Tag: lava la rue

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

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

#7 Young Jesus: The Fool

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

God damn it…

Yeah, I was insanely sick the past couple of days. It started when a toothache started to really make itself very noticeable while I was writing my JPEGMAFIA piece on Thursday. I phoned up the emergency dentist and made an appointment for the next day, for the second time in the past ten days. “But Alex”, I hear you cry, “Why aren’t you registered to a regular dentist? Or why haven’t you even gone to the dentist in the previous decade??”. To which I reply: shut up, mum! Anyway, soon after I made that appointment, my toothache became unbearable. Paracetamols were no good, I’m apparently not supposed to take ibuprofen because of my ulcerative colitis, so I was running out of options. Until I remembered that I used to be prescribed codeine! I rooted through all my old medications until I found a pack, and then munched down about a thousand of them! This kinda sorted out my toothache, but at the same time fucked me over in every other sense. The next day, I could barely get out of bed, cancelled my Chinese class in the morning, and honestly tried to write this fucking post, but my head felt like all my brain synapses had been placed inside an oil drum that had been violently kicked off the top of the K2. The effort it took to exist yesterday was already unbearable, never mind write this dumb list that nobody reads.

Which is a shame, considering that this is the only album on the list so far that actually has a song on it written about me. No, honestly, it does. Yeah, I know that sounds crazy, but it’s not, don’t put in the paper that I got crazy.

Hala Yasser Hamed Al-Sinnwa

#17 Lava La Rue: Starface

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

It’s another concept album, kids!

And it’s a pretty great concept, not gonna NGL. A “Lesbian Ziggy Stardust”, as Lava themselves has christened it. ‘Starface’ is the name of a genderfluid alien who crash lands on Earth, puts their best human skin on, discovers that we humans are into some freaky-deaky shit, there’s some big battle which isn’t fully explained, Starface then falls in love in a brave show of support for inter-species relations (would have preferred it if they started fucking a walrus or something, but a human is alright, I guess), is dismayed by the fact that some people are on drugs, and ends the tale by (spoiler) debating whether they should return to their planet.

Malak Saher Nasr Abu-Sahlool

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

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

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

#55 Lava La Rue: High Fidelity

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

Ma dudes, I can’t do this again, how many more thousands of words do all your leeches need from me explaining how much I fucking adore Lava La Rue? They are one of the most exciting, most vibrant, most dang essential up and coming artists in this early stages of the 2020s we somehow find ourselves encased within.

‘High Fidelity’ is more excellence, and subsequently also works as a quick cheat sheet if you want an eighteen minute primer on why Lava’s multi-influenced, energetic yet always vulnerable, ethereal takes on queer romance make them such a pant-wettingly exciting prospect for defining the next decade or so of British music.

DO YOU LIKE THEM THOUGH? I FEEL LIKE YOU’RE BEING VAGUE

#57 Alvvays: Blue Rev

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

OK, own up, the lot of you, when was it all decided that Alvvays were officially ‘A Big Deal’? I loved their previous album ‘Antisocialites’ in 2018, as did everyone who heard it. But, like, ‘everyone who heard it’ was a couple of hundred worldwide, surely? It just never seemed that many people were aware of them, they’re such a minute and delicate little gem, surely more than maybe 72 people listening to their dainty little anthems would cause the band to shatter? Be careful how you handle Alvvays!! They’re fragile!

Yeah, his finishing move was him teabagging his opponent. Shut up, you just don’t understand wrestling

Yeah, I know that both of their albums have been shortlisted for the Canadian Polaris Music Prize, and that ‘Antisocialite’ won the Juno award for Alternative Album of the Year, which, yes, is a real thing and, yes, is also Canadian. But these are Canadian awards! How many people actually live in Canada? Couple of thousand, maybe? At a push? Their adorable little awards are hardly a good barometer of someone’s wider cultural impact. You know who won that Juno award this year? Mustafa the Poet! Who, yeah, actually sounds pretty awesome now I read about him, but he ain’t headlining no Superbowls, brother!

HEADLINING THE SUPERBOWL SHOULD GET YOU BLACKLISTED

Legit Bosses: 2021’s 121 Greatest Songs

~ Lex Leeson ~ 6 Comments

You know it’s all about that boom! Legit Bosses, baybay!*

(*yeah, that song isn’t actually included. It’ll be on Legit Bosses 2022 though! I’m just a bit slow with these things…)

So, only 121 this year, a marked decline on 2020’s 125. So was it a notably worse year? Absolutely chuffing not. Despite the 2.928% drop in numbers, the quality on show is outstanding. Never mind the weight, feel the quality. The top maybe twenty songs especially are on some next level shit, and you haven’t seen so many GOATs since you traumatically happened upon Weird Uncle Colin’s problematic porn collection back in 92. I also shaved a few songs last minute, mainly because they were from albums due to be released in 2022 and I decided to make them Next Year Alex’s problem. Also, one or two I realised… weren’t… actually… that… good… So that just means the 121 that made the cut are all of such spectacular quality that you may want to warn the people around you before you start reading this list, as the floor between your legs is about to get soaked.

No, no, hey, maybe it’s you that’s too gross, ever considered that??

Anyway, let the festivities begin, here are the playlists:

Spotify

YouTube

Continue reading “Legit Bosses: 2021’s 121 Greatest Songs” →

26 Olivia Rodrigo: SOUR

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

I’m so insecure, I think

That I’ll die before I drink

Brutal

Ha! Trust me, Ms Rodrigo, if I died before I first drank, it would have made a lot of people’s lives easier! Your not missing anything, I promise. Have you ever tried Methyl​enedioxy​methamphetamine though? That’s some good stuff, get it down you.

Christ, it’s a minefield trying to search for Olivia Rogrido photos. Like, is she twelve years old in that one?? I’m I accidentally turning this whole post into paedofodder? There’s also a lot of gifs of her doing something like sticking her tongue out but looped, which I’m pretty sure are just weird masturbation fodder for 40 year old men. OK, not many years until I’ll greatly appreciate all that pandering, but right now it’s still officially gross, OK? Jesus, this woman turned eighteen in February of this year, and this is her life now. Listen, maybe just read my Jordana piece and, like, amplify it.

I guessed you moved on really easily

28 Lava La Rue: BUTTER-FLY

~ Lex Leeson ~ 6 Comments

You know that I ain’t blind

I can feel the tension, even when we’re not together

Even when we talk on facetime

Tell me it ain’t wishful thinking

Tell me, girl, I’m not wrong

You know that we more than get along baby

G.O.Y.D

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaw shit. That song… hits… Shit. It’s actually borderline difficult to listen to.

No no no, it’s not difficult because of the phenomenal Lava La Rue, silly! La Rue has absolutely become one of my favourite things in 2021! I love her more than many of my direct family members! I definitely love her more than at least a portion of the people I’ve been married to! In fact, she’s the official winner of the 2021 Necessary Evil One to Watch™ award! Do I have a logo for that? I feel like I should have a logo for that. Hang on a second…

Yes, I know I have beautiful eyes, try saying something original we all don’t already know every now and then, yeah? Lava La Rue now officially has the same accolade awarded to her by Necessary Evil as she did by the Grauniad way back in July 2019. But did that Grauniad award come with such a beautiful logo? No. So sit down, your nonsense didn’t mean shit.

more words to watch (and read)