10. Britney Spears - Blackout
Yes, I admit; I listened to this CD earlier this week. I'll even go so far as to say that I tried to like it, and in fact in some places, I did (what the bloggers are saying about "Piece of Me" is right). Despite all reason, this album was not a complete disaster. I'm chalking that fact mostly up to the fact that Blackout was on the good end of the Snakes On A Plane Effect: expectations were so low on this CD that Spears' simply showing up was a success. But the fact remains there's more AutoTone on this than Britney, and this album did more to pay the bills than it did to mark Britney's "comeback".
9. Avril Lavigne - The Best Damn Thing
Another album that wasn't a complete and total dud, but lacked much to be desired. I will once again admit that I miss the Let Go-era Avril. That CD was nigh short of excellent when it came out, and sadly, Avril's done everything possible to stray from that work. As for this album, you may not believe, there are songs on this very CD, let alone other songs from this year, that are more annoying than "Girlfriend". Scary thought, but it's true. Keep reading and you'll learn about them.
8. Guns N Roses - Chinese Democracy
Yeah yeah, I know the album never came out. But we heard the first signs that it exists in some form or other, and it is crap. This would be far less disappointing if this were billed as an Axl Rose solo project; if that were the case I would expect garbage. But alas, I am still teased with the promise that before I die, Chinese Democracy could be part of my CD collection. Based on what I've heard thus far, it probably won't be, but the important thing is that it could.
7. Cartel - Cartel
I haven't actually heard this album yet, but:
Cartel being a by-the-numbers B-list punk band + the fact that they had to have a reality series on MTV to drum up excitement for the CD + the utter failure of said reality show = This HAD to suck.
6. Radiohead - In Rainbows
That's right. I said it. Now what?
Taking nothing away from what Radiohead did to promote and market In Rainbows, I did not like this album. Melodies were few and far-between, and it seemed like Thom Yorke spent more time coming up with new and pretentious ways to get the blogs talking than he did actually recording decent music. This is easily the most overrated album to come out this year, and with a January release date for the physical CD, we get to see it on all the Best Of '08 lists too. ...Joy...
5. Feist - The Reminder
Another one that's gonna earn me hatemail from Pitchfork, Idolator, and all the other Holy Music Blogs. "1234" made me want to punch things by the thousandth time I heard it; I hated it more than I hated "Rehab". The rest of this album just put me to sleep. If I want to fall asleep to music, I'll listen to Pink Floyd; at least that has the benefit of being memorable and socially cool. There's no feist in this music, it's just dreck.
4. Shop Boyz - Rockstar Mentality
This is here mostly on the strength of my hatred for "Party Like A Rockstar", and the fact that this album pretended to have meaning when it was just garbage. Same goes for the next one.
3. Mims - Music is my Savior
This and Shop Boyz are pretty much interchangeable; they both feature criminally stupid songs, and have no real soul in them at all. What makes Mims worse is a) a stupid name, rivaled only by the artist/album at #1, and b) an equally ridiculous hit song in "This is Why I'm Hot". To my knowledge only 3 good rap albums came out, and they belonged to Timbaland, Kanye, and Jay-Z. Most of the rest were marginal, and sad cases like Mims were just awful.
2. James Blunt - All The Lost Souls
As of September this was the worst thing I had heard all year. Bland, sleep-inducing, and generally unexciting, Blunt brought back all the things we had so pleasantly forgotten about 2005's Back to Bedlam. This album is the worst kind of bad; it's not exceptionally bad, its just boring. There's nothing actively noteworthy about it, except that I can't remember anything except how lame "1973" sounded. Memo to James Blunt; get a freakin' backbone.
For a long time I thought this was the worst CD of 2007, until I heard...
1. Soulja Boy Tell 'Em - souljaboytellem.com
Oh. My. God. I don't know where to begin. I guess we start with the God-awful name of both the artist and album (your website as an album title? C'mon. Even YOUR marketing people have to be better than that). Then there's the part where every song consists primarily of shouting Soulja Boy's name over some beat, while also writing tributes to either Sidekicks (the phone, not an actual counterpart) or some ridiculous dance. To be honest, I only got four songs in before I turned it off for the sake of my own sanity. Yep, I think that's a winner/loser.
It should now be noted that I compiled this list while being too apathetic to listen to a number of albums that could have been on this list, including Amy
==TJ==
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