#14 Marina and the Diamonds: Electra Heart (Platinum Blonde)

Holy shit! Happy birthday ‘Electra Heart’!

Starburst? Yeah, fuck that kid

NE2022 enters into a strange ‘rerelease zone’ for these next three entries. I can’t remember if I did this intentionally. It’s difficult to consider ‘classic’ albums alongside newer material. You need to balance out any nostalgia and the unfair ten year start that some records have had to burrow into your subconscious. Yet you don’t want to go too far the other way, and fail to remember the original spark and energy that was originally locked within a song you’ve heard fifteen thousand fucking times already. You can’t give too much weight to cultural importance… but you certainly can’t just blindly ignore it. It’s an extremely complicated equation that I honestly don’t believe anyone reading this will be intelligent enough to fully grasp. Or, I just realised there were a lot of amazing rereleases this year and didn’t want them all clogging up the top ten, so parked them all just outside. Two releases still escaped and made the top ten. There are five records in the top 15 that weren’t released in 2022. Shut up. Ah do warra want!

YOU DON’T LOVE ME? BIG FUCKING DEAL

#63 Rina Sawayama: Hold the Girl

Get in line, pass the wine, bitch, we’re going straight to Hell

This Hell

There are few things as indicative of a grossly rotten capitalist system as Elon Musk. If this was a world that worked in the slightest way, if it was properly focused on providing correctly for all human life, or even if it were really the meritocracy that many on the right and the centre claim it to be, then people like Elon would not exist.

Elon Musk has, according to Forbes, eight two sillywillion-scumskillion-foreskillion-skatupllion dollars. Remember how arsey I got about Beyoncé? Well, Elon Musk spends ‘a Beyoncé’ every day on one of his special artisanal morning coffees (he makes it out of unicorn anuses and the condensed tears of one hundred an fifty million starving children, which needs to be collected en masse overnight. Tastes quite nutty. Because Elon nuts in it. Because the idea turns him on so much). If Elon earned this money by being especially good at something like playing billiards – even if he were the best billiard player in the God damn world – then being allowed to greedily accumulate that much wealth would still mean the system is broken. But Elon isn’t especially good at anything. It’s just the whole depressing and boring vulture capitalist, venture buyouts, stock market nonsense that all rich people do.

YOU MUST HAVE REALLY ENJOYED THIS ELON MUSK ALBUM

Legit Bosses: The 125 Best Songs of 2020 (pt.1 #125-#81)

‘Member 2020? Do you really?? I’m not 100% sure 2020 as a year actually took place in any official capacity. I accept that days were marked off and months were filed as ‘complete’ in admin, but it was all just a box ticking exercise to make sure that all the paperwork lined up and we weren’t caught out were the concept of the year twenty twenty be questioned in any future audit. Sure, it happened, just look at that tick of the Excel spreadsheet. Can we move on? Please?

“Fuck it, check off 2021 as well, I’ve got a feeling that’s already a goner…”

While its existence is obviously a hotly debated issue, what’s undeniable is that we saw a shovel load of amazing songs in 2020. Thirteen more than in 2019, in fact, which means that, despite everything, 2020 was actually 14.56% a better year than 2019…? I know, it didn’t seem that way, but the maths doesn’t lie. In every previous year’s Legit Bosses countdown, I was fully confident what was going to finish top before I started writing it. In 2020, however, there were so many massively different but equally stonking songs that I had no idea where it was going to to land when I ranked them last night, the one that ended up on top really surprised me, and- fuck it- I may well change my mind again whie I write this. It’s my fucking list, piss off.

Some of you might remember me previously explaining that the Legit Bosses will be published a little later in the year because I had a big immigration law exam on the 25th February to study for. Well, despite studying like an appropriately legit boss myself, a week before the exam I was rushed to the hospital with ulcerative colitis, which was serious enough for me to be kept in the hospital for eight days, miss the exam and have to reschedule for May. I could have finished this dumb fucking list before New Year Day. Ah well, not to worry, just know that, no matter how fiendishly provocative and titillatingly obtuse my writing predictably, I resent everything about having to write this list and in all honesty despise you for reading it. More after the jump!!

Continue reading “Legit Bosses: The 125 Best Songs of 2020 (pt.1 #125-#81)”

Necessary Evil 2020 pt.13 (15-11)

#15 Burial: Tunes 2011-2019

Yeah, you know how JPEGMAFIA’s album was just a collection of singles from the previous year? Well, Burial sees that effort and raises it by releasing a collection of singles and EPs from the better part of the last decade. Might have made sense to split the two albums up on the list. This list isn’t about aesthetics and sensible ordering though. It’s pure science. And if the science states that they should be placed next to each other, perhaps both fitted with a secret microchip so Bill Gates can track their movements, then who are we to argue?

