The Miley Cyrus story has gotten increasingly interesting as of late. As per usual with child pop stars she’s had her big public meltdown and decided to go all “Sexy” image wise, and par for the course the tabloids and tv news stations have been eating it up. After her now notorious VMA performance with Robin Thicke I think a solid two weeks went by where I didn’t go a day without Miley showing up in my facebook feed, Miley showing up on the evening news, Miley’s face miraculously appearing on my grilled cheese sandwiches; it was insane. Not being a tween suburban girl, this seemed particularly odd. Why were my friends posting about Miley Cyrus? Why was Brian Williams telling me about her exploits? Why was it in MY grilled cheese she was appearing? We had entered an inescapable Mileyverse, which permeated America like the smog in Beijing.

After about a week of this I was unsurprisingly sick of talking about the former Disney Channel child star. ‘’Aren't we like, considering going to war with Syria?”, I asked the void. “Isn't France engaging in a pretty serious military  conflict with Mali Right now? Doesn't that take priority over asking whether some pop star on the VMA’s shaking her ass is “racial appropriation”?”  The flame wars and newscasts continued and after a while I just started to drown it out and stop paying attention as much as I could, but every time something new came out it got at least a head turn. Between “Miley is naked on top of construction equipment in her new video for some reason!” and “Miley Cyrus sang in front of a montage of giant kittens at the AMA’s during her performance of Wrecking Ball!” it was really hard for even me to ignore some of this. Over the course of her coming-of-age freakout something about this girl’s aesthetic had become bizarrely and honestly kind of delightfully post-modern.  The cats, the giant teddy bears, the weird awful fever dream that was the “We Can’t Stop” video, its like 4chan had suddenly been given charge of creating Miley’s image. And I can’t lie, I kind of approved.

All of these recent thoughts and events were floating around my mind as I sat down to finally listen through Miley’s new album “Bangerz” for this review. I went in expecting a terrible but probably amusing trainwreck of an album. This is why it came as a surprise to me when I took out my headphones after the last song and realized with simultaneous feelings of pleasant surprise and disappointment, that much of what I had listened to over the past fifty or so minutes was actually pretty good.

Now to be fair this is not how I felt starting out. The album starts out with “Adore You” which is among the most paint by numbers, boring love ballad that I've heard on a recent release. Between the lazy piano plodding along, the entirely expected vocal line, and the old love song studio fallback of synth strings, track feels like it could have been written by literally any female pop star of the past twenty years. Needless to say I was disappointed. This wasn't at all what I was expecting from the “new era” of Miley. It wasn't even amusingly bad! But as the song ended and began to fade into the next one I found myself legitimately interested again. 

“We Can’t Stop” has been on the radio for a while now and there’s been a lot of commentary about its cultural importance and what it represents with the overtly sexual references and talk of doing molly and snorting lines in the bathroom. But with all that taken away, I realized that musically, this was a step in the right direction. The piano line by itself isn't much, but once combined with the drums which layer on, and the incredibly well chosen synth, it becomes memorable in an actually positive way. The sound had me thinking of synthpop from the likes of Shiny Toy Guns or even The Birthday Massacre, and I was impressed with how distinctly unlike current pop music it sounded. I also have to give her some credit for the bizarre music video which the song received, which more or less debuted the aesthetic of the new Miley to the public, and which I still find at least interesting moments in. Just watch it and tell me you don’t find yourself still thinking about it and saying ‘What the fuck did I watch” days later.

The next track “Bangerz” is unfortunately pretty bad. This appears to be Miley’s “I’m a strong independent woman who don’t need no man” track for the album, and is filled with a distinct Black Eyed Peas vibe. They have that cumbersome low bass beat that Will.i.am uses coupled with a deep robotic voice repeating “bangerz” and miley seemingly doing her best Fergie impression. That said there’s a couple of interesting moments for the synth when the more plunky electro pop type filters come on, and the use of autotune is actually interesting with electronic obviously autotuned vocals paired with clean ones. 

