It does rock--if your idea of rock is Aerosmith doing Diane Warren songs.

In trying to wrest profundity from simplicity, Keys to the World is only profoundly disappointing.

Most of the songs on J.Lo, for all their craftsmanship, are easy to trace to last year's hits. And while dance pop doesn't necessarily demand great singers, Lopez is just scraping by.

Country-crossover schmaltz.

Most of the time, the lyrics are vague and unformed, and when they aren't, the band's lyrical details seem too singularly British to translate.

Alas, if you're looking for Slowhand to ignite the pyrotechnics, forget it.

The music dips into ska, Eighties electro and power ballads, and the sumptuously noirish torch song "In Your Life" proves White's heart is as big as her spleen.

Most of the songs are pitched too high for her register, the production sounds cheap, and love has dulled whatever street edge she might have had.

Only a handful of tracks -- including "No Phone" and the surprisingly sweet "She'll Hang the Baskets" -- push pleasure buttons like they ought to.

The results are much better than his 1993 sci-fi shark jump, Cyberpunk, and so it automatically counts as the best thing he's done since "Cradle of Love."

The well-named Pop Trash shows off their jaded hooks and nasty wit; it's for fans only, but those of us who still crumple at the opening hiccups of "Hungry Like the Wolf" will be glad for another fix.

If the songs sometimes feel a bit undercooked, the spirit is dazzling.

Sugarland are ruthless in their desire to leave no radio-ready trick untried, but in the end it's too much machine, not enough heart.

Long on rote melodies and slickly produced SoCal stomp.

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.

The club, not love, is her salvation, as she proves on 'Do It Well,' the only track that lets J. Lo do her thing: dance.

The sludge is so overbearing that anyone born during the Eighties will wonder what once made them special. [28 Oct 2004, p.103]

Revitalizes Duran's early synth-pop magic. [28 Oct 2004, p.103]

Verdict: a mildly charming, sometimes gawky LP that will please Gleeks and befuddle everyone else.

The cuteness starts to wear thin pretty fast.

When the album works, it's because of Foxx's easy charm and A-list confidence.

Almost all of the tunes here (particularly "So Excited") try to replicate Jackson's early work, with diminishing returns.

On her fourth album, she's still doing the diva-by-numbers thing, alternating between angry-at-her-man anthems and lovey pleasantry.

He essays a few fashionably global-sounding electro-club tracks, including an Auto-Tuned one with T-Pain and Akon, and at least four numbers where he swipes guys' girlfriends. Keri Hilson and Kelly Rowland help him stretch out; Plies, Yo Gotti and T.I. add muscle

Ultimately, Gwenmars is a Xerox of a Xerox, but this melodic, very big facsimile remains very listenable, indeed.

The album's latter half contains some welcome pop moments--'Nothingtown' and 'Let's Hear It for Rock Bottom' make going nowhere in life sound like hot fun--but the standout melodies often take a back seat to the diatribes, and Holland doesn't back up his disaffection with many good reasons to rally behind him.

Vultures is a serviceable record. The production, in typical post-My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy fashion, is sparse. While it won’t be confused for a masterpiece, it shows that West is still good at being a producer. He puts Ty Dolla Sign in position to sound as bubbly as he’s been since the Obama era.

Next to guests Jay-Z, Snoop and Slim Thug, Pharrell's playa-playa croon gets tiresome.

Much of City Beach is sort of bland and a little corny.

F.A.M.E. is a pop 'n' b album with something for everyone: bedroom ballads, dance-floor thumpers and even "Next 2 You," a puppy-love declaration with guest vocals by Justin Bieber.

Despite a handful of strong cuts, Destiny Fulfilled sounds like the kind of album you make when you're saving your best material for your next solo album.

Teenage Dream is the kind of pool-party-pop gem that Gwen Stefani used to crank out on the regular, full of SoCal ambience and disco beats.

Hearing twenty-one Lynch-penned songs back to back gets exhausting.

The band doesn't exactly have a lot of new ideas about what a rock song should sound like.

How did such a glam movie star turn into such a rinky-dink pop singer?

Break Up's nine songs have plenty of sweet harmonies, but there's just no sexual chemistry between these two friends.

This soundtrack would be a great bonus disc for the movie's eventual DVD release, but as a stand-alone it falls way short of their vastly superior debut album.

Tracks with Future and 2 Chainz highlight his limitations on the mic, and without the Dr. Luke-assisted buoyancy of 2012's Strange Clouds, the album falls flat--moments of well-meaning ambition not withstanding.

Wears thin long before its halfway mark.

We're placed squarely in Michael Jacksonland, a bizarre place where every sparkling street is computer-generated, every edifice is larger than life and every song is full of grandiose desperation.

Dull missteps such as "Sickalicious" and "Into You" show a lack of creative vision that stunts him when the hot beats run dry.

There are some decent pop moments: 'When I'm Gone' is a seize-the-day anthem with a cathartic refrain. But most songs, like the angry barnburner 'The End,' are barely distinguishable from a dozen or so other Warped Tour bands.

It could have stood to cut five or six entries, starting with “Memphis.” That would have left “Fuckin’ Up the Disco,” an homage to his own “Let the Groove Get In,” as the album’s opening track — a starting point that motions towards what does work about the album versus the places in which it completely falls flat.

This album sounds like his band's final aria--the death scene.

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]

Dragged down by radio-courting melodies and ready-made rhymes, this album's first half is particularly calculated.

The songwriting remains basic, as always, and vocalist Sam Martin blandly belts "Lovers on the Sun" and the club hit "Dangerous." But the album sounds consistently great.

They're back with another dull slog through the AC/DC catalog.

Nine albums in, these Cali punks are coasting by on dourly told jokes and reheated mad-at-the-world bluster.

