#14 on the 2025 Bacon Top 31 — Lorde

January 18, 2026 by Royal Stuart in 2025, Top 31

Virgin by Lorde

It’s been 12 years (and two non-charting albums) since we saw Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor, aka Lorde, grace us with her presence on the Top 31. With Virgin, her fourth LP, the 29-year-old singer/songwriter has given us what I would call her best album yet.

Lorde has been through quite a bit since her 2013 debut, Pure Heroine, was at #28 that year. After the success of that platinum-selling, #3 in the US album, her sophomore album, the Jack Antonoff-co-produced Melodrama, full of synths and beats made for moving your body, went all the way to #1. Her third album, Solar Power, also co-produced by Antonoff, abandoned the beats for acoustic indie pop, and consequently fared the worst, “only” charting at #5 in the US.

In the years that ensued after Solar Power, which came out in 2021, Lorde had a bit of an identity crisis. She set out and succeeded in overcoming the crippling stage fright she’d been experiencing up to that point, but then turned that critical eye towards her weight in an unhealthy way, which she sang about on a Charli xcx track that was released as part of the Brat remix project called Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat, on a song called “Girl, so confusing,” released summer 2024. “And scared to be in your pictures / ‘Cause for the last couple years / I’ve been at war with my body / I tried to starve myself thinner / And then I gained all the weight back.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone released around the time Virgin was released, Lorde spoke of how her healing from the stage fright involved MDMA and psilocybin therapy (successfully). But she was not only treating that and the eating disorder. She was also reconciling a life (between the ages of 13 and 27) of relying on (and sometimes dating) boys and men significantly older than her, and the inherent power-dynamic problems that creates. Ultimately, Virgin is the outcome of that personal growth. Not only does she now feel she’s got a grip on her life, but she’s better understanding what it means to be Lorde — who she is, what she needs, and what life will look like going forward as a near-30-year-old megastar.

As part of this new understanding, gender identity has come to the fore. The Lorde we see in the videos from this new album still exude the overt sex appeal that comes with being a pop icon, the shift in how she represents herself has become less girly-girl femme all the time, in her words more “masc.” Take a look at the video for opening track “Hammer” (featured above). Lorde seductively lies in the grass in a bikini and suspended in a warehouse completely naked while singing about the themes for the rest of the album. “I burn, and I sing, and I scheme, and I dance. Some days, I’m a woman, some days, I’m a man.”

She goes even harder on the gender fluidity on “Man of the Year,” a video where she duct tapes her chest flat and sings “Gliding through / Like new from my recent ego death” and “Take my knife and I cut the cord / My babe can‘t believe I‘ve become someone else / Someone more like myself / Who’s got’ love me like this? … Let’s hear it for the man of the year.” There’s a definite masculinity rooted in her psyche that has finally started to show itself, and she wants the world to know it.

Musically, there’s a good reason this album hits different. On Virgin, Lorde parted ways with Jack Antonoff and the acoustic folkiness of her last record. Instead, she co-wrote and co-produced the album with producer Jim-E Stack, who also happens to have co-written and co-produced Top 31 favorite Bon Iver’s¹ latest, the amazing SABLE, fABLE. Together, they brought the Melodrama beats back, too. Check out “What Was That”, a dancey, get-your-body moving song about the fallout from the aforementioned relationships with unnamed older men.

I’ve loved Lorde’s sultry delivery since her debut, and I’m glad she’s coming out of her third decade on Earth stronger, more self-aware, and in control of her situation. We’re all better off for it, and I can’t wait to hear what she does in her 30s.

^{1. All of Bon Iver’s albums that have come out in the duration have been featured on the Top 31 since I started it in 2009: #17 in 2009, #6 in 2011, #1 in 2016, and #9 in 2019. And that’s not to mention lead singer Justin Vernon’s other collaborations that have been on the Top 31, such as Big Red Machine and his work with Taylor Swift.↩}

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#12 on the 2024 Bacon Top 31 — Tyler, The Creator

January 20, 2025 by Royal Stuart in Top 31, 2024

Chromakopia by Tyler, The Creator

At the end of 2023, many music-related news outlets started declaring that hip-hop was dying or perhaps even dead. The genre had experienced a major surge throughout the 2010s, so great that it beat out rock-n-roll to become the #1 listened-to genre in music in 2018. It’s been able to maintain that ranking every year since, just as streaming music has become the only game in town, but the sizable lead it built up over the other genres has been declining in recent years. The number of chart topping hip-hop songs had dropped significantly while the genre became a reflection of the results of streaming on the whole: there’s less concentration on two or three huge artists while everyone finds and follows their own lane. Popular music on the whole was becoming homogenized.

