If Norman Fucking Rockwell! was the record her non-partisan sympathisers dreamed she might make, this is the one they feared. It’s hushed but impersonal, pared-back without having anything to reveal, and verbose without saying anything of substance.

Sticky is the very definition of throwing sh*t at the wall and seeing what sticks. Unfortunately for this album, nothing does, and all you’re left with is the horrible odour from its experimentation.

So sigh with me; for all the promise their reunion had, they sound as if they're remembering how to work together, painting their album by numbers rather than taking risks or adding artistic flourishes of their own.

Black Kids are trying too hard, plain and simple.

It's just a sludgy, grumpy record from a band who once knew pop music needed whimsy.

It’s not a verbatim copy of Kendrick’s work, but it’s every bit the stylistic counterfeit, and while it, along with the other mentions above, could be seen as imitations done in reverence had they been released on a free mixtape, their use on an album is no doubt a calculated effort to profit off of the ideas and work of another who did it first, in an attempt to capitalize on the ignorance of those listeners who may not know better.

Despite its competence musically, Tickets to My Downfall’s cookie-cutter, antiquated presentation and MGK’s blatant ignorance make it a truly punishing experience to sit through. Punk by definition is supposed to be something that comes straight from the heart in all its raw ugliness, but this album is the anthesis of that and doesn’t even try to hide its overt shallowness.

Skeletal Lamping lacks a satisfactory, uh, idea. None are progressed, thoroughly provoked, just simply thrown out the speakers in hopes that we are transfixed by its oh-so literal translation of Barnes’ Georgie Fruit act.

The main problem with most of the songs on Grand Hotel stem from The Explorers Club's inability to moderate pretty much anything.

It’s as if Metallica decided to try and court the 16 year old post-mall goth crowd with a bunch of inane Black Veil Bride like lyrics, while adding in a bit of Avenged Sevenfold-lite songwriting.

This album is simply objectively terrible. Issues have managed to craft an album that is entirely without any sort of value, appeal, artistic merit, creativity.

Taylor opts for interchangeable melodies that never really threaten to take attention away from the lyrics, which function more as tabloid clarification than earnest poetry. I struggle to hum a single melody but, against my will, I can make an educated guess as to what song is a Matty Song or a Travis Song or a Joe song.

Bleachers ends up being all the worst fears of Jack’s career path made manifest, as any semblance of uniqueness is sanded down in favor of Christmas Special-quality cameos to remind you just how strong his LinkedIn profile has grown.

It can't even stack up to Gabriella Cilmi. Estelle? Leona Lewis? Yikes. Avoid.

This record comprises fourteen tracks, yet managed to be nothing more than a bad concoction of bad pop punk, bad rap rock, bad lyrics, and vaguely competent performances.

With its terrible lyrics, uninspired and generic music and general sense of boredom, the only positive to glean from the wreckage was at least it couldn't get worse.

Everything about Father of All Motherfuckers is lazy. It begins with the self-referential American Idiot album cover, which features a unicorn exhaling/vomiting rainbows whilst forcefully blowing flames out of its ass. The music is befitting of said artwork, as even the staunchest fan would have an aneurysm trying to figure out what the hell these guys were thinking on this one.

The defense that it isn't trying, that it's just for kicks, would I guess be admissible if the songs weren't so entirely devoid of substance.

This is an empty record, and the exact opposite of what it means to write classic music, because through all its forced smiles and fake problems, it's an album that means absolutely nothing to me.

Anarchy, My Dear fails because it tries to recapture things that Bemis just doesn't seem to have right now--true discontentment and anger and venom.

The biggest problem with Oh My My is that OneRepublic forsakes the few characteristics that once made them relatively unique in favor of bland, done-to-death radio pop.

Music For Robots functions as the first embarrassingly terrible album of 2014, and should be avoided by all except those with an extremely morbid sense of curiosity.

It's just we know there's more to this guy than this sluggish, lifeless material.

WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU has little to offer on basically any front. On the drama front, there are no haymakers or grand declarations. There are a few guests that stop by ala Mr. Rodgers style to give low-effort mumblings to the effect of “Drake Sucks,” but much of the project is devoid of anything compelling enough to hang your hat on.

Using neanderthalic rhymes that MC Hammer would be proud of, the lyrics are in your face and exclusively concern rock ‘n’ roll, girls, drinking and partying.

