Please, Music Gods, Let These Things Happen Before the Year Ends

Nothing in life is certain. We make plans in the hope they will happen. Sometimes they do but, more than often than not, someone takes a sledgehammer to your carefully-plotted evening by flaking ten minutes before you were going to leave. Then you're left home, wearing nothing but pants and surrounded by discarded packets of biscuits, wondering when Saturday night became an incestuous love-fest for one.

People are fucking disappointing, they always have been. Your friends borrow CDs and return them with cracked cases, the World Wrestling Federation lies to you, and Santa Claus, despite having a trillion elves and the ability to traverse the entire world in one evening, somehow couldn't afford a Playstation at Christmas. The older you get, the worse it becomes. For example: this morning I heavily disappointed myself by forgetting to turn on the boiler. My punishment was a cold-shower and, if I'm honest, the remnants of Original Source shower gel continuing to marinade somewhere around my happy area.

We understand that everyone is a letdown yet, for some reason, even with all the ignorant opinions on social media, the spelling mistakes, the fact that Brian Harvey was dumb enough to run himself over with his own car, we continue to place musicians on pedestals. This is OK, I guess. But it's also apparent that musicians are like us, the sort of person that definitely wouldn't come to your birthday drinks despite promising face to face they would attend. Musicians say they will do things; they make plans in the hope they will happen; but more often than not their planned releases never materialise.

We can fix this problem - the sort of dilemma brought on by news that Kanye West is about to release a three-hour spoken word album, on vinyl - by destroying the bastions of pull-quote, click-bait, rumour journalism. Until we destroy the tabloids and the TMZs, they will continue to write stories about things they heard once; it will continue to be retweeted by the masses; we will continue to be disappointed on a daily basis.

So in the meantime, let's question why everything we've been promised this year hasn't happened yet. Music gods, please make these things happen before next year.

First, Kanye was releasing a mini-sequel to Yeezus featuring leftovers from Rick Rubin's sessions, then he was releasing a spoken-word album, then he was putting out an eight-track surprise release (a rumour perpetuated by us, sorry u guys), and then he was just busy making shoes and shouting at clouds / talk-show hosts.

Adidas presented a sample of a new Kanye song, "God Level", back in May. Why haven't we heard the full thing yet?

A couple more songs leaked online - "Bitch Please", "All Day" - but the snippets are so awful they sound like they were recorded with a Tamagotchi.

The latest: Theophilus London, an unlikely news source, has said the album is finished and he's going to feature on the single (LOL). The CEO of Def Jam says the "album is incredible". He says Kanye is "focused". This means nothing. It will probably come out next year. You will know about it when it does. Trust us.

Tha Carter V is supposed to drop next Tuesday. We heard "D'Usse" back in May and three tracks (two of them featuring Drake) dropped over Summer. That was months ago and we still haven't had a tracklist, no follow-up single and, surprisingly, very little promotion from Young Money Cash Money. I am betting they push the release date back on Friday but also willing to eat my words.

In a YouTube video Lil Wayne said he would release two albums this year. "Tha Carter V" and "Da Other Album". We have yet to receive word on either. The clock is ticking. Also, let's get a Lil Wayne and Young Thug collaboration please.

The latest: Wayne will be hosting a "Pre-Season" party on Sunday. Tickets cost between $80 and $750. Go if (A) you're rich and (B) you're dumb.

PC Music has been a thing for a minute now. We posted the first piece on them back in March and since then they've blown up - meaning every website panicked and realised they needed to keep up and cover them. The main thing to glean from PC Music is they make songs that sound like pop bangers. Except they're not pop bangers because no one who listens to daytime radio would feasibly enjoy them. Still, ever since the beginning, the 'heads' have been holding out for a crossover hit, perhaps hoping their Mother can assimilate the assonance of the emoji keyboard while travelling to Waitrose - which, let's be honest, would be the beginning of a dystopian nightmare.

