A Tate McRae song delivers a decent video and the absolute bare minimum sonically and ppl declare it Good.

Mid is mid, unfortunately. If I wanted this specific sound, I'd listen to Britney's first self-titled album.

relies on a lazy sample of one of the most famous house tracks ever made in the hopes that that'll make up for the lifeless vocal performances and awful lyricism. worse than Woman's World.

this album is not hot. it definitely isn't helping me slive. between the insufferable meghan trainor insisting herself upon listeners yet again for reasons time forgot, and the exceptionally mediocre production covering up hilton's own notably sub-par vocals on every track creating a blandly airbrushed nothing of an album, we have a finished project that i couldn't imagine anyone voluntarily picking up to *enjoy* in 2024.

i guess BBA is genuinely okay. mostly because it's ... read more

Sonic dreamland and vivid Image-ry make this one of the most captivating releases in several years.

please please please is the best thing on it, almost everything aside from the singles is unmemorable, derivative, and substanceless, and you're probably going to forget all about 90% of this thing, which despite being pretty short, feels pretty long.

found this by accident.

1: this whole fucking thing is samples????????
2: i could (and will) listen to this album for hours, and hours, and hours.

99.

EDIT: who am i fucking kidding. 100.

Varied genre-adventures with hefty grooves and a cogent voice.

+++ Lessons from Rocky I to Rocky III
++ Music Plus 1

Not quite as embarrassing as the lead single, but still sounds like something made in a laboratory. Extremely sterile, safe, and uninteresting. This brand of riskless dance-adjacent-pop doesn't really work anymore.

Doesn't help that the instrumental feels more appropriate for when she used to record vocal tracks for the Sims.

Finally, Luke *also* produced this forgettable nothing of a song. Bye!

It's not worth five mics or anything, but it's a solid album minus the skits. A definite high point for Lil Kim, and "Shut Up Bitch", "Whoa" and "Slippin" are consistent easy relistens for me.

timeless and of its time simultaneously, with guitar work and vocal delivery that feels rough enough to be prelude to the stuff in that vein that would come later in garage and d.i.y. rough. messy. and incredible.

One of those albums where almost everything the lead vocalist does on it is just so wildly obnoxious and ear-crawlingly irritating that it somehow circles back into being a guilty pleasure.

London Bridge is probably the encapsulation of how I feel about this album as a broader project: it is an absolute car crash with a chorus that sticks in my brain like a fucking parasite, with stupid Noise everywhere that irks my brain and pisses me off but simultaneously just has me along for the ride ... read more

I think it's perfectly fine. It starts out feeling like a 90s alt-rock moment refreshed for the 2020s in a way that is both musically and lyrically interesting, dips a bit, peaks again with "Hit It Again" and "Better If I Just Pretend", and later with "Come Over Again" and the almost Love-ian vocal deliveries on "What I Know Is Love", but there are about as many misses as hits, and the thing could stand to be slightly shorter.

It is a strong debut ... read more

is there an album in the popular music of not just the early 2010s, but also the 2000s, that feels quite so timeless and *new*?

one of my favourites from this period. M.I.A goes chaotic, industrial, messy, and vivid with her sound and it works *brilliantly*.

FAV: STEPPIN UP, MEDS AND FEDS

I went into this unsure of what to expect. I came out of it feeling as though I had experienced a genuinely fascinating soundscape, where more is going on than the components of its parts.

Definitely worth an open-minded listen.

I am *fascinated* by how clearly this was made by someone with no real training or musical intuition whatsoever, and is still somehow a curio that went on to have outsized influence on, or at least served to *predict*, many of the hyperpop trends that came later.

What *happened* here? It sounds like they let this woman loose in the studio with little-to-no real oversight or overruling from a producer with any kind of vision, and she emerged out of it with this mash of noises that both work and ... read more

I don't think there exists a figure in pop music right now who is quite this shameless creatively.

New "versions". The versions you have?

The terrible original. The terrible original, with a 50 second extended buildup. The terrible original, with no vocals. The terrible original, with no instrumental. And the terrible original: girlboss meditation edition.

All absolutely abysmal cash-grab fodder. Katy Perry deserves an absolute career death for this alone, even before you ... read more

A tepid effort held back by the most cliched whining about Today's Society put to a microphone since whatever Kid Rock tried to do a little bit ago.

In which an aging provocateur tries his Nobody Else Would Dare Say It schtick in a year and a time where it has become aggressively passe and boring.

PS: The Caitlyn Jenner lines only emphasise that this man hasn't had his finger on the pulse of pop culture for well over a decade now.

Perry takes empty superficiality to new heights as the producer she burned it all down to work with phones it in with an uninteresting beat.

This is the sound of Katy Perry's career getting whacked with a shovel and reburied.

She's earned the right to be like this.

Infectious, joyful, no-fucks-given, hard-hitting.

More of this, Kesha. Delightful.

I come back to this album periodically every few months and have done since I was 14, and I can say without any real hesitation that this is one of the best albums I've ever heard.