Top 15 Worst Albums of the 2010's
The 2010's have been an excellent time for music on many levels. In this collection of 10 years we've seen an incredible amount of creativity on display by so many artists that making lists for this decade is proving to be incredibly difficult. In the age of peak social media and memes dominating the information superhighway, the soundtrack has proven to have it's fair amount of successes from every genre across the board. However, while we've had a ton of successes during this time we've also had our fair amount of failures and blunders, which is what this list is dedicated towards. I won't lie to you what you're going to see next is ugly, and I'm bound to break at least a few hearts as I count down my list of 15 albums from this decade that have pretty much reinvented what it means to be terrible music in the modern age. Please remember that this is just my opinion and should be treated as gospel, I will have nothing less than such. This is an objective list and will be treated this way, the definitive list of the worst albums released this decade. So if you don't like it I dunno what to tell you, grow up you pissy pants crybaby. I will probably slowly lose my sanity over the course of writing this list. So without further delay and with as much haste as humanly possible here are ten castration inducing records that were released from 2010 the year of our lord 2019. Before we begin however I'd like to make a few dishonorable mentions to albums that I had to snuff for this list but really didn't want to: Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino - Arctic Monkeys (2018), FAME - Chris Brown (2011), Eminem's last two albums I couldn't be bothered to look up the names of, Sorry for Party Rocking - LMFAO (2011), Speeding Bullet 2 Heaven - Kid Cudi (2016), Onision's absolutely atrocious garbage album, The Wall - Doug Walker and Rob Scallon (2019), #willpower - Will. I Am. (2013), Lost Sirens - New Order (2013), Total Xanarchy - Lil Xan (2018), More Life - Drake (2016), Any Imagine Dragons album, Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz - Miley Cyrus and The Flaming Lips (2015), ? - XXXTentacion (2018), Dystopia - Megadeath (2016), Logic's entire career, Dummy Boy - 6ix9ine (2018), Conformicide - Havok (2017), Settle - Disclosure (2013), The Astonishing - Dream Theater (2016), and last but never least the UNK himself Mr. Unkle Adams. Right, onto the fucklist.
In all truth I'm not the prime authority to speak on this album because I feel like my friend Ricky Lai kinda said everything that needed to be said about this one. But I'm gonna give it my best shot. What the fuck is this shit? Before I knew anything about what this dude's music sounded like, I was already pretty weirded out by his image. I wasn't sure at first what to make of it other than that I thought it was supposed to be kind of a really childishly edgy Marilyn Manson type thing that relies heavily on shock value to sell itself, annoying but ultimately harmless. But unlike Marilyn Manson, YUNGBLUD doesn't seem to have the capacity for the same level of self awareness that Marilyn Manson possess, and on top of this, YUNGBLUD is in fact very harmful in ways that I do believe he didn't anticipate to come off as. YUNGBLUD's entire image, and by larger extent his music, and the music specifically found on this record, is not only terrible but also a really damning stigmatization and portrayal of mental health issues. Now again, I'm sure Mr. BLUD didn't intend for this aesthetic to be seen as harmful on any level but the fact of the matter is that there are too many indicators here lyrically and aesthetically that seem to be portraying mental health struggles as "quirky" and "wacky". Never mind the fact that this album musically succumbs to terrible pop music tropes and cheap overplayed radio pop ideas that are clearly just trying to get this dude a #1 hit on the UK Billboard charts, the lyrics on songs like "Medication" and "Doctor Doctor" are really ugly attempts at trying to make mental health issues seem "cool" and "hip" while making the doctors that prescribe medications to those with said problems look like the boogie man for giving them the help they need. Lyrics like "I'm an experiment of young irrelevance/I'm insecure so I got a tattoo of an elephant" or "I just want to be stupid" are not only cringe as fuck but also playing exactly into this stereotype that I'm talking about. When the guy's not stigmatizing mental health struggles he's comparing himself to Jesus Christ on tracks like "Die For the Hype" and spitting absolutely stellar bars like "Yeah polly/I just wanna suck on your lolly". Throw in the fact that the guy's voice is absurdly British and absurdly obnoxious and truthfully I would just rather pass on this one. This guy isn't shocking anyone by running around in a straight jacket. We've made stellar progress in the last couple years opening up the conversation about mental health struggles in the music industry anyway, I'd rather hear it from someone who has something to say.
This is the most pussy shit I have ever heard. In fairness to Attila I'm not really sure if this is supposed to be a joke or not. This is like if Logic made metalcore. It has that same whiny annoying entitled pussy ass white boy tone to it. I don't like Logic, and I'm not really wild about metalcore, so I get that maybe this isn't even supposed to be for me, but fuck me is this shit obnoxious. It's the same hamfisted childish "we don't give a fuck about ANYTHING!!!" attitude that a lot of really bad nu metal acts from the 90's and 2000's like Limp Bizkit had. It's supposed to come off as really intimidating but all it really ends up making me laugh. For that I feel like I should applaud this thing for getting some cheap laughs out of me but if that's all the criteria for these albums getting onto this list was we'd be looking at a much different list. I don't hate this thing because it's childishly edgy the same way YUNGBLUD was, I hate this thing because it doesn't even sound like these guys are trying. Every single boring ass metalcore cliche that got other bands from this genre like Suicide Silence popular is on display here and to top it off the production this album is horrendous. Lyrically everything being said here I have already heard from kids half frontman Chris Fronzak's age in Call of Duty lobbies on Xbox Live. Hell, those kids say way worse and more shocking things than this dude tries to blurt out on this album. I wish I could give a specific example of the edgy 12 year old shit this dude throws at us but truthfully none of it is memorable enough to stick with me. It's just a lot of f bombs being thrown around. I mean come on dude if you're trying to stick it to assholes on the internet talking shit about your music you have to say something way more nasty than whatever shit is being spewed on RYM at any given moment. Be creative or something man come on, this is just pathetic. I wish I could say "Guilty Pleasure" at least lived up to it's namesake but it can't even do that because it's just pussy metal.
This decade has seen it's fair share of reunions and reformations. Some were easy to see coming, some weren't. Black Flag is one of those band's that I don't think a lot of people ever saw coming back. I think few fans of this band would argue that Henry Rollins' time with them was where their best material was and I think even fewer punk and rock historians would argue that this band's impact on the punk world as a whole was defined by the Rollins era. I love those record with Rollins, they are incredible and are basically the defining hardcore punk albums if you ask me. Its music that's apart of my DNA at this rate basically. But what about Black Flag without Rollins? What is actually there? Well the answer is a bunch of assholes who don't really have a lot say. See what made Rollins' contributions to this band so essential was that this dude was angry as fuck and he wanted everyone to know why he was angry and what he was angry about. Which was a lot as it turned out. But even Rollins chilled out. Fuck dude, that was 35 years ago. They were all young and had a lot of negative energy to expense, and the result of that came in the form of legendary punk music. But here, it's really hard for me to buy at 65 fucking years old that Greg Ginn is really still pissed off about a lot the same way he was in his youth, and I think that's evident by the fact that literally nothing about this album is memorable. The whole thing is just a bunch of really boring awfully generic hardcore instrumentals with Greg Ginn whining about uhhh....something? I really don't know what he's supposed to be so angry about on this album. Lyrically it just sounds like an old man rambling on about literally nothing. On top of all that, there are literally songs that just start and end mid take. I don't know how anyone in the studio could have ever thought this was a smart or good idea. If they were trying to go for an experimental approach or something it didn't really work. Ultimately, "What The..." falters compared to this band's golden era because the most interesting part about the band isn't with them anymore (and isn't coming back) and that this is quite literally music that is angry for the sake of being angry. As a fan of those Black Flag records from the 80s that basically transformed punk rock forever, this is disappointing and a slap in the face to the diehards. Unlike the Attila album this album does live up to it's namesake because I think "What The..." is the only thing you could possibly have left to say by the end of this album.