Amazingly, that wasn’t the end of the story. In 2024, hip-hop saw popularity coalesce around a handful of artists (see Doechii at #18). With that focusing of excitement came the artists driving #1 songs and albums throughout the year, reinvigorating the genre. Tyler Okonma, otherwise known as Tyler, the Creator, was one of this artists that caused the turnaround of events with his phenomenal eighth studio album Chromakopia, coming in at #12.

I’ve been sleeping on Tyler for pretty much his entire career. I mean, I’ve known about him for a long time, but I’ve had very little bandwidth for hip hop on the whole, so I hadn’t paid him much attention. In past years when I’ve latched on to acts like Run the Jewels (#6 in 2020, #28 in 2014), they essentially fulfilled my hip-hop allotment for the year (I’m not proud, it’s just the truth). Not so in 2024 — I listened to more hip hop this year than I have since I first dabbled in the genre as a high school freshman trying to figure out his particular flavor of rebellion by listening to NWA and The Geto Boys in the late 80s.

There’s a few reasons I’ve listened to more hip hop in 2024 than in any previous year, and “the music just got better!” can’t be one of them, no matter how much it may feel like it’s true to me. The simple truth is I seem to have unintentionally allowed hip hop to have a bigger presence in my life. 2024 started with a birthday surprise from my wife, taking me to a listening party centered around Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange. (I’d loved his Blonde album, (#4 in 2016) but hadn’t been able to give the earlier album much love, so I re-listened to it a lot in January of 2024.)

Secondarily, the beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar leapt over the cultural divide and became a minor obsession for me. There were other smaller beefs (Charlie XCX and Lorde, Tyler and Childish Gambino), but the rift that grew between Drake and Kendrick that began in March of 2024, or back in 2011 depending on where you draw the line, slowly filled every bit of idle time I had, with me reading articles and podcasts (such as the always wonderful Dissect) and other non-music related content. Not only was I listening to more hip hop as a result, I was reading and learning more about it, too.

And likely the biggest reason for there being more hip hop in my life in 2024: my 16-year-old child has found a new love of hip hop, and has been listening to a lot of it recently. Having your teenage child grow into their own musical tastes that are separate from (but hopefully influenced by) your own, and then feeling compelled to talk to you about what they’re finding and listening to — that’s where the magic is. As a proud father who loves music, I’ll fall over backwards to accommodate any music-related ambition from my children. If they love Tyler, the Creator, I’ll be damned if I don’t love Tyler, the Creator, too. If they love Tyler’s past albums, I’ll love those, too (I’m looking at you, IGOR, which is cued up in my earbuds to listen to next).

Thankfully, Tyler is easy to love. Chromakopia is a rich, leaning-forward-into-the-momentum album that is a compelling listen. The number of guest stars on this album is astounding, including Top 31 past favorites Childish Gambino, Thundercat, Doechii, and Inflo, as well as future favorites GloRilla, Lil Wayne, ScHoolboy Q, Santigold, Willow, Daniel Caesar, Sexxy Redd, Teezo Touchdown, and Solange, and at least 20 other people. The production on the album, done by Tyler himself, along with the songwriting and arranging, is all-encompassing.

Hit play on the video above, for the song “NOID,” and you’ll get a taste of what I mean. The song, autobiographically concerned with the paranoia Tyler feels as his fame grows ironically larger, prominently features a sample of the Nambian band Ngozi Family’s song "Nizakupanga Ngozi,” from their 1977 album 45,000 Volts to great effect. Watch closely and you’ll see Ayo Edebiri from FX’s The Bear acting disturbingly psychotic with a gun. “NOID” is my favorite song on the album, so it’s convenient that it’s the only song for which Tyler made a video. “Balloon” featuring Doechii (#18 this year) is my 2nd fave, specifically because of Doechii’s appearance. That girl can do anything.

Nearing the end of the year, on Christmas Day, Tyler released “THAT GUY” – a freestyle remix of “Hey Now” from Kendrick Lamar’s 2024 album GNX, which only itself came out on November 22. Tyler seems to me that he’s mimicking Kendrick’s delivery style on the song. Or maybe my untrained ears are adding something where it’s not needed. Either way, I really like that beat, and Tyler’s verse on top of it is fantastic.

