By teaming up with some of the best producers in the r&b/hip-hop genre right now, including frequent Drake collaborators T-Minus and Boi-1da, Kelly Rowland has managed to make one of the best sounding r&b albums of the year.

The Gifted is a horribly disjointed album. If Wale would have gone one way or the other (soulful nostalgic beats or straight up pop-rap), the album would probably be at least a little bit better.

While Story of the Year won't win any originality awards any time soon, they definitely still know how to bring a party to your speakers.

Once the initial shock of hearing this Mazes' brand of distorted but highly melodic rock wore off, it gave way to pure delight.

Every song on Soul Punk bleeds confidence and assurance--that these songs are what Patrick Stump is happy creating--music that he's proud of.

Though it is probably not Coldplay's best, it is indeed a memorable listen and another chapter for a band whose place in rock music is firmly cemented.

At the very least, Better Nature represents 10 more (well, 9 if you don’t count “Ragamuffin”) well-crafted and heartfelt songs to listen to for the next 2-3 years before they put out another unbelievably consistent record.

All of this makes for an interesting listen, even if the record can tend to drag on a little bit toward the end.

It's nice to have a few good new tracks to add to the collection from one of the scene's finest.

So while the disc may not his best album, it is still one that makes you think and challenges you.

When combined with crisp guitar work, meaty bass lines, and thunderous drumming, the screams fire bullets against the enemy track after track, and unlike with Attack Attack's This Means War, Memphis May Fire are winning the battle with Challenger.

Despite being fifteen years in the punk rock scene, My Shame Is True is a showcase of a band continuing to be vibrant and vital, when lesser bands have become stale and irrelevant.

Omni is accessible yet not watered down; complex and engaging all at once. Its catchy and progressive elements will surely dig its way into your cerebellum.

Candela makes for an, at times unpleasant, but ultimately forgettable listen.

He still has an ear for production and his voice remains a pliable tool, but to keep himself tethered to an aesthetic he defined and completed within a year is to do himself and the listener a disservice.

It’s not going to be a new favorite album for anyone other than Avril Lavigne’s most ardent admirers, but a handful of great summer mixtape songs and a few other exercises in mindless pop fun are still enough to make Avril Lavigne the eponymous singer’s best record in nine years. That might not be saying much, but it's a step in the right direction.

Spills Out is a satisfying album that puts a unique spin on otherwise trite indie-pop touchstones and a marriage of dissonance and charm seamless enough that, at times, it's almost difficult to tell one from the other.

Songs of Innocence is a great record. Not a perfect one, mind you: for one thing, Danger Mouse, the record’s primary producer, uses a few too many of his tired stock tricks along the way, making the record sound more generic than it would with Brian Eno behind the boards.

Battle Born is the kind of rock 'n' roll record that almost nobody makes anymore: it's bombastic and excessive and oversized, but it's also a grand and universal statement, a master class of album structure and sequencing, and a culmination of everything Brandon Flowers and The Killers have done up to this point.

Its 10 songs meander by with enough sense to not stick around, and other than the grungy rock-out moments of “Nightwater Girlfriend,” we barely notice anything.

It’s all well and good to deal with tough topics through music, but My Everything puts on a breezy pop face that severely hinders the potential poignancy of Grande’s words, morphing them into a more disquieting figure.

Awesome As Fuck captures the intensity of a live Green Day show while giving you a nostalgic throwback into what made you fall in love with this band in the first place.

Truth be told, finding a clunker on the second half is a tall order and that simple fact is what makes History of Modern so rewarding.

Hawthorne Heights gets better with every release, and Zero is their best effort yet. The band has honed their talents and refined their music nearly enough to be a different band, and one that sounds better than ever before.

A Christmas Album captures the essence of any early Bright Eyes album whilst putting a new twist on festive favourites.

This album is a great start for anyone who leans on the more accessible sides of ambient/indie music.

Without rising above the sum of the parts brought together, Travis loses control of his own album and it ends up sounding like a collection of tracks from various artists with the loose theme of Travis Scott barely tying it all together.

If Purpose focused on the excursions into global dance sounds that earned him popularity outside the insular Belieber fandom, it might have been one of the best pop records of the year and alleviated some of the headaches induced by his lyrical persona. It certainly doesn't help that Purpose is another entry in an ever growing catalog of big tent releases that relegates some of its best tracks to bonus track status.

Picture Show may not have as much mainstream appeal as a song like "Animals", but it definitely shows a band honed in on creating enjoyable, addicting tracks that seem fresh without losing the hint of the past this album seems thankfully unable to shake.