Chance the Rapper is probably a good dude. He seems like he just wants to do right by people, and for as easy as it is to make fun of good dudes, I respect that. I doubt he had any malicious intent when it came to making absolutely one of the worst hip hop albums of the year, but he we are regardless. Sorry Chance, I'm sure you're a nice dude, but being a good dude isn't gonna save the quality of your absolutely terrible music. The bitter irony of all of this is that despite the fact that Chance is more than likely a good guy, I think he ended up pissing everyone off here on "The Big Day". Everyone except his wife anyway. Who he loves. A lot. He pissed off his fanbase because despite keeping good on his promise to deliver a commercial debut album after years and years of pretty acclaimed mixtapes, the actual barsmithing here is just not well crafted at all and the production is so amateurish it's honestly kind of astounding to believe these beats were conceived and created in a high budget studio. He pissed off his label because ultimately he soiled his image and probably put the label in a financial hole because there's no way they're gonna earn back the investment they put into this dude and this album. He pissed of Death Cab fans for including a corny ass feature of the band that doesn't fit at all making most fans desperately yearn back for the days of "Transatlanticism". He pissed off everyone else featured on this album because they're the only people putting any effort into this mistake of an album and embarrassed them as a result. He pissed off fans of house music by including that literally unfinished hip-house track on this thing. He pissed off people who like to take hot showers. Most importantly though, he pissed me off. This thing is like over an hour long and has rarely a moment of interesting or enraging hip hop to be heard. If I'm not laughing my ass off on tracks like "Hot Shower" which is maybe Chance at peak corniness then I'm cringing as hard as humanly possible on....really the rest of the album truthfully. Sorry Chance, better luck next time? Maybe?
In truth I didn't even really want to put this one on this list but I feel like this album is just too legendary to not at least mention. I feel really bad for Corey Feldman at the end of the day. This guy has not had an easy life, and I have to respect the balls on this dude. The sheer bravery it takes to call out and expose an industry-wide pedophile child sex trade is not something that should go overlooked by this dude. The level of balls it takes to literally ban the most renowned music critic on the internet from ever attending your shows is an incredible display of real authority that I can only respect. Most of all though, the sheer level of post irony that this album exudes is incredible to me. Corey is on some next level shit here. I can only assume that he was so confident that he had made some real gold in creating a two part dance pop concept album about...God? I think? Ultimately there's no real way I'll ever know what the thought process behind this album was but I can only assume the Corey Feldman, someone who has literally no real experience in the music industry, decided to make this absolute two part rager and did it basically all by himself because there are things happening on this album that only non-musically inclined people could come up with and be satisfied with. I don't think he showed this to anyone else. I legitimately think he wrote, recorded, mixed, and mastered (is this thing even mastered?) all by himself with no other assistance from anyone other than Youtube tutorials on how to use Ableton. There are just mind boggling creative decisions made here that I just don't even know what to say about. Corey channels basically every dance and electropop cliche on here and takes it to the absolute extreme while at the exact same time managing to have so little awareness about what he's doing, resulting in some seriously insane songs. There is a whole song on here where he just repeatedly sings "You crossed the line" over what sounds like an unfinished DFA compilation remix from about 15 years ago. If he's not appropriating the entire dance music spectrum he's writing...country rock songs? The track "Bad People" is indeed about bad people, I think, and pulls every single trope you'd hear from Lynyrd Skynrd at the brief height of their popularity. Lyrically it seems like Corey is trying to channel themes of religion and how we all eventually pay for our sinful behavior. However Corey Feldman's poetry isn't quite compelling enough to really sway me here. It's like I can hear what he was trying to do on some of these songs but he misses the mark by so much I'm just left in awe of the beautiful disaster he's created. Ultimately though, this could've been anyone with no actual musical ideas and nothing of actual artistic value to say. Corey Feldman is just a famous actor with a lot of money and as a result gets to just do shit like this. He has absolutely no idea how music composition or production works because all of these songs are mixed so unbelievably poorly and his singing literally sounds like he's doing a bad impression of his favorite rock singers. Literally what the fuck is going on in "Lickety Splickety"? This song is a hideous boiling pot of absolutely terrible ideas. This track has everything from club dance beats to Corey trying to do his best Lil John impression, components of the song like the hook and various melodies that aren't even in the same key as the rest of the song, and a fucking Kurupt feature to top it all off. The worst part about this is that nearly every song on this album is like this. The track "Lovin Lies" has some of the most godawful like unbelievably bad singing I have heard on any track this entire decade. At the end of the day the most I can do here is respect the sheer ambition and scope of this project while also being completely shellshocked at how every single non-idea here is executed in complete and total failure. No doubt this will be remembered as a classic in 10 years. Excellent work Mr. Feldman.
Coldplay are another act who much like Chance the Rapper I feel kinda bad about having to be this scathing towards. For as easy as he is to pick on Chris Martin is an ambassador for peace, he certainly presents himself in that manor anyway. He seems like a cool dude, so saying what I have to say now is gonna really fucking suck. Coldplay's first three albums are truthfully still albums I really enjoy. Like a lot honestly. Love 'em or hate 'em Coldplay have developed their own formula and sound. On their first three albums, this mix of Radiohead-inspired moodyness and U2 influenced stadium rock ballads made for some really excellent songs, and while I'm one of the "Viva La Vida" naysayers, I can at least respect that album's ambition even if I don't really like it. But man, what the fuck happened on Mylo fucking Xyloto? I won't lie to you while I'm not going to make a worst songs of the decade list I can assure you dear reader that "Paradise" would rank very high among those songs. The worst part about this is that when this album came out I really tried my darndest to defend this for some reason. Don't ask me why, I don't fucking remember what was going through my head when I was that young but there was something in me that really thought tracks like "Princess of China" were really worth sticking my neck out for. For some odd reason I went out of my way one warm Maryland day in the spring of 2012, a spring I still remember like it was fucking yesterday for that goddamn matter, I decided it was a good idea to go out and buy a CD copy of this fucking album. After all this time, I've reckoned with my sins as a man in his 20's now and I can tell you nearly 8 years after the release of "Mylo" that I was in fact, wrong about it. Very very wrong. Maybe this album wouldn't irritate me so much if it didn't have some serious production talent behind it with names like John Hopkins and Brian fucking Eno taking the helm. Maybe this album wouldn't grate me as much as it does if the features had at least some salvageable moments on it. Maybe I wouldn't hate this album as much as I do if "Paradise" didn't stay on constant rotation on pop radio and supermarket playlists everywhere for the next 5 years after this album's release. Maybe I wouldn't fucking despise this album as much as I do if the production didn't sound so shockingly hideous. Seriously why does every sound on this album sound disgusting to listen to? Some of the synth sounds on these tracks genuinely grate my ears. Maybe I wouldn't have to be so cruel and scathing to Mr. Martin and Coldplay if this album didn't signify that Coldplay had lost just about all creative energy they were ever capable of having. I mean how do you go from heart-breakers like "The Scientist" to "Hurts Like Heaven"? Apparently this is a concept album but I couldn't fucking tell you at all what concept I'm supposed to grab from this is other than that conceptually this band has nothing left to say. If this was just a dud in Coldplay's discography and they at least were able to release decent pop rock like they had been doing before I wouldn't even bother putting this on this list but what followed this was hardly much better. What frustrates me more than everything is the weird nostalgic connection I have to this album considering that I actually used to like this and have memories associated with listening to this from high school. This makes listening to this album even more frustrating in that regard. 2011 was a great year for music but this album certainly was not a highlight. The years that have followed have showed that this wasn't just a dud for Coldplay but a marker that this band had gone completely creatively bankrupt. It's frustrating to see a band that had so much potential at the start of their career just lose steam and settle for formulaic, absolutely hideous sounding, cookie cutter pop music. I don't know what happened with the production here but I swear this is one of the ugliest sounding albums I've ever listened to and not in like a cool dissonant way. Tracks like "Every Teardrop is a Waterfall" just have these absolutely hideous blaring synths that are literally headache inducing, like to the point where I had to turn off the album at points and take a break. Have I mentioned how fucking bad "Paradise" is yet?!
