This album is a purposeful move into Top 40 that misses the quirk of well written pop and the sonic inventions of EDM.

Eventually all this mellow reflection begins to resemble a retreat rather than an advance.

Don't expect a record as breathtaking as U2 at its best. Rather, this is average-grade stuff with a couple essential songs.

Most of the dozen tracks on Partners-- which features duet partners such as Michael Bublé, Andrea Bocelli and the singer’s son, Jason Gould--offer no such vantage [of a whole other way of looking at [a] song].... Yet there is strong work here--four songs that live up to the singer's stated ambition.

He and band move through riffs, guitar solos and drum fills with a compact tightness that shouldn't surprise; Prince is a legendary taskmaster. The problem, though, is that half the songs, most obviously "White Caps," don't pop, don't scream for replay and should have landed on the cutting-room floor.

...And Star Power is scattered, often silly and mostly inconsequential.

1989 is a deeply catchy, sleekly-produced pop record with the slightly juiceless quality of an authorized biography, a would-be tell-all bleached of the detailed insight she’s trained us to expect from her.

The presence of those strong women [Gwen Stefani and Haim] does wonders for Harris’ amped-up music. They bring out the man, not the meathead, in the machine.

If only the others brought aboard were extended as much freedom to do something other than trace outlines over the contours of this familiar canon.

At 16 tracks, though, Fifty Shades of Grey is a bit of a slog, with too many dreary midtempo numbers--by Sia, Laura Welsh and Skylar Grey--that only feel more glazed (and less enticing) the longer you listen.

Smoke + Mirrors puts across strong feelings, but it refuses to reveal how they work.

It rarely puts the original material in a new light or reveals much about songs that were already close to perfect.

The third studio album from Major Lazer, Diplo's project inspired by Jamaican dancehall music, features a few hot tracks and a few so tepid that we need reminders about what made Diplo interesting in the first place.

Bryan, never a particularly flexible singer, sounds even more wooden than usual in these tracks; for the first time, this 39-year-old father of two seems a bit embarrassed here, which threatens to topple the whole enterprise.... The singer is far more convincing in the album’s slower, quieter tunes.

In almost every way This Is Acting feels safer and more ordinary than “1000 Forms of Fear,” with familiar (if sturdy) melodies and lyrical clichés about houses on fire and footprints in the sand.

It’s a disappointingly ordinary effort that for the most part merely does what modern Nashville product is supposed to do.

Yet for an album that promises revelation, Meaning of Life is full of generalities.

Expertly appointed but emotionally inert homage to the place that he says made him.

The singer, no surprise, sets off all kinds of vocal fireworks. But as the painfully familiar images in “Southbound” demonstrate--another pontoon boat?--the songs on Cry Pretty (most of which Underwood co-wrote) cast these emotions and experiences in such generalized terms that it’s hard to come away with a clear sense of a human in the world. TThe effect is of a gifted strategist trying to cover all her bases.

The latest in a long line of Madonna songs that ponder the many responsibilities women are asked to shoulder. The problem on “Madame X” is that neither the post-trap grooves nor the winding melodies are sturdy enough to make any of this stuff stick in the way her old classics did. She seems to have assumed that the force of her personality would put the songs across.

“Ice Cream,” the song with Gomez, is the most gratifyingly stylish track here. ... [The Album] plays like a transmission from a previous era. “Crazy Over You,” with its airy wind-instrument sample, rewinds even further to the hip-hop exotica of Timbaland’s late-’90s heyday. ... There’s something vaguely oppressive about “The Album.”

“Spheres” is in reality no more — or less! — on the nose than Coldplay’s earlier albums.

Though it’s larded with glib disco-funk tracks and morose, One Republic-style pop-rock tunes, “Everything I Thought It Was” contains a handful of gems in “Love & War,” a Prince-ish ballad with his prettiest falsetto singing, and the spacey slow jam “What Lovers Do”; “Selfish,” the album’s coolly received lead single, is another highlight, this one with echoes of Bieber’s underrated “Changes” from 2020.

Toning down the sonic drama creates an appealing intimacy, but an hour's worth of blues- and folk-flavored ballads becomes monotonous.

This album is not very good--and what makes it even worse is that it’s by Miley Cyrus.

Overstuffed as it is undercooked.

[Witness is] more jumbled still, with would-be self-empowerment anthems next to earnest ballads lamenting the end of a relationship. ... Witness contains strong moments beyond “Chained to the Rhythm,” which still feels like the beginning of an intriguing project.