The next song “4x4” was another one I felt strongly ambivalent about. It starts off sounding like Miley is going back to a more country-western style ala some of her older work, and she takes on a bit of a Dolly Parton drawl which would be pretty easy to make fun of. But then just as I was ready to start hating on it, Gogol Bordello style accordion and gypsy guitar come forth and forced me to like it. I legitimately can’t say this is a bad song, and to be honest, Miley sounds kind of badass here and there in this track. Nelly does a solid guest verse too, adding a much needed element of coolness to the song, and solidifying it as weirdly being pretty good. Then suddenly we get treated to “My Darling”, a plodding uber-generic love song featuring a hip-hop artist named “Future”  using that always riveting sleazy auto-tune voice, leading to the song sounding like someone forced T-Pain to write a love ballad after giving him ample doses of ketamine. Such is the give and take of “Bangerz”.

The rest of the album is a mish mash of a couple good songs, a few interestingly bad songs, and one or two complete write offs. “Love Money Party” and “Maybe You’re Right” sound like Miley trying very hard to be Rihanna and Coldplay respectively and not doing a very good job, meanwhile “Do My Thang” encapsulates everything awful about the party music of the past ten years including but not limited to: bad white girl rapping, Awful David Guetta sounding beats, synth claps, dubstep drops, and pretty much everything that’s made me hate the pop music of the past decade. 

On the other hand we have songs like “FU” which turns out to be a weird mish mash of dark cabaret and other anachronistic styles with modern synth, and probably the best vocals Miley Cyrus has ever put forth, which sound legitimately awesome, even by my standards. It also features the best use of dubstep style synth that I’ve ever heard in a pop song, used expertly in the chorus, and mixing awesomely with the cabaret feel. “#Getitright” while not necessarily my thing is also really well executed, essentially being a sultry-sexy summer lust song with reggae guitar, whistling, and playful keyboard parts giving it the perfect atmosphere. In my opinion it actually would have been a bit better suited to an artist like Bruno Mars, but Miley does a decent job with it so I can’t complain. The album ends with “Someone Else” which is nothing new or innovative but is a decent dance-pop type song with pretty good vocals if that's what you’re into, giving a rather anticlimactic feeling to the end of what is on occasion a pretty interesting album. 

“Bangerz” left me feeling conflicted. It’s definitely one of the more schizophrenic albums I’ve heard recently, and the style seems to change about every other song which can be sort of jarring, but on the other hand it certainly prevents it from becoming a dull experience. It approaches being one of the most fascinating pop albums of the past few years, but it comes short by mixing the interesting tracks with a bunch of bad ones and boring ones. That said I can’t deny that this album thoroughly surprised me. I’ll admit it, I honestly like “Wrecking Ball” and “We Can’t Stop”. I think they’re pretty well written and have some interesting musical ideas which are outside what is currently generally found in pop music. It could just be an increased tolerance to bad pop music as a result of hours of forcing myself to listen to One Direction and Flo Rida, but I’m actually inclined to defend this album as something of a step in the right direction for current pop in terms of its experimentation and its weirdness. I don’t love it and I certainly don’t have any intent of buying it, but I don’t regret the hour I spent listening to it in the why I have with a lot of the pop I’ve reviewed. So yeah, I’m giving a positive review to “Bangerz”, what of it. Now can we stop talking about the twerking and move onto literally anything else please?

You know for all of the supposedly hetero songs on Robin Thicke’s 2013 album “Blurred Lines” never before have I seen a man with a more obvious crush on Justin Timberlake. All the warbling “Oooh baby”s, the vague attempts at hip-hop, the guest rappers, the more than slightly 90’s boy band sound of “4 The Rest of my life.” I’m pretty sure if we delved a little deeper we’d find out that Robin thicke has a life-sized Justin Timberlake poster above his bed and makes his wife dress up in shades and a fedora before sex, but I digress.

I found out about Thicke more or less the same way every one else did, being lampooned with youtube adds for Blurred Lines and eventually being forced to watch it . Perhaps over optimistically I thought this track, and Thicke himself might fade out of the limelight in a couple weeks as just some one hit wonder who we would soon stop talking about, but alas, here we are. Apparently having a former child star with a micky mouse hand twerk on you while you botch the vocals to your only notable song is a good way to stay in the public consciousness. So how does his remarkably successful new album which Rolling Stone called a “near-perfect summer record” hold up to scrutiny you ask?......badly, the answer is badly.

