Beyond summer-anthem contender "I Luh Ya Papi," Lopez supplements flat production from names like RoccStar with forgettable verses from rappers like T.I.

For his seventh album, Deadmau5 has turned from an electro-house polymath into the world's most unnecessary Nine Inch Nails tribute act.... However, erase the Reznor fan fiction from this 141-minute behemoth, and there's a solid 64-minute house record hidden in there.

There's a somber, nearly a cappella take on the Motown oldie "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday," and "Quiet" laments suburban sprawl--but those are rare chin-down moments for a guy who makes Jack Johnson look like Ian Curtis.

Unfortunately, O’Connor’s music doesn’t reflect the independence she aspires to.

The pristine production undermines any realness, like an amber-tinted Instagram filter.

Prince does his Hendrix thing over turgid live-band grind, and songs like ''Whitecaps'' and ''Aintturninround,'' where 3rdEyeGirl step out front, have a New Age-y alt-rock feel, like No Doubt in a Funkadelic phase.

Too much of the LP sounds like someone cranked up the brightness setting on her early work, destroying what made her unique in the process.

Coyne's kaleidoscope eyes were too big for his own good this time.

This album is all surface-level, free of sharp punch lines ("I been Hungary like Budapest") or metaphors that connect.

They're masters of generality, packaging all the bland blue-collar fantasies and unrequited nostalgia of an According to Jim rerun into formulaic head-nodders. The Canadian rockers' latest set is no exception, though they've cast a wider net this time.

The band's 14th studio album shows them clinging to relevancy with grim resolve, and occasionally hitting the mark.

The combination of self-pity, grandiosity and leaden spirituality can get trying. And all those attempts at musical worldliness can feel like stylistic tourism.

Fan of a Fan has its share of low-end R&B bangers.

This soundtrack for the hottest show on TV could use more of the beat-you-with-a-broomstick fire of Taraji P. Henson's character.

On most of Blaster, Weiland's first all-new solo album since 2008, he suffers from a bad case of Generic Rock Voice.

"Golden Showers in the Golden State" is almost as filthy and funny as early Blink at their best. But if this "Suburban King" wants to rise again, he may need some help from his friends.

Unfortunately, the latest LP by Ceremony--who dabbled successfully in Strokes-style rock on 2012's excellent Zoo--is stifled by too much restraint.

GO:OD A.M. is a 70-minute studio album that would have been better served as two mixtape diary entries until the sober Miller discovered a smarter way to channel his newfound enthusiasm.

Even guest turns from Run the Jewels and Skrillex can't add enough energy to make Big Grams feel like anything more than an attempt at landing a better festival slot.

Too bad Stories brings so little to the EDM conversation.

In an era where disco has found a second life all over the pop charts, Green's throwback barely makes a thud.

Gonzalez's more sincere side peeks through in moody, orchestral tracks like "Solitude," and the harmonica-heavy ballad, "Sunday Night 1987." Still, as its title implies, Junk leans too heavily on the quirks from the past, rife with the least flattering odds and ends of a time long gone.

The party gets weird around "God and Guns," a hard-rock NRA hand job that's meatheaded and inflammatory. Elsewhere, attempts at pop coalition-building become wishful thinking.

It's a self-titled affair but it lacks the calling cards that originally made them interesting.

Riddled with resentment and lyrics that land with a self-serious thud, Memories is a stunningly drab record. For the most part songs plod along at a strenuously mid-tempo pace, and are mostly lacking in any sonic detail that would reward closer listening.

Their [producers Mattman & Robin's] spacious productions are an odd fit for Dan Reynolds' tortured dude-isms.

The 18 tracks of Beerbongs become an ouroboros of new-money narcissism: Post's obsession with flexing, partying, and banging groupies feeds a growing paranoia that the people around him only like him for exactly those attributes. And it is no small irony that the album's most convincing moments occur when he drops the cool rapper pretense and gets all lonesome cowboy.

The meandering LP can't bear the weight of the man at the piano's indulgences.

On her fourth LP, So Sad So Sexy, she embraces slickly produced pop with open arms, and she's lost some of her character.

It's all piss and vinegar and posturing.

MNEK is a strong singer capable of bracing jumps into his falsetto register. But he seems to have been so immersed in writing for others that he’s lost his own voice.

The coldness of the instrumentals is compounded by the duo’s vocal delivery.

Most of Simulation Theory could be about our surveillance state and/or a relationship. The blurring results in clunkiness.

