2 Prince: Parade

Dec 26, 2025 ~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

Yeah, I was completely baiting you when I said that this 1986 stone cold classic and eighth stop on our annual trawl through the most interesting back catalogue in 20th century pop might have been named the best album of 2025. It isn’t, and no Prince album on this journey ever will be named as the album of the year: While these annual lists can contain records from all kinds of points in recent and ancient musical history (this year’s list already has ancient texts dating all the way back from 2022), the #1 album always needs to have been released in the qualifying 12 month period. I’m not saying that my personal favourite ever Prince album would have been named #1 if it could, all I’m saying is that it couldn’t. It also means the competition announced on Christmas Day is still open! Nobody’s won it yet! Nobody’s entered it, admittedly, but I assume that’s because all my millions (and millions!) of readers are still just thinking really hard about it.

By 1986, it had essentially always been Prince and The Revolution. Ever since Prince needed a backing band to tour his recently released (and completely self-composed) debut album in 1979, that group (Dez Dickerson on guitar and backing vocals, Andre Cymone on bass guitar, Bobby Z on drums and percussion, Gayle Chapman on keyboards and, obviously, Matt “Dr.” Fink on keyboards) may not have had an official name yet, but they were the first building blocks of what would soon become by far and away Prince’s greatest ever collaborators. When Gayle Champman was replaced by Lisa Coleman in 1980 and Brown Mark replaced Andre Cymone the year after, this thrillingly tight and unbelievably exciting live band were considered at least enough of a part of the Prince package to be given… a hidden backwards credit on the ‘1999‘ album cover.

Goodness will guide us if love is inside us?

Top 40 Prince Songs Recorded Between 23rd April 1985 and 31st March 1986

Oct 26, 2025Dec 9, 2025 ~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

The eighth Prince album ‘Parade’ was released in 1986. It has twelve songs on it. Is it any good? Mate, spoiler alert! You’ll find out if I think it’s a stinker when I list the 2025 Necessary Evil albums of the year!

Previously though, I have included tracks from Prince’s albums in my Legit Bosses countdowns of the best songs of the year. But that’s not really fair, is it? When He was listed as the joint best song of 2024 people were piiiiiiiiiiiissed!

So I’m going to give Prince His own dedicated countdown, at least in the near future, simply ranking all the songs that He recorded between His last album, 2024’s ‘Around the World in a Day‘, and 2025’s ‘Parade’. So, ranking ‘Parade’s twelve tracks, right?

Well… no… I could never settle on an exact number, but Prince recorded somewhere between 60 and 100 original songs in the eleven month period between the two albums. Eleven of them would appear on ‘Parade’; one would appear on His 1987 album ‘Sign ‘O’ the Times’; a handful would appear on future albums; some were given to protegees and other artists (including one that was famously taken the fuck back); and many are instrumental jams that were… maybe… never going to be released, but Prince was planning an instrumental jazz album at the time so it’s impossible to say.

We are now entering Prince’s most prolific period: in the next two or three years He would plan and then cancel at least four separate albums, countless side projects, a damn play, He would split up His band, start to question whether Warner Brothers were working in His best interests; and launch a near impossible to count number of failed protégées. It’s quite a ride.

Oh, and that 23rd April 1985 (when ‘Around the World in a Day’ was released) to 31st March 1985 (‘Parade’) timeline is occasionally loosely applied by a week or so (and, in one case, two fucking months). I’ve gone with the first recording of each song, as otherwise we have no idea (so, obviously, thanks a billion to https://princevault.com/.

Here’s the YouTube playlist, you lazy bastards.

This is what it’s like in the Dream Factory

The Best Film of 2025: Under the Cherry Moon

Oct 11, 2025 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Arise ye pris’ners of starvation
Arise ye wretched of the earth
For justice thunders condemnation
A better world’s in birth!
No more tradition’s chains shall bind us
Arise, ye slaves, no more in thrall;
The earth shall rise on new foundations
We have been naught we shall be all.

Eugène Pottier‘s ‘L’Internationale‘; written in 1871 after the violent crushing of the Paris Commune that Pottier was a part of

1984’s ‘Purple Rain’ was an incredible – and completely illogical – success. That film starred an at the time moderately successful pop star in their first acting role; an ensemble cast that was essentially made up of people that moderately successful pop star was either in a band with, was mates with, or was shagging; a script that had gone through several rewrites and rejections until eventually being shaped by a television writer building on that moderately successful pop star’s own bonkers ideas; and was also directed by an unknown debutant who’s recently edited an absolute flop. And who was far from the first choice.

The film made $70 million off a $7 million budget, picking up an Oscar as well for its troubles. Shit, thought Warner Brothers, We don’t understand it at all but this guy just shits money, maybe just do whatever He wants in future? When Prince said to Warner Brothers in 1985 that He was thinking of making another film, they greenlit the idea without even seeing a script. ‘Purple Rain’ was a monster hit when it starred a moderately successful pop star, now we’re getting the same shit again only now it’s by the biggest star in the world?? We could be talking Rocky IV numbers!!

If you wanted to buy a Sam CookE aLblum, where would you go?

#14 Les Savy Fav: OUI, LSF

Dec 16, 2024Dec 16, 2024 ~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

I’m turning 50 soon. The last time we recorded something as Les Savy Fav, I was about 40. Around that time, I had a serious mental health crisis – I got diagnosed with bipolar and had been manic for a long time, then went very depressed. Getting out of that took a couple of years and was really dramatic for me and my family. I’ve always identified with a Peter Pan type universe, so I was trying to figure out how to square the person you see on stage, which is core to who I am, with the person that wants to be able to afford pants…

I then got laid off from my job and that was super stressful. Turns out I hated that job. I hadn’t really thought about it, but all of a sudden I realised I had spent so much energy annoyed by this thing, that when it went away, it was like clarity. I was writing music, I was writing lyrics, and it wasn’t just because I had more free time. It was about mental space and realising how much energy it takes to grind an axe. I think that’s where so many people get stuck.

Frontman Tim Harrington briefly lets Crack Magazine what he’s been up to for the past 14 years, 24.02.16

Les Savy motherfucking Sav, bitches!

Les Savy Fav last made this list when they were ranked number seven in 2007, on the oldest of these lists that I’ve ever been able to track down and post online. Anthony Kliedis’s girlfriend wasn’t even born when this band last (and first) made the Necessary Evil countdown. And even seventeen years ago, I was laughably late to the party. Gimme a break though: I was a married, fuckable 23 year old with a social life, easy access to drugs, and functioning alcoholism, so I was kinda busy, yeah?? LSF had been a going concern since 1995 and had released their debut single in 1997. Those who knew about them were instant converts – here’s a Pitchfork piece from 1998 describing the band playing to a one person crowd and the writer still being won over – but for the first decade or so of their career despite inspiring devotion from those lucky enough to experience them, even freaking Jesus had more disciples than these guys. Yeah, I realise that Jesus is a pretty big deal these days, but to have only twelve disciples in his own lifetime is pretty pathetic, guy just wasn’t a draw. I’m not denying Jesus’s influence! Just that he was more like the Velvet Underground: only twelve people followed him at the time but each one wrote a book about him.

Baraa Mohamed Fawzi Shaldan