This album will sway neither the faithful nor the unbelievers from their positions along the borders of her stalled momentum.

Even if it came out in 1996, it would still be self-absorbed, turgid, over-produced and soulless.

It doesn’t challenge listeners or give them anything unexpected or even asked for, really (who's waiting around with bated breath for 'Ring-A-Ling?'), but it’s already a certifiable hit.

Sweet Christ, in no universe will Big Sean be greater than Notorious B.I.G. or Big Pun, and at the rate he's going he'll be lucky to end up a better rapper than Sean Combs, let alone Sean Carter.

[A] ham-fisted attempt at being exactly like everything else.

Origin is a saccharin mouthful of bloated riffs, burdensome lyrical clichés, and second-rate studio trickery -- songs that lurch rather than rock. In other words, it’s Oasis at their best or the Doves at their absolute worst.

Sleepy, sporadic and inconsistent.

Thrilling prospect though it may be, the result is a disaster.

Ahead of the Lions is pure press-a-button-out-comes-album radio pap.

There is bad music here, to be sure, and although the intentions are good, they are expressed in the now-common nihilism of our generation, where nothing is sacred and everything is a joke.

Weak and vanilla.

Sounds like a band mashing all the current trends and ending up with nothing.

A predictable, oversimplified, boring mess.

The lyrics are especially vapid here in the Stadium Arcadium.

The simpleness just keeps on coming until it's simply deadening.

Comparing his remarkable contributions to Deerhoof with this boring, nondescript effort suggests that Cohen should open his studio doors and welcome collaborators.

Quite possibly the worst record by a great emcee in recent memory.

I admire Cunniff's attempt to create positive, breezy music. I just wish it were better.

In the end, Calling the World left me bored as hell.

They seem to have packed up that cleverness with their Scotchgard bongs and headed straight for the wishy-washy world of adult contemporary without even knowing it.

The twelve songs here drip with coatings of sentiment and sparkly instrumentation that are saccharine and plastic.

The problem with the album goes past its unmemorable music.

If Red Album’s songs were formulaic, shiny, and easily digestible like everything on Green or Maladroit, the vacuity of the new songs wouldn't be as big a problem. But 'Heart Songs,' 'Thought I Knew'--these are just plain bad.

By trying to define they’re own specific legacy, they’re actually ramming it down their listener's throats, and daring the music world to question them.

The album has a consistent lack of meaning and genuine feeling.

It essentially exposes Doherty’s biggest weaknesses: his trite lyrics, his less than perfect voice, and his inability to sound interested in anything he’s doing not under the title "Libertines."

None of the band’s stylistic flourishes are pulled off well enough to convince you they could do one style effectively, nonetheless the 10 they try out here.

It’s disappointing that a duo this good on paper could be responsible for an album as uninspired as A.M. Even the album’s better songs (the piano-led 'And I Wonder' and the sauntering 'The Wrong Turning') are limp and tedious at best.

"Cartoon Motion" was a nice moment for Mika, but this second album does not improve or advance what he did before. In fact, he seems to have regressed through his venture into childhood on The Boy Who Knew Too Much.

Even with slick production the instrumentation is lackluster, missing that rattling punk energy; in their overt politics and complete lack of subtlety, the lyrics are trite.

As with all covers records, the crucial issue is whether these renditions bring anything new to these songs. The answer is a resounding no.

In the Dark is a big, loud, dumb record, filled with songs about not respecting women you bang on the bus ("Someone's Daughter"), feeling empty inside ("So Lonely" and "I Don't Even Care About The One I Love") and being for real ("I Am For Real").

An Introduction to Elliott Smith [is] a compilation that maybe would have made some sense in 1998 but has no place in 2010.

Having blown out and polished away all of the music's industrial grit, Eisold reveals himself to be little more than a meticulously researched, clinical New Order cover act.

How does this sucker sound? Not very good.

What makes BAYTL really frustrating is the fact that besides V-Nasty's appearances, the album has a chance to be excellent.

Mired in the generic neo-new-wave and self-consciously emotive yawn of contemporary fashion indie rock, Athlete's unimaginative music matches up nicely with the shallow lyrics.

Call And Response is an interesting (and by “interesting” I mean “awful”) remix album due to the fact that no one seems to want to mess with the originals for fear of alienating anyone or veering off from the song’s original composition (likely for the sake of the commercial prospects of the album).

His lyrics certainly won’t help, but if he wasn’t a Stroke, this album could only be sold out of Fraiture’s trunk at open-mic nights in upstate New York.

Despite all the stupid records he's put out before, The Return of Dr. Octagon is the first one that plunges wholly into self-parody. He's now a fully realized clown, a prop, a joke and, most disappointingly, a sub-par rapper whose forced ideas and personality obstacles have devolved into flimsy, uninspired character sketches.

Dylanesque is a mess. Nearly every album has a few bright spots, but this is a lazy collection of covers that offers no insight into the catalog of one of the twentieth century's foremost songwriters.

Timbaland rose to the challenge of making Chris Cornell a solo star by producing arguably the worst album he’s ever had a hand in.

Rather than mature effectively, Electric Six has pretty much reached the end; at this point, the band is just cashing out.

Earth to the Dandy Warhols is as much of a joke album as "Metal Machine Music," except I don’t see any rock ‘n’ roll scholars finding anything particularly smart in this slop 20 years from now.

The album is a stunningly lackluster, impersonal anti-work.