In truth I actually forgot this album existed but chose to speak on it anyway because it was either this or Blood on the Dance Floor and truthfully I just didn't wanna give a pedophile any exposure regardless of if it's good or bad. This was one of the main reasons I kept the Onision album off the list too. So instead we get this, an enormous middle finger and tired excuse of what the masses view as "rock" in the 2nd decade of the 21st century. God fucking help us if Bono and his group of hack frauds are what is considered to be the real deal business class act rock 'n roll that was once topping charts and giving the voice to a defiant youth that rebelled gloriously against their parents. The time honored "rock is dead" argument is one I wholeheartedly disagree with and will fight tooth and nail to counter. However, if there ever was a band or record to exist to prove that sentiment right, what better band than U2 and what better record than Songs of fucking Innocence? This record really does feel like the death of rock 'n roll, and not in a cool or good way. In a way that feels tortured and slow and painful, which is what listening to this record is. Painful. If a song so unbelievably lame and poorly titled like "The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)" doesn't explain entirely what I'm talking about than I don't know what will. Everything about this album is tired. U2 is a tired band that is completely cliched and has been out of ideas for the last near 30 years. Every single punch this band pulls on this album they've already pulled a million times before and on better albums. Bono's incessant whiney reverb drenched "waoaoaoaohs" and "wooooooooo hooooooos" that plague these tracks is so hard to listen to without making me think about that South Park gag where Bono runs for president. The Edge, a legitimately cool and innovative guitarist, is completely phoning it in here in every way possible. The dotted 8th delay thing was cool the first million times you did it dude. The other two dudes? What do you mean other two dudes? U2 has more than two people in it? There's a rhythm section in this band?! What?! When snobby music journalists talk about how much a band or record sucks for not evolving musically or creatively, U2 is what they're really talking about. The worst part is that this could've honestly been any U2 album post "Achtung Baby" but it's the fact that they partnered with everyone's favorite conglomerate Apple to effectively shove this garbage album down our throats by including it on EVERY Apple product that was released for the remainder of that year and the year ahead of it. That is what elevates this album from just terrible to mega-terrible. Not only is it the boring ass U2 album that nobody wanted to hear, but it's also the boring ass U2 album that nobody wanted OR asked for. I'm not kidding you 2014 is actually the only year in the history of the smartphone where Samsung effectively sold better than Apple, and it was basically for this reason. This album is so bad and boring it borders on self parody with names like "Iris (Hold Me Close)" and "This is Where You Can Reach Me Now". U2 was legitimately cool in the 70's and 80's and made some of the most important and awesome rock albums of all time like "War" and "The Joshua Tree" but this is not only a far cry but a sad fractured shadow of what this band used to be. This album is the musical equivalent of getting an unsolicited dick pic. Fucking awful.
Speaking of albums by previously respected rock bands who have effectively squandered their reputation or any sort of artistic credibility they had left, let's talk about Green Day! If you thought the musical equivalent of getting one unsolicited dick pic was bad, try getting 3 dick pics by the same guy! Effectively, that's what these three unholy albums are. Look, I'm a Green Day apologist. I've generally liked most of what this band has done throughout the 90's and the 2000's. This decade though, not so much. To put it lightly. However, I will die on the hill that regardless of the fact that it's mastered terribly and spawned a generation of bad pop punk and pseudo-emo bands with frontmen that had messy hair and went WAY too hard on the Guyliner that 2004's "American Idiot" is the last time rock music has ever really mattered in the modern contemporary music spectrum, and that it's deserving of it. That album resonated with my generation in a way that rock music just was not able to ever follow up with, and is a legitimately great sweeping statement of the political climate of the United States during that time. Even now that album feels relevant (maybe more relevant than ever) in a way very few rock albums since it released have managed to feel. When Green Day are on fire, they're unstoppable. The unfortunate part is that Green Day have been stuck in a cold lake for the better part of 15 years. 2009's "21st Century Breakdown" isn't the worst thing the band have ever done but it didn't exactly spell good things for the band ahead. Despite how badly anyone could have predicted Green Day would deescalate in quality I'm not sure anyone was ready for "Kill the DJ". This song alone is worth the price of admission for these 3 albums to end up on this esteemed list. What were they thinking here? Did they really think that people would be able to stomach 3 hours of Green Day? These albums aren't so much that they're awful, I mean they are, but like U2 they're more boring than they are technically bad. Everything you've come to expect about Green Day is on full display here. High gain punk guitars, palm muted power chords, racing drum beats, and BJA's whiny vocals and high-schooler level poetry. What positive thing I can say to "Uno!" is that it's at least mostly inoffensive, again outside of the incredible "Kill the DJ". There's nothing really good about it, but nothing astoundingly awful. Again, except for "Kill the DJ" which is approaching maybe the best song of all time status. But it's on "Dos!" where the heat really turns up and the quality dips significantly. I don't know what's ballsier of BJA and his hack frauds. That they would release three albums nobody asked for or wanted, or the fact that the 2nd one literally starts with a song called "Fuck Time". That's real ambition right there. BJA's never been a lyrical genius, but man does he really try here on "Fuck Time". "Oh baby baby it's fuck time/You know I really wanna make you mine" Armstrong croons poetically, "Take a look into my eyes/I wanna hold you till your paralyzed" oh Billie you're such a charmer, "Oh Amanda Jones my holy grace/I wanna choke you till your blue in the face" this man is a kinky animal! Somebody hold this horndog down! Watch out ladies! Seriously! Watch the fuck out! If there's anything that becomes clearer and clearer throughout the duration of "Dos!" it's that Billie Joe Armstrong has a problem of being uncompromisingly creepy towards women, intentional or not I'll leave it to the listener to decide but on tracks like "Nightlife" and "Makeout Party" it becomes clearer and clearer that this dude is insanely horny and fucking creepy. While "Tre!" doesn't hit the hilariously desperate levels of awful that "Dos!" does, it DOES have this absolutely awful final 3 track stretch of "Dirty Rotten Bastards", "99 Revolutions", and "The Forgotten". "Dirty Rotten Bastards" Particularly is maybe Green Day's most tedious, boring, offensively awful song they've ever released. This three track stretch might as well have killed this band off effectively having any creative ambition or anything of artistic value left to say. This is also the part where I admit that I couldn't even sit through all three of these together I just picked tracks at random to listen to and speak about after about 30 minutes in. I've sat through these three abominations once when they came out the year that they did and I really didn't have any desire to do it again. Shame on me I guess. Fuck Green Day, fuck the revolution.
