Synths push this from kraut-psych-cruise-control curiosity to unabashed triumph.

Predictable and immaculately produced, these arena-shakers offer a familiar brand of Jersey cheese, but where Jon Bon Jovi once was kind of quixotic ('Livin' on a Prayer'), he's more contemplative than ever, turning out meditations like 'Live Before You Die' ("There'll come a day when you have to say hello to goodbye").

More corny than convincing. [May 2006, p.91]

They all sound like pop songs... yet they all feel like country songs. [Aug 2004, p.107]

Too bad the performances are so lamely tossed-off. Borrell's quavering vocals feel showy and shallow, while the quartet's glossy guitar pop could come from any crew of faceless studio hacks.

Maybe the Ting Tings have pulled some sort of Lou Reed maneuver here. Maybe this is their Lulu.

The result is alternately audacious and befuddling.

Listening to this disc sorta gives new meaning to the phrase virgin sacrifice. [Oct 2005, p.142]

There's charm in its corniness. [Feb 2007, p.82]

Perry delivers the gurl-gone-wild stuff with requisite sass, but she actually sounds more engaged on "Not Like the Movies" and "One That Got Away"--quieter cuts that recall her singer-songwriter days at L.A.'s Hotel Cafe.

Tough guitar scrimmages, soaring supergroup moments that last a lifetime, boner-like intensity, roto-toms--Astronauts has it all. [March 2002, p.130]

At its best ("Great Wide Open"), Tales recalls Foo Fighters' wimpier singles, but for the most part, it's just a reminder of why even Dave Grohl turns up the screaming now and then.

Devotees will probably find it terribly amusing. Everyone else might want to hit the bong pretty hard beforehand. [Dec 2006, p.102]

Like Good Charlotte and Fall Out Boy before them, these multiplantinum Canadian heartthrobs have finally covered up their pop-punk roots completely, on their fourth album. [Feb 2008, p.99]

Everything presents a harder-edged JT, who tries a little of everything over 77 minutes but adds remarkably little to the pop landscape.

Even with precisely triggered drums and sensuously distorted bass lines, the band seems stuck in place. [Sep 2007, p.138]

The sweetest, cleanest grunge ambrosia since Urge Overkill's 1993 major-label bid, Saturation. [Aug 2004, p.105]

The static beats of... Scott Storch and Trackmasters do little to freshen up his sound. [Jun 2006, p.78]

There’s plenty of groan-inducing lyrical inanity, and one can only assume the reggae-rock abomination 'Beat on Repeat' was a misguided effort to branch out. Sometimes the middle of the road is the proper path.

The Offspring's nervousness is palpable in their protestations of relevance and liveliness, but no matter how fast or loud things get, there's no energy or wit, nothing to convince you this band could win, or even prolong, a fight with oblivion.

Memories does indeed trigger some, particularly when a big-chorused rocker ("The Afterlife") opens up like a razor-blade suitcase. As for the ballads, you're better off YouTubing "Glycerine" -- or one of the tearjerkers ("Forever May You Run" ) from Rossdale's underappreciated 2008 solo disc.

By no stretch of the imagination is Beerbongs & Bentleys a good album, but it’s admirable in its commitment to its strangely singular dirtbag vision of L.A. luxury. It isn’t consistent enough to mold Post Malone fully into the Soundcloud rap version of Ed Sheeran, but it will certainly allow him to stick around for at least a few more years.

You're better off soaking in the good choices here and resigning yourself to enduring the bad ones.

My Bloody Underground emphasizes the band's trippy side, often at the expense of Newcombe's undervalued tunecraft. [May 2008, p.96]

On her debut full-length, the 22-year-old songwriter (see Miley Cyrus' "Party in the U.S.A.") nails a variety of roles: crotch-grabbing punker, '70s soul diva, Kelly Clarkson–style bellower.

Tical 0... takes that voice and plugs it into more than a dozen tried-and-true rap templates. [Jun 2004, p.104]

Despite these moments [“NBA YoungBoat” and “66”], it’s disheartening that virtually every lyric from Yachty on Lil Boat 2 is wholly unmemorable.

The failures of his latest effort don’t simply center on that side step from audacity to reckoning. It’s in how that move has somehow left him struggling to write a listenable song.

