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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

#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.

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.

With Sting's familiar bass sound driving most tracks, and Shaggy's production partner Sting International (no relation) providing bounce and clarity, 44/876 contains much of the sizzle of classic reggae or dancehall, though a little more substance would've been welcome too.

Valente has a pleasant, if thin, voice--she doesn’t have the chops to elevate this material into anything memorable.

Mims has good taste in beats. But this album seems just . . . superfluous.

"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.

His worst enemy is still his own voice, an agitated whimper that makes even tender lines sound strangely like complaints.

This is an album steeped in the anthemic feel of pop from decades past.

It's a Top 40 record of a high order, packed with electro-pop hooks and big Kelly Clarkson-style shout-along choruses. Cyrus' 17-year-old ire--however genuine it is--just adds spice.

Second Round is wholly lacking in the playfulness that made his debut, Cheers, a varied delight. [21 Sep 2006, p.88]

stirs up the same hey-whatever mix of reggae, hip-hop and punk that made Sublime shirtless charmers 20 years ago.... But without anything like Nowell's sarcastic slacker edge, Ramirez comes off as not much more than a good-natured party dude.

Radio 4 show a real lack of gusto. [28 Oct 2004, p.98]

Monkey Business is just as bright if not quite as fun as Elephunk.

Enjoy the band's extraterrestrial makeover; it's far more amusing than the music.

Rossdale's heart is in the grim, grandiose stuff, bellowing his pain in Vedderian rumble, and forever striving to be deep and meaningful, a goal that exceeds his gifts as a songwriter.

For the Star Wars generation, it can be hard to get beyond timid fanboy reverence.

This is unabashedly slick adult contemporary fare -- file between Eric Clapton's work with Babyface and the last Tina Turner album -- but Richie can still write and sing the hell out of a get-you-right-there-where-it-hurts ballad...

Incubus retain some of their early, macabre nerdiness (the harmony-bedecked "Tomorrow's Food" reminds us of our dirt-bound mortality), but, for all the energy, the melodies fail to ignite.

It's when Staind crank down the sludge and slacken the tempos that things get heavy in a bad way. [11 Aug 2005, p.72]

What the album could use is a few more drink-clinking splashes of summertime fun, but despite the usual army of A-list writers and producers, there isn’t really anything here to rival the sticky, inescapable punch of “Sugar” or “Moves Like Jagger.” A little more escape might’ve been welcome. But whether it’s trying to be light, serious, or somewhere in the middle, Jordi can only get it done in half-measures.

Def Leppard show signs of life on the headbanging 'Bad Actress,' which takes on the Lindsay Lohans of the world, but it’s clear they’re missing their old producer.

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

On the occasions when his slinky guitar takes center stage — like on melancholy instrumental renditions of the Pet Sounds tracks “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)” and “Caroline, No,” or the first half of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” — the results are predictably serviceable. But Depp’s pro forma, double-tracked vocals provide scant additional justification for the project’s existence; and in a few unfortunate cases (like when he attempts a soul croon on Smokey Robinson’s “Ooo Baby Baby”) you won’t be able to find the skip button fast enough.

Despite the tabloid-worthy subject matter, a couple of bangers are invigorating, with Foxy spitting fiercely over a dark, stomping beat on 'How We Get Down.' But she also gets stuck in rote braggadocio.

This much serotonin in four humans can only mean they'll get carried away all over the place, and Beginning bubbles with the kind of slobbering excess that drives Peas haters bonkers.

This Los Angeles party-hop duo can't decide if they want to rhyme like the Beastie Boys or booty-croon like Taio Cruz. So on their second album (which includes the hit "Party Rock Anthem"), they do both, making for a disc of brain-cell-depleting jams.

Ondrasik's self-pitying ballads overflow with dewy-eyed dreaminess, as his vocals swoon and swoop - think of a more annoying Chris Martin.

Whibley cleans out his soul closet over operatic hard rock, rain-swept balladry and bad Green Day opera punk--often crammed into the same song. If he's trying to show breakups are arduous, it worked.

The funniest thing since Ravyn-Symone's Here's to New Dreams.

Mostly, though, it's like a crowded party where you don't really get to talk to anyone as long as you'd like.

Yes, Perry has a heart, but it sounds like her bustier's too tight for her to use it.

She still can't project any personality of her own. [27 Jan 2005, p.58]

They still sound generic – a bar band in search of songs.

Everywhere, Tom Scholz fine-tunes the angelic-choir harmonies and aerosol-guitar crescendos until they're spotlessly, unmistakably Bostonlike. Some things never change--but remembering a sound isn't always enough.

This megadose of Wallen doesn’t only ensure that One Thing at a Time will be lodged at the top of the charts for a while — alongside Dangerous, which is currently at Number Five on the Billboard 200 — it also reveals his preferred musical and lyrical tropes, as well as his fondness for simple, slippery vocal melodies that easily stick in listeners’ brains.

On their fourth album, these Florida rockers muster up anthems that would embarrass a Hallmark Card hack.

The slower stuff vagues out, and the bonus disc of ambient instrumentals ought to come with a controlled substance, but elegant relationship songs such as the torchy "Forever" suggest this talented softy has found a sensible way to come down from a multiplatinum high.

The problem is that Papa Roach don't rise far enough above the radio-rocking competition--it's hard to remember the band's identity at this point.

Pharrell Williams and Dre of Cool and Dre provide the same synth beats they probably offered Raven-Symoné, and guest MC Missy Elliott outshines the Queen, who's so bored she's rapping about exhaustion.

Swooning song-poetry and Coldplay karaoke over electronics-tinged arrangements that sound very pro forma.

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

The reality of Jennifer Lopez is...blah.

Syncopated sludge that will connect only with aging burnouts and the angriest of young 'uns.

Not "authentic"--amiable.

Too often, Earth sounds like the Dandys have too many toys — or maybe too many ideas.

Playful spirit is in short supply on a record where club beats, acoustic strumming, and parched guitar lines usually get siphoned into unobtrusively earnest background pop. [Jun 2020, p.71]

Things can get ponderous once Metallica start impatiently stomping, but often they turn Reed's pretensions into something muscular.