Miami can keep it.

It's a Madonna remix album.

I'm most intrigued by the Skin re-spin - this takes it from ice-cold trance and into something almost astral. Beyond that, though, I don't really care for it.

Beyond the ethics of it all, Dr. Luke really was the anchor around her neck, huh.

Though I am pleased to report that the lead single (which I had not heard until now) bucked all expectations set by the following pair of disasters, the rest of album did not.

For Stepford's Jessie Murph, I recommend:

A voice coach.

An end to what must be an 80-a-day Virginia Slim habit.

A PR consultant.

Decent songwriters.

A casual skim through some introductory feminist texts. Even "The Feminine Mystique" would do.

Retrograde and talentless.

It's been a crowded field, but from theme, to production, to god-awful vocal, to utterly confused style and presentation, *this* is probably going to be in my top five for worst singles in the pop lane this year.

Murph's enduring commitment to producing the most tasteless and technically abysmal pieces of music conceivable must be studied closely. Who at Columbia greenlit this?

Near perfect record. The album I opted for to detox from the sheer overbearing hollow heterosexuality of the new Alex Warren disaster.

I Wish You Were A Girl is one of the best individual tracks ever recorded. Captures a particular kind of queer experience better than almost anything else, frankly. Not many other notes for right now bc I'm recovering from that other album. Luv u Ryan Olcott!

You would only ever make something like this if you were focused on how many people saw and heard your content, and regarded the LP itself as secondary. An influencer playing at music, in other words.

Credit to Addison (Rae): She actually seems to care about her craft. If you were hoping Warren seemed to *like* music, you'd be disappointed.

My only comment on this EP is that the "Sucking Queen" parts on "Throat Goat" just make me think of Darienne Lake's "Big Girl Walking Down This Dirty Street" verse on Drag Race S6.

Overall it's really shit. Treat Me Like A Slut is catchy, but that's about it.

Dead Petz' boring little brother.

There are artists who are able to pull off this abrasive hyperpop styling without too much difficulty. Katseye, for instance, can't do it for shit - they look like posers, they sound like posers. You can almost hear the boardroom discussion under the instrumental and the badly-written quips.

Kim Petras is at least familiar with this game, being notably acquainted with some of hyperpop's biggest influences. That alone wouldn't do it, though. What does, I think, is that ... read more

You know the movie "Wild At Heart"? The dreamy Lynch crime-romance about the outlaw and the girl he's in love with hitting the road out west to California?

This album sounds like that. I have to imagine, based on the allusions Ms Saunders made a few times this year on her Instagram, that this was probably at least partially deliberate. That kind of incredibly rich psychedelic ethereality has been a strong suit for her since Le Kov, so it's no wonder that she baked it in the ... read more

I sometimes do this thing where, in lieu of a full album retrospective or dissection, I spotlight one or two tracks that I believe get lost in an album popularly remembered for its singles even among Album Listeners.

In this case, my choice is the viciously silly "D.I.N.O.$.A.U.R", a cut which is so unserious but has aged phenomenally and tragically all at once.

The songwriting here kills me - D I N O S A U R a DINOSAUR is a phenomenally stupid hook - and the asides are so ... read more

Disclaimer: The most important thing to me is that Kesha is happy and that the album is happy. After so much unhappiness and so little true control for so much of her career, Kesha's liberation is a wonderful thing to be able to witness, and we love her.

Main review:

The further away Kesha gets from many of the popular sounds of fifteen years ago, the better this album gets. Unfortunately, she just can't resist indulging in unmemorable faux-spirational We Did It Katy Perry-esque ... read more

Beautiful airy record that is so quintessentially Herbert in its oddities and its warmth and yet so uncharacteristically spiritual in some ways, too.

Love this. A return to the form Around The House and Bodily Functions established so strongly.

Surprise! Lorde makes beautiful queer art! I found her *other* album cover to be very visually striking and kind of beautiful in the context of the album, too.

Something very mystical and otherworldly about this very fundamentally introspective record about one's experiences and relitigating all of them in a Certain Light. About eschewing euphemism for blunt, cold honesty. It works brilliantly.

This is not another Melodrama. But it really doesn't have to be.

Five tracks! This is handy, because I don't feel like playing clever writer, so I can just score each one out of 20 and add them up at the end.

Ready?

Gnarly: 0
Gabriela: 8
Gameboy: 8
Mean Girls: 0
MIA: 13

This EP, therefore, gets a whopping 29 points! Which is around 20 points more than I expected after hearing Gnarly for the first time! Good job, girls!

Kesha is one of the more versatile in the Game even now, being able to don cheap recession-pop sleazestress or artistically substantial confessionalist whenever she feels like it.

Unfortunately, plastic-wrapped Perry EmpowerPop is so antithetical to even the *idea* of Kesha that this just completely fails for me.

The shadow that this record will cast over music for what I hope will be the rest of my life is surely enormous.

So beautiful. So bizarre. So jarring. So desolate. So cold. But there's a resolve here to Be and to force the future to Be with it.

I miss her so, so, so much. "Generational talent" doesn't even really get under the surface of it all.

Whenever I think M.I.A is closing in on Kanye for "most washed", Kanye chooses to release, and I'm being generous here, the most hacky uninspired garbage you've ever heard in your life.

An automatic zero for the AI nonsense. Fuck yourself.

If it weren't bad enough that this hack couldn't sing, he had to go and make this aesthetically repulsive Jennifer, white, 43, Denton, TX. mom-of-three lifelong Republican-ass record with that dying alpaca he calls a voice. Sigh.