Thomas Evans

T-Pain is the 2000s rapper known for his pioneering use of autotune to actively distort his voice rather than using it to sound natural. He’s also this goofy little guy who’s happy to turn up on things like the Lonely Island’s ‘I’m On A Boat’ to croon lyrics like ‘I fucked a mermaid’. In 2019, he appeared and won The Masked Singer USA dressed as Monster, beating Donny Osmond as Peacock and Gladys Knight as Bee to the top spot. Having enjoyed the experience of singing other people’s songs, he started putting together a full covers album, this becoming 2023’s On Top of the Covers. Ever wanted to hear T-Pain’s versions of Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Belivin’’, Sam Smith’s ‘Stay With Me’ and Frank Sinatra’s ‘That’s Life’? Probably not but they exist and they’re fantastic. The standout of the collection is his cover of Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’, a full funk-fusion reworking of the original song that T-Pain and his band go to town on. This thing hits with force, the cathedral-orchestra synths and T-Pain’s echoy lyrics giving the whole thing an epic grandness that really fits the theme of war. Ozzy Osbourne himself called it the ‘best cover of War Pigs ever’, and you can’t get better praise than that. Despite the complete word salad that is ‘T-Pain’s funk cover of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”’, this is the real deal.

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 30

21. War Pigs - T-Pain (2023; USA)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfEc...

When Let’s Eat Grandma hit it on the scene, they were two nineteen year old girls who had spent their adolescences exploring music together and somehow ended up creating seven minute long electro prog rock songs called things like ‘Eat Shiitake Mushrooms’. Time had not been kind to them though: being in a band was hard, one of their partners died of a rare form of cancer, and they seemed to be slowly drifting apart. Out of this came Two Ribbons, an album that’s pretty much their Rumours given how directly it’s about the band’s troubles. Each song was written separately and then produced together; each song is pretty much them describing a fractious friendship; and the album as a whole keeps switching between synth pop bangers and slower ballads, the concept of splits built into its very structure. The music remains astounding though. ‘Happy New Year’ is the synth pop banger that kicks off the album: an euphoric declaration of dedication to each other whose choruses are filled with painful little vignettes of their friendship troubles. The lyrics ‘And you said “Just think, if we’d been together, we’d be breaking up”. I said “I want a synth”, and “What a thing to say”’ just speak so evocatively of who these people are and where they’re at. It’s really quite beautiful, and sad, and joyous, all at once. It’s like the friendship itself: absolutely massive feeling, yet oddly fragile.

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 29

22. Happy New Year - Let's Eat Grandma (2022; England)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R9q...

Honestly, not an awful pick for first record.

The second single I bought was 'Nu Flow' by Big Brovaz. I didn't fully realise that you could skip songs when listening to a CD and 'having' to listen a 10 minute remix that was just one line of the chorus repeated ad nauseam almost brought me to tears.

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 28

23. White Woman's Instagram - Bo Burnham (2021; USA)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHot...

"Moderation" is an enigmatic song that really captures the vageries of being both self-assured, neurodivergent and really anxious.

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 27

24. Moderation - Cate Le Bon (2022; Wales)

youtu.be/M6a7WeVYnSs?...

A great and underrated band give an enjoyably wobbly sounding critique of society from the 70s to the modern day, all facilitated by some of my favourite lyrics of the decade.

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 26

25. Back to the 70s - Home Counties (2022; England)

youtu.be/hf4_hJC-_6Q?...

These bands are more modern off-shoots of those British rock bands you used to get with ludicrously convoluted names and a sweary but more surreal approach to their lyrics. Your Kunt and the Gangs and your Half-Man Half-Biscuits.

My big music theory is that every British town has a D&B act who write comedically vulgar songs about being on the bottom rung of society. Your Petrol Bastards, Northern Boys, etc.

In Stoke-on-Trent, our version is Uncle Dad and the Day-Drinkers.

Glad to be of service!

YouTube video by Melt-Banana - Topic Puzzle

#TheTwen2ie5 Honorable Mention 5

'Puzzle' - Melt-Banana (2024; Japan)

Can't not shout out Melt-Banana when given the chance

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SERP...

YouTube video by RayeVEVO RAYE - Genesis.

#TheTwen2ie5 Honorary Mention 4

'Genesis.' - RAYE (2024; UK)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOX8...