The Album starts with its inescapable title track “Blurred Lines”  which at this point has been talked to death from an analytical standpoint. I could go on for paragraphs here talking about whether or not its misogynistic or promotes rape culture or what have you, but this strikes me as both A. incredibly dull and B. irrelevant to whether its a good song or not. Is it objectively pretty sexist? Sure. Are the lyrical implications pretty rapey? Yeah just a tad. However these facts having nothing to do with why I hate it. I hate it because it's four minutes of those insufferable white-boy-R&B falsetto vocals over an annoying disco beat which repeats over and over for the duration in a ceaseless circle until I find myself wanting to stab puppies. I don’t inherently dislike it because its sexist, I listen to Combichrist for fucks sake, but no matter where you stand on that part of the argument it remains one of the most annoying songs I've been subjected to in a long time.

The rest of the album seems to fall between two primary categories. First  you have songs like “Take it Easy on Me” and “Give it 2 U” which exhibit Thicke’s rather sad and invariably annoying attempts to be Mr. Timberlake, and also some incredibly funny moments of Thicke attempting to do hip-hop. “Give it 2 U” also has the dubious honors of both containing a synth line which sounds simultaniously identical to pretty much anything Will.i.am has produced in the past five years, particularly “#thatpower”, and having a title which makes me die a little inside whenever I have to type it. Also why is Kendrick Lamar on this song?! Kendrick, buddy, You made one of the best albums of 2012, you actually make good music with interesting insightful lyrics, why are you on a Robin Thicke song?

The rest of the album is made up of pretty standard loungy soul/R&B tracks, which while on the whole not terrible, do nothing to tip the balance in favor of this actually being a good album. In the same way adding more white bread to a sandwich containing a dead cat you found that morning won’t suddenly make it haut cuisine, these songs don’t do anything to make you forgive or forget the truly awful ones.

On the whole this album isn't abjectly terrible, I've listened to far worse in the past year. But if only for managing to become as popular it has while being this powerfully mediocre It has earned a special little place of enmity in my heart. I’m also pretty sure someone's payed off the greater population of Syracuse to exclusively blast Blurred Lines when passing me on the street, so there’s that grudge as well. One can only hope that music this forgettable will soon be forgotten and replaced with something which is at the very least more interestingly bad.

                Lil Wayne has been a pretty omnipresent figure in American popular music for about the past six years or so, and I think its officially time that we move on to the next talentless hack. Seriously guys, this ones getting stale, its time to bring in the 2013 models who can also hail themselves as the "best rappers alive" and lower the bar even more until the bar descends into the bowels of Tarterus and melts.

                There is very little new which can be said about "I Am Not a Human Being II". It indisputably sounds like everything else Lil Wayne has done. The tired boring flow is there, the casual misogyny is there, the obnoxious self aggrandizement is there,  nothing of the classic Wayne formula that has made him loathed by people with firing brain cells over the past ten years and apparently loved by the American public is absent from this release.

                For me the most notable achievement of this particular album if I recall correctly it is one of the first albums I've reviewed that forced me to quit half way through. I can take a lot of musical punishment, but the sheer level of stupidity and awfullness I was dealing with here proved too potent even for the likes of me. If nothing else being even less tolerable than LMFAO and Hollywood Undead has to be some sort of accomplishment.

                But perhaps I'm being too harsh, there has to be something nice to say about this vacuous waste of pro-tools tracks and studio time right? Well....uh....the piano in the opening track IANAHB is actually pretty dramatic and well performed. It actually makes for a decent instrumental track, and I'm sure an artist with something resembling the tiniest fucking modicum of talent could have done something cool with it. Alas we are dealing with young Weezy here, so instead we get a song which starts with the line "I'm in the crib butt naked bitch, she said my dick could be the next black president". So no, the song still sucks more than a pleasure-bot which started life as a vacume cleaner. The third track "Days and Days" also manages to bring rapper 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne together at last, which HAS to be some sort of awfulness singularity.

                Thinking about it however, there is one serious contribution this album makes to the world, particularly snobs for like me. This serves as a veritable dissertation on everything wrong, stupid, and utterly fucking backwards about mainstream rap. "IANAHBII" is a loathsome piece of trash composed mainly of uber-macho boasting, calling women ho's, bragging about having vast quantities of weed, and talking about shooting people. It mistakes vulgarity and misogyny for wit and was created by a vapid 25 year old millionaire of sub-human intelligence who covers his teeth in diamonds. Calling this album a piece of vile pedestrian trash would be an insult to other vile pedestrian trash.