"Hey QT" reached a bigger audience - albeit one contained in an online microcosm, the populus of which are comfortable with the idea of an energy-drink popstar. Danny L Harle released another track the other week - it's fucking sick but you won't hear it on Fearne Cotton. The last we heard SOPHIE was getting kawaii with Kyary Pamyu Pamyu - not Katy Perry.

The latest: This probably won't happen and if you can't understand why then you don't get it

The lint-roller was cool.

Last week's basketball game was fun.

But, honestly, bring back Degrassi. A new Drake album would be cool but let's be serious: an entire series featuring superstar Drake doing normal things would be unfathomably huge.

Last year's song of the Summer was obvious. You were up all night for good fun, up all night to get some, up all night to get lucky. This year: not so obvious.

Is "Anaconda" the song of the Summer? IDK. It bangs but with lyrics like "He toss my salad like his name is Romaine" you're hardly going to catch your Nan singing along, which is always an indicator of a Summer Song. Plus "Baby Got Back" was the song of the Summer in, like, 1992. As a general rule, Song of the Summer only happens once.

Is ""Rather Be" the song of the Summer? If, right now, you're figuring out how to fill all the free periods in your Sixth Form timetable, maybe. Also: no.

Is "Lifestyle" the song of the Summer? No. The track is amazing but can anyone honestly understand what Young Thug is saying? The song of the summer, as a requirement, needs lyrics that can be understood by the masses.

From the factual research above it's clear there has been no Official Soundtrack to Two Thousand and Fourteen. We get that Summer is over - but is it really too late for one massive pop song to magnetise culture and bring us all together? Rihanna, where the fuck is your new album? Beyoncé, where is "Drunk in Love" part 2? Record labels, what the fuck are you doing?

The latest: Fuck knows.

Grimes released the first single from her fourth album back in June. The track was called "Go", it was alright, and it seemed like an album was imminent. She even released a video for "Go" in August. Why, then, haven't we heard about her new album?

The latest: Grimes said the new album "sucked". She has "started again". So, there's that.

She was finally set free from her label in Summer. Still no album though. Is there anything left to ask? If you pre-ordered this back in 2011 can you claim interest back from iTunes? Will we ever stop making this joke?

I am glad you asked. The Wu have had a rollercoaster year. First: a member of Wu-Tang Clan cut off his penis. Then news-outlets discovered that, actually, the man was only an affiliate of the Wu-Tang Clan. Then, in a further twist of events, news outlets uncovered a key fact: the man who no longer has a penis was never anything to do with Wu-Tang. He's not even a famous rapper. He's just a man with no dick. Still - some people are publishing follow-up news stories almost a year after.

Second: There was meant to be an official remix of Drake's "Wu-Tang Forever", which never happened.

Third: The group decided they were going to release one record, try to sell it for $5 million and, presumably, fuck-off back to playing chess or reading about Shaolin monks or whatever.

The latest: Forbes travelled 3,500 miles from New York to Marrakech to hear a 51-second snippet of the album. What a waste of time. Also: no museum is yet to purchase the record. Great work everyone.

It seemed like last year was jam-packed with huge albums. Kanye, Drake, Jay Z, Beyoncé, Rihanna, David Bowie, Daft Punk, Justin Timberlake, My Bloody Valentine, Britney fucking Spears: they all put albums out last year.

What've we had this year then? Well, so far, one semi-entertaining (depending on how much you like brass instruments) album from Pharrell.

Sure, there's been good records from good artists - everything TDE put out has been great, YG's album was cool, Pop'caan made everything better - but nothing from the blockbuster artists. Does this explain why no album will reach platinum status in the US this year? Probably. A quick glance at the UK best-selling list and you'll see that almost half of the Top Ten were released last year. Ellie Goulding also comes in at Number 6 with a record that came out in 2012, begging the question: seriously, who buys this shit?

The latest: We have 65 days till Christmas. Considering Beyoncé put out the best-selling album of last year the week before Christmas and considering record labels like earning money, let's really hope someone puts out something big right before we all have to head home and make polite conversation with extended family.

Follow Ryan on Twitter: @RyanBassil