By the end of Teenage Dream--hell, halfway through--it's apparent that neither Perry nor her collaborators had much to say that was meaningful, or even particularly interesting. It sure didn't stop them from saying it anyway.

Despite the catchy moments, The Orchard is not a distinctive record. In fact, aside from showcasing Duquette's inventive, propulsive drum work, the only chance the album takes is that it doesn't really take any chances.

Mostly, though, the album is noisy jumble of competing sounds and ideas, none of which ever develops fully enough to make MAYA into as cohesive a statement as her first two albums.

His vocals here are mostly murmurs, and the musical accompaniment, though skillful throughout, lacks the punch of his previous albums.

It's a collection packed with groaning clichés and calculated banality, and while that's not so different from plenty of music in any era, Leave This Town is so formulaic, it could have come from a laboratory at DuPont, where they make plastic.

No such luck on 'Cause I Sez So, an album that, despite a few bright spots, is too flimsy and forgettable to honor the Dolls' legacy.

Professionalism is the order of the day, and most of Entertainment, recorded over two years and produced by Killers boardman Jeff Satzman, aims for the same middle ground.

The band's third full-length, Touchdown, is more of a 10-yard pass than a score.

The uneven Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle finds Callahan's knack for twangy crispness, pastoral imagery, and stone-faced singing very much intact, though he adopts a distinct growl to utter the title of 'My Friends.'

Sov never quite recaptures the brash personality and cutting-edge sound of her first album. The beats here are more pedestrian, the lyrics more tentative, and for all her talk in the press notes about resuming her career (after a six-month break) with a sense of control over her music, Jigsaw sounds more like an album without a firm direction than the wide-ranging statement of purpose she meant it to be.

An act that thrives on formula continues to mine it with Unstoppable, another celebration of puppy love and sugary hooks boiled down to their simplest forms.

The drum machine hallmark of his 1980s heyday is a staple of MPLSound, a disc that hauls that sound into the present with mixed results.

The third disc, Bria Valente's Elixer, is a tepid afterthought.

He doesn't quite succeed, though in the process of failing, he turns in his most restrained and focused recordings to date.

Deacon is hampered by his boundless creativity. In his mad dash to leave no pathway unexplored, he neglects to chart a course toward anyplace in particular.

'I Don't Even Know What Time It Is' sums up the whole record, stranded between sublime '80s guitar-pop and the more recent smarminess of Arctic Monkeys and Art Brut.

While that darkness gives the album its semblance of originality, it may prove incompatible with the group's mass-market ambitions.

Despite any pretensions otherwise, their second album sounds a lot like the Day-Glo disco and retro house being pushed by every other hip indie-dance act right now.

The good songs are great, but the empty bluster on some of the others overshadows the spunky personality that made Clarkson a draw in the first place.

The group doesn't stray far from the template, turning in another batch of hooky mid-tempo songs that are pretty without necessarily sounding distinctive.

As a spirited reintroduction, the album is by no means too little, but given the time the band has been away, it may be too late.

The irony is that such a colorful person and performer in life has seen so little of that fire (no pun intended for those who recall Lopes' most infamous exploit) carry over to her work.

Skin of Evil may come off as an unwieldy curio at first pass, but lingering listens will reveal the gripping gothic undertow of Mercer's warts-and-all songwriting, even for newcomers.

Universal Mind Control gets stuck in the same rut as so many other booty-jam records do: It's not all that memorable.

The preponderance of slow jams makes sense, given the introspection on display, yet none of them stands out enough to remind you that Brandy is more than just human.

It's too bad the best songs here don't really match up with her best performances, but that's nothing new for Spears.

'Ringleader Man,' remind you that whatever his vocal limitations, T-Pain has reintroduced the idea of melody to urban music, which is no small feat. However, predictable overkill of both the signature AutoTune warble and guest stars (Ludacris, Ciara, Akon, et al) obscures that accomplishment.

As it turns out, the 45-year-old English singer's exploration of Soul comes up short in interpretation as it retreads ground long since broken by others.

The music on Take It to the Limit is forceful and full of bright, churning guitars, with just enough melody to elevate the songs above most of the hedonistic hard rock out there.

Whereas its early tunes built from twitchy verses to shout-along choruses, the new material skews glossy and nondescript.

