Tag: mgmt

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

The Necessary Evil Hall of Fame: Gold Star Artists

~ Lex Leeson ~ 21 Comments
  • At least three albums
  • All albums featured on the Necessary Evil best of year countdown

I’ve been doing this dumb blog that nobody reads since my first post on the 1st December 2014 called the latest Pixies album an “especially grievous dirty protest”. 2024’s list was the tenth I’ve written in excruciating detail on the blog. The intelligent thing to do would be to call it a day after that. But then again the really intelligent thing to would have been to never start it in the first place. As a stupid person, I’m definitely conflicted. My (recorded) albums of the year go back to 2007. I’m not wanting to put too fine a point on it, nor am I at all pompous enough to ever overexaggerate my importance, but I think it’s fair to say that I am objectively the paramount and most respected voice on music of the last 15 years. And before that too, I just didn’t have a blog then.

Pulitzer Prize stuff from 2019

But what about the artists themselves? They sometimes play a part in the psychosexual agitprop magic of this blog. We can obviously consider the artists whose work has appeared most in my year end lists, but that’s obviously going to be the Manics (eleven + one very decent JDB solo record and one dreadful Nick Wire one), Prince (eleven, and eventually all 42 of the fuckers) and Nick Cave (I think around eleven, over a variety of projects). Like, duh much? We can all agree without any argument at all that these are the three most important musical artists of all time. It’s like if someone says their favourite food is “crisps”. Like, of course it’s crisps. Crisps are amazing. Everyone loves crisps. But what does that tell you about them as a person?? No, we need a different gage to work out the real stars of Necessary Evil.

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Necessary Evil 2021 (70 – 61)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 12 Comments

70 Kings of Leon: When You See Yourself

(2016 #104, 2008 #17, 2007 #1!)

I’m allowed to still have Kings of Leon, right? You people will still consent to this? This is still OK, yeah? Nobody’s feeling mistreated in any way? I don’t want this to be one of those things where I was almost sure you were OK to me playing with my gross old man testicles while you watched holding back tears.

Remember that Simply Red song Holding Back the Tears? Well that’s what it was about. Mick Hucknall was so ahead of his time. He was trying to teach us, why did we refuse to learn? What’s that? It was actually called Holding Back the Years?? Well, shucks… Ah well, I’ve written it now.

I’ve done well, haven’t I? I’ve, like, mostly irradiated all the bullshit white guy rock that was honestly the entirety of all music I consumed before the age of about 19. I like to think that my end of year lists, while being a no way near exhaustive list of new music, is at least a forward thinking and progressive exercise in highlighting new and exciting progressions in style and presentation and in many different (and often new) genres. What’s your favourite Turmeric Trancotone album of 2021? Gotta be #26, right?

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41 The Men: Drift [CANCELLED DUE TO JOSE MOURINHO]

~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

I’m really sorry, Men, and I really do honestly love your album. I’d probably hypothetically put it as forty second or maybe fortieth best album of the year, if I was into stuff as bizarrely obsessive compulsive as only even enjoying art in order to list it at year’s end. And- ho-ho!- I had a straight fire bang up the elephant entry planned! It would have been so funny it would have literally blow all your collective arses out through your collective eyeballs. Literally. Literally. It’s unfortunately had to be shelved, much like my editor told me that it ‘wasn’t a good time’ to publish my ‘Top 100 Boeing Aircrafts’ on September 11th 2001. Especially as I’d planned to hold the launch party in Times Square. While dressed as Osama Bin Laden. It’s really hard to judge the mood at times like that.

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Besides, let’s face it, I’ll just write the exact same piece I was planning later on an album I’m struggling to think of what to say about. I’m looking at you, El Perro del Mar!! Erm… ‘spoiler’… I guess…

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47 Big Thief: Capacity

~ Lex Leeson ~ 9 Comments

Sibling Thievery

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I’ve already mentioned how much I always appreciate recommendations and referrals, how I am always fascinated by what exact pieces of culture push different people’s buttons and charge up their dopamine. I am always intrigued by different people’s appreciations and infatuations, and am always eager to investigate them further if I have no working relationship with them.

(Once, back when I was drinking, drugging and fucking at university- believing I was living an impossibly cool Hunter S Thompson-like gonzo lifestyle while actually near irreparably fucking my life up for more than a decade- I was in a girl’s room the morning after a CONQUEST the night before- #LAD- and was perusing her CD collection. I laughingly put down the ridiculousness of much of her collection, explaining to her at length how fucking shit Jamiroquai, Sublime, The Mighty Bosstones etc were. She slapped me in the face. Like, hard. I immediately realised how much I deserved it, and changed my life accordingly. I later married that woman. True story)

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56 Young M.A: Herstory

~ Lex Leeson ~ 16 Comments

Old A.P Loves Young M.A

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I always appreciate cultural recommendations: if you mention a song, album, movie, TV show or wrestling match you think I’d like, or simply something that you really like yourself, I will always afford it close consideration. I once watched a fricking eleven hour movie in freaking Korean (the lamestream media claim it’s only 2 hours 36 minutes, but it’s definitely eleven hours! #FakeNews) and an entire TV series about American football just because a friend suggested I do so. If someone is really interested in something, it’s always worth investigating. Chiefly for the following reasons:

(Bwa-ha-ha! That should ensure they click the ‘read more’ link!! #Clickbait)

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