Cyrus’ self-styled country album might be the most weakly considered event record of the year, with lumpy melodies, slapdash rhythms and lyrics that border on self-parody (and not in the way that Nashville’s finest know how to do).

With 16 tracks in a wide variety of styles and moods, Bieber’s centerless sixth studio album is noisy and grab-baggy in a way that once was typical for him (and other major pop acts) yet now registers as shallow and unsatisfying.

The album feels slapdash — a messy collection of stray thoughts about his mother, about divorce, about God, about the bipolar disorder he’s referred to as his superpower. ... The stylistic range is impressive but exhausting in a way distinct from 2016’s “The Life of Pablo”; this album lacks a sense of momentum to push you from the arena-rock guitar squall of “Jail” to the throbbing club beat of “God Breathed” to the dense choral vocals of “24,” which means nothing builds on anything else. West’s rapping is similarly scattershot.

An exercise in pointless artifice. [23 Nov 2004]

For all her lovesick panting, pleading and purring, Ashanti is never emotionally engaged with the songs, which aren't worth the trouble anyway. [2 Jan 2005]

Kelly's whole approach is familiar and threadbare. [3 Jul 2005]

Her singing is not convincing in the least. [16 Oct 2005]

For most of the album, she sounds like any other self-absorbed teen, yearning to be Alanis, Gwen and even Stevie Nicks. [6 Dec 2005]

Like cotton candy, the food group she most resembles, what may seem like a mouthful for a moment is gone in the blink of an eye, leaving a sweet aftertaste and empty calories behind. [22 Aug 2006]

Peel away the accessibility of his fluffy debut and there's nothing but major-label album fodder.

Last Night feels like a cold academic exercise, as though Moby were compiling a collection of beats for future examination by an alien race curious about our after-hours ways.

She has to, you know, sing. You can tell she's not into it.

There is some of the old energy here, thanks in part to the presence of drummer Tommy Lee, who drives 'Down at the Whisky' and 'Chicks=Trouble' like somebody with a head full of stimulants. Yet the album lacks the tune-craft that once made vintage Crüe such hits as 'Dr. Feelgood' and 'Kickstart My Heart' so appealing.

Jeezy's sonic sins would be partially pardonable were The Recession to flash any hint of fun or humor. Instead, the street-cred-consumed caricature is more content to rip off Tupac Shakur ("Hustlaz Ambition") and write abominable hooks.

Doll Domination is a series of signifiers to other, more interesting, moments in recent pop culture.

The record is larded with awkward modernist R&B, Christian semaphore ballads like 'You Can' and warm-milk mewling that makes David Cook, Archuleta's "Idol" foe, sound like Robert Plant.

On 'Human' you can hear Brandy striving (understandably) to express herself, yet the result rarely rises above diary-entry tedium.

The album's sound is raw, but "raw," even in the Americana circles that Son Volt travels in, doesn't always equate with primal power. Sometimes it's just undercooked.

There are a few glimmers of hope; Tisdale has said her heroes are Pat Benatar and Kelly Clarkson. But to succeed in the crowded hallways of teen pop, she'll have to be as fearless a misfit as those two bad girls--and not feel guilty about it in the morning.

Editors' ponderously titled third album is a disappointing reversion to form, with listless melodies, gloopy, synth-heavy arrangements and corny lyrics that might pass for sly goth-culture satire if Smith didn't deliver them with such self-serious bravado.

The Circle shows off Bon Jovi's still-sharp knack for wedding blandly optimistic sentiments to predictably soaring choruses. Unfortunately, it's getting pretty hard to tell one song from the next.

Most of the material, though, tends toward a flavorless pop-rock sound that doesn't even do much to flatter Allen's appealingly rumpled vocals.

Endicott had a hand in penning the excellent title track from Shakira's new album "She Wolf." Perhaps he can preserve some of that creative spark for his own band's next endeavor.

A handful of lovingly arranged power ballads were evidently designed to illuminate the singer's remorse over the Rihanna incident. Yet Brown doesn't seem up to the task of contrition.

Too many of these 16 hazy, half-crazy tracks sound like undercooked studio goofs recorded in the wee hours by Albarn and his impressive circle of celebrity pals.

Basic Instinct offers enough android booty bass action to satisfy those who like their rhythms complicated but repetitive and hooks foreseeable from a mile away, but pleasant enough when they arrive.

Coming from a star whose weekly "Idol" pronouncements emphasize the value of charisma, "Love?" definitely disappoints.

The jokes are reasonably funny and the riffs rock reasonably hard. But Argos never convinces you that his unlikely persistence is paying off.

