Never mind the cultural appropriation bollocks, here's ethnotronic industrial pop.

Sometimes, like on the outstanding "Wrecking Ball," the emotion calcifies into catchy, mature hooks, propelled forth by Cyrus' oft-underestimated vocal heft. Then again, the breakup also produced "FU," a dismally adolescent electro-soul duet with French Montana.

One Plus One is One sounds like an attempt to make a more serious statement, but with little substance invested in it. The result is Badly Drawn Boy's first boring album.

Most of the songs here aren't even good enough to be considered for a knockoff commercial targeted at the "indie-inclined" twenty-something demographic.

Since half of experiencing Tangerine Reef comes from experiencing the visuals it accompanies, it’s hard for me to really vibe with this album as a complete thing. Really it feels less than that, like a side table, a bed frame, or a pierced hole in an ear with no earring in it.

Many of This Unruly Mess I’ve Made’s flaws could’ve very well been forgotten, or at least temporarily swept under the rug, had the actual music been good.

The music is appallingly predictable, unoriginal, uninspiring, boring, over-polished, and vain.

It Falls Apart is a mess of overproduction and features bland songwriting.

The thick and poorly affected patois, the overproduction, and the sheer terribleness of the songs on Trapped Animal seem, at best, a huge dent in The Slits’ otherwise immaculate armor.

And the mixing problems extend far beyond Corgan’s voice. The Band of a Hundred Murderous Guitars has turned into a modern-radio-rock band.

Younger Now is a hookless, joyless, profitable success.

The album is essentially a tried-and-true big-budget rock album gimmick writ large: smother the listeners in a minute or so of formless noise (using the artiest guitar and keyboard settings imaginable, of course), and then snap them out of the doldrums with the sweep of a heroic chord progression.

Señor Smoke suffers from nothing more then a total lack of discernable hooks to balance out the glaringly juvenile lyrics, cheese-filled synthesizers, and schlock-rock guitar stylings.

There is no sense of nostalgia here, only pure awkwardness and honest decadence that take the definition of 'kitsch' to unexpected artistic levels.

Minus a few semi-refreshing exceptions that see Brian Wilson team up with old bandmate Jardine--is more or less artistically bankrupt, failing as it largely does to communicate or emotionalize anything of Wilson’s concrete being or of the 21st century in which he now finds himself.

Raditude is not a great album or even an interesting one.

Forgettable melodies and arrangements abound on the mid-tempo tracks that comprise the bulk of Moonshine.

Maybe we're supposed to love this album because it's the musical equivalent of a KFC Double-Down, filled with fancy co-stars and production, deep-fried, and devoid of any intellectual or nutritional value.

Unfortunately, two good songs do little to temper the overall disappointment with this new direction, and having thoroughly enjoyed Take Me to the Sea, it really pains me to denigrate its successor.

Your willingness to stick with McPhun from here on out depends entirely how much you enjoy listening to music that sounds like a meticulous recreation of 80s dance pop.

His reunion with frequent collaborators belies a rich history of discovering and championing new voices. This ostensible distance from which Kanye preaches reveals King’s true tension: Kanye, like Kendrick on DAMN., is asking for our prayers, while also distancing himself from our hands and our mouths. And it doesn’t work. ... He has artistically lost track of his audience and himself in its midst.

Booze and Reynolds maintain a consistent level of awfulness throughout, but really bring their A-game to songs like the bludgeoningly-repetitive 'Sparkly Sweater,.'

Weezer's once unique aesthetic has been replaced by something formulaic and ultimately too safe.

Destiny Fulfilled starts off pitifully and only gets worse.

While the tension and confusion have passed, we are unfortunately left with a pretty disappointing piece of work.

Simply put: the lyrics are simply too vacuous and cliched, the production tinny and lacking any real thump, and Scwhartz’ charm? Nowhere to be found.

They are to hip-hop what No Doubt was to ska.

I want to say “you’ve gotta hear it to believe it,” but there’s too much good music out there to waste your time on the bad--let alone the bad that knows it’s bad.