The highlight of this collaborative set is "Days/This Time Tomorrow," a medley of Kinks classics.

The quartet's first record in a decade is a surprisingly vital viva-la-grunge manifesto.

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.

His debut--a ho-hum jaunt through an America full of dog-eared Bibles, rugged pickup trucks and girls "hot as July, sweet as sunshine"--works overtime playing up his wide-eyed charm.

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.

This is exactly the record you'd expect to hear from Weezy in 2013: a solid album by a brilliant MC who's half-interested.

Let's hope Nashville will take her back, and quick.

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.

There are magical moments on Come Home the Kids Miss You to be found amidst a primal need to sex his female fans.

It's well-meaning, well-crafted and confused. Sometimes versatility can be a vice.

The killer swarm of 1994's Tical and Tical 2000's astro-black ambition aren't anywhere to be seen. [27 May 2004, p.80]

Instead of seeming angry or inspired, 311 just end up sounding like the pop world has passed them by.

The taut power-trio arrangements mix the whisper-to-a-scream dynamics of post-grunge with glam-rock chords and a big dollop of emo's teen psychodrama.

With 15 cuts in all, the album sounds like the Dolls just threw everything they had against the charts to see if anything would stick.

He's a consummate crowd-pleaser, but he's best when he gets weird.

It runs a little thin over sixteen tracks.

The heart of Lions lies in the best ballads the band has ever waxed, such as the Led Zeppelin III-esque "Soul Singing" and the churning "Losing My Mind."

Winning Days is a noisy triumph -- as good as their 2002 debut, Highly Evolved, and in some ways a leap forward in style and frenzy.

He aspires to be more than the face of so-called "mumble rap." Yet Lil Boat 2's best moments are when he reverts to the familiar.

The album de-emphasizes the (very) guilty pop pleasures of her 2004 debut in favor of leaden I-hate-you-Daddy laments.

His nice-guy-with-a-retrograde-flow shtick is fast running out of steam.

At 77 minutes, Revival is a heavy listen, going deep on ballads with guests like Ed Sheeran and X Ambassadors. But a certain indulgent messiness has always been part of the Eminem experience. ... When Revival's confessionals work, it's proof that, when the real Marshal Mathers stands up, he can still pull us into his evocative dramas.

Matchbox Twenty now seem almost dignified, a fact that is as much a tribute to their advancing abilities as it is to how shamelessly their sellout successors suck.

You’ll notice when the guitars escalate on 'You’re Too Hot,' when Harry sotto-voces her sexpot act on 'Dirty and Deep.' But you’ll really notice when a long diminuendo fourteen tracks in proves a bridge to the last three songs.

Even by the standards of a remix album, Air's latest is a bit insubstantial.

Unfortunately, Borland has picked up Ween's affectations (pitch-altered vocals with wacky accents, ultra-chintzy synthesized beats) without the songcraft that lets them embody the genres they mock.

Kowalczyk is revisiting themes he's been mining for years. The band's signature sound of slowly rising choruses punctuated by Kowalczyk's rumbling wail has also grown quite stale.

The rudimentary guitar, starchy beats and formless synths just sound rough, never fun or spontaneous.

Their fifth disc is rife with signs of rock ambition - acoustic songcraft, sweeping guitar solos - folded into their vaguely emo, synthed-up sound.

Whatever novelty their sound once had has long since worn off, and the foreboding poetry and constipated howl of Wiccan singer Sully Erna are almost laughable.

For all the sloganeering, Press the Spacebar never forgets that it's a dance album.

Mudvayne write some decent guitar hooks (check the title track), but their imagination is parched, with most songs hewing to one formula: riff, whimper, shriek, repeat.

It's a concept album about the loneliness of pop life--with a high-profile broken engagement behind her, Brit gets personal and drops her most bummed-out music ever.

The 12th Bon Jovi album extends the Springsteen liberalism in JBJ's stadium­rattling Jersey cheese into full-on "social commentary" (his term).

Birds of Pray, their sixth album, sounds a lot like the previous five.

It's a crew album--of course it sucks. The depressing thing is how much. [28 Dec 2006, p.114]

Timbo's genius has always been of the wizard-behind-the-curtain variety, and here his clunky croon dominates.

Melodrama drags down several cuts, including the absentee-dad lament "Dear Father," and in some form or another, you've heard all these songs before.

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

It was only natural to suspect that Limp Bizkit would fall on their faces this time by getting serious. But Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water is looser and livelier and just plain better than anything they've ever tried before.

#willpower siphons Chris Brown, Bieber, Britney, Miley, Skylar Grey, K-pop act N2E1 and many more through mistily whooshing, thunderously stomping dance pop that manages to be both hilariously one-dimensional and obsessively high-def.

Lange keeps things rolling--and to his credit, Chad Kroeger gratifyingly comes off as more of a regular guy than a rock star.

They played slick, heroic neo-grunge for the Clear Channel era, where all regions melted into one long, Nickelback impression. They're still clinging to that anthemic plod a decade later, like an eight year-old who can't bear to throw out a dead hamster.

Every rose has its thorn, and every airport bar has its 22-year-old divorcee. But not every album has two songs from different reality shows starring Bret Michaels.

Listening to an Owl City song is like speed-eating a box of Girl Scout cookies: You go from tasty to pukey in minutes.

Kitschy lyrics spin out of control here.

Its follow-up still trades in hard-driving anthems ('Use Me') and catchy hair-metal refrains (the title track), but frontman Austin Winkler is a bad representative for emotional frat dudes.

His soft falsetto is sumptuous, but too many tracks veer into uncomfortable parody.

Korn have circled the wagons and self-produced their best album to date, refining the formula to a black-cancer marmalade of corrosive riffs, fist-flying rhythms, gothic-carnival atmospheres and toxic vocals.