Almost designed to get play in stores, cafes, and fast-food places across the globe. This is not a compliment

Seeing the reception to this song versus my own experience listening to it in some quarters reminds me more than I'd particularly like to say of the whole TTPD experience, in that Lorde die-hards are sprinting to tell me this might be peak form returning once again and I just can't hear it.

Now, this is better than almost everything off *that* record, but it still doesn't exactly leave me in a position where I get any of the big hype. Maybe I need a few weeks with it.

Overexposure hasn't helped this song much, but it'd probably be less damaging if the fundamentals - her voice, the uninspired sonic direction, the dime-a-dozen pop-angst schtick - were any good, or compelling.

This has all the problems I have with a lot of this Tiktok soft-edge milky vomit, but with one big twist: Jessie Murph sounds like a dying chain-smoking cat being throttled on this track.

That's all I really have to contribute.

So many little touches and micro-moments and lyrical choices on this album that make this genuinely very funny and simultaneously endear "The Real Me" presented on the record to you.

It isn't the best record ever created, but it *is* one of my personal favourites this decade, somehow. The rare kind of comedy/folk piss-take album I can endorse.

Nu-Di-Ty shouldn't be one of my favourite Kylie cuts, but it is. The stuttering vocal and instrumental lines all over the place. The icy dancefloor detachment. The synth surges piercing the gloss every so often. The syllables-for-lyrics. Just grand.

Lots of this album is odd and eccentric and eclectic and I do like around half of it a *lot*, but I'm spotlighting that one because it's just so bizarre for post-2000 Kylie.

I just love this record so much. Save for the comparatively dismal britpop number "Some Kind Of Bliss", there's a messy cohesion going on throughout. This is also notable for being Ms Minogue's first LP where she is a credited songwriter on every track, and the second after "Let's Get To It" where she was credited on a majority of them. And if you are familiar with "Let's Get To It", you'll know that this is a pretty vast ... read more

This is how you write an album title.

The music is also pretty decent. Not as punchy as her debut nor as electric as her sophomore effort, but it has quirks.

A generational artist. By which I mean, he is this generation's radio-friendly cardboard-peddling safety blanket the way Maroon 5 were, whenever that was.

It is desperately unfortunate that the kids on Tiktok are going to grow up thinking this man is what must be popular, with how incessantly he is pumped into their faces and into their ears.

we don't need mid reissues. we need him in therapy and on meds.

Exhilarating. As if it wasn't fantastic enough that their enemies included the British, Israeli, and American states, their music is sleazy and their swagger is magnetic. Yes please.

An intensely promising debut from a silky-smooth star. The consistency on show here is incredibly admirable. The writing has a tendency to lag occasionally, but tighten that up, and I don't think anyone will be able to stop her.

Her best? Clearly not, but this might be Madge at her most creatively ambitious - "Dark Ballet" is *fascinating* for so many reasons, for instance, and probably one of the most interesting cuts she has ever produced - and unlike, say, the wretched MDNA, this hasn't got the total/complete stench of pop-compliance on it. For the first time in over a decade, you can see *risk* on this LP, and for that Madonna earns my plaudits. Yes, the reggaeton and the trap is very 2019, but a ... read more

This album could only have been more scattershot and purposeless if they'd forced Naomi to perform a cover of "Teenage Whore". It's an absolute mess with no creative core and no real soul.

As it is, though, the R&B/trip-hop territory would land surprisingly well were Campbell even a karaoke-level singer on most of these cuts. Alas, she isn't.

I wish Rebecca Lucy Taylor well. She seems like a perfectly thoughtful and decent person.

But based on the critical reception, the real star here is whoever her agent/representation is. "Life affirming" in particular made me cackle. What about this string of hollow electro-dirges affirms *anything*?

The problem is that she is not at all compelling or affecting. Maybe it's because a few of the tracks on here have borderline unfinished production on them, maybe it's because ... read more

The last time I heard someone rap this saucelessly over a sample this lazy, it was Doechii on the last Katy Perry album, so why this surprised me I couldn't honestly tell you.

This is fairly easily the best track to come out of the Addison Rae braintrust since she stumbled out of the Hype House with serious ambitions.

But at the end of the day, this is still just third-rate Bedtime Stories material. If you were given the choice between them, and you were aware of the former, you would not pick "Headphones On".

The biggest conundrum Rae seems to have is that she seems to lack any real identity as her own artist. Instead, it feels like she lifts other ... read more

S-Club marionette outsources her mouth to dozens of songwriters and, in the process, is made to sound compelling against some plinky-plonky dance-synth-pop instrumentals.

This might sound dismissive, and maybe it is. Even at the *time*, the limited creative control was discussed in the music press. I'm not looking for a virtuosa, though, just a decent album, and this is one of the best British pop LPs of the noughties. Particularly disheartening, in that context, is that for all this was ... read more

At first, I was not high on this one - famously, SY recorded it with all-new equipment after their customized gear went bye-bye, and it doesn't initially work for you if youre anticipating an extension on their work chronologically - but I came to two overarching conclusions.

The first is that this is really not too off-base relative to their more no-wavey early material, which historically is more hit than miss.

The second is that, however asinine it may be on first listen, "Boys ... read more

+15 for finally having the humility to launch herself into space.

-5 for failing to take Luke with her.

-5 again for coming back to vapidly vomit all over my television screen about how the cosmos remind you that you are loved - an insight about as fleshed-out and philosophically interesting as most of this album.