A largely boring affair.

A little less than half of this stuff is worth singing about.

This collection of quirky tunes is largely directionless, with Gough's indistinct voice sounding lost and uncertain in a swell of pianos, strings and horn arrangements.

If she had just shown up and sang her ass off, Stripped would've been a better show.

His similar-sounding interpretations lose their oomph a few tracks in.

The ballads sound more mawkish than ever and the rockers sound, well, a lot like bad Bruce Springsteen rip-offs.

The transformation leaves her bland and boring, rather than bright like Britney or bold like [Michelle] Branch.

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

This bummer sounds more in league with Yanni than Moby.

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

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.

A mixed bag at best.

At worst, a couple of the songs sound like bad Oasis remixes--"All or Nothing" comes to mind--but the good stuff can get any club (or car) hopping.

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

Headed for a prom near you... it's the Goo Goo Dolls.

His pontification gets in the way of his songwriting.

Like the soundtrack of a very bad Jazzercise class.

She fails to bake any new ideas, leaving us with the same old sad love songs and confused-girl anthems that the Texas torchbearer has always churned out.

The experiments sometimes work, but the album is mainly weighted down by cryptic religious ramblings that sap the pop life right out of it.

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.

Short on the kind of sweet 'n' simple coffeehouse ditties that made the Alaskan-born folksinger a fan favorite.

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.

Nothing here is gonna rock your world.

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.

Most of Future/Present dabbles in drab mainstream pop, with songs ranging from fairy-tale cute to charmless good tunes that are weighed down by overwrought production.

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.

The band sounds strong but derivative of its own best work.