#1 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Kendrick Lamar

January 31, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

There was a noticeable shift in my music listening in 2024. I used to be a dabbler in hip hop and rap, enjoying it from time-to-time but putting it in my speakers infrequently. This year those habits changed. What was a low percentage of my overall listening became a majority, especially in the latter half of the year. I attribute that shift to one man: Kendrick Lamar. No musician — in any genre — commanded my attention more in 2024 than he did. And that shift is carrying into 2025, as we are just over a week out from Lamar’s performance on the Super Bowl LIX stage on February 9, 2024. I couldn’t be more excited.

GNX, Kendrick Lamar’s sixth album, dropped unexpectedly on November 22, 2024. It is a great album, and taken without any of the additional context I’m about to share below, it would likely have been my #1 album of 2024 anyway – but I obviously can’t know for sure. I will dive into the merits of the album from my (decidedly naive, considering it’s hip-hop) perspective in a bit. But first, I must share the additional context.

Prior to the release of GNX, hip hop was already dominating my 2024, thanks in part to Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal, released on Aug 24 (#18) and Tyler, the Creator’s CHROMAKOPIA, released on October 28 (#12), but mostly due to Kendrick, who had a seminal verse on one track and subsequently released five non-album singles between March and September 2024. If we had gotten to the end of the year without an official album from him, I would have been put in the very strange position of having listened to a lot of new music in 2024 by and because of an artist despite them not having released an album. I don’t know what I would have done, because I feel so compelled to capture Kendrick Lamar’s 2024 in my own words, so I can better understand it, and I can pass that understanding on to you (whether you wanted it or not). Here goes nothing.

Where’s The Beef?

You may have heard of The Beef. Not the TV show (although it was enjoyable), but the escalating series of events, the rap feud if you will, between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. It was this feud, the way it played out, the speed at which both artists recorded and released music, and how the feud resolved (or continues to resolve) itself that I found intensely engrossing. Drake, the Canadian rapper very close to being the most popular musician in the world (I believe he is #2 only to Taylor Swift’s #1 all-time streaming record), versus Kendrick Lamar, the Pulitzer-prize winning incendiary West Coast Compton-born rapper.

At its core, the beef is about what makes a rapper legitimate. That, in and of itself, has been a long-time rap staple — if you didn’t grow up in the hood, if you haven’t been somehow related to gang violence or had to successfully avoid it to survive, then you aren’t deserving of any stature in the rap world. Of course this kind of base thinking doesn’t only happen in rap, but I would argue it comes up more prominently here than in any other genre. That is the foundation upon which The Beef is built: that Lamar believes Drake is a poseur, and his unprecedented popularity has taken the rap industry down the wrong path. His hyper-polished, overproduced, and sanitized music, his non-American nationality, and even how he carries himself, do not represent rap how it should be represented in popular music. He has caused the rap industry on the whole to sour, and something needs to be done about it.

And Kendrick is not entirely wrong in this stance, but you have to squint at the numbers to have it make sense. In 2018, hip hop became the streaming world’s #1 genre, thanks to both men, but Drake much more than Kendrick. Since then, it has remained the #1 genre, but until 2024 that buffer that had been built up between hip hop and other genres had been slowly declining. Taylor and her minions likely had a lot to do with that shift away from hip hop. But in 2024, thanks to Kendrick going on the offensive, calling out Drake and the industry on the whole over the course of a year, he drew my and a whole slew of other people’s attention back to (or for the first time to) the genre. Hip hop’s popularity climbed back up to a commanding lead in 2024.¹ Carrying the weight of an entire genre on your shoulders back to greatness is itself a feat to be recognized. Now let’s talk about how he did that.

Where The Beef Began

Drake and Kendrick have a long history together, and it started out on a positive note when Lamar featured on Drake’s “Buried Alive Interlude” in 2011. 2013 saw the first lyrical shots fired between the men, when Kendrick rapped on Big Sean’s “Control” that he had love for Drake and a number of other popular rappers at that time, but he wanted to “murder” them when it came to rap. A couple weeks later, Drake’s response came in an interview when he said “I know good and well that [Lamar]’s not murdering me, at all, in any platform.” Over the next ten or so years, there were various lines that they both delivered in verse and in interviews that, while not overt, were interpreted as “sneak disses.”

In October, 2023, Drake and J. Cole released “First Person Shooter,” in which J. Cole states that he, Drake, and Kendrick are the “Big Three” greatest rappers in modern hip-hop. This was apparently the start of the end for Kendrick, who disliked being lumped together with the other two as “the greatest” – not only because he considered himself, alone, to be the sole title holder for “greatest,” which I feel he has a legitimate claim to, but also because J. Cole had the audacity to claim that Cole and Drake were “the greatest” in any capacity. Kendrick’s official response came five months later, with a verse on his, Future, and Metro Boomin’s single “Like That,” in which Kendrick raps “Motherfuck the big three, n****, it’s just big me,” elevating himself above Drake and Cole. Innocent enough as a diss, but knowing the history behind it and Lamar’s intent to not only boost himself but to also cut down Drake is key.²

Full-blown Diss Tracks

Drake took the bait, creating the first complete song in The Beef whose sole focus was to take down the other man. “Push Ups” first leaked online on April 13, with Drake claiming many artists are better than Kendrick, including 21 Savage, Travis Scott, and SZA. On top of that, he made fun of Lamar’s physical presence, saying, “How the fuck you big-steppin’ with a size-seven men’s on?” and calling him “your little midget ass.” Lamar is only 5' 5", and I’m sorry, it’s all fun and games until you make fun of something out of a person’s control, like their height. That’s below the belt, and believe that likely went a long way to push Kendrick over the edge. But Drake felt he had the upper hand, looking down from his mountain, so he took the shot. “And that fuckin’ song y’all got did not start the beef with us. This shit been brewin’ in a pot, now I’m heatin’ up.”

Six days later, the official version of “Push Ups” came out, along with a second song, “Taylor Made Freestyle.” The latter song featured unauthorized AI versions of Tupac and Snoop Dogg dissing Kendrick, as well as a diss on Kendrick’s ties to the music industry in general, claiming that those ties were keeping Kendrick from responding to the leaked “Push Ups” because he didn’t want to interfere with the concurrent release of Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, which also came out on April 19 (hence the “Taylor” in the name of the song). Tupac’s estate threatened to sue Drake, stating their support for Kendrick in their response: “The unauthorized, equally dismaying use of Tupac’s voice against Kendrick Lamar… who has given nothing but respect to Tupac and his legacy publicly and privately, compounds the insult.” Drake took the song down from streaming services a week later.

After two unanswered songs calling him out, Kendrick finally responded in full on April 30, with “Euphoria.” At 1,400 words, the 6+ minute track is non-stop hit-after-hit on Drake. Lamar calls Drake a bad father, raising his son poorly. And that his abs are fake. But more importantly, he makes the first real dig at Drake’s legitimacy in the rap business. “How many more fairytale stories ’bout your life ’til we had enough? How many more black features ’til you finally feel that you’re black enough? I like Drake with the melodies, I don’t like Drake when he act tough.” He goes on, “I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I hate the way that you dress… I even hate when you say the word “n****,” but that's just me, I guess.” The song ends with a repeated refrain “We don’t wanna hear you say ‘n****’ no more.”