Save the few fire-breathing dragon moments of Lollapalooza-era churn, it’s the Smashing Pumpkins in name only, and that ice cream truck has long left the gas station.

The Mums were much more likable back when they were pretending to be coal miners who churned their own butter. Compared to this stuff, that was a decent look.

His blend of garish Day-Glo net art and brawling homage to the glory years of DMX and Onyx may be a commercially effective millennial update of Rotten Apple thug rap. But aesthetically, his distinct lack of lyrical talent and annoyingly hyperactive presence often undermines the whole thing.

As quality control at Khaled HQ dips slightly yet noticeably, it might be time for him to receive more undeserved blame than undeserved credit. ... With no commercially undeniable moments like the Rihanna showcase “Wild Thoughts” (from Khaled’s Grateful), Father of Asahd grooves along like an adequate 54-minute stretch of hip-hop/R&B radio (with no commercials, at least).

He is a genuinely engaging artist who raps with impressive intensity and clarity, if not nuance. He confronts his incurable sadness head-on, and it’s easy to identify with his mental health struggles. But for an album about depression, The Search contains a noticeable lack of tension and interior texture.

It’s hard for a band like STP to change and grow, especially after the losses of two iconic frontmen, so perhaps Perdida will function more like a steppingstone to something greater. But for now, they sound like half the band they used to be.

The 16 songs on Changes focus almost exclusively on the logistics of having sex when you are both hot, young, and working in fields that require a lot of time apart. The concept itself is kind of funny, but the execution is often unimaginative and cliché, especially given how earnestly Bieber delivers every line, no matter how ridiculous.

Full of shiny seventies pop rock simulations, but you would be much better off putting on an old Todd Rundgren or Raspberries record. [Aug 2020, p.73]

Music is the Weapon is a stale, mixed bag that aspires to the global ubiquity and incredible commercial success of Major Lazer’s 2015 spastic moombahton anthem “Lean On.”

Rather than a through-line back to the Pumpkins’ trip-hoppy Adore, Cyr often sounds like Corgan was going for a new-wave sound that recalls Talk Talk, and unfortunately he has neither the singular vision he had in the Nineties nor the melodic savvy of Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis to pull it off. Instead, most of the songs, all filled with neo-goth romantic lyrics, stumble and fumble over meandering melodies with no sing-along choruses to buttress them.

A clunky mix of late-Nineties easy listening and 2000s emo pop. [Mar 2021, p.73]

The lyrics strain to demonstrate cleverness (the opening line of “Little Did I Know” rhymes “Shakespearean” with “experience” and “delirious”) or simulate personal experience (“History” quizzes a new lover “At what age did you have sex?/Did you have a teenage phase with cigarettes?” she asks her lover). But the overall effect is neither personal nor universal.

On the vast majority of Latest Record Project, he’s resorted to presenting off-the-cuff emotional reactions (and similarly tossed-off arrangements) as though they’re finished products. The result is a sometimes amusing, sometimes frustrating, sparsely thrilling, and largely unlistenable collection of rants and riffs.

Donda occasionally gestures toward the truly shapeless writing on that LP [Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red] but stops short of sounding as if West is truly articulating his id.

Listening to Khaled’s albums is like searching for blessings amidst the chaff, and the signal-to-noise ratio is generally low. But God Did isn’t as torturously bad as, say, 2019’s Father of Asahd.

Do You Sleep at Night offers little in terms of actual ingenuity. Instead, it presents a smattering of existing tropes thrown at the wall with little in terms of depth.

Drake meanders through yet another collection of superlong streaming bait. For All the Dogs may have its sparks. But too often, he settles for subliminal bars aimed at rivals like Kanye West and Pusha T, keeping it “gangsta” by putting down women and, of course, filling up the piggy bank.

Underneath is the Verve Pipe's third album and it's more of exactly what made them a hit with "The Freshman" -- earnest alternative-lite vocals that cross Matchbox Twenty with Phil Collins delivered in sugary choruses that loop endlessly in case you weren't paying attention the first ten times.

Taking on familiar songs, though, always unearths the rough edges beneath the polish, especially when they sound flat wrong emanating from the mouth of America's peppiest nineteen-year-old.

Heavy on outside contributions and certainly missing 2Pac's editorial control and final production decisions, Until the End of Time bops and weaves from peak to valley in schizophrenic fashion.

