Seventy Two & Sunny breezes by with the worst kinds of countrified clichés... sung by a guy who was never meant to carry a harmony.

Predictably packed with hip-hoppy dance numbers and chiming ballads that don't dare push her vocal range, J.Lo vibelessly goes through a series of songs about love, fidelity and how real she is.

A thoroughly dull collection of acoustic-based country-rock ballads you could hear at any local open-mike night.

This bummer sounds more in league with Yanni than Moby.

Employing actress Brittany Murphy on the ridiculous "Faster Kill Pussycat" hardly helps, as does reducing Pharrell Williams' talent with a caricature of a tune like "Sex 'N' Money."

Rife with hyper-marketable flamenco guitars and jazz pianos, it's world music for people whose idea of adventure is a trip to Banana Republic.

Although he has sensibly cut back on the droning that defined his last disc's stand-out single "Strange Condition," this release shows few other signs of growth.

It's business as usual.

The fortysomething performer doesn't have the stamina he used to, and the album quickly turns into a long run of listless ballads and silly cries for privacy.

Unfortunately, it lacks much of the spark and spunk that made the original disc so memorable.

She throws so much sparkle, shine and, yes, glitter at us that even tracks about her friend's suicide and her recent breakup are as glossy as her latest publicity shot.

There's nothing as instantly likable as "Frontin'," and even with the presence of some bigwig collaborators the disc sounds strangely inspiration-free.

The B. Coming attempts to document the emotional upheaval Sigel went through during his trial and conviction, but from the start the sober moral tone and forced gospel choruses make it obvious the MC's mind is on other matters.

Fails to whip up much excitement.

The end result of all this sermonizing will likely inspire you not to renounce sin and its sordid ways, but feel the itch to grab some hooch and a few George Jones albums and have a rip-roaring time.

It sounds like he wrote his lyrics by taking random words out of a thesaurus.

If he approached these songs with the slightest hint of subtlety, he might get his point across, but he's happy just hammering everyone with his trailer-park politics.

Record buyers will find nothing as good on Atomic as the breakout bubblegum slacker-punk of "My Own Worst Enemy."

Anyone order more of the same?

Chapter V is merely a carbon copy of, uh, chapters I-IV, simply rehashing the same punishing riffs and self-pitying lyrics.

The first word that comes to mind while listening to Destiny Fulfilled is: boring!

[A] thoroughly underwhelming debut, an album that merely paints within the lines already drawn by Pavement and the Pixies.

Less immediate than their brilliantly untouchable 1998 album Mezzanine, this project is unsettling, uneasy and, okay, sometimes unbearably depressing.

Most of the good parts of the Britney that originally hit us, baby, one more time (then oops!...did it again) drown in breathy vocals and multiproduced, tweaked-to-perfection studio gimmickry.

A largely boring affair.

What once sounded like the future's music a decade ago just sounds creepy and dated now.

Gold Medal's tempos are sluggish and the lyrics are emotionally vacant.

A set of predictable, plastic, street-tough R&B jams.

Has a polish that verges on parody.

Sadly, Keith's least-clever disc yet was almost completely written by him for the first time.

While the band's wounded vulnerability and breathy melodrama will probably imitate enough to sell well, this is predictable second-rate stuff.

There's something high-concept going on here, if you listen closely enough. Sad thing is, you probably won't want to. There's something high-concept going on here, if you listen closely enough. Sad thing is, you probably won't want to.

At their best they sound like a female Black Sabbath tribute band, at their worst they sound like slutty old goth rockers. Frankly, neither is all that appealing.

Though not terrible, Trey Anastasio's latest is miles below what he's done before.

His crisp voice has dulled, and his inspiration has gone with it.

In the end, Island makes Dave sound like he's just not enthusiastic about making music anymore.

It doesn't help that the best song here, "Feel," sounds like a bad Richard Ashcroft B-side; the worst is a seven-minute mariachi stomp about traveling to Las Vegas with a monkey, called "Me and My Monkey."

It's not exactly a convincing change of gears, nor is it particularly groundbreaking--unless you consider jamming as many four-letter words as possible into three minutes (on "As I Come Back") novel.

Velvet Revolver sounds like a hungover bar band playing catch-up, wading through tired blues licks and meaningless grunge imagery.

Sure, sanitary party jams like "Switch" will get the PTA meeting rocking, but there's just no getting around Smith's insipid rhymes.

Feels like it was designed by committee.

Aside from some cool collaborations with Missy Elliott, Twista and Method Man, Kim spends most of the album lecturing her fans with less-than-stimulating lines.