YouTube video by Samantha Crain Samantha Crain - Ridin' Out The Storm (Visualizer)

#TheTwen2ie5 Honorary Mention 3 (Catching Up)

'Ridin' Out The Storm' - Samantha Crain (2024; USA)

youtube.com/watch?v=GmaahW4BP4w

YouTube video by MadilynMeiVEVO Madilyn Mei - What’s Going On?! (Official Music Video)

#TheTwen2ie5 Honourary Mention 2

'What's Going On?!' - Madilyn Mei (2025; USA)

Sneakily adding a song that would've 100% been in my Top 50 had I not first heard it one week into the challenge.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIoR...

YouTube video by BABYMETAL BABYMETAL x @ElectricCallboy - RATATATA (OFFICIAL VIDEO)

#TheTwen2ie5 Honourable Mention 1

'RATATATA' - BABYMETAL feat. Electric Callboy (2024; Japan/Germany)

A fun metal dance bop.

youtu.be/EDnIEWyVIlE?...

A song I love for the way it brings back a particularly 80s style of sexiness that hasn't really survived the sex positivity of the 00s.

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 25

26. Girl With No Face - Allie X (2024; Canada)

youtu.be/k7unOyCT_Rs?...

When they arrived on the scene, Black Country, New Road were the exact type of band you didn’t get anymore. They wrote ten-minute multi-phase songs that veered between jazz, indie rock and noise. They had tons of band members. Their lead singer was an angry young man poet. In an age with so little money flowing around the music industry, it was rare to get some newcomers with this much ambition. And in their wake came a new generation of young British indie bands – your English Teachers, Home Counties and Last Dinner Parties. And then, a few days before the release of their second album, the lead singer dropped out of the band and disappeared into the ether. Black Country, New Road were now a band defined by their incredibly idiosyncratic lead singer who no longer had a lead singer but did have an album and tour to do. What could they do? Amazingly, they banded together, scrapped their old songs, wrote a gigs worth of new material and did the tour anyway, releasing one of their shows as the album Live at Bush Hall. Then they went back into the studio and completely rebuilt themselves from the ground up. Wanting to avoid any of them burning out again, the songwriting and singing duties were shared among the band’s members with people typically singing the songs they wrote the lyrics to. A lot of the songwriting was also given to their female members. With comradery on their minds, their songs ended up being largely about the theme of friendship. With friendship on their minds, their songs largely brightened up and became much more folksy in feel. And with that, Black Country, New Road had gone from being Britain’s best indie band to being an even better one. ‘Besties’ is their comeback single and establishes their new sound immediately – bright, hopeful and friendly but still with that jazzy, experimental edge. It’s a shining, heartwarming track and shows you the best way to reinvent anything: give it to women and make it warmer.

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 24

27. Besties - Black Country, New Road (2025; England)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cae5...

My first ‘almost-a-relationship-but-not-quite’ happened during the first year of my Masters and the final year of her undergrad degree. We had known each other for years but then something clicked and, before I knew it, I was dropping dinner mid-plate to bake cakes at hers’ until 1am. She was big into the folky side of country and listening a lot to Sarah Jarosz’ song ‘Build Me Up From Bones’. A bittersweet ode asking a lover to hold them close and ‘build them up from bones’, it’s a quiet but tired thing with a real sense of fragility. As someone to whom ‘tired’ and ‘yearning’ are basically the two emotions I’ve got left, it connected to me like little else that year. Just before I could ask her out, she received an offer from a far away university to do a better Masters degree than was offered locally. Too early into things to ask her to stick around, I instead went through my first proper heartbreak. (My heartbreaks are spectacular; a film student literally made a documentary about it.) And there with me during this period was ‘Gone Too Soon’, another Jarosz song from the Build Me Up From Bones album about her not wanting to leave her lover. The emotional connections I have to that song still wreck me to this day. I moved on and did other things also defined by their failure to start. Then, over a decade later, Sarah Jarosz returned to my algorithm with new single ‘Columbus and 89th’. In it, Jarosz remembers a past relationship that the world seemed to temporarily align itself around and quietly contrasts it against the unspoken years after she left it, this relationship now one of the few moments where her life made sense. I don’t know how she keeps doing it. Every time I listen to a new Sarah Jarosz song, I find that it’s describing my current emotional state and end up carrying it with me as a totem. Beautifully crystalline and impermanent, it’s another hidden gem from the one woman I appear to be in the process of growing old with.