Five Songs Across Five Days

From there, with Kendrick having released a verse, Drake two songs, and then Kendrick with one song over the span of just over a month, the creative output and nastiness of the disses kicked into high gear. Over the next five days, Drake released two more songs, and Kendrick three, volleying back and forth with deeper, more scathing digs without sacrificing musical quality (at least on Kendrick’s part, but I’m biased by this point). On May 3, Kendrick followed up “Euphoria” with “6:16 in LA” – mocking a common Drake song-title structure – non-coincidentally produced by none other than Jack Antonoff (one of Taylor Swift’s lead producers). The instagram-only track is not as overt as “Euphoria,” instead choosing to target Drake’s OVO Records crew and Drake’s penchant for internet memes as more fodder for why he’s not street enough.

14 hours after “6:16,” Drake released “Family Matters” and proceeded to go ballistic. At 1,700 words and 7.5 minute in length, the song is the longest, most dense track in The Beef. Drake not only calls out Lamar, he lashes out at many other well-known artists like Future, Rick Ross, A$AP Rocky, Kanye West, producers Metro Boomin’ and Pharrell Williams, and singer the Weeknd. He pushed things further into chaos by claiming Kendrick was a domestic abuser against his wife, Whitney Alford. “On some Bobby shit, I wanna know what Whitney need,” comparing Lamar to Bobby Brown attacking Whitney Houston. He claimed one of Kendrick’s kids may actually be fathered by producer and filmmaker Dave Free (a point which becomes more relevant later on).

20 minutes later, Kendrick’s “meet the grahams” hit YouTube. Drake’s last name is Graham, so you can see where this is going. Less song and more spoken-word poem, it starts “Dear Adonis, I’m sorry that that man is your father,” Lamar makes it very personal by speaking directly to Drake’s son. “I look at him and wish your grandpa woulda wore a condom. I’m sorry that you gotta grow up and then stand behind him.” Then he addresses Drake’s parents, Sandra and Dennis. “You raised a horrible fuckin’ person, the nerve of you, Dennis. Sandra, sit down, what I’m about to say is heavy, now listen. Mm-mh, your son’s a sick man with sick thoughts, I think n****s like him should die. Him and Weinstein should get fucked up in a cell for the rest they life.” Just brutal.

He goes on, claiming Drake has a secret daughter. In the final verse, addressed directly at Drake, Lamar explains why he’s cutting so deep. “This supposed to be a good exhibition within the game. But you fucked up the moment you called out my family's name. Why you had to stoop so low to discredit some decent people? Guess integrity is lost when the metaphors don't reach you.”

The Death Blow

The next morning, roughly 14 hours after the previous song, Lamar releases the piece de resistance, “Not Like Us.” A classic right out of the gate, the song famously features production by Mustard (whose birth name is Dijon McFarlane – get it?). It became the song of the summer, and was hands down my favorite song of 2024. It is four minutes and 33 seconds of straight-up bliss.

The song picks up the story where “meet the grahams” left off, diving further into filth. He calls Drake a pedophile, rapping “Say, Drake, I hear you like ’em young. You better not ever go to cell block one.” and “Why you trollin’ like a bitch? Ain’t you tired? Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minorrrrrr.” (I cannot wait for that line to be sung by literally everyone at the Super Bowl.) Not stopping there, he raps “And Baka got a weird case, why is he around? Certified Lover Boy? Certified pedophiles” – naming Baka, a member of Drake’s security team who had been, according to Wikipedia, legitimately arrested and charged with sex trafficking, assault, and robbery of a 22-year-old woman he allegedly forced into prostitution in 2014 (but was only convicted of assault and a weapons charge), and name dropping Drake’s Lover Boy album.

He then refers back to a line Drake had in “Family Matters” where Drake said “Always rappin’ like you ’bout to get the slaves freed,” flipping it around. He accuses Drake of exploiting Atlanta-based artists for his own gain, akin to slavery. He runs through a litany of Atlanta stars who have guest appeared on Drake’s songs, including Future, 21 Savage, and 2 Chainz. The final verse ends with “You run to Atlanta when you need a few dollars. No, you not a colleague, you a fuckin’ colonizer.”

After that pinnacle of a song, Drake followed up the next day with the lackluster effort “The Heart Part 6” – mimicking Lamar’s “The Heart” song series titling. In the song, Drake goes fully on the defensive, denying he’s a pedophile a handful of times, and that he doesn’t have a hidden daughter, giving legitimacy to lines that were clearly not realistic when they were first rapped by Lamar, but now elevated to new heights by having been acknowledged by Drake. He should have left well enough alone, or picked new roads to go down. Instead, Drake continued attacking Lamar with the domestic violence and illegitimate fatherhood notes from previous songs.

Not only had Kendrick released the phenomenal “Not Like Us” just 24 hours earlier, “The Heart Part 6” was widely panned, hitting an ignominious 1 million dislikes achievement on YouTube. The general consensus is that this is where Drake unequivocally lost The Beef. Kendrick had proven his lyrical and musical prowess, and Drake had to move on. Of course things didn’t really end there, and it has yet to prove if it has had any material affect on Drake’s popularity, but it has certainly helped Kendrick achieve greater heights. And he is not letting anyone forget it.

Begin the Victory Laps

Kendrick hosted a concert on Juneteenth – another indirect slavery dig at Drake – called “The Pop Out: Ken & Friends.” The concert lasted over three hours, and featured over 25 West Coast artists, including Tyler, the Creator. It was split into three “& Friends” sets, with DJ Hed leading the first set: a showcase of up-and-coming LA rappers. Act II was led by Mustard and featured a long set of Mustard-produced tracks with special guests singing their own songs. Act III was Kendrick’s time to shine. He opened with “Euphoria” with some new lyrics dissing Drake, and proceeded to play other Drake diss tracks “Like That” and “6:16 in LA.” After 15 songs, with Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, and ScHoolboy Q all making appearances, Kendrick brought Dr. Dre out on stage to perform “Still D.R.E” and “California Love,” which Dre had performed originally with 2Pac. Dr. Dre then got the crowd to quiet down, and whispered the opening line to “Not Like Us” – “Psst, I see dead people.” Which led to Kendrick performing “Not Like Us“ five times back to back, each with a little bit different set of flair.

On the 4th of July, Kendrick released the music video for “Not Like Us,” which featured at the beginning of it a snippet of a then-unknown song, later to be revealed as the fantastic “Squabble Up” from GNX, shown in the video at the top of this post. The “Not Like Us” video notably celebrates West Coast and LA rappers. It closes the door on the accusations made by Drake across a few of his diss tracks by showing Kendrick’s entire family happily dancing together in the video, and having the video co-directed by none other than Dave Free.

On September 11, Kendrick released an untitled, Instagram-exclusive song that has come to be known as “Watch the Party Die.” In it, he references The Beef, but does not overtly diss Drake, concentrating instead on the cultural relevance of influencers, materialism, and celebrity culture on the hip hop industry in general. It was posted at 8pm, just when the 2024 Video Music Awards were starting, likely intentionally calling out the award ceremony.

And that is Kendrick Lamar’s 2024, up to the release of GNX on November 22. But first, to give full consideration of The Beef up to current day: Drake is not ready to give up. On November 25, Drake filed a petition against Universal Music Group and Spotify, claiming they had conspired to artificially inflate the popularity of “Not Like Us.” A day later, Drake filed a 2nd petition against UMG, claiming defamation for them not having stopped the release of a song falsely accusing him of being a sex offender, as well as UMG creating an illegal payola scheme with iHeartRadio. On January 14 of this year, Drake dropped the petition against UMG and Spotify, but the defamation claim remains. A day later, Drake filed a formal lawsuit against UMG, “the music company that decided to publish, promote, exploit, and monetize allegations (in “Not Like Us”) that it understood were not only false, but dangerous.” It is not likely the active lawsuit will keep Lamar from playing the song at the Super Bowl, but it does make the upcoming experience a little bit contentious and exciting.