The songs just are just way inferior this time around. My December’s fourteen tracks (including the hidden "Chivas") sound like rough sketches fleshed out with Breakaway’s light rock arrangements.

Skyscraper is filled with those types of Banks lyrics, the kind of trademark brain-vomit that produces words that sound cute together but lack any semblance of cohesion.

For an album called Out of Control, it's astonishing just how bland and devoid of personality or expression this is.

Each of the album's thirteen tracks passes by without any fuss or fight; every song blending into one long blob of grey matter that leaves such little impression in spite of repeated listens.

Nothing is just what it brazenly titles itself as – an empty record, one lacking the sometimes questionable but more often than not intriguing experimentation and oddball weirdness that might not have made their earlier records great, but at least made them interesting.

Requiem for Hell is anything but acceptable. It's lazy, trite, mundane, dull, and every other superficial adjective that's been thrown at the genre.

The album is pure homogeneous shitheap of stream-of-consciousness turgidity nonsense that strives to be different and to take you “somewhere else” but in the end really just ends up being hilariously bad and hilariously derivative of his past work and despite the frequent “so-weird-it’s-almost-cool” moments it still just plain sucks hardcore.

Yours Truly, Angry Mob is such a sloppily put-together album that it almost seems intentionally bad.

The very elements that made No Doubt popular in the first place have disappeared.

It’s a record so entrenched in referencing other music that it ceases to be artistic expression, and is entirely separated from expression as a concept, floating in its own sterility. Looks like it’s back to the drawing board for whichever craven startup CEO cooked this one up in the experience machine; you won’t be able to unplug fast enough.

Completely unaided by flat production and little or no deviation from one or two initial ideas, it's verging on an insult to the memory of one of punk's pioneers.

Unfortunately, with Fragile Future, Hawthorne Heights start awkwardly and never really find their feet.

Symphonic elements always have potential in music, but often are ruined by the execution and this album is no exception. Cradle of Filth fall into the trap of using them as a replacement for actual songwriting, relying on the symphonic arrangements to cover up their lack of talent. It doesn't work, especially because the arrangements themselves aren't too interesting in the first place.

Augustana sound bored and weather-beaten to death on their self-titled, and if this is how the true Augustana sounds, then it's fair to say that they're far and away past their prime and could consider calling it quits.

Is it a question of [Moore]simply not caring, or does he actually believe that his fans are too stupid to not realize any clear lack of progression and that they're simply being force-fed the same half-assed bass trends again and again and again?

This band’s tedium, their mercilessly polished tones, their big bucks mastering, their humourless refusal to spotlight any glorious points of absurdity within their own writing, their algorithmic combination of the most derivative parts of how many separate genres into a no less unremarkable whole - it all makes for one of the most irksome feints at artistry I’ve heard this decade and feels oriented towards an impressionable audience with sickeningly calculated precision.

It's too empty, too boring, too lifeless, too lazy.

It is more of the same: overproduced, generic disney channel beats by names no one knows, derivative choruses and melodies that obviously sound manufactured by a tie-wielding Atlantic executive, and lyricism that fails at even being anthemic for parties.

There are almost no redeeming qualities to be found here, and the whole thing is shamelessly derivative, thoroughly lacking in any sort of creativity, and (worst of all) a logical point in Skrillex’s career arc, one which has been pointing downhill ever since 2010. Listen at your own risk.

Any piece that can cover an emotional spectrum ranging from gruff cries all the way to handclaps must have a lot to offer. ... Step aside Nickelback, there’s a new sheriff in town and his name is Imagine Dragons.

I suppose you could say that’s what wrong with Relapse, it is almost completely non-sequitor, with no real lyrical substance until the last half of the album....Relapse sucks.

The two biggest problems with BE are thus; the energy that made their first LP a surprisingly decent effort has been removed completely, and Liam’s lyrics have plumbed to new, previously unassailable depths of self-parody.

The melodies just aren’t flowing and the choruses are rarely memorable. The instrumentation is lacking to say the least, and their brand new ideas are questionable at best. There’s absolutely no lyrical, emotional, or musical substance.

The only merit to be found on this soulless revisionism is the production, which is at least serviceable. Outside of that, this is, to the surprise of no one, inferior to the original in every conceivable way.

