Tag: vince mcmahon

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

~ 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 Biggest Moment of 2023

https://www.redbubble.com/i/hoodie/larry-by-SWITCHSHOP/152034883.VR8OC
~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

I hate this idea that you’re the best. Because you’re not. I’m the best. I’m the best in the world. There’s one thing you’re better at than I am and that’s kissing ass…

I am the best wrestler in the world. I’ve been the best ever since day one when I walked into this company. And I’ve been vilified and hated since that day.

CM Punk’s ‘Pipe Bomb’ promo, 27/06/2011

I thought I’d already written the final eulogy on CM Punk’s wresting career. His firebombing of goodwill and petulant kicking of the pricks surrounding his cot in the aftermath of All Out 2022 sounded the death knell of his comeback to the ring. Surely now, he had burned too many bridges, shown himself to just be too unstable a livewire, for any federation to continue to employ him, and likely for many major wrestlers to want to work with him.

So I look at it like this: November 13th 2022, Punk left this blog.

November 18th 2023? He’s back

i’m trying to run a fucking business here

AEW All In 2023: Proper PPV Review (Part 1: the Build Up)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

Alright, so we’ve had all the niceties, I’ve given all you sick freaks a few thousand words and what it felt like to watch ‘The Biggest Event In Wrestling History™’ live in attendance, now let’s take a look at the actual show itself. Immediately, this means two things:

  1. The photos are going to be a lot better. But, I dunno, lacking some of that charm, you know warra mean? Not as legitimate somehow? Like, sure, you’ve got your complex autofocus tracking and your high-ISO capabilities, but where’s the heart, y’know? Hey, Isa, if you’re reading this, you’re the real star. And, also:
  2. There’s gonna be a lot more complaining. The Wembley show was an absolute triumph (as I write this intro, I still haven’t watched the PPV broadcast that I’m about to review), but most of the build-up, decsions and angles leading up to it were weak as The Weeknd covering that Skunk Anansie song for seven days straight. Shut up, that line worked perfectly. The card was borderline piss poor on paper, I would suggest that there were maybe (maybe) three matches that fit the historic hugeness of the event, and they were all rematches. OK, maybe four, but Grado v Jeff Jarrett was on the pre-show so I’m not counting it. Hey, I’m a wrestling fan, all we do is complain. If you’re ever forced to go undercover to infiltrate a terrorist group of fat, middle aged wresting fans, make sure you never say that you enjoy wrestling: it will blow your cover immediately.

In fact, I’ve written so many complaints, that I’ve had to split this post into two parts. Here, we’re getting general pre-show thoughts, then the events of Zero Hour before the main show began. Net, I’ll just review the matches, I promise… I kinda promise… and that post will come out over the weekend.

Because I don’t write about wrestling that much on a blog that mainly concerned with psychosexual fetishization of suicidal ideations music, so when I do I tend to write under the delusional idea that non wrestling fans might read it. Hence I often have to stop and explain what an ‘Irish Whip’, ‘Tope Suicida’ or ‘Singlet’ is. I’ll be forced to translate carny sentences such as ‘He ribbed the worker and their shizon with the gimmick before taking a bump himself, a total shoot’ into the proper English (‘He murdered his wife and their seven-year-old son before hanging himself at their residence in Fayetteville, Georgia’) to make sure the normies could keep up. Well, screw the normies: I’m preaching to the perverted in this post and assuming at least a base knowledge of AEW in this post. It’s going to get pretty scary, but we’ll all emerge from the other side as better people.

christ, really need to get started on this

#46 Zeal & Ardor: Zeal and Ardor

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

Listen to Z&A’s third full length album, listen to how this bafflingly overlooked Swiss band manage to combine a myriad of genres from soul to gospel to electronica to blues and house them all under a single roof of the blackest of black metal, listen to that at once hilarious and at once terrifying jump cut Emersion makes from BandCamp bedroom electro-pop into screaming death thrash, listen to this band redefine what could be considered heavy rock music for 44 minutes. Then come back to me, I want to see your face when I tell you that this is by far the most straightforward and standard record the band have yet made.