What Were We Talking About? Oh Yeah, GNX.

On the morning of November 22, around 8:30am PST, Lamar released “GNX,” a one-minute video without any description, and ending in a simple white-on-black treatment of the letters “GNX.” The snippet of song in the video has not appeared in any other recording from Lamar, giving clear indication that there is still more to come (maybe before the Super Bowl?). Thirty minutes after the release of the video, the album GNX hit streaming services, and within 20 minutes of the release I’d seen a notification somewhere and was downloading the album to immediately put in my ears. Having watched all of The Beef happen in near real time, I was more than primed for the album’s majesty, and it did not disappoint.

From my untrained ears, GNX is more approachable, and simpler, than Lamar’s past efforts. Aside from the names mentioned elsewhere in this novel of a post, GNX was mainly produced by Sounwave and Jack Antonoff (he’s everywhere), to great affect. I didn’t have Lamar’s first two albums (2011 and 2012) on the Top 31. All of his other albums have made an appearance, from To Pimp a Butterfly at #29 in 2015, DAMN. at #22 in 2017, Black Panther: The Album at #21 in 2018, and finally Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers at #16 in 2022. All of them are masterpieces in their own way, but none of them have been a mainstay in my daily listening like GNX has been.

It is a perfectly sequenced album. The first track “wacced out murals,” references The Beef a few times, but chooses to rise above the direct attacks on Drake, choosing instead to put everyone to task. “It used to be ’Fuck that n****,’ but now it’s plural. Fuck everybody.” He gets straight to the point, intentionally. “This is not for lyricists, I swear it’s not the sentiments. Fuck a double entendre, I wan’t ya’ll to feel this shit.” No more beating around the bush.

From there, Kendrick goes into the bouncy “squabble up,” which starts with the fantastic line “Woke up lookin’ for the broccoli, high-key, keep a horn on me, that Kamasi,” referencing Kamasi Washington, an American jazz saxophonist who also has production credits on the album. Rhyming “broccoli” with “Kamasi,” how can you not smile? The third song, “luther” is a beautiful, slow duet with SZA (#7 in 2022³), evoking similar feelings to “All the Stars,” their duet on the Black Panther Soundtrack.

“Man at the garden” is the fourth song from the album. It’s a slower, downbeat song that Lamar uses to give a complete and thorough description of why he is deserving of any and all accolades that are directed at him. He refers to The Beef, ending the song with a very impassioned “Tell me why you think you deserve the greatest of all time, motherfucker.” Song 5, “hey now (feat. Dody6)” gives me my favorite guest appearance of the album. The song starts with Kendrick rapping in the low register. Over the song he slowly gains volume and energy, climbing an octave and driving more anxiety as he does it. When Dody6, an up-and-coming West Coast LA rapper, joins the fray, his delivery is entirely unique. There’s a laid-back Snoop quality to his bars, but with an urgency underlying it all that is all his own. I will be looking out for more work by him.

The sixth song, “reincarnated,” is the heart of the album. In it, Kendrick draws connections to past extreme rises in fame paired with self-destruction, telling the stories of (without naming) John Lee Hooker and Billie Holiday before turning the magnifying glass on himself, all in an attempt to keep his own extracurriculars in check. The song culminates in a crazy back and forth where Kendrick is talking to God, voiced by himself. “tv off (feat. Lefty Gunplay)” is a high energy song that gave the world “MUSTAAAAARRRRD,” that I’m sure you’ve heard many times by now.

“Dodger blue (feat. Wallie the Senset, Siete7x, and Roddy Ricch)” slows things down again, with a 90s-esque R&B slide beat that will have you boppin. “peekaboo (feat. AzChike)” is an odd outlier that is deceivingly simple, repeating “What they talkin’ ’bout? They ain’t talkin’ ’bout nothin’” over and over again, with a few other lines that start with the word “peekaboo.” Still, it is an addictive listen.

“Heart pt. 6” (where Kendrick reclaims the title of the song back from Drake), marks the first time he includes a song from the series of The Heart songs on a proper full-length album. It is beautiful. The next song, the title song, featuring Hitta J3, YoungThreat, & Peysoh, is carried by a back-masked beat that drives the song quietly forward while the lesser-named kids take a chance at the rhymes. The twelfth, and last, song on the album, “gloria,” is another duet with SZA. The two of them have such clear chemistry musically, and this song is no different.

It’s been announced that SZA will be appearing in the Super Bowl Halftime show with Kendrick, as well as double-billing with him on their summertime stadium tour. I cannot wait to see what else the future holds for Kendrick Lamar that we’ll get to enjoy. It’s all but a given that there’s another album coming this year. And seeing he and SZA live on stage in May here in Seattle is going to be huge. Maybe something more will come from Drake’s lawsuits, who knows. But one thing is for sure, I’m now a fully committed Kendrick Lamar fan, and I’m here for whatever he brings next. Thanks for reading along.

^{1. I’m sorry I can’t point you to the exact data points I’m referencing – I swear I read exactly what I’m reporting here recently, but I can’t for the life of me find that reference now. Nonetheless, it makes for a good story, so I’m sticking with it.↩}
^{2. On April 5, J. Cole was the first to respond to Lamar’s dig, on his own “7 Minute Drill.” In it, Cole blasts Kendrick’s album To Pimp a Butterfly, among other things. But two days later, Cole publicly apologized onstage for releasing the song and removed it from streaming services, effectively removing himself from the building melee. ↩}
^{3. On December 20, SZA released a new deluxe version of her stellar 2022 album SOS, called LANA, featuring 15 new tracks added to the front of the album, and including a duet with Kendrick Lamar.↩}

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#2 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Waxahatchee

January 30, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Tigers Blood by Waxahatchee

It is surprisingly difficult to reread my review of Waxahatchee’s last album, Saint Cloud, my #1 album of 2020. That album came out March 27 that year, just as the world was locking down. This was the first year of Covid, with (only) 400,000 deaths. Saint Cloud was the blanket that kept us warm, the unexpectedly bright star in that darkness. 2024 wasn’t nearly as dark, as Covid is mostly controlled, having left the world scarred and scared. And here as I write this at the end of January 2025, we’re in a different kind of dark times, unsure where the world is headed. “Unsettled,” as a vibe.

We’re so lucky to have Katie Crutchfield and her band to help prop us up and give us the energy we need to carry on. Like Katie to her sister Alison, Tigers Blood is very much a twin to Saint Cloud. Crutchfield brought back Brad Cook to produce the album (he also plays bass on every song aside from one). His ability to bring the coziness of the recording space into these songs is impeccable as always. You could easily play both albums back to back and have no real indication where one album ends and the other begins, aside from one notable exception: the backing vocals of one MJ Lenderman.

You may recall Lenderman, whose recent solo album was featured at #9 this year. His dry drawl is a perfect lower-register match to Crutchfield’s strong twang. Lenderman’s guitar appears across every song on the album, and he provides exquisite harmonies on four of them, often singing an unexpected harmonic tone underneath but not hidden from the forefront. The first single from the album, “Right Back To It” has Lenderman’s voice so prominent that he received a “ft. MJ Lenderman” credit in the song title. Released just over two months before the album came out, it was a strong indication of where Waxahatchee was headed.

Another highlight of Lenderman’s backing vocals is the “title song,” a slow, depressing-in-a-good-way dirge that ends with the entire band lending their voices to the chorus. I challenge you to zone in on Lenderman’s voice when you can pick it up underneath Crutchfield. The choices he makes for the harmony line are entirely unique and surprising. It makes me want to go back and give his band Wednesday’s 2023 album Rat Saw God another proper listen.