The delicate balance of good-then-bad-then-good-again ideas and taste appears rarely on WZRD.

Cardiology dials down the sparkle, which is kind of a bummer; plodding fake-U2 anthems such as "Right Where I Belong" are definitely not Good Charlotte's sweet spot.

These Los Angelenos deliver a brash follow-up to 2006's platinum-selling "15." Spewing filthy oaths and sweet promises, sometimes in the same line, frontman Josh Todd does his best to give misogyny a good name.

Britney Jean may chart respectably because it leads the most musically uneventful December in years, but it will soon fade like "Perfume," because there's zilch in the way of humanity here.

Overall, The Bridge has a very Reagan-era vibe, and not just due to appearances by KRS-One and Big Daddy Kane.

Hotel California is inexcusable. It may be the least creative major-label rap album in recent memory.

The result is a bigger, slicker record laced with potent "American Idiot"-style Bush-bashing, a handful of emo-heavy relationship ballads, and very few surprises. [Sep 2007, p.138]

The second record falters with a clunky combo of Celtic rock and leaden hip-hop rhythms that squashes the fragile, hook-free tunes. [Jul 2007, p.100]

The sound is now clearer than on either predecessor; the rapping likewise. And here come Jane's Addiction and the Smashing Pumpkins--this is a slicker, grander record than Significant Other. [Jan 2001, p.112]

A familiar blend of big-riff rockers and pseudo-sensitive power ballads, Dark Horse won't win the Canadian band any new fans--or will its hearty endorsements of oral sex disappoint the devoted.

Stupidity this willful has its limits. [Nov 2006, p.98]

Featuring 11 miniscule variations on Fireflies, the giddy worldwide smash that put home-studio boffin Adam Young on the map, this unrelentingly wide-eyed follow-up offers more genteel Christian rock reconfigured as techno lite.

His tunes and/or jokes plop out like forced turds. [Mar 2005, p.92]

The best you could say for Lil Xan is that he can be serviceable: “Saved by the Bell” and “Shine Hard” are catchy enough, and at least fully-formed ideas. The album may be bad but it is not especially so. It’s paint by numbers and as such blends in with everything else. You might hear it at an Urban Outfitters and confuse it for three other recent rap albums you’ve heard.

What elevates this bove a cheeky tribute is the unselfish sweetness that Schwartz mixes with his smarts. [Feb 2008, p.94]

Dreary production from hometown benefactor Eminem does little to liven things up. [Aug 2006, p.82]

They've de-funned rebellion and turned it into a task. [Oct 2004, p.109]

The King & I wastes too much energy centering a known relationship on these formless descriptions, a flaw that turns a 72-minute project into a poshly produced endurance contest.

The Peas give fun a bad name. [Jul 2005, p.104]

Over brutish synths and hammy bleats, the puerile brosefs' third album shares, among other witticisms: Gonna have a house party in my house.

The Miami-born, Paris-based socialite subsequently wastes most of her somewhat-dated debut album boasting about MySpace friends and fiddling with torturous, Ed Banger-produced synth pop.

No. [Jan 2003, p.99]

Eye Legacy renames and remixes several Supernova tracks and finishes off some previously unreleased jams with diminished results.

On the band's seventh studio album, Incubus fully embrace surf-bum balladry.

Fox gets tripped up by uninspired rap-reggae mashups, electro-pop beats better suited for Nelly Furtado, and rhymes that dwell on designer labels and raunchy sex. [Mar 2008, p.98]

Peas leader will.i.am mixes up house and disco beats, Chic and Slick Rick samples, wonky Moog hooks, crunchy guitars, and '70s funk bass into one of the year's wildest sonic stews.

America presents the most contemporary, Top 40-friendly version of Thirty Seconds to Mars to date. Bombastic drums and guitars have largely been replaced with fairly tame looped and programmed beats and ominous synths, basically reimagining Thirty Seconds to Mars as the glossy grungetronica of Imagine Dragons. Leto still screams like a banshee, but for once the sounds backing him don’t match his fury.

