Tag: SZA: blind

Legit Bosses – The 160 Best Songs of 2023

~ Lex Leeson ~ 30 Comments

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

4 SZA: SOS

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

This ain’t no warning shot, in case all of you hoes forgot, they know we’ve been more than lost. Us punk-asses tried to replace them but the stakes were too high, we weren’t able to live off some SZA mini-me. In December 8th 2022 they dumped this album like a press squeeze, they were horny like “Suck these”, daring like “Touch me”. They just want what’s theirs, after spending more than five years watching countless people try and fail to replicate the magic of their debut album.

And it’s hard to be a SZA mini-me. Their incredible 2017 debut album felt like a true moment in the history of recorded music. It’s one of the handful of 21st century records – as our tastes become more and more individualised and the latest stage of capitalism involves eliminating community and creating more dividing lines along identity – that is near unanimously considered an all-time classic. It spent more than 300 weeks on the Billboard top 200, selling millions of copies. You gotta rip that off, right??

OUT OF REACH, OUT OF TOUCH, TOO NUMB, I DON’T FEEL NO WAY