2026’s New Gold Star Artist’s (and a Couple of Shameful Exits)

Keep up at the back! I’ve explained all of this a dozen times by this point! For glorious entry into the prized and celebrated Necessary Evil Gold Star Artists Hall of Fame you need to meet just two basic yet extraordinary difficult criteria:

  • At least three albums
  • All albums featured on the Necessary Evil best of year countdown

Well… not none, but… few… Few Shall Pass.

NE25 saw two new entries to the most prestigious list in all of music. In all of life. And they’re biggies: legitimately two of the most notable artists of the 21st century, and even if a normie mainstream media (more like lamestream media, ammi right lads???) outlet like Rolling Stone or BBC or The Daily Stormer or Razzle decided to list the greatest artists of the past two decades they’d both be listed high. And, in a pleasing bit of symmetry, there were also two artists condemned to the eternal shame of being disqualified from the Gold Star Artists Hall of Fame and violently dispelled into the disgraceful Ex-Gold Star Graveyard. It was a great shame that one of these artists was expelled. The other one I couldn’t give less of a shit about.

More, more, more, how do you like it?

Necessary Evil 2019 (16-11)

Boooooooooooooooooooooooooo-yar!! This will actually take us up to the top ten! And it’s not even Christmas yet!! Just to be clear, you should all be very impressed.

16 Pickle Darling: Bigness

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Just… gorgeous. ‘Bigness’ seems almost like it was intended as something of a wry, ironic name, as Mr Darling deals in ostensibly small scale music. His songs can initially seem so slight, polite, inoffensive and casual, all linked with a voice so hesitant and unassuming that it’s the volume and urgency that a fruit fly might adopt if it wanted to get the waiter’s attention at Costa Coffee to inquire as to what was taken its Hazelnut Praline & Cream Latte so long but didn’t want to make too much fuss. The tags that the album is identified with on Bandcamp are alternative; bedroom pop; christchurch; new zealand; pop; indie; indie pop; Christchurch, which tells you one thing… Well no, it firsts lets you know that Pickle Darling is from Christchurch, New Zealand, as he’s so keen for you to realise that that he states it twice, but the second thing that the tags tell you is that ‘Bigness’ is a bit of a cheery, unassuming and- in the words of Helltown– ‘bedroom bullshit‘ kind of record. It’ll be fine. It’ll be cheery, a little bit twee but well meaningfully pleasant. Most of all though, it’ll be small.

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