The problem with Flowers is that McCulloch's voice never soars. He still has the timbre, but he's lost his range and forcefulness, resulting in a lost sense of urgency.

At the core of these lush power ballads is a lot of empty posturing -- especially when it comes to lyrics.

No Doubt does play its own instruments, placing the group a cut above the current glut of acts that concentrate more on choreography than musicianship. But try as it might to mask itself in pink hair and fast-paced arrangements, No Doubt is as close to being alternative as the members of 'NSync are to being musicians.

Buckcherry aim to carry on the tradition laid out by the Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Aerosmith, and Guns N' Roses -- extolling the virtues of sex, drugs, and rock and roll -- but listening to Time Bomb is a game of spot the rip-off.

All the star power in the world can't save sub-par material.

The disc is strangely uneven... t's puzzling right from the start, as what should be the climax -- a rambling, 18-minute version of "Cowgirl in the Sand" -- appears first.... The remaining tracks vary widely in quality.

From Here On In may grab you with a slide-guitar hook here, a tiny melody or vocal quirk there, after repeated listening. But it's hard to justify the five or six hours necessary to achieve such meager nirvana.

Any hopes of redemption are dashed by the same bland production that plagued his first release.

There's artistic maturation, and there's just plain old selling out. This, friends, is a prime example of the latter.

Most of the songs on 2000 Years of Human Error feature the now clichéd mix of distorted vocals, loud guitars, and electro rhythms, and, as a result, the band sounds too much like its brethren to be distinctive.

All the glitter does not make gold: being Nelly Furtado ("Yo Yo") doesn't work, and a couple of Natalie Imbruglia-esque power ballads ("Saturate Me," "Crush") capture Moore in all her adolescent awkwardness, while the uptempo tracks rely on oddly placed Middle Eastern arrangements that don't fit the dance floor.

A largely useless excuse for a bored millionaire to air out his late-night bedroom recordings at the expense of the kids.

There's little in the way of cohesion or artistic forethought here, and some of the tracks are just bad, though nothing is as surpassingly awful as lead single "Rollin'," its shout-outs overly reminiscent of "Bawitdaba."

Hewitt's problem on BareNaked, ironically, is that she lacks "it." Whatever magnetism she carries on screen, whatever eye-candy poise she possesses; it all comes off as vanilla in her music.