                The main conclusion I came to upon giving up on any attempt to finish listening to this album is that Lil Wayne is seriously in need of a series of pummellings to the general face area. Perhaps we will be lucky and this will result in some sort of serious brain trauma preventing him from "contributing" any more of his musical excrement to the media in the future, but one can only wish. For now I'm still holding out hope that with his current health problems he'll make good on some of the rumors of his retirement and I'll never have to give his body of work a second thought. Unfortunately, this seems unlikely, and much like a herpes virus on the crotch of the music industry, he will return again and continue to serve as an embarrassing irritating blight.

          Somehow, last week, Hollywood Undead’s third album, “Notes From The Underground,” stormed the Billboard album charts and managed to briefly become the second most popular album in the U.S.

          Seriously, America? You let this happen? I might have accepted this back in the mid-2000s when the whole emo-rap thing was still in its prime and this sort of thing somehow passed as acceptable, but at the very least I thought we had moved on to otherterrible music trends. But no, apparently what we wanted last week was a teenage angst-ridden dose of white boy rap backed up by some distorted guitar riffs. Obviously the fact that this anachronism managed to get to the No. 2 position in the album charts means it was totally awesome, right?

          Well, as the first song began, I knew the situation was dire. Between the lyrics, which reeked of a 12-year-old trying to write something “edgy,” and the whiny emo vocals in the chorus and intro, I was well aware of exactly what I had gotten myself into. What would I do if you told me you hate me, Hollywood Undead? Presumably, I’d be really happy and then respond by telling you to write some better tracks. By the way, the “Does this smell like chloroform?” joke got old like three years ago, guys.

          The next few songs devolve into their usual confused messy mixture of rap, emo, metal and pop. The problem isn’t that they’re mixing genres, however. It’s that each element of that mixture is of a supremely bad quality. They’re bad rappers (Charlie Scene couldn’t change his flow to save his life), they have some of the most boring riffs I’ve heard in ages on their heavy tracks, they subscribe to every emo cliché imaginable and their pop comes off as third-rate and thrown in.

          It’s after this point that some of the more uniquely awful songs spring up. “Pig Skin” is the band’s attempt at simultaneously mocking club songs while cashing in on the genre, either way about two years too late for it to be relevant. Also, someone seriously needs to tell Charlie Scene that the way he constantly references different brands of booze in every single song doesn’t so much make him sound cool as it does make it sound like he has a drinking problem. This one really is laughably bad, though, so I recommend listening to it if only for the sheer spectacle of witnessing a musical car crash.

          Following this, we have “Kill Everyone” which is a terribly rapped, sung and played song that sounds uncomfortably like it’s supposed to be a school shooter anthem, featuring the lyric “Now let’s let the f***in’ gun break the silence/Close your eyelids/Another shot and then here come the sirens/I thought I told you to keep f***in’ quiet? /Somebody’s dyin’, so come say goodbye, kids.”

          “From The Underground,” meanwhile, legitimately sounds like it could be a One Direction track for the most part. Any pretension of edginess or grit is immediately lost as Danny wails and croons with his badly autotuned voice over keys and synthesized strings.

          The one vaguely enjoyable song on the album is the brainless party track “Up in Smoke,” which encourages the listener to “Get down like you just got out of rehab” and actually makes for a decent party track. However, a friend pointed out to me that the beat and some of the vocal melodies seem to blatantly rip off the song “Night Shift” by edIT (a much better song) so even this one is tainted.

          Overall, the most striking thing about this album is how the band has found new and unique ways to suck even more. Whoever thought throwing pop elements into their god-awful Linkin Park style emo-rap was sorely mistaken, and I think it’s been proven once and for all that Hollywood Undead needs a stake through the heart.

One Out of Five Stars

          Oh my God, guys, she’s finally back! Can you believe that it’s only been two years since her last record? It feels like it’s been like SO long. But the time has come and Ke$ha, one of the most innovative artists of our time, is back and better than ever! I just can’t express how talented and important Ke$ha is or how much thought was put into this record. I mean, to call her anything short of the voice of a generation would just be…

          Nope, I can’t do it, not even for the sake of satire. This album has defeated me, dear readers. Whatever hope for the musical taste of the general public Cee Lo’s recent christmas album had instilled in me has officially been taken out back and drowned in a pool of Ke$ha’s glittery Jack Daniels. As bad as Ke$ha’s debut album “Animal” may have been, “Warrior” is worse. Far, far worse.