I really don't know where to begin with this one. For 15 years and counting, Kanye West has had the world by it's balls. Years after his best work behind him, Kanye still finds ways to make people go fucking nuts over his shit. That's a superpower, to be able to keep up that level of hype for 15 straight years. Truthfully though, I can't criticize those who have fallen for the hype, I've certainly bought into my fair share of Kanye hype over the years. How could you not? If nothing else, this dude is interesting as fuck. For a while, his personality clashed really well with his music. In fact he ended up making some of the best hip hop ever just period. Make no mistake about it, for all the criticism Kanye deserves for any shit he's pulled, he deserves a lot of the praise he receives equally because he really is the most innovative hip hop producer of his generation. His 2000's work and the elephant in the room are both proof of this. But when Kanye's self destructive personality, quality writing, and producing talent all hit an apex with "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" in 2010, Kanye really wasn't capable of ever hitting the heights of the quality of that album again. That would be okay if what he decided to do was, y'know, finish making the music he starts. I wasn't a fan of "Yeezus" in 2013 and I'm still not now for the same reasons that I'm not a fan of much of Ye's work that's come afterwards. This year, when Ye dropped "Jesus is King" a lot of people's rose tinted glasses for Ye finally began to wore off but in truth, "The Life of Pablo" was really that album for me, and three years after it's release it still is. Since "Yeezus" Kanye's M.O. has been to release music that sounds seemingly unfinished and to varying degrees of results, it is. "Yeezus" wasn't good but at least what I can say about that album is that it certainly felt more finished than most of the modern era Kanye stuff, it wasn't very good but at least it sounded more put together. That and it was really funny, not sure if that was Kanye's intention but at least "Bound 2" continues to supply me with laughs years later. This album though, man I just don't know. Nothing about this makes sense or adds up, and it shows in the fact that Kanye released it unfinished. This isn't me being snotty or anything Kanye straight up admitted and tried to sell this album as an unfinished album that was constantly changing and morphing, and a lot of the morons that cling to his every word like it's holy scripture bought it. But not me, not I said the fly. This was really the turning point with me and Kanye. There is making music that seems like it's unfinished for the sake of being experimental and trying to make a statement, and then there is just releasing straight up unfinished music and hoping people will still buy your shit. I'm not really okay with this. Not when one of these songs is quite literally a slightly altered version of Desiigner's "Panda". I gotta draw the line somewhere Kanye. This album is so infuriating, there is no reason on earth anyone should be allowed to release an unfinished album like this and try to pass it off as an "ever changing and evolving artistic statement", especially when that "anyone" is the most prolific hip hop producer of the last decade and a half. But here we are. I might be willing to give awful shit like the clearly not properly mixed hideous vocals on "Freestyle 4" a pass if this album wasn't over a fucking hour long. That's really what seals this album's tomb for me, the length is just so fucking abhorrent. There's no reason on earth it should be this long. And outside of the infamous "bleached asshole" line on "Father Stretch My Hands Pt.1" I can't even laugh at nearly anything on this album. I can't take an hour of clearly unfinished Kanye tracks that were never supposed to leave the studio in the state that they're in. What makes this album even more frustrating is that there are two moments where it feels like Kanye is just fucking with all of us, laughing in our faces. On the "I Love Kanye" freestyle and "No More Parties in LA" it really feels like Kanye knows what he's doing is wrong and instead of actually doing anything about it he just laughs in our faces. "Wolves" is a hideous song, Sia's vocals are so poorly implemented into the song it's hard to sit through it and the stretched and strained pitched vocals on "FML" is seriously maybe my least favorite moment in Kanye's entire discography. The bulk of these songs don't go anywhere because, like I mentioned, they're fucking unfinished, but when they do it's typically not a place I had ever wished they'd gone. I can't take over an hour of this. This is so embarrassing, even for the guy who said he'd marry a porn star, and then actually did. To be honest, looking back, "The Life of Pablo" was a warning of things to come for most, but for me it told me everything I needed to know about the future of Kanye West. Barring his weird hot streak in 2018 most of the music he's released since "Dark Twisted Fantasy" has been released as an unfinished mess because he realized that he can manipulate his audience into believing it's an artistic statement and they'll just eat it up without thinking twice about it. It's incredibly frustrating to watch as he's done it so many times at this point. Many are just figuring that out now, but for me, "The Life of Pablo" was a grim forewarning of what was to come for Kanye. I'd still listen to "Jesus is King" over this though because at least that album is only like 20 minutes long and is hilarious, this is not.