The highlight for me on the album is also the most sparse, “365.” I first truly fell for Waxahatchee on her song “Chapel of Pines” from the 2018 EP Great Thunder. It’s a simple song, just an acoustic guitar and Crutchfield’s strong, dripping-with-emotion voice planted firmly in your ear. This is where Waxahatchee shines brightest, when she is at her most intimate. “365” is similar in tone – simple acoustic baritone guitar from Brad Cook, organ from his brother Phil, Lenderman on a second acoustic guitar, and drummer (and Jeff Tweedy’s son) Spencer Tweedy playing a lone cymbal, everything drawn back to let Crutchfield’s voice proceed unhindered. The song is a gut punch, describing a person whose whole being is wrapped up in their broken-beyond-repair partner:

“I catch your poison arrow. I catch your same disease. Bow like a weeping willow, buc-kle-in’ at the knees, beg-gin’ you ‘please.’ If you fly up beyond the cosmos, it’s a long way to fall back down. Ya always go ’bout this the wrong way, and I’m too weak to just let you drown. So when you kill, I kill, When you ache, I ache. We both haunt this ol’ lifeless town When you fail, I fail When you fly, I fly, And it’s a long way to come back down.”

Crutchfield’s own voice doubles up her lead vocals, going up even higher on the verse above. It is such an unbelievably wrenching baring of emotion, you can feel throughout your entire being this person’s anguish at being stuck in this situation.

There is not a bad song on Tigers Blood. You can watch videos for the much more amped up and rocking “Bored,” evoking sounds of Rilo Kiley¹, and the more traditional slow country “Much Ado About Nothing.” Better yet, you should watch Waxahatchee’s latest “NPR Tiny Desk Concert” from December, 2024. This is their third appearance in the series, having appeared back in 2013, young, solo on guitar, and rough around the edges, and again with a special “Tiny Desk (Home) Concert” in April 2020, with her boyfriend Kevin Morby (another Top 31 alum – #3 in 2022²).

Waxahatchee has been on a massive wave since I started following them shortly after the release of their 2018 EP. The audience keeps getting bigger, and Crutchfield’s reach keeps getting wider. This year she’s been nominated for a Grammy, for best Americana album. The category is full of names I don’t recognize, aside from the heavy hitter T. Bone Burnett, who I imagine would be a lock with the Grammy voters. But maybe we’ll be able to see Katie sharing that stage with Beyoncé or Taylor Swift or Kendrick Lamar on February 2. If not, I’m fairly certain this won’t be her only opportunity. Here’s to looking forward to the next one!

^{1. I’ve learned today that Rilo Kiley, led by Top 31 alum Jenny Lewis (#24 in 2014) is reuniting and touring this summer – I’m going to assume Waxahatchee leading the currently indie rock scene into alt.country heaven is what has made that happen.↩}
^{2. Crutchfield showed up in 2022 as well, as half of the duo Plains with Jess Williamson on their fantastic I Walked With You a Ways at #13.↩}

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#4 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Beyoncé

January 28, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Cowboy Carter by Beyoncé

If you know my family, then you knew Beyoncé was going to make the Top 31. Both my wife and daughter love her, and more importantly in the case of this blog, I do as well. So prevalent she is in our lives, in mid-December when I was talking with my friend Pete about the albums that had potential to show up on the upcoming Top 31, he said “Oh I know you’re a Beyoncé family,” and I responded “Beyoncé’s album was last year.” As a family, we’d not stopped listening to Beyoncé for two-and-a-half years: her fantastic #2 album Renaissance had come out on July 23, 2022, and that had blended right into the release of the phenomenal Cowboy Carter. It didn’t help that we’d seen her on the Renaissance World Tour in September 2023, either. Consequently, I had mistakenly remembered Cowboy Carter coming out in 2023, and not on March 24, 2024.

Few artists have been as consistently great as Beyoncé has. I personally was pretty late to the party, having only fallen for her on her groundbreaking album Lemonade (#6 in 2016), when she’d already been 16 years (!) into her singing career (including her Destiny’s Child work, which began in 1998). Beyoncé has been on a meteoric climb for as long as I can remember, but it was Kanye West’s outburst at the 2009 VMAs¹ that serves as a good demarcation line for the careers of both Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. From that fateful day, the two women have been battling each other to command the most eyes and ears of the ever-widening consumer public. Who is in the lead at any given point depends on by which metric you’re measuring (note Taylor’s 2024 album The Tortured Poets Department will not be appearing on the Top 31), but there are no other artists in contention for that top spot, nor have there been for the last few years.

Cowboy Carter is Beyonce’s eighth solo album, and fifteenth album overall when considering her work with Destiny’s Child and others. The album is the second of an announced trilogy that began with 2022’s Renaissance. These two albums, along with the apparent third yet to be released, were started in 2019 and then recorded during the pandemic. Cowboy Carter was supposed to be “Act I,” but Beyoncé swapped the order due to the pandemic still going strong in 2022 (she knew we all needed to dance). While Renaissance is unequivocally a dance / R&B album, Cowboy Carter blends many genres and is widely considered Beyoncés country album. By everyone except Beyoncé, that is. “I hope this music is an experience, creating another journey where you can close your eyes, start from the beginning and never stop,“ Beyoncé said in an Instagram Story just before the album’s release in March. “This ain't a Country album. This is a ‘Beyoncé’ album.”

Personally, I wish she’d stayed more on the dance side of the spectrum. The country-esque songs are fantastic, and the inclusion of legends Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, and Linda Martell on the album speaks to the reach Beyoncé has achieved. And even if country isn’t Beyoncé’s strong suit, her country songs are still the current best in the genre. But it’s the power of her dance songs, like my favorite song on the album, “Ya Ya,” featured in the video above, that really makes this album a stand-out.

Beyoncé didn’t tour in 2024, and her Renaissance world tour ended in October, 2023. She had exactly one live performance, and she invented a new way to get in front of as many eyes as possible: the “Beyonce Bowl.” The NFL Christmas Game Day broadcast featured two games, to be broadcast on Netflix, who had no experience broadcasting football games to date. By connecting the games with Beyoncé, Netflix was bringing the big guns.

Overall, the viewership hit 27 million during Beyoncé’s performance, drawing the biggest Christmas Day NFL game audience since at least 2001. Beyoncé and Jay Z’s daughter Blue Ivy (12) even made an appearance (as she did when I saw her at Lumen Field in Sept. 2023, as well, when she was only 11), dancing alongside her superstar mother to an audience of 27 mil. It will be interesting to see where she goes over the next few years.

Beyoncé was set to have a big announcement on January 14, 2025, but she postponed due to the devastating wildfires ravaging LA at the time. New album? New documentary? New tour? All of the above, probably? We’ll know soon enough. We won’t know exactly what the overarching theme of Beyoncé’s trilogy is until we get the third album, but it seems a safe bet to expect something in yet another genre. Maybe we’ll get a folk or rock n’ roll album. Or maybe a jazz album that invokes Billie Holiday. Whatever she gives us, I’ll be first in line. It’s bound to be stellar.

^{1. This was the incident where Kanye West ran on stage unexpectedly to interrupt Taylor Swift’s Best Female Video acceptance speech. “Yo, Taylor, I'm really happy for you, I'mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!” referring to “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It),” which itself ended up taking “Video of the Year,” rendering his entire interruption pointless.↩}

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#10 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Billie Eilish

January 22, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Hit Me Hard and Soft by Billie Eilish

Welcome to the Top 10 of 2024! This is the point in the Top 31 where the decisions I’ve made about what albums to include and where they sit in the Top 10 can really be contentious with the small group of you who are paying close attention. A lot goes into my thought process of where to put an album that I enjoyed greatly throughout the year. There’s the quantitative side – literally how much did I listen to a given artist, but that plays only a small part in my decision. A Top X of anything as derived by a single individual is always a qualitative, gut-feeling endeavor. The Bacon Top 31 is no different. It’s a blend of: How much do I enjoy an album? How often did I listen to it in certain scenarios of my life? How much was the album loved / requested by one of my children?

