How Not to Die From Boredom This Christmas

If you celebrate it, the older you get, the more christmas sucks. You have to start buying people presents after all those years of blindly receiving them from what you assumed was a bearded resident of the North Pole who breaks into your house at night. Elderly relatives begin to die off. Families splinter off into factions. Simmering resentments bubble with terse words over bread sauce. And even if you’re lucky enough to come from a family blessed with money and happiness, it’s really just a time where you sit on your arse, isn’t it?

Once christmas is over, there’s that great stretch of nothingness before new year where you are literally just waiting for time to pass. Nothing is open. Nobody is around. Nothing happens. In other words, it’s fucking boring. Personally, I’d rather spend the day doing other things, like go karting or licking the back of a poisonous frog and seeing what happens.

Now that we've really brought the mood down, below is a bunch of stuff to read, hear, and look at over the next week or two so you don’t just stare into the blank void. Assuming you’ve already watched our sick docs from 2017 (things like Noisey Blackpool Grime 2: One Year On or The People Vs Big Shaq or Princess Nokia and the Art of Doing What You Want) and rinsed our many features, here are some other things to pass the time before death, all of which have been meticulously selected by Noisey UK staff:

If you, too, are an enormous music nerd, then you may enjoy this serialised podcast which breaks down Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly and Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy on a track-by-track basis through a prism of biographical context, musicological genius, and cultural relevance. Equally, it’s probably quite an interesting thing to listen to if you think you hate Kanye West because it will clearly explain all the reasons why you are wrong.

Ugh, do you ever love something so much you wish there was a way you could squish it into a ball and shove it in your mouth and consume it whole, spit dripping everywhere, savouring every bite without completely destroying it? That’s how Brockhampton’s short film Billy Star makes me feel and it might make you feel too. There are lots of new tracks and beautiful shots in the LA in betweens: sunrise, sunset and after dark.

A lot has obviously been written about Melodrama by Lorde because it was one of this year’s most vibrant and relatable pop masterpieces. If you read anything about it not on this website, though, make it be this incredible, sprawling, very human essay by Caitlin White. It will stick with you.

IDK if there will ever be a cooler human than Chloe Sevigny – apart from maybe Rihanna but she released “Umbrella” which isn’t that cool – and in this brief rundown for Pitchfork she talks us through the music she grew up obsessed with, from Annie the musical to Brian Eno. Sometimes hearing about other people’s music tastes can be dry, but for some reason this is addictive.

Smash this at various inappropriate moments to cause upset, havoc and mayhem over the festive period.

Watch evil little PC Music mastermind slash audio shitposter Danny L Harle create a huge banger out of thin air in less than 10 minutes, concentrating very seriously on chopping up a Clean Bandit sample while his various ridiculous idents like “YES MILORD” and “INFINITE BASS” go off in the background.

What it says on the tin.

Watch Big Mouth on Netflix if you’re in the market to see REM’s Michael Stipe rendered in the shape of a tampon, with a soundalike singing a version of “Everybody Hurts” called “Everybody Bleeds.” Also ft. Kristen Wiig as a talking vagina.

If Flower Boy was also one of your fave records of the year, this stripped back, purple-lit video of Tyler performing a bunch of tracks with a gospel choir will totally soothe your soul.

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