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?

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