Eve 6 seem to want to improve themselves but keep bumping up against their own limitations of style and substance.

Qualifies as cruel and unusual cuteness.... It's as if Jimmy Fallon and David Gray had a baby, suckled by Edie Brickell and diapered by the Spin Doctors.

In venturing to offer something for everyone, Simpson offers nothing for anyone.

Aside from Fridmann's studio expertise, there's little here that elevates Thursday above the followers they disdain.

Sounds a lot like a collection of rejected Foo Fighters tunes. [7 Sep 2006, p.107]

Chingy is the least interesting part of his own songs.

Though this comeback celebrates the parole of ex-junkie bassist Cris Kirkwood, tuneful it ain't.

On this South African band's third album, the guitar tones are a teeth-grinding, digitized-sounding nightmare, and a series of I'm-singing-through-a-cell-phone vocal filters can't disguise how played out Morgan's style is.

T.O.S. would simply be a middling posse record if it didn't further undermine its own cred by constantly referencing better rap songs.

It's all pummeling, vacuous rave noise--useful mainly for thrash dancing and scaring neighbors.

There's nothing here to be triumphant about.

Karmin can make you hate pop music.

No matter what mode they’re in, they manage to turn four-minute songs into small eternities.

Her attempt at breaking out as a solo artist has been rocky--lead single "Cannonball" sank like one--and this album of insta-dated EDM-pop anthems and half-cocked bass drops probably won't help her cause.

Rossdale’s voice becomes a distraction when it overpowers the group’s wooshy guitar textures. But mostly Bush’s biggest sin is going back to the same well again and again hoping to find something new, something vital but coming up emptyhanded.

Offers the same disco-metal dreck he's been peddling for 30 years. [Mar 2021, p.73]

Gunna has a flashy and intoxicating vocal style, and that alone DS4 a worthy escapade. But he can’t transcend the clichés that define his era.

As Her Loss abandons 21’s form of smack talk as a playful, revelatory exercise, its tone shifts to Drake’s toxic petulance. ... There’s a gloominess this time around, and it’s not just the sloppy sequencing and hit-or-miss quality that ranges from clear standouts like “Pussy & Millions,” where the so-called “treacherous twins” team up with Travis Scott, to aimless dross like “Major Distribution.” ... Singular misfire.

An electronic-noise collage that sounds disturbingly rooted in the what-the-fuck? tradition of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.

Their musical influences sound fifth-hand -- distilled Matchbox Twenty, Black Crowes and Deep Blue Something -- and singer Pat Monahan seems like he's boring even himself.

Third-rate grunge retreads stuffed with overdriven guitars and generic rock-dude melancholia.

His most irrelevant album to date: a double CD, thirty-track compendium of indecipherable song titles, gratuitously weird sounds and occasional wisps of ersatz classical piano that are aimlessly pretty.

The limp rhythm section and layered guitars expose the rote melodies, ridiculously dull lyrics and cruise-control tempo. [27 Jan 2005, p.60]

Shuffles between romantic ecstasy and agony with tempos crawling and Tweet stretching out lush melodies till they're barely recognizable.

The Backstreet men rarely accelerate beyond a mid-tempo thud. [16 Jun 2005, p.100]

Whether it's a fuck-you to fans who scoffed at 2003's synth-poppy Welcome to the Monkey House or a vindictive fulfillment of their contractual obligation to Capitol Records, this crap smells bad any way you sniff it.

Leav[es] one wondering whatever happened to the immortal MC whou could carry an album by himself without needing a breath. [4 May 2006, p.59]

The second album... is miles worse than their shallow but tasty first, its big-budget production only making its shortcomings more apparent. [21 Sep 2006, p.88]

If you are not Jah, however, you may lack the stomach for Sinead's megasincere tributes to Curtis Mayfield and Jesus Christ Superstar.

Alas, her cat-strangling whine is still a remarkably ugly sound, no matter what she's singing.

Streets of Gold is about as pleasant as a case of genital herpes.

There are punk, country and EDM experiments that sound like Nineties novelty act the Bloodhound Gang without the jokes.

In place of once-sharp radical jabs, we get empty alarmism.

Federline's rhyme flow is the opposite of tight.

The Papercut Chronicles II is the year's most charmless album, 11 punishingly dull rock-rap tunes with hooks that would've sounded dated a decade ago.

Nowhere amidst all the confusion is there even a worthwhile tune to be salvaged. Hideously dull.