However, despite losing a key member, the Red Hot Chili Peppers come out triumphant with I'm With You.

To put it simply, Eminem is back. There are some truly essential songs on Recovery, and even the weak tracks are an improvement from the debacle that was Relapse.

These Ohioans escaped the abyss and emerged with the definitive Hit The Lights album, one well worth the three-plus year wait.

As a whole, Bullet show absolutely no progression on Fever, despite this being their third album.

Time just feels far too fabricated, far too forced and well far too late.

Musically, it's pretty much vintage Zombie-- relatively catchy metal with the occasional industrial vibe.

It’s disheartening that the album isn’t the game-changing record Fallon promised, and it’s too bad that it doesn’t have the thesis-statement cohesion of albums like The 59 Sound and American Slang. But the songs are still great, the production is still excellent, and the performances of the band members have rarely been in finer form.

If Move Along got the name in lights, it's Kids in the Street that ensures The All-American Rejects to be burning bright for years to come.

Nothing continues the trend of unique and fun music the N.E.R.D. name has become synonymous with.

The only thing I want to do at the end of Vices & Virtues is hear it all over again.

MGMT is truly the sound of two artists in the studio with the goal to entertain no one but themselves.

This is The Get Up Kids years later folks. The familiar nuances have been rearranged and built into something stronger, but the attitude and depth is all the same, if not more adhesive and much more endearing than before.

Although Hot Chelle Rae obviously aren't doing anything new here either, they've mastered the art of cheese pop and took a much more "natural" new route in sound compared to Lovesick Electric.

Timez Are Weird These Days is the perfect example of what London is capable of, snatching elements of popular music from across the decades to create a sound that's both nostalgic and refreshing.

Go With Me certainly isn't a bad record by any means, but it just doesn't have the originality and lasting value that will keep people coming back for repeat listens.

Some will deplore the record for its relative lack of pop appeal, but for a massively popular band that has so often been derailed by its own lofty ambitions, there is a huge pleasure in hearing something that succeeds on such a small, modest, and humanized scale.

While the album is often an enjoyable listen, it is difficult not to wonder what the collective talents of Andrew Dost and Jack Antonoff of fun., or even the talents of a Sam Means of The Format, could’ve yielded to Grand Romantic’s songwriting.

Bangerz is at times touching and at others a blast--but for a disappointingly large portion it’s as annoying as her detractors had hoped.

Lil Durk's first album is lacking in a lot of things, the first being songs. Now, ten tracks is not necessarily too little of a number, but when half of the album is filler, that's when that number starts to work against you.

If I lived completely under a rock, I'd say Screamworks, and HIM in general, would hit Twilight tweeners straight in the heart with its dark, dismal and dire themes, but the more mature crowd would see the excessive sentimentality as almost self-parodying.

The regression in complexity seems to underscore the band's endorsement of arrested development as the secret to eternal youth. Their perpetual glee suggests that maybe they're onto something.

An album with too many cooks in the kitchen and not enough good songs to recommend.

Timberlake throws every influence he’s ever touched at the canvas here, and he somehow gets away with it.

Dopamine isn't his best record, and it might be his worst, but for one of the slyest songwriters from the past two decades of pop, "worst" can still be pretty damn great.

It may not supplant Through Being Cool or Stay What You Are as your favorite Saves The Day album, but you can safely put it in the upper echelon of their discography.

It's the bold, adventurous and grandiose album that the Top 40 charts needs right now.

While there’s a healthy dose of filler on Sheezus, there’s still plenty of charmers.

Gossamer. That's the best way to describe the new album by The Watson Twins. Like strings of gossamer and gauze, Talking To You, Talking To Me is a supple, soothing effort that's relaxed, reflective and decidedly old-school.

A good, solid, rock album that's certainly worthy of Four Year Strong's song writing talents.

His flows are lazy, uninspired, and flat out boring.

If anything, Tha Carter IV feels like a party, one that Wayne is throwing for his contemporaries in the hip-hop scene.

It's basically the third time Attack Attack! have written the same record.

This album is mostly just a fun side project for the band before they start plugging away at the next full length, and it should be taken as such.

There are a few good songs, but A Head Full of Dreams is disappointing because it's the first Coldplay album in awhile that is distinctly less than the sum of its parts.

So make no mistake, Rolling Papers is unquestionably slick pop-rap candy, and there's nothing substantive to be found beneath the choking shroud of weed smoke.

Morrison’s occasional lyrical forays into cheeseball territory can detract from the record, but taken as a whole there’s more to like here than there is to hate.