Barnes and company's ninth studio album isn't as catchy or cohesive as the past few, hitting upon sublime moments--like when he quietly asks "Why I am so damaged?"--that are frustratingly few and far between.

Chesney's sincerity is never in question, but his songs are uniformly garden-variety and obvious no matter how they are dressed.

Folds is clearly having fun, but is he laughing with us or at us? Sometimes it's hard to tell. But it's even harder not to smile.

She has a magnificent voice that deserves a lot better than this formulaic pop and soul.

The Atlanta crack rapper's third album is largely a faithful rehash of his first two platters, which transformed him from unrepentant hustler to unlikely inspirational figure.

However nonsensical, Perry's rants remain entertaining, and despite its flaws, the album holds together from start to finish.

It's a slick collection heavy on pop hooks and packed with glossy guitars and studio-perfect bass and drums. Too perfect, in fact: these 12 songs have had all the personality produced right out of them.

While the slow-into-snappy single '7 Things' is an obvious attempt at a follow-up, and although much of the disc tends toward the same mildly punky pop (much of it co-written by Cyrus), there's an unwelcome familiarity to the hooks, a sense that Breakout is actually just a mash-up of moves tried and discarded by Lohan/Duff/fill-in-the-Disney-diva-of-your choice.

As a placeholder for Hudgens' future career, Identified serves its purpose, even if it's seldom identifiable as her own work.

It's an improvement on the band's impressively dull 2005 album, "X&Y," but Coldplay's latest doesn't recapture the promise of the band's first two albums.

She has fresh relationship issues to work through on Flavors of Entanglement, her first set of new tunes since 2004, but she has difficulty striking a balance between soul-searching and dance grooves on a set that doesn't distinguish itself with either.

As on past releases, he mostly celebrates the snap and polish of the sharkskin '60s. His songs crib so blatantly from that era that citing his influences--Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Van Morrison--is almost redundant.

As it is, it merely stands him in good stead amongst the many contenders for his throne.

At its core, though, Anywhere I Lay My Head is a curious project that never seems to light on any raison d'etre beyond indulging Johansson's love of Tom Waits.

Much of this album is leaden and lumbering, with the vocals mixed low (thanks, Albini) and gummy bass tugging at curtains of distortion, but there are shining exceptions.

This time, however, the subject matter is more mundane, and Jackson's flattened vocals are paired with less imaginative post-punk guitars and synths.

No Age is certainly an adventurous band, but its sound here suffers from too much repetition.

This time, Madonna is just another singer drawing on the chart appeal of Timbaland, Timberlake and Pharrell, which makes this particular piece of candy taste like a sour ball: It's appealing to fans, but it's not for everyone.

That leaves the expected collection of highly buffed beats, a dozen producers deep, which occasionally generates material that ranks with Mariah's best.

The production is lush, the songs are well-written and Lewis can certainly sing. It’s just a boring record that hews too closely to the modern album template with a couple of hits and a bunch of filler.

Tracks like "Press Play" feature booming-enough backings, but even in the record's funkiest moments, like the left-field Prince homage "Cool," Snoop holds back.

While the new material will hardly tarnish the band's legacy, it won't add much, either.

Detours clearly wants to be Bob Dylan but ends up being Bob Roberts instead.

The San Diego rockers haven’t completely reined in their runaway libidos on Slick Dogs and Ponies, but they stray from the devilish attitude that made their brazen dirty talk such a riot.

Nash is more than just another girl on piano, and some of the songs on Made of Bricks are promising. But her inconsistent songwriting and penchant for falling back on cliches show that originality requires more than just an English accent.

There are glimmers of appeal elsewhere--the understated soul 'vamp on 'Day Too Soon,' or "Buttons,' the hidden rocker tacked onto the end--but the tunes feel too often like surface exercises that lack heart.

'Like You'll Never See Me Again' is a reminder, amidst the clutter of many cooks on As I Am, that perhaps Keys was best as she was, after all.

High points are overshadowed by the abundance of filler on Intoxication.

Blackout is her fifth and most hilarious record, thanks largely to the contrast between the often-brilliant musical production and Spears' steadfast insistence on taking herself seriously and expecting you will, too on songs called 'Get Naked (I Got a Plan),' 'Freakshow' and 'Why Should I Be Sad?'