The album at #10, the fantastic Hit Me Hard and Soft from global powerhouse Billie Eilish hits just the right notes of all of those questions. I enjoy it greatly, I listened to it often around the house and in the car, and the album was VERY MUCH loved by one of my children. But it should be said just because an album is loved by my children doesn’t mean it will show up in the Top 31. You don’t see a Bluey album in here, do you?

Billie Eilish has been making music for 10 years now, and yet she was born in the current century. She is a month into being 23 years old (born December 18, 2001), and yet each of the three full-length albums she’s released have sold more than 2 million copies each. You rarely see that kind of success from anyone, and you never see it from someone who has only been alive for just over two decades. Hit Me Hard and Soft is a VERY good album, and I can’t help but compare it to other releases by global, white, female, megapop stars in 2024. This album is much better than Taylor Swift’s 2024 album The Tortured Poet’s Department, released a month before Eilish’s album. It’s also way better than Sabrina Carpenter’s Short N’ Sweet and Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine. It may be on par with Charli XCX’s Brat, and I’m sorry to say I can’t really give an opinion there, because I simply did not give Brat much attention (but I still hope to). To me, Hit Me Hard and Soft is the best of that bunch.

I’ve been enjoying Eilish’s growth in fame and musicality over the years.¹ I was enamored with her EP Don’t Smile at Me but it did not appear on the Top 31 because I used to have stupid requirements about what qualified as an “album.” Her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? showed up at #12 in 2019. Unfortunately, I didn’t give her sophomore album Happier Than Ever its due, but if I were to rejigger that list from 3 years ago I’m sure there would be some changes now. All that said, Hit Me Hard and Soft is truly her best yet.

“Birds of a Feather” (featured in the video above) is a great song about love and connection, and the video is fun to watch in an Everything, Everywhere, All At Once kind of way. (Watch the short behind the scenes video about the making of, too.) “Chihiro” is my second favorite track on the album, and its quieter tone goes well in an otherwise high-energy album. “Lunch,” the lead single from the album, is catchy but a bit vapid in its lack of complexity. It feels as though it’s seen popularity due to the nature of a young woman singing “I could eat that girl for lunch” evoking thoughts of a still-inexplicably-scandalous lesbian nature. The behind the scenes on this one is less interesting, but it’s neat she also released three of the complete one-take lip syncs of the song for fans to enjoy: (One Take T002), T004, and T009.

If you only give the music a quick pass, and don’t think too much about what you’re hearing, it may be easy to write off Eilish and her producing partner, cowriter, and brother Finneas as merely being in the right place at the right time. But once you start to dig, you really see how much effort these two put into making something the best it can be. A good example of this effort can be seen in the “NPR Tiny Desk Concert” the two of them performed on, “unplugged” style, with a backing band. Eilish doesn’t come off as her only 22-years-of-age, but she is still very endearing as far as global megastars go.

As I mentioned in my Tyler, The Creator review at #12, I do my best to encourage the positive ends of my children’s music listening. They are often stuck listening to my personal favorites while I drive them around to various activities, but I also give them a window into being able to request things. I try to not just shoot their requests down because it’s not something I would traditionally want to listen to. This mentality has brought a lot more good music into my world. In the case of Billie Eilish, I was already well into her world prior to my youngest’s own love of Eilish’s music. But it‘s because of my youngest that my “well into” turned into a “love” of Eilish’s music in 2024. I look forward to other music turning into loves for me as she grows up.

^{1. I’ve also avidly watched the annual interview that Vanity Fair magazine has been creating with Eilish for the past eight years. Watch for yourself if you’ve not seen them before. ↩}

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#2 on the 2023 Bacon Top 31 — The National

January 30, 2024 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

First Two Pages of Frankenstein and Laugh Track by The National

The National are back near the top of the Top 31, surprising no one. Unbelievably, it’s been four years since they released their last album, the fantastic I Am Easy To Find, in 2019 (#6 that year). Granted, a lot of non-music stuff happened in those ensuing years (remember Covid?). Additionally, a lot of tangential work to The National came out during this period of “down time”: Taylor Swift’s Aaron Dessner-produced albums folklore and evermore came out in 2020 (#4 that year); lead singer Matt Berninger released his solo album, Serpentine Prison, that same year (#8); Aaron Dessner’s not-a-band-but-more-a-“project” collaboration with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver called Big Red Machine released How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? in 2021 (#2)¹ 2022 was the only year in that four-year span that lacked music to fill the massive void left by having no new album by the National.

The band has made up for that time by releasing two great new albums in 2023, First Two Page of Frankenstein on April 28, and Laugh Track on September 18. These two albums more than make up for “lost” time. The band prepared us fans for Frankenstein by putting out four singles between January 18 and the album’s release three months later. Laugh Track, on the other hand, was a complete surprise (aside from the inclusion of Bon Iver collaboration, “Weird Goodbyes,” which was originally released in August 2022).

The National have been long-time staples here on the Bacon Review. Including the albums mentioned above, they’ve always produced music that has been in my Top 10: Sleep Well Beast was #4 in 2017, Trouble Will Find Me was #2 in 2013, and High Violet inadvertently prevented all future albums from defaulting into the top spot by being #1 in 2010.

Where Easy To Find was a true departure for the band, seeing Berlinger relinquish the lead-singer role to a bevy of female guest stars on a number of songs, Frankenstein and Laugh Track are a return to form, quintessential National albums. There are some repeat guest stars here (the aforementioned Justin Vernon, and Sufjan Stevens), and some new great ones as well. Phoebe Bridgers sings beautiful harmonies on three songs across the two albums. Rosanne Cash shows up on “Crumble” from Laugh Track. And by far the biggest name, the Taylor Swift, joins Berlinger on the absolutely perfect duet called “The Alcott” on Frankenstein. After having spent a long time singing the Vernon/Swift duet “Exile” from her album folklore, I am glad my 6-year-old daughter and I have a Berninger/Swift duet to sink our teeth into for Car Karaoke²

Check out the video above, for “Your Mind is Not Your Friend,” one of the songs Phoebe Bridgers is on. The band have released a number of other nice music videos from the two albums, but this one, directed by Bridgers’ brother Jackson, really gets to the heart of what makes the band special. Over National-trademarked Sad Dad lyrics about trying to pull yourself out of depression, Matt Berninger and his brother Tom cavort around comically. Tom shows the depressive side of Matt’s lyrics literally, moping around and being sad, and Matt portrays the happy side of his brain, with flowers attached to his suit as he leads Tom around a park playground. Bridgers makes a brief appearance, appearing in the playground to take her character’s baby away from the grown men playing on the structures. That’s The National to a tee: cathartic depression. And that’s why I love them.

You can watch the rest of the videos they’ve released, too:

“Eucalyptus”
“Dreaming”
“Laugh Track” featuring Phoebe Bridgers
“Alphabet City”
“Deep End (Paul’s in Pieces)”
“Space Invader”

These are The National’s ninth and tenth albums in 24 years. It is now officially impossible to say any one of those albums is their best, as the answer will shift from day to day. No other band in my lifetime has been able to put out as much consistently great music as these five men have. Every new album they put out, I feel “whelp, this must be it, no way they can keep up this pace,” and every time I’m proven wrong. Who knows what’s next for the band? Whatever it is, it will be amazing.

