2025’s New Gold Star Artists (and a couple of RIPs)

Sigh, I guess I should explain the rules again? To be honest, if this is one of your first times reading The Most Trusted Voice in Music then you really should start with the first post from December 1st 2014 and then read through the next 791 entries (or “chapters”, as I like to think of them) until you’re ready to read this post. Necessary Evil might be oversimply referred to as a ‘Blog’, but it’s actually more of an epic tale – a poem, really – that only sampling parts of risks lessoning its artistic impact. What’s happened to this generation’s attention spans?

OK, the criteria for qualifying for the Necessary Hall of Fame as a Gold Star Artist:

  • At least three albums
  • All albums featured on the Necessary Evil best of year countdown since 2007

There were three new Legit Bosses crowned on the the 2024 list, and here’s my ranking of their three albums so far, which will soon be added to the ongoing Hall of Fame.

And, excitingly, for the first time this year we have two artists that have brought great shame on their careers, their legacies, and their entire families by dropping out of the Gold Star Artist Hall of Fame. Both (predictably) Soccer Mommy and (perhaps surprisingly) Illuminati Hotties released records in 2024 that weren’t considered good enough for the end of year lists, so they are forever banished to the dreaded Ex-Gold Star Graveyard. There, they are both feted to rot for eternity. A ridiculously harsh ‘punishment’ for the supposed crime of releasing a record that I didn’t think was quite as good as their previous three+? Especially tough considering Soccer Mommy’s previous three albums were all released before the list shortened to 40 albums and all finished outside the top 40, so could arguably be being punished for remaining as good as they ever were?

Yes.

Sorry, SJW cuck snowflakes, take your woke ideas of fairness and ‘not treating people like shit’ back to Libtardia. This is Necessary Evil. We hit harder here.

KAPOW! CRRAACK! ZGRUPPP!

Legit Bosses – The 160 Best Songs of 2023

In their 1972 book ‘Psychology of the Arts‘, Hans and Shulamith Kreitler tried to explain the reasoning behind why certain people react in certain ways to certain pieces of art. However, they deemed that to fully explain it, your knowledge of each person would need to “extend over an immeasurably large range of variables, which would include not only perceptive, cognitive, emotional and other personality characteristics, but also biographical data, specific personal experiences, past encounters with art, and individual memories and associations”. Sounds like a lot of work, right? Well, luckily, I’m here to just tell you what the best music of 2023 was, so all that effort behind your own personal psychosis can be sidestepped altogether. Think of it as my new year’s present.

no spoilers on what number this particular classic finished

And there’s one hundred and sixty this year. Maybe one hundred and sixty one. Because there was a lot of great tunes released in 2023. While limiting the Necessary Evil list to just 40 albums still meant there was space for at least one ‘meh’ album and one absolute stinker, over the past week I’ve actually had to really edit this list down to prevent it being ridiculous. And yet here we are: 160. Maybe 161.

I’m also going to be giving shout outs to particular golden moments in certain songs – similar to what I did in 2018 – and for each of those I’m going to be using a picture of one of the greatest moments in the short history of All Elite Wrestling, because… well… I get the horrible feeling that company is cooked and I hope to look back on this list in five years time and laugh at how pessimistic I was.

Can I finish this before 2024 and maybe have some days off before I go back to work?? Let’s seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

[Edit: No. No I cannot. Not even close.

You’ve got some playlists though, will that make you happy?? Here’s the countdown on Spotify and on YouTube, minus the unavailable songs on whatever platform]

I REMEMBER NOTHING, SO THERE’S NOTHING TO REGRET