A record with stronger songs that somehow manages to sound just as banal as her first.

Left to his own devices, Gahan, a mediocre songwriter at best, is forced to rely mostly on personality. Hourglass, his second solo album, is more a collection of moods than tunes.

The hooks are less immediate as well. Songs like 'Carry You' and 'Here it Goes' retain the compact force of past band gems, but too much of Chase is afflicted with a degenerate case of sameness.

Its all-too-mechanical new album fails to meet the band's genre-melting potential.

A late-album glut of so-so, mid-to-slow-tempo material like the Anthony Hamilton duet 'Losing You' and 'Work It Out' leaves you with a lesser impression than the disc probably deserves.

The current reigning male vocalist of the year for both major country music organizations sticks to that blueprint for Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates, taking no chances on a collection full of slick, predictable hooks and an easygoing manner.

Lewis has tons of charisma--but it's a shame the shift in focus coincides with an album so superficial that her characters' hollow-eyed come-ons seem genuine by comparison.

While the slower, gentler moments are not without charm, large sections of the album land on the wrong side of the drowsy-dreamy divide.

The ballads that apparently deal with Rowland's ex-fiance, Roy Williams, are the broken heart of the album: They also eschew subtlety (lyrically, at least), yet the results show Rowland has artistic depths that keeping up with the Knowleses doesn't inspire.

"The Mix-Up" is all about groove and texture, sometimes at the expense of hooks.

An uneven album with some tremendous bright spots.

These relatively simple power-pop songs aren't always big or memorable enough to support their grand conceits.

Her songs and the ways in which she works them frequently lack distinction, and though an artist whose appeal is rough edges doesn't need to be sophisticated to be effective, neither should she be quite so ordinary.

Where Francis suffers is in the music.

The songs are lively and well put together, but sometimes they could be a little more fun.

The songwriting is weaker than on her previous two albums, though there are plenty of sugary pop hooks and a slick, punked-up guitar sound that exists solely in $1,000-a-day recording studios.

"Cassadaga" is an insular, self-referential album that strives for depth and profundity and sounds instead like a high-school poetry reading, full of rhyming-dictionary couplets and banal pronouncements about life.

The everyday-ness of the songs makes them easily relatable, but, like a commute where traffic and weather happen on the 10s, the album starts to feel routine by the end.

The real shock of the disc is the hit-or-miss results.

A sophomore effort that rarely rises above middling.

A collection of smoothly produced, soft-pedaled cowboy anthems.

While he's a fine creator of moods and verse-long vignettes, Malin often has trouble stretching a cohesive narrative for the length of an entire song.

At times... "Introducing" sounds like the long-sought missing link between neo-soul and future-soul.... When "Introducing" falters, however, it's done in by the twin killers of modern soul: too much sex, not enough melody.

Much of "Turn the Lights Off" is inspired by '80s artists who wanted to sound like they were from the '60s.

"Black Pompadour" suffers from split- personality disorder.

An atmospheric downer.

The band sounds crisper and cleaner than it should.

Although the folk songs fit the theme of the album, they don't showcase Cooder's skills as a composer.

Essential background music, if such a thing exists.

In some spots, the pacing proves problematic.

A pop album that, for all the lightness and joy that come with humming synthesizers, punchy horns and sing-along melodies, requires listeners to do some pretty heavy lifting.

It's worth giving it a second (or third) listen.

Even when they're abrasive, though, the songs are fascinating for what they show about the band's creative process.

Almost every dramatic synth swell, exploding snare and multi-tracked "Yeaaahhhh" has been done better elsewhere.

The problem is that the ballads - a key to the crossover longevity Ciara desires - are almost uniformly limp.

This record is far more cohesive and creative musically, but it's less inspiring lyrically.

Taylor has vastly improved as an MC since last year's "The Documentary," and though his material is still largely built around hip-hop cliches... he shows flashes of mordant wit that are as sly (and smutty) as they are surprising.

The lack of experimentation isn't necessarily a bad thing, though, and the album's finer moments come when Hoppus and Barker stick with what they know.

The album as a whole is a tad precious, but the songs are pretty and Campbell's voice is subtly captivating.