Lacking any of the imagination of previous albums, The World We Left Behind feels brilliantly disappointing, almost to the point of undoing the good work that came before rather than just standing on its own as a weak album.

This certainly is not one of the worst albums ever recorded; indeed, it has its moments of merit that hit the proper spots and deliver the intended dose of dopamine. However, as a cohesive statement worthy of an album's length of the listener's attention, Memories is lacking.

No matter how hard Simpson tries, no matter how foreboding the surface, beneath it all she's still light and frivolous. But that doesn't mean, by any stretch, that this is bubblegum music, since that term implies that this music is frothy, fun, and, most important, hooky, and I Am Me is none of those things.

It's a shame and embarrassment, and hopefully it will be a temporary slump like Circus.

It never seems like a collaboration, it seems like it was assembled by committee, discussed in boardrooms, farmed out to contract players and stitched together on computer.

Even within the framework of a musical these songs are a murky, turgid mess, too concerned with atmosphere and narrative to reel in a listener and ironically not offering ambience or story enough to suggest that the musical would entertain.

Between the airless production, the clunky arrangements, and the songs that are bereft of hooks, the album is their worst to date by far and hopefully signals either the end of the road, or rock bottom.

The whole thing sounds good on paper, but in practice, it's a bit of a mixed bag.

Short on new ideas and lacking in cohesion, Soulja Boy Tell Em's second official full-length finds the young upstart trying way too hard to re-create the bazillion selling 'Crank That' and repeatedly coming up short.

Certainly, it's not the embarrassment of the live album, but it has its own internal logic that keeps it humming along, and that's good enough for a listen and to get the band out on tour again, even it's not good enough for a second spin.

She's best when playing it kinetic and in complete violation of good taste, so whittle this one down by half for the ultimate in bird-flipping, rave-rapping, and repercussion-free living.

This music seems clumsy and half-hearted, and Ginn's interplay with new drummer Gregory Amoore feels sluggish and leaden at every turn.

Hoodstar only makes it all the more apparent that the St. Louis MC's overnight popularity was like lightning in a bottle.

Super Collider is so mired in midtempo drudgery and familiar hard rock (not thrash) tropes that it never really connects.

Despite all their newly developed relative nuances, Nickelback remain unchanged: they're still unspeakably awful.

Those who connect with Staind will likely find this more consistently satisfying than Break the Cycle.

The band certainly throw their arms wide open in welcome, crafting the laboratory-perfect, good-time emo-country-pop hybrid experience that'll sound very good blasting out of rag tops and 4X4's, if not a moody teenager's bedroom.

This is music that works almost entirely as a surface pleasure; strip it of its pretensions, and it's just contemporary easy listening music.

If you look beyond everything that's downright embarrassing about this album -- the reliance on interpolations rather than original songwriting, the amateur-at-best rapping, the generic beats -- you'll notice a few minor improvements.

Never Gone [is] a solid adult contemporary album, which will please both BSB diehards and the dwindling ranks who wish that the glory days of Jon Secada never ended, but its relative strength does highlight one problem with the album: this kind of music doesn't sound quite as convincing when delivered by a group of guys as it does by one singer.

Some serene, wide-angle numbers toward the end help a lot, making this safe album easier to recommend to the longtime trance addict.

There's nothing wrong with a change of pace, but there's a startling lack of depth in either the words, which are entirely too literal, or the music, whose hooks are at once too obvious and not ingratiating enough.

It's a pleasant enough listen, but it's hard to see the point of the album.

Brown clumsily emphasizes womanizing and hedonism and balances it out with a couple clean and empty ballads. Out of this portion of the album, only a couple songs leave a lasting impression, and when they do, the silly things that come out of Brown’s mouth tend to be the reason.

A loud and obnoxious ruckus.

There may be no recognition of L.A. Style, but in their blissfully ignorant, lazily monotonous sunshine grooves, Shwayze does manage to be all about the style of L.A. in 2008, creating the quintessential record for L.A. sleazeballs.

After a half-decade of life lessons, Azalea could have gone in a certain cathartic and mature direction. However, on In My Defense, she opted for a less gracious and, ultimately, exhausted route.

It's a bit of a surprise that this album sounds like a watered-down diluted Urban Hymns, with all the romantic darkness turned into something cheerfully dippy.