A lot of things in this world depend on opposites. Light and dark, comedy and tragedy, war and peace; the existence of one is amplified by the existence of the other. This principle applies to the world of music as well. For all the good albums that come out in a year, there are often more bad ones. I’ve put together a list of some of the worst I heard this year for you to angrily disagree with me about. They are listed below in alphabetical order.
AVRIL LAVIGNE – HEAD ABOVE WATER–This is the Canadian singer’s first album in 6 years and it follows a bout with Lyme disease that inspired some of the songs on it. The lead single and title track gained some traction on Christian radio, but I’m sure many listeners who were hoping Lavigne had turned over a new leaf were disappointed when they saw the racy album cover. Their disappointment probably got worse when they found that literally all the other tracks on the album were unfit for Christian radio in one way or another. Ironically I liken this album to Contemporary Christian Music in general in terms of quality. It’s full of a lot of weak attempts to sound relevant years after the wave has passed.
BLACKLIST 9 – MENTALLY ILL, LEGALLY SANE–This is a rare example of an album where every piece of the puzzle is bad. The writing is bad, the vocals are bad, the guitar tone is bad, the recording is bad, the mix is bad. The performances leave a lot to be desired. The riffs sound like a high school band in 2003 learned just enough to play basic nu-metal riffs, and the drummer flubs his fills sometimes. There are moments where the band isn’t even completely in sync. In some instances a combination of elements this bad can still come together as something charmingly rough like a punk record. But part of what makes this so awful is the band is taking themselves so seriously. I guess if I could say one good thing it’s that the album is short.
DJ KHALED – FATHER OF ASAHD–DJ Khaled believes he is an authority on good music, a curator of fine hip-hop beats and talent, a hit-maker supreme, and he’s quite humble about it too. I mean, he did name is label We The Best Music after all. Jokes aside, there might have been a time when that was true, but this album feels more like Khaled is co-opting the work of other people and putting his name on it, hoping that it will become a hit and he will get rich and famous by association. Even the best featured vocalists and rappers feel like they’re not giving it their all. All 15 tracks start with shouts of “DJ Khaled!” and “We The Best Music!” as if those are indicators of quality. But it ends up being more like a signal to hit skip.
FLORIDA GEORGIA LINE – CAN’T SAY I AIN’T COUNTRY–If I was ever asked what exactly I didn’t like about bro country, I would immediately point to this album. You can find an example of just about everything wrong with the genre on it. Toxic masculinity, formulaic country mad-lib lyrics, appropriated elements from hip-hop and R&B, tonal and moral inconsistency; it’s got it all! There’s seriously very little of value here. Watch my full review here.
IGGY AZALEA – IN MY DEFENSE–An artist who welcomes controversy with arms wide open returns with an album full of unapologetic appropriation and lyrics. She’s not sorry about anything that’s happened and she reminds you of that on every single song. She takes a page out of Logic’s book and fixates on her critics and haters, but doesn’t have Logic’s talent to make it at least tolerable. It might not be so bad if the beats were any good, but I really have a hard time remembering anything from this album at all.
JETBOY – BORN TO FLY–Jetboy are a glam band that enjoyed some very, very mild success in the ’80s and very early ’90s. Even though their songs were used in a couple movies, it still only earns them little more than half a dozen paragraphs of bio on their Wikipedia page. This is their first album in nine years and it’s pretty much 45 minutes of forgettable, vaguely ’80s hard rock that isn’t even all that hard. I don’t really know who they’re making this for because I can’t imagine there are a lot of Jetboy fans out there and this certainly isn’t going to win them any new ones.
JORDAN RUDESS – WIRED FOR MADNESS–This album is the musical equivalent of that coworker that eavesdrops on all your conversations and then tries to insert themselves into it, offering some vaguely related anecdote to turn the focus onto them. Jordan Rudess (of Dream Theater) is a really good keyboardist, and he won’t let you forget it for a second. This album has become my new definitive example of prog wankery, meaning music that is technically impressive, but ultimately devoid of any personality or soul. It’s just a wall of notes and scales that screams “hey, look how much theory I know and how it makes me better than you!”
MADONNA – MADAME X–This album was promoted as containing wide reaching musical influences. Madonna said Madame X is like a secret agent who can become whoever she wants to be. But let’s just say that if Madame X really were a spy, she wouldn’t be fooling anyone. This album is full of weak and watered down Latin pop and that’s about the only exotic flavor you get. Madonna employs weird vocal processing on a lot of tracks, makes unpredictably weird stylistic shifts, and tries to convince the world that she cares with a couple shallow political tracks. This album fails to deliver on its promises and it’s especially disappointing because we all know Madonna can do better. Watch my full review here.
MIDLAND – LET IT ROLL–The internet likes to joke about how country songs are all about the same things like dogs dying, wives cheating, and trucks breaking down. Midland sees these jokes and uses them as the blueprints for their songs. I have never in my life heard a collection of country songs so bland, formulaic, and unoriginal than on this album. It’s like they plotted all of the biggest Nashville hits on a graph, drew a line through the middle and set a goal to never exceed that standard. If I had to say one good thing about this album, it would be that this band is extremely dedicated to the mediocrity of it all.
SNAKE BITE WHISKY – THIS SIDE OF HELL–This is the self-proclaimed number one sleaze rock band of Australia, a genre I’m not entirely sure they didn’t make up. This is music for people who think rock peaked with Appetite for Destruction. The attitude, the swagger, the clothes, even the hair is all here. And that includes some of the problematic stuff too. It’s called sleaze rock for a reason. Unlike other bands like Steel Panther where you can clearly tell everything is tongue-in-cheek, I can’t tell if these guys are joking or not.
Continuous Thunder 