Can’t Say I Ain’t Country is an amalgamation of country-pop’s worst features. It’s country without the grit or emotion; pop without any of the fun or hooks.

The Path Of Totality is an album that doesn't work because it tries to be something it's not; no, it fails because of not just its terrible premise but its truly dreadful execution.

If you’re the type of music fan who loves every facet of their music to be vacant of genuine emotion, creativity and expression, this album will satiate your cravings, you hungry listener.

Obviously, Atlantic did not rape Lupe into releasing a soulless, automated, corporate record. The real irony is that Lupe's fans demanded this garbage be released.

Avenged Sevenfold is "City of Evil" minus the cool parts, more of Shadows, a circus, and an occasional female singer that’s supposed to make it all sound innovative.

The London five’s debut effort is hampered by uninspired, unmemorable songwriting and a baby-proofed approach to recording and composing that ensures anything that could be described as edgy or life-affirming is, at best, lost in translation.

Listen to the guest performances if you dare; just tune out the pedestrian rapping.

Imagine the worst Good Charlotte song repeating “I fell in love with an emo girl” as a chorus. ... If anything, the more trap-infused tracks gracing the record’s back half fare better, solely because they aren’t direct copies of some of the most well-known pop punk songs of all time. Moreover, the extremely overblown production doesn’t achieve the same maximalism here, making for a comparatively listenable bunch of songs. Key word: comparatively.

Not even some admittedly slick production can drag this out of the mire.

Might Delete Later is a miscalculation at every level and may prove in time to be his version of Chance the Rapper’s The Big Day.

To try and explain just how bad the "music" is on this disc is about as much of a masochistic exercise as listening to it.

There are no surprises (other than the lyrics about cutting himself) and nothing all that redeeming to take away from the listen.

California 37 erases Train's original identity, simply leaving us with a train wreck.

Universal Mind Control is offensively bad.

This misguided eagerness to please is endemic throughout the album’s 12 tracks, from the appropriation of other artists’ styles (the chunky riffing and brutish vocals of ‘Hammerhead’ are reminiscent of Dave Grohl, while closer ‘Rage And Grace’ is a transparent attempt to recreate the vitality of Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’) to Holland’s equally unrelatable lyrics.

Comparing to what the band has done in recent years though, Siren Charms is still an unforgivable misstep containing oversights in both songwriting and execution that such a veteran band should be able to spot and correct.

Like "Red Carpet Massacre," The Block is proof that it requires more than the best producers and songwriters to make good pop music

There are no good songs. There are no ‘moments’ that make any of these 18 songs worth listening to. There’s nothing that implies there is potential, there are no guests that make Eminem worth listening to, there are no good lyrics, there are no good production flourishes, and there aren’t any melodies. There’s no evident flow, and there isn’t anything to be gained from listening to this that can’t be done by listening to literally anything else.

The New Game signifies Mudvayne's transition from elite metal juggernaut to their inevitable fade into obscurity.

Underclass Hero tries its best to be profound and musically challenging, however its only success is found, without exception, in the tracks which drop the pretense entirely and return to the formula which made the group popular to begin with.

Every song layers Levine's singing/clumsy rapping over the most cringe inducing trap beats, and most of the time he sounds like a middle-aged stepdad trying to sound "hip" to get in good with his stepson. It's transparent cultural and trend pandering, and even when Levine adheres to his bread and butter, the melodies are more vanilla than usual.

Revolting, messy, lazy, and undeniably Sum 41, Screaming Bloody Murder is a dead band moaning in its grave. Any highlights here more or less just belong to other, better bands, or even Sum 41 themselves from the past.

The album’s music is a similar story, theoretically well-equipped with its slick production and generous emphasis on slide guitar, yet so heartlessly procedural in its composition and homogenous in its tempo that its encapsulation of the country Experience misses the elation and dynamism of wind-in-your-hair and ends up for more cholesterol-in-your-burger.

Any message contained within Lulu is lost in the whirl of discordant guitar work, Reed's mutterings and the complete sense of abject disappointment that surrounds the entire album.

Every song is so utterly devoid of energy, like they've released a record composed of the spaces between the notes in all their previous work.

Cringe-worthy lines are unfortunately rampant through The Weirdness’s (long) forty minutes.