Therapy's diagnosis ultimately is not positive, because the disc's split-personality disorder results in too much incoherence.

Weighed down with bland lyrics and blander arrangements, it meanders off into chick-rock clichés and lazy easy-listening melodies.

For the most part, the vitality is gone.

From the amateurish cover art to a succession of clumsy diss tracks aimed at Fiddy, Blood in My Eye merely makes the Tupac disciple look desperate and directionless.

Despite the fact that nobody bought their lackluster last two albums, Art Alexakis and his two lackeys are back with the even more banal and unnecessarily loud Slow Motion Daydream.

Carrying none of the charm or innovation of the duo's earlier ABBA tribute, this set is salvaged only by a relatively straight reading of Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill."

Human Conditions is as bloated and directionless as its awkward title suggests, weighted with meandering songs without melodies, lyrics straight out of freshman-year philosophy class and a sickly slick sheen.

There's little here that Our Lady Peace, Foo Fighters, Everclear and a half-dozen other post-grunge bands don't already do better.

This sub-par group's darker efforts to push society's hot buttons and dis others are ultimately more silly than sinister.

He can still work a guitar and woo the pants right off of you, but after listening to another round of patchouli-soaked ballads like "Baptized" and "What Did I Do With My Life?" you really begin to consider running the other way.

Finds the sexy singer too often wading in the oversimplified pop influence of heavyweight producer Glen Ballard, her country sass and personality replaced by hackneyed and bland musical doodles.

Like the soundtrack of a very bad Jazzercise class.

The Philadelphia quartet continues to believe that barbershop harmonies, sugary ballads and New Jack Swing beats are where it's at. It ain't.

It says a lot about an album when the best song, "Get Right," is actually a leftover from Usher's Confessions.

It's hard to believe these men were once innovators.

The duo's seventh album sees an invasion of unnecessary guest stars, such as Lloyd Banks and Yayo, and a disappointing lyrical turn that celebrates monotonous Detroit staples like guns, cash and bumps.

All the Right Reasons doesn't so much pick up where 2003's The Long Road left off, but damn near replicates that album in whole.

Carey's once glorious voice is all over the place, her rainbow-and-stars lyrics come off like the notebook doodles of a 12-year-old girl, and her song selection is shocking.

A headache-inducing mess of rehashed classic rock riffs and stale grooves.

If he keeps going like this, it's a good bet that his best days are behind him.

Appallingly not so good.

There's little to dig here as the guys sound like a three-headed John Mayer or a trio of little Joe Jacksons.

With nothing to react against and few new ideas to air, P.O.D. mostly operates in default mode, relying on hitmaker-for-hire Glen Ballard to inject the music with new life. Sadly, he doesn't.

It sounds like the band is trying too hard to recapture the quirk factor, and the overdose borders on annoying.

Unlike previous albums, The Altogether doesn't really take the listener on some mind-altering trip. It simply throws together some half-baked novelties, some wasted and underwhelming guest appearances and a bunch of rhythmic ideas that would have sounded infinitely better a decade ago.

In the end, his big head seriously weighs down the quality of Quality.

Ed Kowalczyk and crew burden their sound with angry guitars, pseudoraps and needless swearing torn straight outta the Fred Durst book of lyric writing.

Basically disco with a new-wave spin, it's nothing you haven't heard before--in 1983.

An album that lacks severely in all areas, including production, direction and inspiration.

There are no new ideas, no points of interest.

A subpar album.

All the spiky edges have been worn away.

This disc is filled with the kind of generic club grooves, terrible singing and general sense of aimlessness they once would have laughed off.

There must be some kind of new world record in terribleness here.

Chester Bennington's anguished man-child howling is largely left on the shelf, as are the thrusting hooks that were Linkin Park's big draw.

Declawed and hesitant, it's hard to get excited about this piece of funkless confection.

It all amounts to the kind of mediocre girl pop-rock about dreams and stuff that one writes when they want to be Vanessa Carlton or Michelle Branch but don't really know how.

He doesn't deliver much you haven't heard before.

The lyrics are clumsy, the synth-pop melodies bland and the genius long gone.

Deadsy crosses cheesy new wave keyboards, metal guitars and overwrought gothic drama in a way that just never jells.

It's just so staccato and nonlinear, a sort of free-jazz version of rock with just too much going on and little worth hearing.

Aside from the razor-thin, plastic-sounding tunes, it's hard to determine what's more disturbing, her acid-hued cover photo or the Prince-y song titles like "Run 2 U," "2 Become 1" and "U & Me = Love."

Call us out of sync, but we never got the memo proclaiming that wafer-thin cheese metal sung by deranged lunatics is back in fashion.