#6 Suck it and See - Arctic Monkeys (2011)
Talking about Arctic Monkeys is infinitely frustrating because the band started really strong. A lot of the pantheon of 2000's rock and indie rock specifically is starting to enter this phase of "cool to hate" by many internet music boards (indieheads, rate yr music, ect) and that was honestly inevitable, so I'm not really salty about that. In fact I typically welcome it. When popular music enters this phase it gives us time to see if some of these albums were just products of their time or if they really were classics like everyone was heralding. It'll be interesting to see what that time of music looked like at the end of the 2020's compared to what it looks like at the end of the 2010's. If there's one band that probably deserves this time of review and second look, it's Arctic Monkeys, the band that basically broke NME. When Arctic Monkeys debuted in '06 with "Whatever People Say" they were fiercely over-hyped not just by the aforementioned NME but quite literally everyone else. They were being called the next Beatles, or the next Oasis, or the next Rolling Stones. I'm not sure what any of that actually means but what I can say is that this band's early career is still filled with records that hold up extremely well and lyrics from Alex Turner that don't make me want to jump off a fucking cliff. This band's debut was an album I fucking wore out in high school, I bought an overdrive pedal that year that Alex Turner used (or still uses I don't know or care) on that record because I wanted to get that same versatile guitar tone, that pedal is still my main overdrive and distortion pedal that I use today. That really says something when I liked an album that much that I wanted to sound like the guitars on that record. While I'm not as wild about that album as I once was, it still has this aggressive punk energy that I typically crave from many rock albums and can gladly revisit it with nothing but mostly good feelings towards it. This band's early stuff had heart and soul to it. However, some time after 2007's "Favorite Worst Nightmare" it seemed like this band's kinetic energy had started to falter. While the Josh Homme produced "Humbug" isn't awful, it isn't particularly compelling either and mostly flew past me. But something happened when "Suck it and See" began to roll out in 2011. Alex Turner got his hair cut, he started wearing sunglasses in the dark, and most of all started wearing leather jackets. Now none of that might seem like a big heap of anything but this faux sense of rock 'n roll swagger that Alex Turner started to exude that was more cringe inducing than it was legitimately cool is exactly what spilled over into this infuriating collection of 12 absolutely awful songs. Compare guys like Sebastain Grainger from Death From Above 1979 who are just naturally cool and don't really have to try all that hard to act that way to Alex Turner who is on some Elvis bullshit here and you can see a clear identity discrepancy, but that's not the real issue here, I just think it's worth noting. Where "Humbug" was supposedly their psychedelic album, on "Suck it and See", the band decided to play around with the totally original and not overplayed or overdone at all genre of 60's British jangle pop. This is where my problems with this album really begin to arise. It's not that I dislike any one particular thing about "Suck it and See" and it's songwriting, although I do dislike a lot of specific things, it's more about what this album represents, and what Arctic Monkeys' later work has gone on to represent. Like I mentioned, Arctic Monkeys are the ultimate foundation for what I like to call NME ladrock. That being, British indie rock that is void completely of originality or personality that NME tries desperately to hype up because in the words of the great Waka Flocka Flame: "Fuck this industry". Arctic Monkeys aren't the sole perpetrator for landfill indie and the inevitable death and corporatization of indie rock, but they are a big part of why it happened. All these publications tried to so desperately sweep up any British band that wore leather jackets and acted at all like they were from the 60's and hyped them up until they're first record was inevitably shipped DOA. A few genuinely great and seriously creative bands survived this surge of career ending PR nonsense, but for the most part this is maybe one of the most destructive things that's ever happened in this history of rock music. So why this lengthy explanation exactly? What am I exactly getting at here if, musically, "Suck it and See" is fine despite it's terrible name and cover? Well dear reader, "Suck it and See" epitomizes the death of rock and roll as we know it. Is your dad wondering why rock songs don't chart like they did when Pearl Jam were hot shit? It's cause this is what's popular in rock music right now. Safe, bland, soulless, derivative trash that has nothing to actually say and instead of thinking forward in any meaningful way just continues to revel in the fabled past glory of rock's better years. Even in the most gutless of bands, there can be some quality that makes them identifiable, but for Arctic Monkeys and "Suck it and See", there is quite literally nothing that makes them stand out in any particularly interesting way. Everything that has been done on this record has been done before and done so much better in a million different ways a million different times. The album tries desperately to have personality with wacky song titles and lewd lyrics that only a fucking high schooler could find "sexy". What the fuck is "The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala"? What is this dogshit? You expect me to enjoy this? This is awful, send it back. This is some of this band's laziest songwriting period. "Brick By Brick" is so fucking bad it's not even funny. "I wanna build you up! Brick By Brick! I wanna rock and roll! Brick By Brick!" Shut the fuck up. This album isn't smart, it has no personality, it's just gutless rock music that has absolutely nothing to say. Instrumentally there's nothing really wrong with this album but that's kind of the problem too. On this band's earlier work, even on the worst cuts of those songs Matt Hedler's drumming was still seriously fucking excellent. Even on this thing it sounds like he's phoning it in. Everything about this album is just so void of originality. Why bother trying to write your own unique spin on a sound when you can just do what all your influences did decades before you? This is the problem in rock music right now, and this is why I hate this album. It represents this mentality that everything that can be said or done in rock music has already been done, so there's no point in trying anything else. This isn't a problem that only Arctic Monkeys are perpetrating in fairness to them, plenty of acts are doing this right now. But at least in acts like Tame Impala who borrow heavily from this same era of 60's pop and rock music, they're able to put their own spin on something. This album just has nothing interesting happening for 40 minutes, and it's infuriating because I know this band is capable of so much more. However, in truth, if this is the future of rock music, if this garbage "throwback rock" that has only continued to take hold in some way shape or form in other bands since this album's release, then fuck it, the genre deserves to die. There are legitimately cool bands doing cool forward thinking shit right now that are still able to pay homage to this genre's rich and favored past but they're being overlooked and not endorsed or favored because it's so much easier to look back with nostalgia and rose tinted glasses at rock's best years than try to move forward in any meaningful way, and bands like Arctic Monkeys aren't helping the case. None of these songs even have any fucking balls to them. "Don't Sit Down Cause I've Moved Your Chair" is a hilarious attempt at a heavy massive Queens of the Age style stoner rock jam but is just so unbelievably corny and goofy there's no substance to it at all. That's this whole album, it just lacks any real substance. It is void of life or personality or anything remarkable at all. So if this is the legacy that The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Doors, Hendrix, Sabbath, Talking Heads, The Smiths, Nirvana, Joy Division, and every other classic band that defined their generation left behind, if "Suck it and See" is the real result of the contributions these geniuses made to rock music, then fuck it, let it all burn down. Cause this isn't worth it.
#5 Muse's Entire Output in the 2010's (2012-2018)
Muse's output in the 2010's is enigmatic. This band took creative risks this decade that are so baffling and head scratching it honestly makes me respect them as artists. I can't say there are really a lot of artists, established, household name ones that sell out arenas especially, that would be willing to take the risks that this band took this decade. I genuinely respect that, these guys just do different shit every time now, they always leave me guessing. The problem with Muse isn't that they haven't evolved from the days of space rock yore, it's that the creative evolution they've evolved into has absolutely no payoff whatsoever. The result of this is three different albums that are filled with creative decisions that are so fucking baffling that I genuinely have no idea where to even start with this. Originally I was just gonna write about "The 2nd Law" which might quite literally be the best worst album ever made, but passing up the rest of these albums is just not fair. There's so much here. There are so many moments throughout this trilogy of albums that leave me absolutely speechless for simultaneously the right and the wrong reasons. If this has confused you and made you unsure of what I really think of these albums that's okay because in truth I still really don't know how I feel about these albums. I think I respect these albums in the same way I respected "Angelic 2 the Core". There's almost nothing here that really works, but it's not for a lack of trying. I'm 90% sure Matt Bellamy just completely fucking lost his mind somewhere between 2006's "Black Holes and Revelations" and 2009's "The Resistance" because the difference in songwriting between those two, and the way he's continued to write songs since, is unbelievable. There's no way you can write a song like "Survival" and expect me to believe that with that corny ass piano and these incredible lyrics about winning a race I think that you didn't completely lose your shit. I'd also like to state before I go any further I'm not like a perpetual Muse hater, I actually really love their first handful of albums. Those albums are some of the most fun, badass, and enjoyable rock records I've ever heard. I hold "Black Holes and Revelations" incredibly close to my heart, I think it's genuinely a great album and deserves to be praised as one of the bests of all time. It's not like I'm coming into this with some weird hate boner for the band like a lot of publications have done in the past. Writing about these albums is hard truthfully. I couldn't do it alone, so I enlisted the help of someone far more qualified to talk about Muse than I am because he's quite literally studied these last three albums down to their very cores and has a much better analytical grasp on these things than I could ever have. I enlisted the help of my comrade James (@jambert on twitter) to carefully and thoughtfully analyze these three creative nightmares. James' contributions will be written in bold so you can see the distinction.