^{1. Dessner produced Ed Sheeran’s 2023 album, _–_ (otherwise known as “Subtract”), which I’m listening to for the first time as I’m writing these words – too late to include in the Top 31, and too early to say if I would have even tried to include it. If it’s anything like his collaboration with Taylor Swift, I’ll have made a huge mistake not hearing it earlier. (Update – still listening, but struggling. In Swift’s Dessner-produced albums, there’s an easily recognizable Dessner influence. Despite him having touched every song on Sheeran’s album, Ed’s voice and lyrics pull things far enough away from anything related to The National that I lose the thread entirely.)↩}
^{2. If you want a real thrill as a parent, sing fantastic songs as a duet with them on repeat while driving around town. Rarely can I get through “The Alcott” with my daughter without choking up.↩}

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#2 on the 2022 Bacon Top 31 — Beyoncé

January 30, 2023 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

RENAISSANCE by Beyoncé

There are megastar pop stars, and then there is Beyoncé. Of the pile of the musicians you could claim are “on top of the world,” from Kendrick Lamar to Taylor Swift, Queen Bey is standing atop that pile with her flag firmly planted. She has won 28 Grammys from 88 nominations across her 25 year career, making her the most honored singer ever (across both of the outdated male and female categories). As a solo artist and as part of the groundbreaking Destiny’s Child, her albums have sold a combined 260,000,000 times worldwide. That is nearly enough sales so that every American, from your 100-year-old grandma to that newborn who was just born yesterday, could have their own Beyoncé record.

She’s achieved this level of fame and glory not by following the path of those who came before — Madonna, Janet Jackson — but rather, defining the path for those to follow. Beyond her pace-setting music, she is a vocal advocate for Black Lives Matter, going so far as to appear at the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show with back up dancers dressed up as Black Panther Party representatives. She has put her excessive cultural weight behind other groups as well, such as when she spoke out against those (including our 45th president) who would remove the rights of transgender youth throughout public schools.

RENAISSANCE, her seventh — and best — album, marries all of the above into a tour de force unlike no other. Simultaneously a “dazzling tribute to underground and under-appreciated Black culture” and “the sound of a once-in-a-generation superstar performing at her peak” (according to critics Kate Solomon from i and Vernon Ayiku from Exclaim! respectively), RENAISSANCE is the strong dose of dance-infused medicine our Covid-19 stricken society needed. This isn’t Lemonade part 2 (#6 in 2016) – there are no genre-hopping scorned lovers on this record. As Julianne Escobedo Shepherd from Pitchfork said:

“Renaissance is inherently about bodies undulating in the dark, under strobes; sexual agency; and the Black queer and trans women who are both politicized and the most endangered people among us.”

Despite oozing sex appeal throughout her career, this album is Beyoncé at her most carnal. Shepherd goes on to say “Beyoncé has never been this horny in public,” and I concur. Nor has Beyoncé ever been this vulgar. I have a staunch “no clean versions” policy in the music I listen to. My children have grown up in a house that revels in all language, from Macklemore to Run the Jewels to Lizzo. But all those are tame when placed next to RENAISSANCE, to the point that I gave pause a couple times when putting the album on. The album opens with a quickly repeated “Please, motherfuckers ain’t stopping mе.” “Might I suggest you don’t fuck with my sis” is heard prominently shortly thereafter. “We getting fucked up tonight. We gon’ fuck up the night” is the repeated chorus just a couple songs later. And we’ve only made it four songs into the 16-song, hour-long set. It’s gloriously raunchy.

At its heart, this is a dance album from the drop. Songs blend from one to the next, as if a DJ was eloquently spinning one hit after another together at the best dance night you’ve ever been to. But these aren’t existing songs — these are expertly assembled, sampled, historically-, culturally-, and musically-significant artists pulled together to represent a whole that is a million times greater than its individual parts. Grace Jones next to Skrillex, trans black television personality Ts Madison up against Right Said Fred — the whole album is a true marvel. What sounds like a glorified Girl Talk album on paper is something completely different. Just listen to “CUFF IT” blend into “ENERGY” and then bleed into the album’s first single, “BREAK MY SOUL”¹. Be sure to check out the video above — Beyoncé’s team pulled it together for when RENAISSANCE was certified platinum. The video is a quick-cut collection of TikTok and other fan-made videos of people of all shapes and sizes, genders and sexuality dancing to “BREAK MY SOUL,” and it’s so damn empowering, you’ll find yourself fighting back happy tears.

RENAISSANCE is a phenomenal record. If you’ve not heard it yet, I command you to do so. Nobody can deny the greatness of it. It’ll be surprising to my wife (and potentially others) that it’s not my #1 album this year, given how much we played it in our house. Any artist able to beat Queen Bey this year had to go to extraordinary lengths, and indeed, the artist at #1 did. You’ll read exactly how tomorrow. For now, put RENAISSANCE on repeat, crank the volume, and I’ll see you tomorrow, sweaty and exhausted.

^{1. This is the first downfall I’ve seen when it comes to YouTube Music – each of these three videos has a disclaimer at the beginning regarding the dangers of flashing lights for some people. It’s a few-seconds pause at the beginning of the song, thereby preventing the listener from going seamlessly between the tracks of this album. This is a fairly significant downside, given how this album is meant to be heard as one can’t stop, won’t stop, non-stop beat.↩}

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3. This Is a Photograph by Kevin Morby
4. Lucifer On the Sofa by Spoon
5. Palomino by First Aid Kit
6. We've Been Going About This All Wrong by Sharon Van Etten
7. SOS by SZA
8. Wet Leg by Wet Leg
9. Chloë and the Next 20th Century by Father John Misty
10. Big Time by Angel Olsen
11. Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road
12. Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To the Sky by Porridge Radio
13. I Walked with You a Ways by Plains
14. The Last Goodbye by Odesza
15. A Light for Attracting Attention by The Smile
16. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers by Kendrick Lamar
17. Inside Problems by Andrew Bird
18. Laurel Hell by Mitski
19. Full Moon Project by Phosphorescent
20. Skinty Fia by Fontaines D.C.
21. I Love You Jennifer B by Jockstrap
22. Too Much to Ask by Cheekface
23. Dripfield by Goose
24. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You by Big Thief
25. And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow by Weyes Blood
26. NOT TiGHT by DOMi & JD BECK
27. Preacher’s Daughter by Ethel Cain
28. Live at KEXP, vol. 10 by Various Artists
29. All You Need Is Time by Daisy the Great
30. Cool It Down by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
31. CAPRISONGS by FKA twigs

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#2 on the 2021 Bacon Top 31 — Big Red Machine

January 30, 2022 by Royal Stuart

How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last? by Big Red Machine

Every year there’s the big obvious acts that continually appear on the Top 31. At the top of that list are both The National and Bon Iver, both of whom have had #1 albums (2010 and 2016) along with three additional, separate appearances on the Top 31 each. In fact, I haven’t done the math, but I’m confident in saying that Aaron Dessner (20% of The National) and Justin Vernon (99% of Bon Iver), combined, have been responsible for the largest percentage of all music I’ve listened to in the last 15 years.

The two of them have done many things together, arguably the most prominent being the work they’ve done together as Big Red Machine. Their first foray into a partnership was a collaborative song called “Big Red Machine” on the Dessner-produced Dark Was the Night compilation in 2009 (#10 that inaugural Top 31 year). According to wikipedia, Dessner reached out to Vernon via MySpace, and they collaborated on the song remotely, and didn’t meet in person until a follow-on performance for the collaboration was hosted later that year. They continued to work together while producing and creating with their respective bands. They formed a record label, 37d03d, which released the first full Big Red Machine album in 2018 (self-titled, #13 that year). In addition to Dessner and Vernon, that album also features Phoebe Bridgers, Dessner’s brother Bryce and Bryan Devendorf from The National, and multi-instrumentalist Richard Parry from Arcade Fire, among many others.