It's not that All at Once isn't a likable record; it just seems rather scattershot, and none of it captures the hard-hitting intensity of their debut's best cuts.

Aside from a thin outer veil, This Modern Glitch is a disappointment from a band who most listeners were probably only hoping to get a few catchy singles from.

Nothing, and nobody, is broken beyond repair, and Unbroken showcases that beautifully.

Chaplin, Rice-Oxley and drummer Richard Hughes, chased down something different while still remaining true to their former records. Not only does it work, it provides a valuable lesson for bands that are far too afraid of taking risks.

While Flowers is a bit more reserved in his solo outing, Flamingo still retains a bit the thematic charm of a typical Killers album.

The instrumentation is luscious and variable, the harmonies are wonderful, the lyrics are solid and compelling for the most part, and with such a lovely blend of slower and up-tempo tracks to choose from, Overlook is something you definitely don't want to do in regards to what might just be considered Maria Taylor's finest solo effort to date.

I've expressed a fair amount of negativity toward Euphoric Heartbreak, but Glasvegas are an endearing, though a bit try-hard, band, and Euphoric Heartbreak is an endearing, though a bit try-hard, album.

Long Way Down has just enough flaws to show that Odell has room to grow and progress. If you listen to one pop album this year, this is a pretty good bet.

For everything Smith lacks in wordsmithing, his bandmates make up for in straight up dramatic songwriting.

The final outcome of this is an extreme lack of consistency. The high spots are high, but the low spots are even lower.

Though it is far from perfect and has far more filler than one would hope, North is indeed a fine effort.

Trill O.G. is a decidedly clashing album. Bun B's old school tendencies are constantly at odds with genre conventions prevalent in today's scene. Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't.

From a technical standpoint, the album does little to challenge, provoke or push the envelope. From a thematic standpoint, there's no cerebral or overarching theme, there's no incendiary political or social statements. At its core, it is a safe, sun-kissed collection of 11 utterly harmless light rock songs about the delights of newfound love.

Wake Up starts with six successive titanic efforts is commendable but also somewhat disappointing. On the second half of the LP, the formula remains the same.

Fiasco has since gone on record as saying he both loves and hates this album. After all he went through to get it released, it's hard to blame him. But all the hard work he supposedly put into making sure Lasers remained true to his vision seems all for naught.

Almost Everything is a triumphant, forward-thinking and near perfect effort. With a disc this good, the piano-pop genre just might have its new hero.

There's nothing to really chew on here, nothing to keep you coming back.

While they don't throw any curveballs or stir the pot too much, the band definitely stays true to their core, crafting yet another memorable piano pop-rock record with these stories.

The Dark Leaves is no less unassuming than anything else they've released, and about half of it is squarely in line with the material on their recent albums.

Certain songs on The Temper Trap are just not worth listening to more than a couple of times.

What Is Love? is a very enjoyable record and a lot better than what I expected. Christofer Drew has given his listeners a taste of his potential, because, musically, he knows what he is doing.

Nearly every song on this record is misogynistic in some regard, from the obvious predatory ramblings of “Animals” to the Robin Thicke-level douchebaggery of “Feelings.”

At this stage in his career, he is firmly focused on doing whatever he and his band want to do. That kind of artistic freedom should certainly be applauded, one just wishes the results were far more satisfying.

Each song will become the soundtrack for Mean Girls soccer moms and pre-teen pre-sluts everywhere.

The record as a substantial body of work comes complete with up-tempo numbers that are danceable but without an enticing hook, a few straightforward pop/rock tunes with tremendous choruses, and an album ending ballad that renders the album slightly indifferent, inconsistent and lacking an underlying direction and purpose.

While not every song is up to a "Moves Like Jagger" or "Payphone" standard hook-wise, the co-writers and producers never stopped breaking into new grounds for the band throughout the record.

Night Visions is a disc laden with buoyant choruses, arena-ready swagger and armfuls of dance floor attitude.

New Glow has its moments, but you won't find it on many EOTY lists.

While armfuls of musicians can sing songs and sound entirely forced, insincere and phony, Potts is blessed in that every word he sings sounds authentic, honest and direct. In a musical landscape chock full of Auto-Tune and feigned emotion, a disc like this is certainly something to champion.

The results of his recent output have been unquestionably subpar.

With a record this charming, one can only hope they last two more decades.

I mean, the guys have packed Streets of Gold with mindless, completely clustered romps through nothingness.

Over and done in less than 45 minutes, Crazy World is a fine album from a band who seems comfortable with their place in the landscape of contemporary music.