I've been waiting to do this list for a while. This is the peak of year-end lists for me. This is the last of the negative lists until next year but the worst albums list is always the most fun because I love mocking bad albums. Without further ado, here are the 10 worst albums I heard this year.
10. Happiness Begins - Jonas Brothers
I don't think I've ever heard an album as incredibly safe and generic as this one this year. I understand that they're trying to keep up with current music trends and trying to make a good pop record, but it falls oh so short of that. Most of the album is either predictable or forgettable. (In this album's defense, Sucker and Only Human are bops)
9. Hollywood's Bleeding - Post Malone
The lead singles gave me high hopes for this album. Goodbyes had some of the best production I've heard all year, and Circles is a dreamy, Tame Impala sounding song perfect for top-down drives. However, the rest of the album is a bloated mess. The song Staring at the Sun is literally Sunflower Pt. 2, Allergic is a sad attempt at an 80s pop song, and don't even get me started on Saint Tropez. It sucks that I got my hopes very high for this.
Have you ever not wanted to not grow up? And have you ever not wanted to do it so much that you make 45 minutes of music whining about how you don't want to do that? Then this is for you. On this album AJR just keeps doing what they do best. Making music that they think is edgy but just comes off cringey and flat. For 45 minutes, lead singer Jack Met does his best Tyler Joseph impression while crying about how you shouldn't take his legos away because he might not want to give them up and how he's only cool because he's had 100 terrible days like no one else in the world has.
7. Free Spirit - Khalid
Don't get me wrong, I love Khalid. American Teen and Suncity are great projects and the lead singles from this album were great. The catchy Better and the Disclosure produced Talk are both solid songs, but this album is just lazy. While there are some bright spots on here, like "Outta My Head" featuring John Mayer and "Hundred," which both feature some cool guitar tracks, this album is just too long. A lot of the album is also pretty forgettable. If there's one artist who shouldn't be making long albums like this, it's Khalid.
WHY RIVERS WHY! This album actually isn't bad for the first 3 or 4 songs as I genuinely think that "High as a Kite" is the best song Rivers has ever written, but after that, it drops off bad. Honestly, this album sounds like Rivers is so excited to turn 18 because he can finally cuss, which isn't something he needed to do. The song "Piece of Cake," starts the downward descent of this album. The chorus is an earworm, but not in a good way. And the opening line, "Let's do hard drugs/Fix our problems," seems like an instance where Rivers is trying to sound cool talking about things he's never done. Another song I need to mention is the song "Byzantine" which sounds like something you would hear in an elevator in Sears. Let's hope Van Weezer is better.
5. The Big Day - Chance The Rapper
This album originally didn't sit too well with me as I thought it was the sound of wasted potential. This had the chance to be the best Chance the Rapper album he's ever released. Yet it isn't. I think the main issue around this album is that he had too many people around him who were afraid to say no. The first section of this album is honestly pretty good, "All Day Long" and "Do You Remember" do a great job of kicking off the album and the songs Town on the Hill and Sun Come Down have incredible vibes to them. But with an album as long as this, there's bound to be some bad spots. For example, a reference to "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" in 2019? Or how his tour is gonna have 8 legs but he can't even sell tickets for the first one? Even though it has grown on me, it's still a very sorry excuse for a Chance the Rapper project.
I have full faith that one day Jaden is going to put out a quality project, but ERYS is not that quality project. If SYRE was his best attempt at recreating The Life of Pablo, then ERYS is his best attempt at recreating ASTROWORLD. There are so many beat switches on this album that I can't even point out each specific one. The ideas on this album are so bold and grand but they never completely pan out. It's kinda sad because Jaden has unlimited resources at his disposal so this album should be good, but he just doesn't know what direction he wants to go with it. Hopefully, he will improve with time and realize that he has unlimited resources.
3. Father of Ashad - DJ Khaled
Speaking of having unlimited resources, this album is a terrible example of exactly that. On this album, Khaled throws away his whole budget to make a mediocre album. From stealing an Outkast beat to including a song that was released a year and two months before the album release date. There's also a lot of collabs on here that sound amazing on paper but end up falling flat. For example, the song "Celebrate" features Post Malone and Travis Scott, but Travis chorus is literally drowning in auto-tune, which means a lot for Travis Scott. I feel like this album only exists so Asahd can get royalties for the rest of his life.
This album is just a mess and not in a good way. Rather than collaborating with people he's actually close with and artists he collaborated with before, Ed decided to take a sharp right turn and get a feature from every artist below him on Spotify's Top 100 Artists list. With this, Ed also decides to try and make a song that sounds like something the featured artist would release. This leads to Ed trying to rap or trying to make a straight-up "rawk and roll" track. Also, of the 15 songs on this album, about 5 of the songs follow the same pattern of, "I'm at a party, I don't like parties, I don't fit in, let me whine about it." Of course, this album still sold insanely well because, at this point, Ed could fart into the mic and still have a platinum album.
The best way to describe this album is, if J.I.D., Eminem, and Kendrick Lamar never existed, Logic would have nowhere to go, because this album wears his influences on his sleeve so much so that he literally sounds like he's making a J.I.D. or Eminem album. This album has Logic wearing blinders to hide constructive criticism while he raps fast and talks about how much haters hate him and how he's so much better than said haters. What Logic needs to do for once is listen to these critics because they might actually help him put out a quality project. And some of the bars on this thing, jesus. "I don't play no games 'less we talkin' Fortnite" on the track Keanu Reeves, "I'm just a regular person, so I'm not good enough, no... I don't get likes like they get likes, so I am gonna slit my f*cking wrist" on wannabe, and, perhaps the grandaddy of them all, "I'd suck a d*ck just to prove it ain't that way/Ninety-nine percent don't listen what I say." on the song clickbait. If there is one person fighting to keep white rappers in the spotlight, Logic is not that guy.
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