Then they turned their attention to Taylor Swift, or many she turned her attention to them. The two albums that came out of their collaboration had a big impact on my 2020 Top 31, coming in collectively at #4 last year. But Swift is not the only Dessner/Vernon produced artist I’ve enjoyed. From the very first Top 31 in 2009, with the aforementioned Dark Was the Night compilation and Bon Iver’s Blood Bank EP, there have been only two years (2014 and 2015) that one or both Vernon and Dessner did not appear on the Top 31 as performer or producer. Sharon van Etten, Local Natives, Frightened Rabbit, Taylor Swift, Kanye West — they’ve all benefited from the magic touch of Aaron Dessner and/or Justin Vernon in the last 15 years.

There were also a couple of Big Red Machine singles to come out in 2020 that haven’t appeared on any albums: “No Time For Love Like Now” with Michael Stipe, and a get-out-the-vote in Wisconsin cover of Aimee Mann’s “Wise Up” featuring 4 of out 5 members of The National and others.

And now we’re finally up to the present, with How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?, the supergroup’s 2nd full-length album under the Big Red Machine name. The album features a daunting list of guest appearances: Taylor Swift on two songs, James Krivchenia of Big Thief, Anaïs Mitchell on three songs, Ilsey (a prolific singer/songwriter who has written for and sung with a dizzying number of artists you’ve heard of), Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold, Naeem (otherwise known as rapper Spank Rock), a song called “Hutch,” dedicated to the lost-too-soon lead singer of Frightened Rabbit, Scott Hutchison, featuring Sharon van Etten, Lisa Hannigan, and Shara Nova (lead singer of My Brightest Diamond), La Force (aka Ariel Engle of Broken Social Scene), Ben Howard, and This is the Kit (Kate Stables).

Whew.

There are many highlights to this album (as there should be for a #2 album of the year). The Robin Pecknold / Anaïs Mitchell sung “Phoenix,” shown in the lyric video above, is my personal favorite (mostly because it’s the favorite of 4-year-old, who demanded I play that song over and over again throughout the summer of 2021). But even the most stripped down songs, such as the two where Aaron Dessner finally takes the spotlight all by himself, playing guitar and singing on “The Ghost of Cincinnati” and “Magnolia” in what can only be described as his best Elliott Smith impersonation. The Taylor Swift collaboration “Renegade” is a poppy, Swiftian jaunt you’ll love – it could have easily been created for Swift’s 2020 albums folklore or evermore.

It’s hard not to look at How Long as the capper of one hell of a musical decade for Dessner and Vernon. There’s no way that either of them is done making music. But if you look at the arc of U2, R.E.M., or The Stones, now is about the time in their respective careers that the drive to create something new and different clashes with the desire to slow down, spend more time with family, and rely heavily on the income from previous hits rather than create something new and earth shattering. Selfishly, I hope they choose a different path and continue to give us everything they’ve got. We’ll find out soon enough – 2022 is a new year, and maybe there’ll be another Bon Iver or National album, or some new Dessner- or Vernon-produced project that will simply blow us all away. I can’t wait.

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3. Jubilee by Japanese Breakfast
4. A Way Forward by Nation of Language
5. Things Take Time, Take Time by Courtney Barnett
6. Little Oblivions by Julien Baker
7. Valentine by Snail Mail
8. sketchy. by tUnE-yArDs
9. A Very Lonely Solstice by Fleet Foxes
10. Hey What by Low
11. Local Valley by José González
12. Head of Roses by Flock of Dimes
13. The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows by Damon Albarn
14. Collapsed in Sunbeams by Arlo Parks
15. Loving In Stereo by Jungle
16. Flying Dream 1 by Elbow
17. Screen Violence by Chvrches
18. Blue Weekend by Wolf Alice
19. Mainly Gestalt Pornography by Pearly Gate Music
20. Peace Or Love by Kings of Convenience
21. These 13 by Jimbo Mathus & Andrew Bird
22. Mr. Corman: Season 1 by Nathan Johnson
23. Home Video by Lucy Dacus
24. I’ll Be Your Mirror: A Tribute to The Velvet Underground & Nico by Various Artists
25. Siamese Dream by Fruit Bats
26. NINE by Sault
27. Observatory by Aeon Station
28. The Monster Who Hated Pennsylvania by Damien Jurado
29. A Beginner’s Mind by Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine
30. Where the End Begins by Knathan Ryan
31. Private Space by Durand Jones & The Indications

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#4 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Taylor Swift

January 28, 2021 by Royal Stuart

folklore + evermore by Taylor Swift

If I were to allow myself a quick indulgence in forgetting the shit ton of god awful shit that happened, 2020 would go down as “The Biggest, Most Exciting Year For a Fan of The National That Doesn’t Feature a New Album by The National.” Not only was there the phenomenal debut solo release by lead singer Matt Berninger (Serpentine Prison, at #8), there were not one but two wholly-unexpected Aaron Dessner-produced and co-written jaw-droppingly good Taylor Swift albums, albums that could easily be called The National albums but with Swift slotted in for Berninger.

I would find it unbelievable if you told me you didn’t know Swift had released a couple albums in 2020. It’s impossible to be that in the dark that you somehow avoided hearing about the best selling album of 2020 (folklore set so many records upon its release on July 24, and it ended the year atop many best-of lists) and its sister album (evermore, released on December 11, may yet set records for sales in 2021, even if it will be out of contention for the critical year-end lists). But I can’t blame you if you discounted it outright, simply for being a couple of Taylor Swift albums. Well, I’m here to tell you that you’ve been thoroughly missing out. These albums are two of the most approachable, exciting, and universally-appealing records you’ll ever experience.

Swift was meant to team up with Dessner (guitarist, producer, and co-writer for The National, who have appeared on numerous Top 31s in the past, as well as one-half — with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver — of Big Red Machine, who appeared at #13 in 2018). Her personal, intimately written stories told in rhyming couplets and double entendres layer beautifully on Dessner’s musical tapestry. If you remove Swift’s words and voice from these songs, these are The National songs. It’s abundantly clear who drives the sounds of their albums. Then you add in Swift’s poetry and voice, and it’s almost too much for one person to handle.

folklore was a huge hit in our house from the day it was released. My family loved it as much as I did, including the youngest of us. Only two at the time of release, my toddler loves to proclaim “You know this song!” whenever she hears any song she’s heard more than once. We heard her say that a lot when we’d put it on. But when she got even more comfortable with it, demanding “Again!” at the end of the album’s best song (“Exile,” one of two duets Swift has with Bon Iver on the albums), and then started quietly singing the words from the song on top of Vernon and Swift… ouch my heart. Hearing my three-year old daughter singing “I never learned to read your mind, I couldn’t turn things around, ’cause you never gave a warning sign” will stick with me forever.

I’ve written so much about The National over the years, but I’ve not ever written about Taylor Swift, so let’s dive into how amazing she is for a minute. The woman has been producing music professionally since 2006, when she was only 17 years old. In the ensuing 14-year span, she’s put out 9 albums and a ton more EPs and single, all of which have sold over 227 million copies, good enough for #10 on the all-time list for most copies sold by any artist, ever. She’s won 10 Grammy Awards, an Emmy, and has set seven Guinness World Records, including “Biggest-Selling Album Worldwide For A Solo Artist” for her 2019 album Lover.

