SPINAL BAP'S TOP ALBUMS OF 2020!

With venues closed for the foreseeable and several legends dead from Covid, some say now is not the time to be snide about music but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. And certainly not while Gary Barlow and Cliff Richard remain on the loose, making insincere charity appeals from their gold-plated tax havens. Looking more wrinkly than ever with his strained voice now clearly unable to pant its way through his own decades-old hits, your gran’s favourite singer really struggled when duetting with Cliff.

Here are Spinal Bap’s top albums of 2020. Look on my blurbs, ye Mighty, and despair.

Gary Barlow – Music Played By Humans

While most musicians acted responsibly in the face of a pandemic by refraining from gigs and staying at home to create quirky bedroom pop and soothing ambient soundscapes, Gary Barlow decided now was the moment to come into contact with more people than he’s ever worked with before. For his album of sub-Bublé drivel he packed a whole orchestra into the recording studio where they were able to share ideas, harmonies and lethal respiratory droplets.

Gary Barlow, who is definitely human, reasoned he had grown tired of music that relies on computer technology and progress. In an interview with BBC Radio 2, he said:

“MUSIC PLAYED BY HUMANS IS GARY BARLOW’S FIRST SOLO ALBUM IN SEVEN YEARS. STOP. GARY BARLOW WROTE MOST OF THE SONGS HIMSELF. STOP. GARY BARLOW WORKED WITH AN ORCHESTRA ON THE WHOLE ALBUM. STOP. ALL OF THE INSTRUMENTS WERE PLAYED BY PUNY HUMANS. STOP. GARY BARLOW IS A MEMBER OF TAKE THAT. STOP. GARY BARLOW WAS BIG IN THE 1990s. STOP. GARY BARLOW’S FAVOURITE SPICE GIRLS SONG IS STOP. STOP.”

Gary Barlow – Music Played By Animals

You may remember that back in 2016 the crackpot cosmic orderer Noel Edmonds decided to launch a radio station exclusively for pets. More recently Edmonds hooked up with everyone’s least favourite tax-dodging crooner for this album performed by animals. Gary Barlow was delighted to work on the project, having been a massive fan of Noel’s House Party and especially its bizarre mascot Mr. Blobby. With his clumsy balloon-like physique and amusing habit of repeating his own name in a ridiculous voice, Gary Barlow used to be a member of Take That. While most musicians were acting responsibly in the face of a pandemic by refraining from gigs and staying at home to create quirky bedroom pop and soothing ambient soundscapes, Barlow and Edmonds packed a whole animal orchestra into the recording studio, including several Chinese bats and queasy-looking pangolin.

Gary Barlow - Music Played By A Handmaid

It is well known that in her horrific dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood included only things that have already happened in human history, most of these having occurred within the music industry. A stickler for tradition and pining to create the kind of music he grew up with, Gary Barlow went back-to-basics on his latest record. He enslaved one of his few remaining fertile friends, dictated what she should wear and forced her at gunpoint to perform take after take until she started coughing up blood. “As a long-term supporter of the Conservative Party I have always admired Phil Spector’s working methods,” said Barlow, “and have long been fascinated by how he got such incredible performances out of his singers.”

Idles - Ultra Mono (XS/S/M/L/XL/XXL)

In September 2020 Idles continued their innovative approach to the music business by releasing a new album to promote their latest line of t-shirts. Soon enough the t-shirts were analysed in painstaking detail by Anthony Fantano, the world’s least entertaining rock critic. In a 20-minute video uploaded to his like-and-subscribe-like-and-subscribe-like-and-subscribe YouTube channel The Piddle Drops, Fantano praised the passion and intelligence that singer Joe Talbot had put into the band’s t-shirts. “With their past merch Idles would often shroud the political points they were making in a bit of absurdism or deliver a story where the point didn’t come across until you finished reading the back of the t-shirt,” the skinheaded vlogger explained. “In the case of their new t-shirts, though, the messaging and topics are way more straightforward, much more in-your-face and to-the-point.” Aptly one of the t-shirts had a cock on it.