In the 2000s Muse were arguably the biggest of the new wave of rock bands that crashed through the cosmos. Albums such as "Origin of Symmetry" and "Black Holes and Revelations" were massive in scale and creativity and still genuinely hold up well to this day. It seemed like nothing could stop them. Then "The Resistance" happened, a plodding and lethargic dirge of half-baked ideas and Matthew Bellamy overplaying his Queen influences to a sickening degree. The only hope that could come from listening to it was that it would be but a one off mistake, a passing fart in the wind. The thing with farts however: they often foreshadow a steaming pile of shit. The 2010s for Muse was one of the most bizarre musical trips a band could possibly take. 3 albums, all of them horrifically planned out from conception to finalization. However, there is a silver lining to this. 2 of the 3 albums are beyond fascinating. A musical mess that not even the heights that Weezer's "Raditude" can touch. The first and biggest of these is The 2nd Law.
It all began with the way Muse was marketing the album. As they were such a huge modern rock band, they were oftentimes a major name drop with people describing what “real modern music” should sound like. They decide to market their new album as “their dubstep album”. The lead single "Madness" set the stage for that sound. Poorly tuned vocals matching a throbbing wobble bass as cheap sounding e drums soullessly plod on. To say their core audience was alienated would be an understatement. Which makes it all the more bizarre that this focus on dubstep isn’t throughout the entire album. Only two other songs have anything close to it. "Follow Me", about as generic as an EDM song of the early 10’s could sound, produced by Nero to boot. The final one is the real high-point of shlock: "The 2nd Law: Unsustainable". Hans Zimmer esque strings matched with fake news footage attempting to combine schools of thought of physics and economics to make some point about how our economy will collapse. A deep idea perfectly punctuated by a cheesy robotic voice going "UNSUSTAINABLE" as Matthew Bellamy makes Skrillex noises with his guitar. That’s the real joy of The 2nd Law in a nutshell, there is no tone. Whether it be musically, as it swaps between the aforementioned “dubstep”, increasingly shallow Queen parodies ("Panic Station", "Survival") or the most standard alt rock imaginable ("Freeze Me", "Explorers"). An even more bizarre decision than any of this, is the removal of Matthew Bellamy as a vocalist on two songs. While he’s overly theatrical and obnoxious at times, Bellamy can at least be a charismatic presence on a song. Chris Wolstenhome comparatively sounds like he is going to sing on the next Royal Blood album. It is ill-conceived in every single way but is such a perfect imperfect combination that becomes a fascinating beast to study on its own. If Muse was going to be this entertaining for all of this decade, a lot of fun could be had. But as Matthew himself puts it, “Here come the drones”.
If the 2nd Law was a technicolor rainbow that had its colors continuously glitch out and randomly explode, Drones would be a black and white straight line. Muse return to a rock focused sound but in the process lose anything remotely creative from their early material. With good ol Mutt Lange on the production chops, the sound of the day is tepid buttrock. This is most apparent on lead single “Psycho”. As Muse take a riff which they have been playing live for a decade as an explosive finish to performances of "Stockholm Syndrome", in studio it becomes plodding and obvious. The only thing remotely fun about this record are the lyrics, which are the worst in Muse’s career, a truly historic feat. Matthew fancies himself woke here, with a poorly conceived rock opera about how we are all slaves to the man, and the man is technology. To this day the initial “A FUCKING PYSCHO” is gut-churningly hilarious. As the record goes though the jokes run out, and as it ends on a dramatic acapella of Matthew going on about how we will all be “killed by drones”, punctuated by quite possibly the most vomit inducing amen ever put to record. Luckily for them, the next record is a far more fun mess.
Simulation Theory is a lot, while it starts off seeming like a more generic rock record ala Drones, it very quickly drops that disguise to give us a palette of poorly thought out sounds possibly even greater than that of The 2nd Law. Propaganda combines Youtube Poop bass boosting, Prince-like lead vocals and “sexy” slide guitar to create a real banger that makes anyone who listens to it a fundamentally more pathetic person. Matthew seems truly desperate to claw onto any bit of relevance he has left here. "Something Human" quite literally sounds like an Ed Sheeran song and the Tove Lo vocal loops and sickeningly sweet chorus on "Get Up and Fight" is something that must be heard to be believed. Muse even decide to go back on the dubstep far after its relevance with the truly remarkable lead single "Dig Down". The bass wobbles may somehow be even worse than Madness. The chorus however, perfectly encapsulates Muse’s decade in just two words, “Dig Down”.
Drones is truly one of the only albums I've ever listened to that's made my blood boil. The first time I listened to it I was high as a kite and by the end of it my high was completely killed. If that's not indicative of the album's quality I don't know what is. James also pioneered a hilarious theory that Matt Bellamy killed his band members since they're barely present on Simulation Theory and honestly I love that. There's also an incredible track on Simulation Theory that sounds like a Weird-Al parody of The White Stripe's "Blue Orchid" and I genuinely love that. In closing, as you can see talking about Muse's contributions to the music world in the 2010's is hard because it's not that these albums are technically incompetent, or that Muse are bad musicians or songwriters, it's that the creative choices made here are so astounding and baffling it's really hard to understand how the band lead themselves to this point. I'm grateful for these albums ultimately though, because they've supplied some of the funniest and confusing moments I've heard in any music this decade. So, as someone once famously said, thanks Matt Bellamy, thanks other Muse guys.
#4 Heartbreak on a Full Moon - Chris Brown (2017)
lol no.