This is all relative, of course: Zeal & Ardor’s ‘normal’ is a far cry from that of plebs like you and I. We still get key changes, electronic swathes, and a near exhausting amount of tropes and genres paid service to. It’s just that compared to the incredibly creative places that the band have dragged their music to over their past two albums (plus 2020’s incredible ‘Wake of a Nation’ EP) their latest often sounds like the band instead turning more inwards and congregating all their visions into making a record that’s slightly more recognisable as ‘metal’.

AND HOW WELL DO THEY DO THAT?

#66 Psychic Graveyard: Veins Feel Strange

~ Lex Leeson ~ 1 Comment

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

Seth Manchester again. Jesus Christ, mate, the places you drag me to. You’re exposing me to dangerous mental disorders here. Is this abuse? Am I being abused? I feel like I’m being abused here.

I am cashing out
I have an expensive mouth
My teeth are stolen
I give watering cans to my children

I Am Blacking Out

No, forget everything I just said, this is fucking awesome. Abuse me more! Choke me Daddy!!

THIS IS GOING PLACES…

The Biggest Moment of 2022

~ Lex Leeson ~ 6 Comments

“I’m here to try and elevate everybody”

With no thought of the massive psychological damage it would cause to middle aged children and the dread it would impose on their already suffocating sense of mortality, with no consideration given to the fact that it was Christmas 2021, like, yesterday, 2022 is soon coming to an end. In previous years I have trailed the year’s Necessary Evil’s list of the year’s best music by naming the year’s best in comparatively unimportant sectors such as films and video games. 2022, however, saw an event so momentous that it renders all other debate on art or even the wider human condition comparatively meaningless, and so I owe it to my legions of fans, I owe it to the internet, I owe it to the culture itself to mention it. Not only that, but I’ll have to try and explain its importance to non wrestling fans, which might actually beyond my ability.

I’m not saying that this was the only thing that happened in 2022, just that all other stories pale somewhat in terms of significance and longterm repercussions. We all enjoyed the Conservative Party exposing the Capitalist lie that money indicates real value as some of the richest people in the country incompetently accused each other of being incompetent with such incompetence that it’s likely to freeze and/or starve a large section of their constituents. Lol! I am literally rolling on the floor laughing. I am a ROFLcopter. This isn’t new though, and of all the talk about opinion polls and potential general election losses, the ruling class fighting amongst themselves while the lower classes suffer is hardly new, will result in no revolution, and the best possible scenario in this country’s broken political system is the other party get in and basically continue the same shit. Sure, The Queen died, and in doing so revealed the longstanding lie that the UK is in some sense a developed country separated enough from its colonial history and repressed shame to be capable of rational thought. But will there really be any longterm ramifications of a gross head of a gross imperialistic state being replaced by a perhaps more gross son in a shamefully gross role? Come back to me when Charlie boy uses his accession press conference to bury the whole Royal Family and throw the whole system into doubt. In fact, have Charles Windsor come to me himself after that. I’d kiss his ugly face. Kings have press conferences, right? OK, we also had Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars, after which Twitter had so much fun that Elon Musk decided he had to stop it. Because of… a weed meme or something…? Honestly, it’s hard to know with that nincompoop, he has the brain development of a thirteen year old Trust Fund kid, and so is extremely hard to understand as an adult. These things also happened, and I’m not ignoring them. The war in Ukraine also happened, which I am ignoring, because it’s difficult to make jokes over. Not necessarily for taste reasons – when has that ever stopped me before? – more that it’s a conflict with absolutely no good guys that any glib comment is likely to support fascism and imperialism in some form if just by association.

Hey! Speaking of ‘no good guys’! Speaking of… fascism…? No, I stretched the segue too far, should have stopped after the first one.

Go into business for yourself

23 Little Simz: Sometimes I Might Be Introvert

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

2020 #65, 2019 #4

Naija women, got the melanin dripping

L-O-N-D-O-N, city girl living

In the back, looking like fire, chili pepper

Yoruba girl tougher than imperial leather

Woman

The Necessary Evil Nigerian element expands. Don’t worry though, I’m not just going to talk about my ex-wife again. Seriously though, entry #20, there’s some real good stuff gonna happen there, promise. Don’t forget to like, share and subscribe. Hit that ‘subscribe’ button as hard as you can. All of that, yeah?