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 23

28. Columbus & 89th - Sarah Jarosz (2024; USA)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gI3...

A cute little folk song this time, detailing all those little regrets Rose has collected in her life. ‘So it’s one for the time that I broke his heart, one for the joke that I took too far, and one for the dent in the rental car, the doodles I’d undo. It’s one for the nights that I let them win, one for the light that I let him dim, and it’s one for a kiss that should never have been, the doodles I’d undo.’ The folksy instrumentation and singsong nature of the chorus establish this as a song to be sung in a pub, thus turning her doodles into things done under the influence. While the song is about regret though, Betts seems happy to wear her doodles on her sleeve, every mistake given a gloss of nostalgia such that each becomes a stepping stone on a path unfinished. People do tend to build mythologies around their nights out, each notable memory becoming part of an anecdote pantheon that can be trotted out whenever social situations require. These stories are often about being young and stupid. When you’re young, you’re doing most things for the first time and are thus prone to mistakes. As such, the failures of our youth often end up becoming the things we’re most proud of in retrospect. They show that we’ve grown, that we have indeed been improving over time. If life is the process by which we collect anecdotes, then tales of hideous nights out and stupid mistakes are evidence that we’ve lived. I do slightly regret not going out more in my youth. It’s not that I didn’t do it, I just don’t have any stories about doing it. My friends have never really been big partiers and I’ve always been too self-reserved to go wild; all my nights club were just going out with friends, dancing a bit and then going home on my own. I should’ve let myself be messier, then I might have few more regrets and learned a bit more. At least I have ‘Doodles’ to live vicariously through.

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 22

29. Doodles - Rose Betts (2024; England)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0Bv...

We’re back in hyperpop land with the loudest, most braggadocious record this side of Fatman Scoop. Heralded by an army of trumpets and singing entirely in capslock, Joey Valence and Brae are here to let you know that they’re ‘THE BADDEST BITCH IN THIS CLUB’. One’s got ‘7-UP IN MY CUP’. The other looks like ‘DANNY PHANTOM’. Then Ayesha Erotica turns up with a big vat of sexuality that she spills over everything like the chili scene from The Office. The bravado is off the charts. Goddamn if it isn’t contagious though. The past year has featured me listening to this a lot to pump myself up for things. It’s a workout in song form. The secret sauce that makes it work is that Joey Valence and Brae are obviously dorks. Again, there’s a Danny Phantom reference, and look at the album cover. They’re not the baddest bitches in a club, they’re teenage boys in their bedrooms. And yet they just sell it, diving into the track with full confidence and no holding back. That’s why they work so well as a pump-up act: if Joey Valence and Brae can be as hot shit as they are here, then so can you. Then in comes Ayesha Erotica to provide an absolutely killer guest verse that steals the show. As forceful as Valence and Brae but actually believable, her performance is awe inspiring. I really love the interplay between her and the boys too, particularly the ‘Do you think anyone’s actually going to dance to this?’ ‘Hell naw!’ introduction. She’s entirely in on the joke and knows to play the material straight. It’s another of the joys of hyperpop: the way that its aggressive pastiches and dedication to aesthetic extremism makes for a really flexible genre where the fun is watching people fluidly switch between identities at breakneck speeds. You can tell how the sound came out of online queer spaces. The ultimate conclusion reached: YOU’RE THE BADDEST BITCH IN THIS CLUB.

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 20

30. THE BADDEST (BADDER) - Joey Valence & Brae feat. Ayesha Erotica (2024; USA)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIhb...

My favourite current band is Major Parkinson, a prog rock act from Norway. They started their career with the albums Major Parkinson and Songs from a Solitary Home, both combining pure fury with a carnivalesque aesthetic. They then changed their style for their next two albums with Twilight Cinema and Blackbox both settling into a more gothic, operatic sound. Now they’ve changed their styles again for their next two albums, Valesa – Chapter 1 and the upcoming Valesa – Chapter 2, both concept albums that add musical theatre and 80s synthpop influences to their already packed musical pallet. ‘Jonah (Prequel)’ was released between Blackbox and Valesa – Chapter 1 and is designed to bridge between the former’s gothic aesthetic and the later’s synthpop stylings. It starts like a normal Blackbox song, a low synth tone and drum beat rumbling along while the gravelly voiced vocalist spits out the opening lyrics to ‘In Heaven (Lady in The Radiator Song)’ from Eraserhead. This setup momentarily stops and is then replaced by these intricate synth trills and a main synth riff, all of which have been played and recorded with the grandiosity of an cathedral organ. From this point onwards, the song keeps growing into something bigger and wider until an entire choir turns up and starts singing a communal tribute to the song’s titular character. Wrap things up with an astounding guitar solo and you have a great song. An alternate version of the track, simply titled ‘Jonah’, appears in Valesa – Chapter 1 but in a completely different form, this time played on acoustic instruments with a slower tempo and a gospel choir providing the background singing. It’s a more intense experience, providing a suitably grand and funereal tone to one of the core moments of the album’s plot. I do personally prefer the single edit, enjoying the sound of friends at a party remembering a loved one more than I do the titanic sound of the church edit, but both are colossal tracks from an astounding band.