Three new tracks (including a dreamy take on the gospel standard "His Eye Is on the Sparrow") provide a glimmer of what Stone might accomplish if he ever rouses himself more fully.

The rest of it, though, is stuff that will probably sound just fine beneath NFL highlight reels but fails to gel when the volume is up and California 2011 beckons.

Every touch of lyrical bitterness is followed by enough sugar to mask the taste, which might be good in the short term but isn't a recipe for long-term health.

Yet for all the textural variety they provide, those welcome cameos rarely succeed in leavening Lightbody's pervasive gloom.

Dead Son Rising feels watery and without a center; it reinforces Numan's legacy, rather than his potential.

Though saucier and sleeker than its peers, the Wanted isn't nearly as fun....But none of the guys has an especially charismatic--or even distinguishable--voice.

Wild Ones has two of Flo's top 40-obliterating recent singles, "Good Feeling" (in which he hijacks Avicii's "Le7els") and the title track....The rest is serviceable work for the clubland meat grinder.

Connick's music has none of the attitude the singer often summons outside the studio.

Pure Vida overwhelms as often as it inspires.

Here they sag under the weight of too many wind-swept piano ballads and booming productions seemingly modeled on Katy Perry's "Roar."

The result isn't the clean-up job it might've been; Bugg, 19, still sings with a nasal edge that wouldn't last more than a round on "American Idol." Yet the songwriting here feels more evened-out, less appealingly pugnacious than it did last time.

Much of Britney Jean devolves into an abyss of electro-neutral bangers produced by the reigning kings of danceable obviousness, Will.i.am and David Guetta.

Ross seems on auto-pilot here.

Predictable and flavorless, these songs seem to realize a fear that unfairly gathered around Shakira in 2009 when her album "She Wolf" led some critics to suspect that the Colombian-born star was attempting to Americanize her sound (or had been coerced into doing so by forces in the music industry).

A pronounced feeling of descent pervades Turn Blue.

The record is a failure, a virtual what-not-to-do guide for both songwriters and spurned lovers.

If Chapman restores some of Lady Antebellum's polish, he still keeps the group moving too fast with zippy pop-country arrangements that rarely allow Charles Kelley and Hillary Scott to harmonize as sumptuously as they're able.

She doesn't give you the sense that she's thought through the opposing themes in her music: the individual versus society, modernity versus tradition, dependence versus independence. It all feels as unexamined as her use of certain vocal patterns typically associated with black singers.

Unfortunately, Muse's efforts can barely get off the ground and wouldn't survive a war against a fly swatter.

But where Jay-Z raps with style and elegance to spare, Eminem hits clunker after clunker on Revival, his clumsiest record to date. It’s not just the corny jokes and goofy puns, either, although those are plenty bad

His music... exerts the allure of the most seductive pop, but does so with the calculation of a predator.

The album's gooey, mid-tempo grind at best evokes System of a Down stripped of ambition and eccentricity, and might elicit sympathy with whatever culprit is running around that no-stoplight town.

The idea of Cornell's sex-god wail over Timbaland's mechanized funk is appealing. But Scream draws out the worst tendencies in both of them.

"Rebirth" deserves its reputation as one of the worst albums of the year so far. With luck, Wayne will return to what he does best -- and soon.

She does herself no favors by choosing consistently bland material, and her third album does nothing to dispel the sense that Rowland should be more selective.

You have to ask if the tween sector of the 1% just found their house band.

Paralytic Stalks is downright exhausting.

The mediocrity taints the entire record and makes one wonder how it all went so wrong.

Contrasted with Lil Wayne's easy, seemingly effortless guest verse, 2 Chainz sounds like a rank amateur whose topics of choice -- strippers, money, drugs -- have been examined to death in hip-hop by others with a much more varied vocabulary.

Authentic not only misses the mark, it doesn't even come close.

Full of dull riffs and saggy rhythms, Uncanney Valley makes you wonder why exactly frontman Travis Morrison reunited the group in 2011.

Full of dull riffs and saggy rhythms, Uncanney Valley makes you wonder why exactly frontman Travis Morrison reunited the group in 2011.

He does manage to out-Mumford and out-Sheeran his countrymen on the rustic single "Bonfire Heart" (ironically, co-written with super-pop penman Ryan Tedder). Whether you want to hear James Blunt plowing that field is a conversation between you and your god.

Shallow, deeply unimaginative renditions [of standards out of the Great American Songbook].

The aimless fragments on The Endless River, on the other hand, are so excruciatingly dull (even by Pink Floyd’s often-dull standards) that the band’s name on the cover feels like a straight-up bait-and-switch.