          Now, originally, I could have been considered something of a Ke$ha apologist. I mean, sure, her music was stupid and vapid and brainless but it seemed almost as if it was so dumb that it was just parodying other dumb music. She seemed to, in some sense, be pop-against-pop, an idea which I found both amusing and intriguing. Also, “Tik Tok” is undeniably fun and enjoyable no matter how much of a music elitist I may be. So how did it come to this? How did her music sink so low as to no longer even be viable as a guilty pleasure?

          Starting things out on a sour note, the album begins with the title track “Warrior,” which fades in following a buzz of feedback. If this, combined with the poorly hidden autotune and nauseating synth tones which pervade the rest of the song, fail to give you a headache, you have a stronger head than me. For someone who claims to love partying so much, Ke$ha’s music would be one of the most effective means of torturing a person with a hangover.

          After that comes the currently inescapable and equally nauseating “Die Young.” I can’t deny that it’s catchy; it’ll probably be stuck in my head for the next three years but, my God, does this song suck. I don’t know what it is but whatever made her previous work lovably bad is completely gone, replaced with ample quantities of regular badness.

          Part of it could be that this track (and to some extent the album as a whole) just seem much more like stock pop music. Katy Perry could have released “Die Young” on a poor unsuspecting public just as easily. The references to glitter, dirt and partying now just seem like studio contrivances and any sense of uniqueness Ke$ha might have had is being milked dry.

          Unsurprisingly, the lyrics are also abysmally written. I know none of us expect pop lyrics to be Oscar Wilde-quality but why on earth do they have to be this mind-numbingly bad? (example: “Feeling like a saber-tooth tiger/sipping on a warm Budweiser”) Who told Ke$ha it was a good idea to try releasing a cheesy “Our differences make us special / let’s all just live in harmony” type song based on the rest of her career?

          On a side note, someone please get this woman a rhyming dictionary. It’s not that hard, Ke$ha, but I regret to inform you that “night” does not in fact rhyme with “side” and “eyes” does not in fact rhyme with “life.” Also, this is your second album, and as B.O.B. learned from the backlash after “Airplanes,” you can’t release a “I wish I could go back to when I wasn’t all rich and famous” song like “Wonderland” on your second album.

          While simply releasing a terrible follow-up album would have been bad enough, Ke$ha also has the gall to bring legitimately talented artists down with her. I kinda liked The Strokes and was not actively opposed to the Black Keys, but after they put their marks on “Only Wanna Dance With You” and “Wonderland” respectively, I’m pretty sure I’m morally obligated to despise them now.

          As if that weren’t bad enough, she even does a song with punk rock legend Iggy Pop in the form of “Dirty Love.” Aren’t you the dude who used to slice his chest with broken bottles on stage and hang out with Alice Cooper? What happened to you, man? Why are you doing songs with Ke$ha?!

          The bottom line is that any sense of so-bad-it’s-good that I got from the songs on her first album is completely missing from the music on this record. It’s repetitive, generic, contrived and bloody hell, is it bad. Perhaps one day if she does something surprising like a full-on rock album (as she seems to keep hinting), we might get something interesting from her again, but with this record, she hasn’t so much misstepped as she has fallen off of a cliff.


One Out of Five Stars

            Well, after the consumption of countless pumpkin pies, the taking of numerous naps and the putting off of vast quantities of schoolwork, it would appear that the Christmas season is finally upon us. Syracuse has had its first dusting of snow, you can’t swing a dead cat in either of our malls without hitting a Christmas decoration, and the ever-ubiquitous Christmas music is starting to be heard creeping out of store fronts all over the city.

            Now this may surprise you, dear reader, embittered music snob that I am, but I do have something of a soft spot for Christmas music. Although it becomes intolerable after a full month of having it blasted at you, Christmas music has a way of grabbing onto one’s sense of childhood nostalgia and throwing you headlong into some semblance of the Christmas spirit.

            Over the years, popular artists have attempted to jump on the Christmas music band wagon with varying degrees of success, or at least varying degrees of catastrophic failure.  A quick YouTube search can bring up pages of videos of pop stars and starlets trying their hand at assorted Christmas classics and failing miserably (and amusingly).

            This year, however, as occasionally happens, one artist has actually gone outside the norm and made something almost unheard of: a good Christmas album. I know, take a minute to let it sink in.  Yes, with his release of “Cee Lo’s Magic Moment,” the man who brought us “F*** You” may have just singlehandedly redeemed the Christmas album as a (semi-)viable or, at the very least, fun art form.