She is the perfect embodiment of female empowerment, and speaks out for herself, gun control, women’s rights, Black Lives Matter, LGBT rights and gender and racial equality, and the importance of voting. And she speaks out against white supremacy, systemic racism, and police brutality, all with an impeccable wardrobe and smile. On top of that, she’s picked up where Prince left off with his struggles against the leech-like record labels that suck every last dollar out of the artistic rights of their recording artists. She has publicly, continually, vehemently battled her record label for the ownership of her master recordings. Failing that, she’s decided to simply re-record all of her old recordings, no doubt making them better in the process and rendering the old masters all but worthless. “Commendable” doesn‘t even begin to define Taylor Swift.

All of that history makes the creation of folklore and evermore all that more astonishing. WIthout the pandemic-induced lockdowns, I don’t believe these records would have happened at all. Rather than being on a worldwide tour (that was supposed to begin in April), she set to recording new music. A few months of absolute chaos later, and she delivers the nicest care package imaginable.

These songs are without fault, and are infinitely listenable. The video above, which Swift directed, for her song “Cardigan” from the first album is not my favorite (see “Exile,” mentioned above), but even the worst song on the album is world’s better than 99% of what came out in 2020. The companion song from the second album, “Willow,” also has a Swift-directed video that starts exactly where the first video left off, and it’s not my favorite, either. For that, I’ll point you to the Justin Vernon co-produced song “Closure,” which doesn‘t feature Vernon’s succulent voice, but does feature key Bon Iver sounds and digitization, such as when he pushes Swift’s voice through his Messina – the vocal modifier that featured prominently on his 2016 Top 31 #1 album 22, A Million.

It’s clear I could keep gushing about these albums for much more — I’m finding myself striving to read all the background material out there (of which there is plenty, of course) to repurpose and regurgitate for you, dear reader. But I’ll stop here, and just tell you to listen, and then seek out the additional material yourself. There are deluxe versions and pared down versions and accompanying films and and and… The Taylor Swift machine is in high gear, per usual, but this time around I truly care, and I’m excited to see where she goes next. I hope there’s at least a few of you out there that I’ve convinced to listen to these records if you haven’t already. And for those of you that were as surprised as I was to find yourself in love with a couple of Taylor Swift albums in 2020, I’d love to hear from you about your experiences with the albums. Do reach out!

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1. Saint Cloud by Waxahatchee
2. Fetch The Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple
3. Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers
4. folklore + evermore by Taylor Swift
5. Untitled (Black Is) + Untitled (Rise) by Sault
6. RTJ4 by Run The Jewels
7. Shore by Fleet Foxes
8. Serpentine Prison by Matt Berninger
9. The Ascension by Sufjan Stevens
10. Making a Door Less Open by Car Seat Headrest
11. Dreamland by Glass Animals
12. A Hero’s Death by Fontaines D.C.
13. Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez by Gorillaz
14. Mordechai + Texas Sun EP by Khruangbin
15. Introduction, Presence by Nation of Language
16. Free Love by Sylvan Esso
17. Miss Anthropocene by Grimes
18. 3.15.20 by Childish Gambino
19. Women In Music Pt. III by HAIM
20. The Third Mind by The Third Mind
21. Superstar by Caroline Rose
22. Impossible Weight by Deep Sea Diver
23. We Will Always Love You by The Avalanches
24. Ultra Mono by IDLES
25. Visions of Bodies Being Burned by clipping.
26. Thin Mind by Wolf Parade
27. The Loves of Your Life by Hamilton Leithauser
28. Palo Alto (Live) by Thelonious Monk
29. color theory by Soccer Mommy
30. Fall to Pieces by Tricky
31. Quarantine Casanova by Chromeo

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#29 on the 2020 Bacon Top 31 — Soccer Mommy

January 03, 2021 by Royal Stuart

color theory by Soccer Mommy

Sophie Allison, otherwise known as Soccer Mommy, has a talent for layering dark, grim lyrics on top of bright, catchy pop hooks. Whereas Tricky’s darkness stemmed from a lifetime of external difficulty and suffering, Allison’s pain comes mostly from within. If the stories contained on the Nashville-based singer/songwriter’s fantastic second album, color theory, are to be believed, she suffers from imposter syndrome and plenty of inner turmoil. Part of this singular focus on herself is likely due to her age – at roughly 23 years old, she’s not lived enough life to really know how much the world could hurt her. Additionally, it’s quite difficult to make a living as an indie-rocker, and that’s only going to fuel that inner fire.

Allison’s first album, Clean, unfortunately evaded my radar long enough to be overlooked for the 2018 Top 31 — not the first time I’ve made a mistake in my 12 years of chronicling the years’ best albums. (Incidentally, it occurs to me that I’ve been writing about my favorite albums each year since Allison was about 11 years old. Yeesh.) But since discovering her in the early months of 2019, Soccer Mommy has taken hold of my playlist and continues to add to and build up my love for her music.

The growth that Allison has shown in her music from Clean (an excellent album on its own) to color theory is subtle at first listen. Upon repeated plays, the songs on the second album demonstrate a greater intelligence. The same ties to the bluntness of Liz Phair or use of rhyming couplets like Taylor Swift are still there, but color theory shows Allison bringing a depth to the music that is all her own. And this is only her second album! I can’t wait to see what lies ahead for Soccer Mommy.

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Subscribe to the 2020 Bacon Top 31 playlist: Apple Music / Spotify
All Top 31s

Father John Misty — The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apartment

September 23, 2015 by Royal Stuart

Nobody does tongue-in-cheek snark quite like Josh Tillman. It starts with his stage name, Father John Misty, which everyone can agree is so ridiculous it’s funny. His live show is 100% camp, strutting around the stage like an over-acted lounge singer, full of swoon-inducing goading and exaggerated emotion. And then there’s his songs. Musically, they’re fairly straightforward indie-folk-rock standards. But once you start hearing the lyrics, the snark comes out. He has a general hatred for anything and everything around him. He doesn’t pull any punches, and that’s a lot of the reason why I like him so much.

For instance, yesterday, with Ryan Adams’s attention-grabbing release of his cover of Taylor Swift’s 1989, Tillman took Adams to task, releasing a couple of covers of Taylor Swift himself, billed as covers of Ryan Adams’s covers, but resembling nothing of the Ryan Adams versions, and everything of what it would sound like if Lou Reed had covered Taylor Swift. Confused yet? You can listen here, even though Tillman himself has removed his covers from where he originally posted them.

Now that you‘ve got the back story, listen to the song above, “The Night Josh Tillman Came To Our Apartment,” from Tillman’s February 2015 album I Love You, Honeybear. The album is pretty great all around, as good as 2012’s Fear Fun. The lyrices of this song are particularly snarky, and my favorite line on the entire album comes 30 seconds into the song, when Tillman sings

She says, like literally, music is the air she breathes
And the malaprops make me want to fucking scream
I wonder if she even knows what that word means
Well, it's literally not that

The of the song is full of gems just like that. Give it a listen, then buy the album. You won’t regret it.

Taylor Swift — Shake It Off

August 22, 2014 by Royal Stuart

I’m as surprised as you are to see a Taylor Swift video here on the Bacon Review. A good friend of mine cajoled me into watching this new video from Taylor yesterday, and, by the magic of pop music, the song and video were still on my mind this morning.

“Shake It Off” is the first single from Swift’s new album, 1989, which comes out October 27. There’s nothing particularly spectacular about this song or this video. It’s perfectly simple and simply perfect; watch and you’ll agree. And then you’ll watch again.

Happy Friday, ya’ll.