Nobody is going to deny that hip hop as a genre has undergone an artistic renaissance in the 2010s. That's why there have been so few hip hop albums actually on this list, the genre has flourished artistically in the way jazz did at the beginning of the 20th century and the way rock music did over 50 years ago. But to say that the worst thing that the genre produced in this span of 10 years was Kanye's "Pablo" would honestly be kind of disingenuous. So if it was gonna be anyone, fuck it, it's gotta be Hopsin. This guy fucking sucks. Nobody takes an Eminem shill seriously, and this is like the literal worse parts about Eminem embodied in some 30-something. I'm talking the melodrama, the homophobia, the corny as fuck bars, the sexism, ect. Hopsin has never been taken seriously artistically because this dude's cartoony, veiled middle-schooler approach to a genre as artistically prominent as hip hop is honestly kind of fucking insulting to the culture. Copy anyone, anyone at all, but Eminem? What? Why? And truthfully when your primary audience consists of Paul Joseph Watson, I really don't think I can say I'm shocked that the only people that your artistic incompetence attracts are people who are incompetent at being people. So, I really don't know where to start with this album. I guess from the start, cause I'm not sure how else to approach this absolute fever dream. The first couple tracks on here aren't so much bad as they are boring as sin but right off the bat in the first track Hopsin hops into the track wasting no time to immediately copy the white savior of hip hop himself, which he continues for the rest of this album's hour long run time. Only on this track, "Forever Ill", Hopsin's decided to filter his voice through this really shitty modulation effect for the entire song, which, needless to say, leaves a lot to be desired. But in any case skip forward a few boring tracks and we're greeted with "Ramona" which is this album's first real moment that had me considering suicide. This song is very not subtle about it's sexism, with Hopsin and Jarren Benton telling tales of canoodling with various women and projecting their incel behavior and attitudes towards said women when they demand more than just weak dick game out of them. This track bothers me for myriad of reasons, namely that it's sexist as fuck, even concluding with a Logic-esque spoken word "rant" where Hopsin does his best imitation of a girl who sucked his dick and was later bullied by him and his friends. Now it's not like this isn't something to be expected of Hopsin, anyone that knows Hopsin knows he's profoundly sexist, but what makes "Ramona" an infuriating track is his sheer cockiness. The level of condescending, arrogant, toxic as fuck masculinity that the king of Datpiff album covers exudes on this track is one that continues throughout the rest of the album and is quite honestly disrespectful to say the very least. In any case, moving on we also have "Mr. Jones", which, to much disappointment, is not a Counting Crows cover. I guess this is supposed to be a diss to his...uh...math teacher? This dude is seriously this petty that he devotes studio time and money to a diss track about his high school algebra teacher. In any case Mr. Sin gives some really compelling bars here like "The new Duke Nukem is gruesome" just great stuff honestly. Even on tracks like "Fort Collins" where Hopsin genuinely tries to show real transparency in his personality and reflects on his career in some way, he just can't do it in a capacity that makes me take him seriously. Because despite the fact that this track has kind of ok bars for Datpiff Jones standards, the production is a fucking mess. There are just too many things happening on this track, poorly mixed sad strings, poorly mixed rock guitar melodies, and a lame as fuck hook with these "ah-ah-ah" vocals that just make my toes curl back. But there are two tracks here that I really want to talk about, tracks that make Hopsin literally maybe the worst rapper of his generation, the first of which being "Ill Mind of Hopsin 7". Hopsin's career has followed a chronological story of singles titled "Ill Mind of Hopsin". Similar to Kendrick Lamar's "The Heart" series of singles, the "Ill Mind of Hopsin" series is a collection of singles where we peer into the mind of Hoppy himself. Where he graces us with his prophetic and witty observations from his own life experiences, and in "Ill Mind 7", Hopsin tackles religion. Within literally 30 seconds of Hopsin spitting bars, he goes from relatively decent flow to full on nightmare Eminem copycat lyrical-spiritual-empirical-miracle screamy nonsense. He just screams stupid Reddit level nuance takes on religion for literally the entire track. He goes from mild manner decent flow to "FUCK YOU MAN I'M JUST TRYNA GET SOME RESPEK" temper tantrum in literally the span of 30 seconds. Then there's the "I can't even beat my dick without getting convicted" line which I don't even know how to address seriously. If that's not bad enough, we also have the absolute classic "Fly". Where Hopsin drops the most infamous bar of his entire career "Did the man who invented college go to college?". A truly thought provoking song for a difficult age. Hopsin questions school and the United States education system with such grace and nuance as he always does. Look there's a lot more that I could say but I'm just gonna leave a few more quotes from this misogynist genius for you and I'll let you judge if you want to listen to what my literally be the worst hip hop album of the decade. "Can't figure me out like Rubix", "You gave me the bible and expect me not to analyze it?!??!", Any line where he calls mumble rappers mentally retarded, "I spread peanut butter on my balls and let my dog lick it". "Pound Syndrome" is derivative, immature, and when the best track on the album is a sketch that's supposed to be a parody of Future, it's telling that Hopsin has nothing of real value to contribute to what is otherwise a genre undergoing artistic renaissance.
This is quite literally maybe the worst rock album I've ever listened to. This is fucking insulting. Literally fucking insulting. In truth, this might be the objective worst album I've listened to this decade, but the #1 spot literally changed my life in the worst way possible, and this album didn't. This is just so fucking lazy. Everything about it is just so fucking lazy. I love Rage Against the Machine, they are one of my all time favorite bands, and their message is still so poignant and ahead of it's time even today, but this weird idea that we need Rage in the 2010s, bordering on the 2020s is just so outrageous to me. Rage were so unlike anything or anyone else in their prime, and their message was so tied to what the political climate looked like back then. While that message remains timeless today, if Rage were still releasing new music now in the modern era, it would be tired, boring, and derivative. Prophets of Rage is quite literally proof of this. Tom Morello's decision to form what is essentially a bar band tribute act version of his old band is baffling enough, but bringing in two MC's who have literally no chemistry with what is essentially not even Rage but Audioslave without Chris Cornell (RIP) just makes my head scratch. Like they couldn't even get Zack de la Rocha back, they had to get Chuck D and B Real. I'm not a huge Public Enemy, Audioslave, or Cypress Hill fan as it is so nothing really clicks here for me. But beyond that, everything about this is just awful. Nobody is putting in effort here. This album is as one note and as samey as rock music can get and instead of acting a celebration of everything that Rage originally meant, it just lines in with the boring rap metal hybrids that Rage inadvertently inspired (and apologized for). In terms of mixing and production nothing about this album hits as hard as it should, especially Morello's guitar playing which is typically a highlight of Rage's early work, Tim Commorford and Brad Wilk's rhythm section is just so boring and uninspired. Speaking more on Morello's guitar playing for a second, this dude completely half-assed it. The riffs are generic for sure but his soloing is what's truly disappointing. What made Morello such a good gutiarist for the entirety of Rage's discography was how he could just make a guitar sound like anything but a guitar while still maintaining a serious level of flow and technical prowess but here all it shows is that more than 2 decades after RATM's debut he is just a one trick pony. But, on top of all of that, there is Chuck D and B Real's half assed boring neoliberal fake ass bullshit lyrics. Zack de la Rocha was the heart and soul of Rage, there was nobody on earth who had as much fire and genuine passion to his message and his bars than he did. Taking him out of Rage was the first mistake, but what's worse is that while Prophets of Rage's sentiment is inherently good and anti-fascist and anti-capitalist like the original lineup's message was, it's just so half assed here. There are no lyrics on here that can even hold a candle to Zack's worst bars. Shit like "They say I'm radicalized see my radical eyes" is literally some of the most fake woke shit I've ever heard and in that very same track where Chuck D and B Real go into this hideous "They say we're seeing this they say we're seeing that" refrain that just shows they have absolutely nothing nuanced, new, or important to say about our political climate right now. "Unfuck the World" (unfortunately not an Angel Olsen cover) is a perfect example of this completely disingenuous neolibral message that this album shrouds itself in. Shallow empty sentiments like "No hatred, fuck racists, one nation unification, the vibration, unfuck the world!" do their best to make it seem like they have something important to say about the state of politics but in reality are just hiding behind big buzzwords to sound important. Zack de la Rocha's lyrics were powerful because they told stories of how capitalism and institutionalized racism had crippled marginalized communities in this country in a way that could get you legitimately angry. I get legitimately angry here with this album but for the exact inverse reason. You're Rage Against the fucking Machine godammit where is the "Rage"? There are so many terrible songs here but the worst one by far is "Take Me Higher" where Chuck D and B Real somehow begin to think that Matt Bellamy isn't the only person in the rock world who has authority to speak on military drones. Fucking shameful for them to think otherwise. "Drones in the hood like wow!" is quite literally a bar that is said on this album and nobody thought it was a bad idea. This album just completely shits all over the legacy of one of the most innovative and important rock bands of the 90s and arguably ever, it's fucking disgusting. I don't know, I don't know what else to say. This album is insulting to anyone that not only a fan of Rage Against the Machine but to anyone who is a fan of rock music that ever dared to be different. It's one of the only albums I get legitimately angry listening to. I should be shocked and Chuck D's incompetence but then again he also supports Louis Farrakhan so I shouldn't be that shocked.