            One feature which shines through the album is that Cee Lo can actually sing. From the first verse of “What Christmas Means to Me,” it’s clear that this dude can belt Christmas tunes with the best of them and that you’re in for a good ride. It certainly says something about the current, rather deplorable state of popular music that something as simple as a singer actually having a decent voice instead of relying on autotune to keep you in something resembling a key would be a sign of merit, but this is where we are, folks.

            Track two is one of the best renditions of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” I’ve heard, featuring Christina Aguilera providing one of the better performances I’ve heard her serve up in recent memory. The song is sure to end up playing in stores in no time.

            From there on, it’s a mishmash of beloved Christmas classics along with some more obscure choices. The seemingly mandatory “White Christmas,” “The Christmas Song” and “Silent Night” all make appearances; the latter in particular is fantastically performed, with Cee Lo’s powerful voice adding a nice gravity to the song without making it seem overly stuffy.

            Cee Lo also puts his stamp on Mariah Carey’s  hit “All I Want For Christmas is You,” and I’m not gonna lie, guys, it’s kinda awesome. I’m sure that last sentence will cost some serious snob points, but it’s fun, well-performed and Cee Lo does a great job of putting his stamp on it.

            The album has a few low points but considering some of the other things I’ve listened to in my time as a critic, even the lows on this practically sound like highs. Some of the lesser-known tracks like “This Christmas,” “Run Rudolph Run” and “Merry Christmas Baby” aren’t quite as grabbing as the more classic tunes which Cee Lo covers over the course of the record, and the collaborative song with the Muppets, “All I Need is Love,” falls flat, but the good on this album easily outweighs the bad.  So, this Christmas, knock back some eggnogs and be thankful that we finally have a quality Christmas album to break out, courtesy of Cee Lo Green.

Four out of Five Stars

           Within the realms of pop music, it’s extremely easy to just hate everything. Show me a top ten singles listing and, generally, I’ll be viewing ten artists that I hate offering songs I’d liken to irritable bowel syndrome. However, once one gets ever-so-slightly out of the Billboard Hot 100 into other musical avenues, things get somewhat more complicated. While there’s still lot of bad music when musicians are writing their own songs and there’s not quite as much label control, one can generally find more redeeming features than in a production-line, carbon-copy pop star like Justin Bieber. It is in this somewhat more unpredictable musical realm that we find ourselves with Muse’s most recent album, “The 2nd Law.”

           The album starts with a sleazy stoner rock riff echoing of Queens of The Stone Age and Them Crooked Vultures, soon intermingled with orchestral strings. For the rest of the track (named “Supremacy”), the sleazy rock sound and rather pompous symphonic sound are combined masterfully, and it does a good job of showing off vocalist/guitarist Matthew Bellamy’s killer pipes. Very few people have a creepier falsetto  and it’s put to good use.

           Conversely, the second song, “Madness,” is quiet and soft, and is the first song to include one of the album’s more notable features, dubstep elements. While dubstep is one of my preferred whipping boys and I do still have that same visceral hatred towards it, I will say it is used tastefully here. It fits with the songs where it’s used and the fact that it’s used to evoke a variety of moods over the course of “The 2nd Law” is rather impressive.  I never thought I would say this, but Muse may have actually showed me that dubstep can have a valid place in music (providing it’s not the main style and is only occasionally used).

           Unfortunately, while “2nd Law” and I started out frolicking through flower-laden fields together and romantically sipping from the same milkshake, the magic was ruined when it suddenly smashed the broken bottle of boring-ness and U2 rip-offs across my unsuspecting face. I don’t know what I did to deserve such a thing, but around track eight, the album just decides it will stop being good for a while; it goes from being a long, dull take on Queen to an exact stylistic copy of every U2 song ever (“Explorers” and “Big Freeze,” respectively). The next song is equally boring, and while there’s an awesome heavy song I actually quite like (“Liquid State”), prior to the two-part eponymous closing track,the damage was already done.

           This, combined with the disappointingly anticlimactic title track that closes the album, left me feeling ambivalent about the album as a whole. It definitely has great parts and if it ended after the first seven songs, I probably would have given it a glowing review full of sunshine and rainbows, but to do so now feels disingenuous. Overall, I would still say the album has more good than bad in it and there’s a lot about it which I like, but a ten-minute stretch of badness and an unsatisfying ending mean a lot in a 43-minute album. Muse is a very good band, but in order to truly be great, they need to stop emulating other artists and embrace the unique sound which they so expertly wield over the album’s first half. That said, I can’t bring myself to hate an album which has a song as fun and silly as “Panic Station.” So I guess you get off this time, Muse… Just don’t push your luck.