Let’s talk about Little fucking Simz though, yeah? This woman is more than a talent, she’s more than merely a star, she’s an absolute presence. It’s what allows her to so easily combine and feature such disparate and unique styles and genres – as she does to her most audacious level yet on ‘Sometimes…’ – and still have them gel together so seamlessly. Track three could be a Barry White-esque excessively orchestrated soul song, track four a relentless trap/grime hybrid, track five a progressive oompah band concept piece, track six an ABBAesque medley, and track seven could be a Simpsonwave thrash metaller produced by Ryan Adams. It wouldn’t matter, they’d all be connected by that voice, that charisma, that God damn presence.

sometimes i might read more

37 JPEGMAFIA: LP!

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

2020 #16, 2019 #34, 2018 #44

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaars!! Pe-ggy! Pe-ggy! Pe-ggy! The latest astonishing collection by hip-hop’s premier avant garde electronica pushing Communist! You know what that means? That’s right: some of the most progressive and experimental music currently being made by any artist, in any genre, in the entire world. Oh, but most importantly, loads of wrestling references.

It also means that, unfortunately, there’s little space between the much appreciated wrestling call outs to actually talk about Peggy’s music. But do you need any more explanation on how he’s such a generational talent? A thousand articles by writers far more talented than me* have already written lengthy pieces and conduced many interviews that shed light on why you should be deeply ashamed if you’re not already on the Peggy Train. ‘LP!’ (always a fan of exclamation marks) retains a lot of the more melodic and slightly less abrasive styles that he presented on his recent (amazing) EPs, but uses it to only squeeze his music into more unique places. It’s a fucking banger.

Continue reading “37 JPEGMAFIA: LP!” →

Legit Bosses pt.3: The 40 Best Songs of 2020

~ Lex Leeson ~ 3 Comments

Hey! Top forty ! This is a nice, normal, manageable list isn’t it? Should I maybe have just limited 2020’s best songs to this workable and succinct top 40 list? What, and not mention Wock in Stock or I Don’t Know, Burn Stuff? I’m not sure I’d ever be able to forgive myself.

That’s all the introduction you’re getting, parts one and two were more than enough foreplay, there are some absolute modern classics in this final countdown, and if you’re as half as surprised as me at what comes out on top…

Maybe, I mean, I still might change it…

#40 Fiona Apple: Under the Table

A very ‘Fiona Apple’ Fiona Apple song, but that is obviously entirely a Good Thing. Lyrically, it’s untouchable, with Ms Apple taking issue with dinner party conversation and refusing to be silenced (“Kick me under the table all you want/I won’t shut up…I would beg to disagree/But begging disagrees with me”). Amongst the barbed and often hilarious response to tension, she also manages to squeeze in some absolutely amazing lyrical asides:

I’d like to buy you a pair of pillow-soled hiking boots

To help you with your climb

Or rather, to help the bodies that you step over, along your route

So they won’t hurt like mine

I’m going to be really noncommittal and say that Under the Table is definitely one of the best lyrics of the year. Don’t make me choose. No, seriously, don’t make me choose, you know I’d just give it to a 1993 Manics’ lyric and ruin the legitimacy of the whole operation.#

Continue reading “Legit Bosses pt.3: The 40 Best Songs of 2020” →

Legit Bosses: The 125 Best Songs of 2020 (pt.2 #80-#41)

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

You want an intro? We you ain’t getting an intro! Unless, of course, you consier this little bit of writing where I explain there isn’t an into to actually be the intro, in which case… Jesus, I can’t help you, friend, just move along… We’ve already had entries #126-#81, now let’s chomp down on part two of the list.

‘Chomp down’? The fuck am I talking about? Not a good start, Alex. Not. A good. Start.

#80 Banoffee: Tennis Fan (feat/ Empress Of)

Invited you to the cinema

You said you didn’t wanna go

But I saw it on your story

As you watched Mission Impossible

Ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch. It’s one thing to be palmed off with a lie, but to lose out to Tom Cruise using his mysterious Theten powers to somehow convince the watching public to give ‘Dianetics’ another chance by hanging out of aeroplanes and later cackling to Loraine Kelly about how he does all his own stunts, I really think you have to assume this is a problem with you, Banoffee.

Which Mission Impossible was it though?? You know there’s, like, a hundred of them now, right? Was it the best one (Mision Impossible 1-100) or even the worse one (Mission Impossible 1-100)? Don’t pretend you have any idea.

Continue reading “Legit Bosses: The 125 Best Songs of 2020 (pt.2 #80-#41)” →