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 20

31. Jonah (Prequel) - Major Parkinson (2020; Norway)

youtu.be/vsG9OjUDsUs?...

A song I love for the way it's one of the few that confronts specifically being in your thirties, having had nothing come together for you, and being unable to accept that your thirties isn't actually that old, something I painfully relate to.

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 19

32. I Forget (I'm So Young) - Sofie Royer (2024; Austria)

youtu.be/fhN2I2FPiNM?...

"The Ballad of Smokin' Joe" is a ludicrous comedy song, and yet also a densely packed outlaw filled with astounding lines and an actual emotional backbone come the end. It's an absolute blast and probably one of the best country songs of its generation, imo.

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 18

33. The Ballad of Smokin' Joe Rudeboy - Tom Cardy (2022; Australia)

youtu.be/B7W4dAvZmQc?...

Is Sabrina Carpenter the best writer of tag raps that there’s ever been? (Yes) The line ‘I Know, I Mountain Dew’d for you’ is ridiculous, (Yes) but then it rhymes perfectly with ‘One touch and I brand new’d it for you’ (Yes) and suddenly it becomes brilliant. (Holy shit) Eventually, the summer haze and the pure density of the lyrics combine into something that becomes high on its own silliness (Hahahaha) but my God if it doesn’t earn it (So dumb), every element both completely ridiculous and yet perfectly placed (Stupid). It’s a masterpiece of comedic craft. I have a bit of a love-it-hate-it relationship with Sabrina Carpenter, hence why one of the biggest songs of the decade is down in the mid-thirties with the indie artists. I have been trying to not have all my write-ups read each song through the prism of my (say it with me!) historically non-existent romantic life™, but there really is no way around it for Sabrina Carpenter. I have a strong aversion to hearing about people’s dating and sex lives, resulting in my lists being big on awkward people ruminating and short on sex jams. Meanwhile, Ms. Carpenter is the artist whose gigs famously pause themselves for a running joke about advanced sex positions. There’s a conflict of interest here. And yet, even I have to acknowledge that this song is sexy as fuck. ‘Espresso’ is custom built to convince you that Sabrina Carpenter is the single hottest woman in the world. Yes, it’s a silly song that’s partly taking the piss out of itself, but Carpenter is so fully enjoying being silly that it comes off as pure confidence, and what’s sexier than that? She’s having so much fun being herself that you can’t help but want to be with her. This is something that I’m working to reclaim for myself: the idea that life is at its best when you’re just running around and enjoying being yourself, and that the act of enjoying yourself will naturally draw people to you. Easier said than done but it is doable. Carpenter’s proved it.

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 17

34. Espresso - Sabrina Carpenter (2024; USA)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVli...

People keep saying it's the fault of Leto but the thing that killed my interest in it was a trailer that opened with the line "So much talk of AI and big tech today". Like yeah, there is; it's inescapable and exhausting and I wish there wasn't. The last thing I want to do is watch a movie about it.

It'd be cool if people who thought they were funny would stop conflating male loneliness with antisocial incels who think they're owed something from women.

I ended up arriving at them the other way - first heard of them when HiRUDiN released, then worked backwards. And am very much looking forward to the new album too!

It will not have escaped your attention that the 2020s have, so far, been shit. Profit focused capitalism has finally got to the point where there’s no more money to be made except at the expense of quality, resulting in everything becoming complete wank. Western governments' responses to people pointing this out have been to set the fuzz on them. And this is all happening in a digital sphere where every new tech advancement is ‘We’ve invented a program that punches you in the brain; you have to give us exclusive rights to your DNA to use it, our CEO thinks he’s Hitler, the program doesn’t work, but don’t worry, we’ve just received a contract to run the NHS.’ It’s complete bollocks out there.

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 16

35. Escape and Retreat - Holiday Sidewinder (2024; Australia)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f8P...

The actual answer is that typically Point A doesn't lead to Point B, hence the jump cut and how the story got onto the Fesshole feed. But imagine that feeling you had when you read the above and got to the jump cut. That's how I feel about every "how we got together" story I've ever been told.

OK, so I spend a lot of my time on Bluesky complaining about how my autism means I just straightforwardly don't know how romantic relationships happen, but seriously: how the fuck does this story go from Point A to Point B?

The single best individual Doctor Who episode is 'Delta and the Bannermen: Part One'. The scene of Ken Dodd being executed remains one of the most horrifying scenes in the show's history.