ain’t no gear stick!!!’ Seriously though, if you don’t let me videotape me pissing on you then I’ll eject you from the competition

Considering this will be the seventeenth time that I’ve collated the Scientifically Proven Best Albums of the Year™, I’m pretty sure I know what I’m doing by this point, yeah? I had only just graduated from university when I started writing this dumb list that nobody reads, and I’ll be freaking forty two when I finish the 2025 vintage! Considering my physical health (which, in 2025, has definitely started to take on a whole ‘end of days’ start of feel), it’s looking more and more likely that I will die before I ever retire this list. Mate, I would love to stop, this is a massive pain in the arse that ruins Christmas and my birthday for me every year. But if I go, then who seriously is there to take my place?? Pitchfork?? Give me a break. Fantano?? Bald fraud. Smash Hits??? Mate, I don’t like having to break this to you, but Smash Hits Magazine shut down in 2006. To quote a far less talented (but bizarrely more feted, which is often how it goes) personality who has been able to actually retire this year: I’m still here because you can’t do your job!

the last time ISN’T now

Legit Bosses: The 143 Best Songs of 2024

~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

Hey, look, I’m getting better at this. Recently, I went on a massive cull of the 2024’s greatest songs to make this list as tight and as concise as possible, so that it would be sure to represent the absolute best of the best and would be as brief and easy to write as possible. And look! There are only one hundred and forty three tracks this year!! That’s a whole seventeen less tracks than last year! This post is going to be a breeze!

spoiler: this song is going top five. It INVENTED GAY POP, show some respect

OK, three weeks laternow, and I’m almost done! This post will be longer than most books you read, but to be fair most of the ‘books’ you read are Dr Who fanfic.

So, yeah, these songs are really good. And they get better as the list goes on. That’s how these lists work.

Here’s the YouTube playlist, which I know is the only thing most of you care about.

How much of an intro do you need, seriously?

A/79/232

#9 The Smile: Wall of Eyes

~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

The kind of dialogue that they want to engage in is one that’s black or white. I have a problem with that. It’s deeply distressing that they choose to, rather than engage with us personally, throw shit at us in public. It’s deeply disrespectful to assume that we’re either being misinformed or that we’re so retarded we can’t make these decisions ourselves. I thought it was patronizing in the extreme.

Thom Yorke explains their stance on Israel to Rolling Stone 2017/06/02

Strap yourself iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin!!!

Apart from the Joe Biden and the Neonazis, few people have as long and as enduring an affection for the state of Israel as the fellas from that there Radiohead. And I can kinda appreciate their reasoning, at least more than I can Nick Cave’s pathetic fanboy “OMG! This is the bar where Jesus shot Gredo first!” or whatever the fuck. It’s even arguable whether, without Israel, Radiohead would have even made it to a second album after the ridiculously of-its-time posh boy grunge karaoke of their debut.

Alaa Murad Ali Binat

2024’s New Gold Star Artists

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

You know the rules by now: an entire album discography comprising of at least three albums, every single one of their albums featured on a Necessary Evil album of the year countdown on the Most Trusted Blog in Music. There were a few Legacy Gold Star Artists who added to their repertoire in 2023, but on this post I’m going to be concentrating on the five artists who earned their wings in 2023. Or rather, who were already glorious winged beasts of musical sapience, but got those motherfuckers gold plated in 2023.

Ah, Ms. Zauner! I see you have chosen to commemorate your achievement! As wee you should, my dear.

Oh, and these particular entrants will just be copied and pasted into the master post as well. I’ve just created this new post highlighting the new entries so you wouldn’t have to go back to the original entry every year to see who has earned promotion. So don’t come at me with that “You never think of us! You treat us so bad!” bullshit, alright? I treat you just fine. If anything, I treat you too well, so that might not be a string you want to pull too hard on. To see how new albums by Legacy artists like Wednesday and Janelle Monae did? Yeah, you’ll have to check the rankings on the master post. Like I say, I already treat you too well, so be careful what you ask for. And did you read what I thought about that Janelle album?? Probably not breaking into that top three, is it?

Anyway, without further ado:

all that glitters

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