           I’ve got to admit something to you, readers. I am not a teenage girl – a fact I’m sure will be surprising and distressing to many of you. As such, I may be doomed to never truly “get” what is so compelling and insightful about the music of Taylor Swift. The outspoken music snob I am, I’ve made jabs at Swift’s particular brand of cutesy country-pop. Such criticisms have often been met with some variation on the claim that while seemingly objectively mediocre, her songs are incredibly accurate depictions of what it’s like to be a teen girl.

           This is a hard point to argue with as a Y-chromosome-owning member of society. While there’s something to be said for specific music appealing to specific types of people, artists like Brokencyde and LMFAO have taught us there’s definitely objectively bad music. The real question is – with the release of her new album, “Red” – where does Swift fall on that spectrum?

           The album starts out benignly enough. When listening to the opening track, “State of Grace,” I could hardly register it as Taylor Swift, instead getting a strong Coldplay/U2 vibe. I was almost worried that Swift’s patented country/pop sound and lackluster lyricism, complete with dopey metaphors, wouldn’t be making an appearance.

           Luckily (although perhaps not for my sanity), with the second track “Red,” any chances of this immediately went away. “Losing him was blue like I’d never known/Missing him was dark grey all alone” sings Swift, simply overflowing with tween emotion. I’ve often heard people praise Swift for her earnest heartfelt lyrics, but my God, do they come out hammy. You really do get the sense that these are lyrics a 13-year-old girl wrote after her first break-up, which, considering Swift is 22, can add an unintended element of hilarity to her work.

           Track four, “I Knew You Were Trouble,” digs the grave even deeper for this album. While getting increasingly poppy would have been bad enough (and trust me, on this track, it is), my old nemesis, dubstep, also rears its ugly head, resulting in audible screaming on my part. I’m fairly certain that this current pop trend was created entirely to torment me as some part huge cosmic prank, but I digress.

           From that point forward, the album goes back and forth between regular, boring Taylor Swift and actively aggravating, horrible Taylor Swift. While there’s certainly a redeeming sense of sincerity to the tracks written solely by her, the co-written singles feel plastic and artificial enough to give the listener auditory whiplash.

           Aside from “I Knew You Were Trouble,” the songs “22” and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” (which were also co-written by Max Martin and Shellback) could easily have been performed by any other cutesy blond pop star and, like most of these paint-by-number pop hits, have the effect of feeling like you had a disgusting pink vat of cute poured all over you. I think I’m going to need a shower once this is over.

           That said, while I went in wholeheartedly expecting to hate every last track on the album, there were, in fact, some redeeming features. “State of Grace” is a nice enough song if you’re looking for something chill (in the general vicinity of Coldplay or other soft rockers), and the instrumentation (primarily made up of guitar, violin and banjo) ranges from being decent to actually quite good. Also, “Begin Again” is admittedly kind of a beautiful song. At least, I think so. After an hour of listening to this girl, the odds are pretty good that I’m just developing musical Stockholm syndrome.

           On the whole, while I wouldn’t call this a good album and it’s certainly not my kettle of fish, there’s far worse music out there. Small praise, perhaps, but probably the best Ms. Swift can expect from me. Cut out the moment of dubstep, take some writing classes and stop with the radio-baiting pop schlock, and then maybe we’ll talk.

Two out of Five Stars

             To be honest, until I got into reading and watching music reviews as a hobby, I had no idea who Flo Rida was. Oh, I’d certainly heard his songs, but he’d never made enough of an impression on me for me to remember his name. Other than being mildly irked that he had ruined the cheesily awesome “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” by Dead or Alive by using it as a sample in the appallingly bad “[You Spin My Head] Right Round,” I really couldn’t be bothered to have an opinion about the guy.

             Well that has changed, dear readers! As it stands, I currently have four opinions about Flo Rida, which are as follows: his sideburns are ridiculous, he’s terrible at rapping, he’s excellent at writing catchy choruses and he probably should have politely retired from music after releasing “Club Can’t Handle Me.”