Sigh… I’m going to have to start with an embarrassing confession. I know, many of you reading this already think all the things I write are shamefully embarrassing, but this is a distressing mark against my musical knowledge which, come on, up until now was unimpeached. In November of 2019, roughly a month before this collection came out, I wrote this:

Continue reading “Necessary Evil 2020 pt.13 (15-11)”

Necessary Evil 2020 pt.10 (30-26)

#30 Luke Haines & Peter Buck: Beat Poetry for Survivalists

Luke Haines is always going to earn a place on this list. Aside from his near legendary cantankerousness these days best evidenced through his Twitter account now that he doesn’t sell anyway near enough records for any journalist to want to bother talking to, but he might actually be one of the most influential and important British music artists of the last 30 years without anyone really noticing or caring (least of all Haines himself). Unfortunately, a lot of that influence and importance isn’t really valued in 2020, like Haines has spent a large part of his career building up a collection of several billion Yugoslav Dinar. His previous band, The Auteurs, didn’t just release the greatest album of 1996, but are widely considered to have been the first Britpop band and their 1993 debut ‘New Wave‘ is considered the first album and perhaps the ultimate example of the genre. Unfortunately, crowing about an artist’s importance to Britpop in 2020 is like raving about one of the most important engineers ever because of their revolutionary idea to build houses using asbestos. People are unlikely to share your enthusiasm, and will likely debate whether it should be considered a ‘good thing’. Regardless of the nonsense that Britpop quickly descended into though, it still can’t be denied that Haines played a central part in solidifying the importance and artistic/financial viability of British guitar music at the beginning of the 90s, and without him we may never of had… erm… what British guitar band are they nowadays? Royal Blood. Without Luke Haines we may never have had Royal Blood. Can you even imagine? But, yeah, he doesn’t care, he’s happy enough by ow (all relative, of course) releasing extremely decent but lower scale and borderline comedy solo albums.

Continue reading “Necessary Evil 2020 pt.10 (30-26)”

The Legit Bosses: Best Tracks of the Year (50-41)

50 Glass Animals: Youth

As soon as you hear that first ‘Ooh!’ a few seconds in you’re more than likely dropping your ears’ knickers

(what the fuck does that mean?)

49 Wild Beasts: He the Colossus

I feel that in 20 years time when late night art talk shows on BBC4 are discussing how odd it was that Wild Beasts are widely accepted as one of the greatest bands of the 21st century yet completely unheralded in their time I’ll be showing blog entries like this to unbelieving post-millennials to prove how far ahead of the curve I was

Continue reading “The Legit Bosses: Best Tracks of the Year (50-41)”

103 Lady Gaga: Joanne

The Ga has managed to avoid me thus far. When she first arrived and was at her successful and cultural highpoint, I was in my mid 20s and so obviously far too cool to really like her, and she was just far too big a deal to like ironically, as my overwhelming snarky self-satisfaction would have been lost in the midst of all those pathetic genuine fans

-4

download (1).jpg

Plus…

…she was a bit crap, wasn’t she? I mean, come on

-13

She was an absolutely brilliant pop star, exhibiting shades of both Bowie’s artistic mindedness and Prince’s

prince.gif

delight in using both sexuality and fashion to subvert and offend, and the world needs pop stars who are willing to shock the order by stroking their genitals across the dead body of Kermit the Frog while projectile vomiting raw meet <I can’t find the incident to which you are referring, can you please clarify?- Ed>

+5

PnbbuCu.jpg

Oh, and for prior services to fashion Googoo gets

8 Prince Points

But, yeah, songs like the dull electronica of Poker Face or the shameless pandering of Born This way were always several shades less interesting and experimental than the person from whence they came

-3

razor eamone

So, maybe I’m too late, and the Gagoo I discover is producing significantly better music, but the terms of the agreement she made with God unfortunately means she is now about 12.5% as interesting as she used to be

-9

vomit.jpg

That atrocious lyric is slightly redeemed by the chorus though, which is the inaugural recipient of my

oral

award, which awards a singer finding new and exciting way to work their mouth around a lyric:

gaga

Metacritic: +67

Length 45 minutes +1

Number of AMAZING songs: 1 (+10)

Best Lyric: ‘She’s stacking money, money everywhere she goes/You know, pesos out of Mexico/De uno, commas and them decimals/She don’t gotta give it up, she professional’ +1

Is the last song just the first track but played on Ukulele? No -1

Total 66

Images stolen from:

http://gagadaily.com/forums/topic/243627-has-gaga-ever-lip-synced/

http://www.animalplanet.com/pets/healthy-pets/what-does-it-mean-when-your-cat-licks-you/

http://www.istockphoto.com/gb/illustrations/vomit?excludenudity=true&sort=mostpopular&mediatype=illustration&phrase=vomit

http://www.wwe.com/superstars/razor-ramon/razor-ramon-photos#fid-26074025

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/entertainment/music/Lady-Gaga-Beyonce-Premiere-Tarantino-Inspired-Telephone-Video-87444397.html

http://gagadaily.com/forums/topic/201964-joanne-album-cover-meltdowns-go-in-here/?page=3