This album ruined my fucking life. It quite literally broke me. In a way that not many other albums ever can or have. For me, this transcends awful to another plane of existence. It makes me question my sanity, I'm not joking. It makes me question reality. The first time I listened to this I thought it was a joke. I really didn't know how to handle what I was hearing. But in fairness, there's probably a level of terrible hear that I'm simply just exaggerating because of my deep personal connection to Arcade Fire. In the 2000's, Arcade Fire were on a hot streak, they were basically fucking unstoppable, and who would WANT to stop them? They were so good and I really do mean SO good. "Funeral", "Neon Bible", and "The Suburbs" defined a generation of indie kids that connected to the music the same way the Gen X kids connected to Nirvana or the way the Boomers did with The Beatles. They basically are responsible, for better or for worse, the rise (and demise) of indie rock in the public consciousness. I loved it, it was fucking great. Those records are still so fucking great. They've only gotten better with time. But after "The Suburbs" something happened with this band and I just don't really know what went wrong. In 2013 they begun to try to convince everyone that they were a dance band now, hired post-LCD Soundsystem James Murphy to produce "Reflektor" which was just the band doing the most blatantly lazy and abhorrently boring LCD impression they possibly could. For as boring as "Reflektor" was and still is, it had a few gems on it in the form of "Afterlife" and that incredible title track, and Murphy's production was genuinely amazing on it too. So there were things that were redeemable about "Reflektor" despite it being a boring mess. I had hopes that it was just a one off disaster, that they would see that the only band with over 10 members in it that should be allowed to get people on the dance floor is LCD themselves. Unfortunately I was wrong. I was so fucking wrong. Nothing could have prepared me for this. Even if I could go back now and tell myself in 2017 that the album was THIS bad I don't think I would believe myself. But unfortunately I'm in the black again, I'm not going back again, from Everything Now. I've never seen so many bad ideas executed so terribly in one collection of music in my entire life. I'm not saying this is the worst album I've ever listened to, but goddamn if Arcade Fire didn't try. When you first boot up the record, you are greeted with many loud strange noises that end before they begin. Which then transitions to the title track of the album, in which Arcade Fire decided to be Abba but instead of making an Abba song they accidentally ripped off the Wii Sports menu music. I've graciously linked them both for you to compare. What follows this is a series of songs that go from being bad, to so bad it's good, to so good it's bad, to so bad it transcends awful. This isn't like "The 2nd Law" where it's just a hilarious ride from start to finish. This is maddening. There is no God. The sun doesn't shine for "Everything Now". Lyrically the album is a concept album about mass consumerism and corporate greed in the age of Twitter and Facebook while also tapping into the public consciousness. With such compelling Cohen level poetry like "Infinite content, infinite content, we're infinitely content" how could you not be content? Lyrically it's really hard to believe that the same guy that wrote "Wake Up", "Keep the Car Running", or "We Used to Wait" among so many other lyrically poignant songs wrote a literal date rape anthem in the form of "Chemistry". I'm not kidding when I say that this song caused my brain to fucking implode the first time I heard it. I was physically unprepared to listen to this song. This song while being hilarious is also simultaneously cringe as fuck. These lyrics while being hilarious are also creepy as fuck "Go to the city, go to the store, ask for a loan from another bank, call your mother, make an excuse, I'm gonna have you baby it's no use". These lyrics became a fucking mantra to me for the next year to follow the release of "Everything Now". The track "Creature Comfort" is one of the most embarrassing things I've ever heard this band create. The lines about assisted suicide and overdosing in the bathtub while listening to the first Arcade Fire album are full stop Win Butler's worst lyrics. When the lyrics aren't being literally offensive on multiple levels, they're feeding into the mindset of a fucking 14 year old's perspective on consumerism. This album is like the full embodiment of that one kid you knew in high school who would try to correct the teacher anytime they could because they thought they were smarter than anyone. The title track is quite literally the musical embodiment of saying "WELL, ACTUALLY..." to a fully educated professional teacher. The stretch of songs from Peter Pan to Infinite_Content are genuinely hilarious on so many levels I could never do justice with words, but the album tanks into seriously unbearable on "Electric Blue" which might be full stop Arcade Fire's worst song. Regine Chassange is an incredible vocalist, songs like "Sprawl II" and "In the Backseat" have proven that she has one of the most unique voices in indie music. So why does she sound like she's singing with a head cold on this track? I get a headache listening to this thing. Apparently this is supposed to be a David Bowie tribute but you'd never know because the reverb that shrouds her voice and the register she's singing in makes it impossible to understand what she's singing about at all. It's genuinely headache inducing. What follows after "Electric Blue" are a series of songs that are just so unbearably boring it's depressing. "Good God Damn" is like the most boring moody Black Keys song that not even "Turn Blue" era Black Keys would be capable of writing. The rest of the album follows this suite of moody mellowed out pretentious bullshit that can't decide what it wants to be. This is ultimately what I hate the most about this album. Arcade Fire lost all fucking sense of identity or what made them so great in the first place on "Everything Now". Every song here is different in the worst way possible, there is absolutely zero consistency. Production wise it's a mess too but I seriously wonder how much of that is in part to the band just throwing a ton of shit at a wall and using it all of it anyway despite the fact that none of it stuck. How was there nobody in the studio that listened to this and thought "maybe we should do something else"? They can't stick to being ABBA for more than a few songs, then they decide they're AC/DC, then they decide they're The Ramones, they then decide they're Bon Iver, then they decide they're LCD again, then they decide they're The Black Keys or Arctic Monkeys or The Alabama Shakes...it just keeps going. For a lot of other artists this wouldn't bother me so much but Arcade Fire were so confident about their artistic identity on their best material and were so proud of it. Hell, even on "Reflektor" the band at least was able to maintain a sense of who their primary influence was. Here I'm just left with a mess of musicians who have no idea what kind of songs they want to write or what they want to sound like so they produce a pretentious shitty pop album that will do nothing for longtime fans like me and will only drive away anyone with genuine curiosity about the band. On top of that this album tries to do that thing a lot of albums do where the last track loops back into the first track but if you actually play the last track back into the first track it doesn't even fucking do that. I just have no idea what they were thinking here. I hate this album so much because it just completely consumed my life. There are so many intricate things and details about this album that I spent years analyzing and trying to understand but ultimately I just can't. This is like the perfect alienation of your listeners as an artist. There are so many baffling choices and things done here that make me wonder if I'm even listening to the same band anymore. Ultimately with "Everything Now" I don't think I am, and it's sad to see such a fucking great band, one of the most important bands of my formative years, fall from grace so fucking hard. I'll always be an Arcade Fire fan, but this makes me embarrassed to be one.