             Despite my general distaste towards this kind of generic club schlock, something about “Club Can’t Handle Me” pulled at my cold, snobbish heart strings. Even I can’t decry a song that undeniably fun. His more recent work on his album “Wild Ones,” however, I most decidedly can.

             The album starts with the currently omnipresent “Whistle,” which I’m fairly certain even pop fans are sick of now. The chorus is catchy for sure, but while one could feasibly enjoy having a song like “Club Can’t Handle Me” stuck in their head for a spell, this one becomes gratingly irritating within seconds. Whoever’s bright idea it was to make whistling the new big fad in pop music needs to be thrown into the nearest Sarlacc pit before he can do any more damage.

             Being Flo Rida, this track is then followed by a mediocrely-rapped and instantly forgettable verse about partying and sex. The song after that is the title track “Wild Ones,” which starts out with Coldplay-like keys and (you guessed it!) an annoyingly catchy hook sung by guest artist Sia.

             This is then followed up by a mediocrely-rapped and instantly forgettable verse about partying and sex (wow, two for two; I’m impressed, guys!). If nothing else, I suppose one could praise Mr. Rida for his consistency, but personally, by about the third track of this formula I found myself nodding off and wishing I was listening to something more interesting like whale songs or an air conditioner.

             On the whole, while Flo Rida does have some very solid musical strengths, they’re all downplayed by how samey and boring his songs are. The production on his music is great, he seems to have enough clout to get a wide variety of guest artists and he can write one hell of an ear-worming chorus. Unfortunately, in order for any of those artistic advantages to have meaning, you also have to be interesting in some way. And the uncanny ability to sound exactly like everyone else on the radio just doesn’t cut it.


Two out of Five Stars

           Oh, Maroon 5, where, oh where, did you go wrong? I can still recall the days when this LA-based funk rock band was churning out adequately-performed, boring pop tunes which one could easily ignore and they’d simply float through their career, one mid-tempo love song at a time. Unfortunately for the general public, or at least unfortunately for music snobs like myself, the band seems to have taken a turn for the awful over the past few years with their two most recent releases, “Hands all Over” and  “Overexposed.”

           Until these two albums, the main adjective I’d use to describe the bulk of Maroon 5’s work is inoffensive. Their particular brand of bland, white-funk was the type of thing one would expect to hear on a TV medical drama or an adult contemporary station while randomly flipping through radio stations. Songs like “Harder to Breathe” and “This Love,” which originally garnered them success, share this trait and set the tone rather well for the type of music they’d be presenting until their shift for the worse.

           Maroon 5 didn’t really     have enough substance or personality to evoke either a particularly strong response either way. They were the musical equivalent of a stale, unsalted cracker. There wasn’t anything especially disgusting or offensive about their music, but there’s no real reason why one would have attempted to seek it out or get excited about it. This changed upon the release of the single “Moves Like Jagger.”

           With this vapid, poorly-written and despicably catchy piece of music, Maroon 5 was suddenly thrust back into the public consciousness. Somehow, a band that, for most of its career could have made The Fray look interesting and innovative, was being given a second chance at the limelight. A large part of this seems to be the fact that this particular track was not primarily written by the band, with the bulk of the work being done by industry songwriters Benjamin Levin and Shellback.

           Now while the music written by most of these mercenary songwriters could be compared unfavorably to being given a colonoscopy with a cactus, one cannot deny that it has a tendency to be catchy, and for whatever reason, it grabs the public consciousness. “Moves Like Jagger” did this for Maroon 5 and suddenly, love it or hate it, millions were at least aware of this song.

           Having used outside writers on “Moves Like Jagger“ with great success (if one can consider writing one of the worst songs of 2011 a success), the band continued this tradition on their follow-up album, “Overexposed.” The result was an even “poppier” album with less similarities to the band’s early albums. Between the studio auto-tune somehow making Adam Levine’s girlish falsetto sound even worse, and the injection of dubstep elements (which this critic has gone on record as saying is one of the worst things in modern music) into several of the songs, the band managed to make me despise a band that I hadn’t even liked in the first place.

           One of the worst offenders from this album is, of course, the currently inescapable “Payphone.” With its grating vocal melody, teenage emo lyrics and a lazy half-baked rap by Wiz Khalifa, this is by far the worst the band has ever been. It just goes to show that if you find yourself in a dull, mediocre band looking for a way to make it big, there’s one easy solution: become actively terrible.

One and a Half Stars out of Five