[The Datsuns] now sound unfit to carry the Donnas' jockstraps. [Oct 2004, p.120]

The rest of the album plods with formulaic, hormone-heavy Kelly Clarkson outtakes, or perhaps Liz Phair during her bleak, sparkly descent.

If singer Justin Warfield had a sense of humor about himself, that wouldn't be such a bummer; as is, Forever seems to go on for about that long. [Nov 2007, p.124]

Soul-free, thirdhand melodies housed in songs that any halfway decent bar band would reject without a second pass. [Feb 2007, p.85]

Em is largely in defense mode; it’s a self-consciousness that leans closer to stagnation than catharsis.

Solid and well crafted. [Nov 2007, p.135]

Singer-guitarist Courtney Taylor-Taylor has an undeniable way with a sticky-sweet hook -- too bad most of them are buried in self-indulgent sludge.

At its best, Weird Revolution is danceable and degenerate... It's a tight package, but the holes start to show on the title track... [Oct 2001, p.132]

Much of A.K.A. is still mawkish, midtempo melodrama that does too much to accentuate J. Lo's tunelessness.

There are a few clunky dance tracks... but it's Madden's search for love in the L.A. wasteland that gives Revival a certain charm. [Mar 2007, p.86]

It's "disappointing" only because it isn't dreadful in funnier, more interesting ways.

Songs like the predictably ribald "Porno Bitches" are little more than by-the-numbers, behind-the-music tracks. [Jul 2005, p.104]

Back from the brink of a long-promised implosion, the Vines sound like a band renewed on their first album since being booted from Capitol following dismal sales of 2006's muddled "Vision Valley."

This throwbackin’ threesome--an expanded version of frontman Guy Blakeslee’s subdued solo outing under the name Entrance--kills it when they stick to the classic power-trio formula.

Both a big relief and a mild disappointment. [Mar 2007, p.90]

Amid spoken-word interludes and I'd-like- to-buy-the-world-a-Coke-style choirs, only Lee's innate melodic gift saves him from total embarrassment.

Whether the album’s title is a plea or a warning does not matter, as the effect is the same: The Chainsmokers have one song, and if you don’t want to hear 12 versions of it, please do not un-click the latch holding this box closed.

Produced with a heavy hand by Timbaland, the third solo album from ex-Soundgarden and Audioslave singer Chris Cornell is strangely appealing in its elaborately empty efficiency.

Kreay indulges the full breadth of her influences, turning Somethin into a series of wan genre studies.

The most memorable songs on his third album are decidedly buzz killers. [Oct 2006, p.96]

One possible surprise is how little of Super Collider actually thrashes.

Rain in England, a therapy-session testimony that sounds like Soulja Boy having a Damascus moment in the champagne room over a beatless synth tide--is his least accessible.

These thumping, Ibiza-inflected excursions into pop and R&B aren't quite as catchy [as "Starry Eyed Surprise"]. [Jun 2006, p.83]

Boilerplate MOR.... But what Liz Phair delivers is authenticity. [Jul 2003, p.107]

The album's most striking moment is "Fallin' Down." Over a ominous guitar riff, the 20-year-old sings, "It's getting heavy / I think I'm getting ready to break down." It's the most honest moment of his short career. The kid sure needs a vacation.

There is Michael Jackson bad, there is Ed Wood bad, and then there is BAYTL, a union so unholy that it cries out for a show on Bravo.

The 23-year-old Malibu rapper's debut is as shallow as a spray-on tan; it's stocked with bro'd-out, giggly rhymes about 420-filled nights and T&A aplenty over lazy, midtempo beats from producer/reality-show rocker Cisco Adler.

The album's most compelling sounds get saddled with songs either forgettable ("Trumpet Lights") or regrettable ("Mirage," a sinuous reggae fusion that's Nas-boosted but unnecessarily nasty).

These hammerheads still sound like the touring company of Grunge-a-Mania. [Jan 2004, p.100]

Here they effectively marry T. Rex's trash-glam melodicism to a relentless blue-eyed funk beat. [Feb 2008, p.95]

The most standout feature of Nine Track Mind might be its rhythmic consistency, an exercise in deceleration.... inoffensive dross.

764-Hero faithfully, almost methodically practices the dying art of melodic rock songs with no particular point to them.