The fortysomething performer doesn't have the stamina he used to, and the album quickly turns into a long run of listless ballads and silly cries for privacy.

His laid-back delivery and glitchy computer beats are only interesting for so long.

In the end, even LL himself seems a little lost in his efforts to find Todd Smith.

The transformation leaves her bland and boring, rather than bright like Britney or bold like [Michelle] Branch.

It's business as usual.

Banks seems determined to launch a one-man revival with perfectly polished tracks like "Addicted" and "Hands Up."

This album tends to lean more toward the psychedelic ballads, which slows down the action a little too much.

Ultimately, like her manufactured pop rivals Ashlee Simpson and Hilary Duff, Lindsay is a little too superficial to sell us angst.

Sure, sanitary party jams like "Switch" will get the PTA meeting rocking, but there's just no getting around Smith's insipid rhymes.

A subpar album.

Rages and riffs with epic drama.

Only the faux-reggae of "Jamaican Girl" lets some much needed light in between the blinds.

A disc packed with so many surefire club-ready hits it'll be impossible to avoid these jams over the next year.

Chapter V is merely a carbon copy of, uh, chapters I-IV, simply rehashing the same punishing riffs and self-pitying lyrics.

It all amounts to the kind of mediocre girl pop-rock about dreams and stuff that one writes when they want to be Vanessa Carlton or Michelle Branch but don't really know how.

Suffers from many of the same problems that tripped up its predecessor: too many skits, too few ideas and a voice that is neither hard nor particularly flowery.

Carrying none of the charm or innovation of the duo's earlier ABBA tribute, this set is salvaged only by a relatively straight reading of Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill."

A few moody moments work, but this CD should come with a warning sticker that reads vacant.

The disc's cool atmosphere and expansive orchestral arrangements go a long way in making a mood.

Anchored in the surreal goofball art rock, club beats and bubblegum punk that made anomaly hits like 1996's "Pepper" so cool, frontman Gibby Haines and gang sugarcoat their standardized tales of decay and hallucinogens but keep some delicious bitterness intact.

From the amateurish cover art to a succession of clumsy diss tracks aimed at Fiddy, Blood in My Eye merely makes the Tupac disciple look desperate and directionless.

Even Santana sounds bored, absentmindedly delivering Latin rock-influenced guitar licks behind a parade of stale melodies.

Carey's once glorious voice is all over the place, her rainbow-and-stars lyrics come off like the notebook doodles of a 12-year-old girl, and her song selection is shocking.

The pop hooks are there, but we can't shake the feeling that the sentiments come off as phony.

He can still work a guitar and woo the pants right off of you, but after listening to another round of patchouli-soaked ballads like "Baptized" and "What Did I Do With My Life?" you really begin to consider running the other way.

His similar-sounding interpretations lose their oomph a few tracks in.

All the Right Reasons doesn't so much pick up where 2003's The Long Road left off, but damn near replicates that album in whole.

Like a crisp Xerox of the band's multiplatinum Break the Cycle, with everything sounding bigger, brighter and tighter.