2024’s New Gold Star Artists

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

20 RobinPlaysChords: Unmasking

The Soviets were completely convinced that “Able Archer” was the cover for a real nuclear strike. They believed that starting from this maneuver a strike aimed at decapitating the command, control and communication centers of the Soviet army, the state apparatus and the party apparatus would be carried out with the help of the new ultra-modern and precise tactical nuclear missiles, Pershing II and cruise missiles for which you had a warning time of only five to eight minutes. With these rockets, the criminal gang in the Pentagon hoped to decapitate the Soviet army, so that they — a quote that I myself have heard — “would run around the farmhouse like a chicken with its head cut off.”

Rainer Rupp

I mean, yeah, sure, you had the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, and that was a whole thing, but honestly the Cold War kind of chilled out for a long time after that. The USA and USSR hardly kissed on the mouth afterwards, but they at least came to the conclusion that they should probably take actual nuclear war and guaranteed world destruction off the table for a while. There were still working people attempting to build some sort of Communism all over the world of course, and the USA trying to support the ruling classes to beat these people down – in Angola, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent Bangladesh and Ethiopia – but the world’s two biggest swinging dicks at least agreed to maybe not spray both of their piss in every direction with such ferocity that it ended all human life. That would, they both agreed, really stink.

Then – whoop-de-fucking-doo – Thatcher and Reagan were elected in 1979 and 1980. They were both united in their shared belief that they were tired of this hippy bullshit. They also both agreed that having to consider workers rights and public welfare to make sure their populations didn’t look too longingly over to the Soviet Union was a lot of work. It also required a high tax rate for the rich. And they thought fuck that. What if, yeah – here me out, OK? – we just stopped caring for 90% of our own citizens, tell them that the real enemy is the ‘Evil Empire’ of the USSR, cut all taxes for rich people so the ruling class has reason to support us, and be done with nearly all public spending apart from shit loads of fucking rockets and shit that we’ll obviously need to protect ourselves against the ‘Evil Empire’? Cool? Cool.

‘CAUSE I DON’T WANNA FEEL HOW I DID LAST NIGHT

22 metagirl: (22) I FEEL YOU EVERYWHERE

[23.12.12 EDIT: Fuck! I’ve only just clocked that the album title starts with ‘(22)’ and it’s actually landed at #22! Come on, that’s proof of God’s existence, no?]

I recently discovered I want to be goth which is gonna make my next album really fun. Hopefully won’t take 2 years this time

Elora in 2020

Well, it technically didn’t take two years. And it ain’t fucking goth. It’s a borderline work of genius though.

Usually, when a small, none-more-independent bedroom artists like Elora Faith releases a record that beautifully exhibits their deft songcraft and seemingly supernatural way around a melody, my chief response is to usually lament what world-humping genius they’d be capable of if they had access to the resources. Would this artist be able to produce a record as universally beloved as ‘Desire, I Want to Turn Into You‘ if only the production budget extended to bagpipes? Would the raw, stripped back Strokes trumping GIVE AND TAKE AND WITCHCRAFT really get to the next level if Elora could afford to hire someone to blow a referees’ whistle just before the musical break like Paradise City? What if the budget stretched far enough for Taylor Swift to rap over ANTIBODIES about “Getting down to this sick beat“? Would that make the song better?

NOW IT’S BACK TO THE INTRO, BACK TO THE BAR

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

#65 ANGEL_TECH: INITIATION :3

Remember how much I stanned the vertical bar in BIG|BRAVEs name at #71? Bro, I was super simping for that punctuation symbol, wasn’t I? It was totally… bussin’… and… PAWG…? Look at all these hip new words I’m using! As far as you know, I’m, like, 22 years old or something. Yeah, I’m a hip young gunslinger. Yes I am. Stop gaslighting me.

Hold on, slow down *grabs pen and paper* Laugh… out… loud… Go on.

Eeeeeeeeeeew, ‘PAWG’ stands for ‘Phat Ass White Girl’?? I honestly never knew that, it’s so gross! I will state at this point that I personally will not be referring to either Melanie James/melodus nor Elora Driver/metagirl as ‘PAWGs’, though they are of course free to refer to themselves as such and may well fit the description.

‘PHAT’ STANDS FOR ‘PRETTY HOT AND TEMPTING’??

Legit Bosses: 2021’s 121 Greatest Songs

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”

Who Needs Love Like Stat? Necessary Evil 2020 in Numbers

Finally, on the the 31st day of March in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty one, we can officially put 2020 to bed. I like doing this post every year, as it’s mostly pictures and I don’t have to do much talking. Just to make it clear, I can’t stress enough how much I hate talking to you people. No, not the person reading this, you’re cool, all the other people, yeah? You know what I’m talking about! Fuck them, right?

We start off, innocently enough, by ranking the countries of nationality in a proven failsafe way to find the best country in the world.

Seriously though, USA always wins this by such a margin that it’s actually embarrassing, and I don’t expect different this year…

Nationality

My tip for inevitable greatness, Dua Saleh, was born in Sudan but was forced to flee the Second Sudanese Civil War in the 90s with her family, eventually being granted asylum in the USA. I have no idea what nationality she considers herself, or even if she bothers to consider it at all, but I’m calling her half Sudanese in a desperate attempt to make this list a little more diverse

Continue reading “Who Needs Love Like Stat? Necessary Evil 2020 in Numbers”