Chromakopia is wonderful. It’s still full of swears, but it’s much less than you’ll find on the Doechii album, if for some reason you found that a bit off-putting in her album. I am looking forward to giving IGOR a chance to ascend my “greatest regrets” list, for having not appeared on the Top 31 of the 2019 list when it really should have. And as for you, if you’ve not heard this new album yet, you know what to do.

Hop to it.

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#27 on the 2022 Bacon Top 31 — Ethel Cain

January 05, 2023 by Royal Stuart in Top 31

Preacher’s Daughter by Ethel Cain

The second new-to-the-Top 31 artist this year is Ethel Cain, the fictional creation of Hayden Silas Anhedönia, from Tallahassee, Florida. Her debut album, Preacher’s Daughter is my #27 of 2022. While I love the song “American Teenager” shown in the video above, don’t be fooled into thinking her music and this album is full of similar pop treacle. Anhedönia’s typical musical style is slow and sultry, and she can be found sandwiched between Lorde and Lana del Ray in the “Jack Antonoff-esque” section of your nearest Tower Records. While she does sound similar to those other artists, Anhedönia differs from her Antonoffian competition in that she produces all her own songs.

She grew up in a tight-knit Southern Baptist community, her dad a deacon at their church, where she and her mom sang in the church choir. This small-town religious upbringing, and how it felt being a suppressed and ostracized non-binary gay teenager in the South is felt throughout the album, if not in lyric than in feel. On top of those already difficult social circumstances, according to Pitchfork she unveiled her true self as a transgender woman at age 20 via Facebook. This ultimately freed her to be everything she needed to create her art. Amazingly, in the interviews I’ve read and watched, she makes it clear that her upbringing was not all pain and difficulty, despite any preconceptions you and I may bring to the table about being transgender and raised in a majorly religious Southern Christian home. There were hard times, for sure, but she also is careful to point out all the good she’s carried forward with her from her days of daily churchgoing.

The dark, dulcet tones that run through the album are punctuated by extremes in volume and excitement, from upbeat songs like “American Teenager,” to the droning, heavy choruses of “Thoroughfare” and “Sun Bleached Flies.” Together, there’s a large soundwave that blissfully compels you through the full 76 minute opus. In this KEXP live performance from August of this year, Anhedönia talks about the direct influence that the KEXP live sessions from Florence and the Machine and Daughter (#11 in 2013 and #17 in 2016) had on her sound.

I encourage you to listen to Ethel Cain’s KEXP session. She belts three stripped-down versions of songs from Preacher’s Daughter (plus “Crush” from her equally great 2021 EP Inbred) while playing the piano and her band backs her up on guitar and percussion. It’s otherworldly. Then pick up her debut. It’s a perfect listen for those long cold winter nights.

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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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#28 on the 2013 Musical Bacon Calendar

December 04, 2013 by Royal Stuart

Pure Heroine by Lorde

You’ve heard of Lorde by now. You know, Lorde: the just-turned-17 (born in 1996!) New Zealander phenom whose song “Royals” (above) is seemingly played everywhere all the time. Have you heard the rest of the album? It’s pretty damn good, too. But you and most other people will never know it, because she’s doomed to fall into obscurity just as fast as she found the spotlight.

This would be unfortunate, because Lorde is the real deal. She may be marketed as a vapid pop songstress, but there’s a lot more there there. Seriously. Go read her bio over at Wikipedia. This kid still has a lot to show us.

Pure Heroine is her debut album, one that she started when she was 15. “Royals” is definitely the strongest song on the album, but the rest of the album is well worth listening to. Her sultry voice (she’s 17!), ear-worm pop hooks, and synth-driven instrumentation is easy to listen to on repeat, over and over and over. So even though the song shows up overhead at the grocery store, through the headphones of your neighbor on the bus, or blaring from the open windows of that car that just drove by, you don’t mind. And then you find yourself humming the chorus 10 minutes later.

Side note: “Royals” is probably my 5-year-old son’s favorite song of the year, and not just because both he and I are named Royal. I want to remember this fact and remind him of it in 10 years, when he’s turning 15 and wondering what direction he should point himself in.

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29. Shaking the Habitual by The Knife
30. False Idols by Tricky
31. Let’s Be Still by The Head and the Heart

2012 Musical Bacon Calendar
2011 Musical Bacon Calendar
2010 Musical Bacon Calendar
2009 Musical Bacon Calendar