Worst 9 Albums of 2019 | bestmusic2019

9 WORST ALBUMS OF 2019

2019 was an amazing year for music. Ever genre seemed to have mind-bending albums and songs that pushed the boundaries of what they could be. But not everyone could find the same level of success. Some artists not only missed the mark, they skidded face-first on concrete until there was nothing but bone left. These are 9 albums I listened to just to tell you that you shouldn't.

9

Weezer

Weezer (Black Album)

I really wanted to like Black. Earlier in the year I wanted to give Weezer the benefit of the doubt after listening to White nonstop. But Black is an utter disappointment through and through. Though the tunes aren't terrible overall, they're bland as hell. Who is this music supposed to be for? Weezer are too old to be making music for teens, but that seems to be their aim here. Nondescript singles like "High As A Kite" or "Zombie Bastards" are forgettable at best. "Piece Of Cake" begs me to make a joke that writes itself. The less said about the horrific EDM/trap fusion "California Snow" the better. Outside of the goofy "Can't Knock The Hustle", Black doesn't warrant its existence.

8

Beck

Hyperspace

This one hurts. For as many styles as Beck has adopted throughout his illustrious career, lifeless pop is a new one, and one I wish he had stayed away from. Hyperspace makes his maligned last album Colors look full of life by comparison. There's no soul in any performance, and nothing instrumentally stands out. It sounds so samey I couldn't tell any song apart if you played them back to me. "Everlasting Nothing" is sadly a fitting description for the album as a whole, as it plays on too long for something that leaves no impact.

7

Mac DeMarco

Here Comes The Cowboy

Mac's slacker music has always had its charm, but that charm is nowhere to be seen on the flaccid Here Comes The Cowboy. When there's a track that is literally Mac saying "Here comes the cowboy" for three minutes over a barely there instrumental, you know he's pretty bankrupt on ideas. The rest of the album is a little more interesting, but Mac sounds totally uninterested in making music here. He was his own producer for this record, so maybe he need a real producer to kick his ass into making decent music.

6

Bastille

Doom Days

Bastille are a bunch of 30 year old dudes who are making party music for teenagers. As such, there's a definite gap in what Bastille think party music should be versus what teenagers actually want to hear. Not only is there the question of why old dudes are trying to tell a party story, the music itself sounds four or five years too late. Plus, when younger artists (namely Lorde) have already covered this topic in stunning detail from the appropriate age perspective, how could older artists match it? Doom Days doesn't offer any answers, and at the best it's forgotten as soon as it's over, much like a nameless faceless party.

5

Avicii

TIM

One of many albums this year to take a dead artist's name and shit all over it, TIM is nothing but a bad cash-in. It was supposed to be a tribute to an underrated EDM legend, but the music sounds like was decided by outside forces after Avicii's death. The half-finished Avicii bits sound, well, half-finished, and there are so many unnecessary features it might as well not even be about the man himself. It's a lousy attempt to respect Avicii, a cheap cash grab by greedy people instead of a rightful tribute. Rest in Peace Avicii, you deserve better.

4

Chance The Rapper

The Big Day

A disaster from start to finish, Chance's major label debut doesn't waste any time in telling you what it's gonna be. Opener "All Day Long" starts with absolutely rancid bars from Chance, a generic John Legend feature, and a completely forgettable beat and rhythm. That's a great tone setter for a bad album if I've ever heard one. The Big Day never establishes any flow, switching from style to style across 22 lame tracks, none of which fit Chance's rapping or singing well at at all. The trap numbers are especially bad. It's hard to believe something as God awful as "Hot Shower" was ever approved to be released. Again, Chance's lyrics are steaming garbage, either too corny when trying to be funny or too wimpy when trying to be tough. It's a failure, and an impressive failure that even some decent features have no chance of saving. At least Chance still has his wife, his kids, and his Tesla, right?

3

GFOTY

GFOTV

I still don't get what this is supposed to be. GFOTY's other songs work, at a bare minimum, as songs, but nothing on GFOTV even comes close to that. It's a bizarre fever dream about shitty television shows, with a pointless instrumental to close things out. Barely 11 minutes of noise and sound, to me, doesn't constitute as music. It's audio garbage, and to be fair, that's most likely the point. But if my art school degree taught me anything, it's how to criticize, and an "album" like this is ripe for excessive critique. This is bad. This is very, very bad. And what the hell is that album cover, anyway?

2

AJR

Neotheater

When a Boomer complains that millennial pop music has no soul, he's talking about stuff like AJR. Everything wrong with modern pop music is what AJR specializes in, as no one has the heart to tell these three soulless brothers what a bad idea is. And that's almost everything on Neotheater. Big, sweeping but lifeless choruses on every song, instrumentals trying to fit onto a Disney movie's soundtrack, offensively bad lyrics on every track, and that's just the start. These boys don't sound like they've ever been within fifty feet of a woman, and their twisted ideas of marriage and relationships make me wanna puke. And how could I forget their hopeless pining for a sponsorship by Beats on the song "Beats"? Or the headache-inducing baby voices on "Birthday Party"? This thing sucks. This thing sucks from top to bottom. I really don't like it, if you couldn't tell. But it's not the worst of the year...

1

Nostalgia Critic

Nostalgia Critic's The Wall

The worst album of 2019 is this. There's no other option. This "album" is an offense to music itself. Everything else on this list is trying to at the very least be music, but this is 100% disingenuous. The instrumental remakes of classic Pink Floyd songs are fine, but they're totally ruined by the Critic himself. Is he singing? Is he talking? Does it matter? Nothing he says is remotely funny or remotely good critique of The Wall. In fact, the Critic is just straight up wrong with some of his criticisms. It's like he didn't do any research or any planning on diving into something as complex as The Wall. It's so surface level, as if he's too scared to actually think about the work itself. And the ending? The SpongeBob theme with the lead singer of Slipknot? What the actual hell? The worst part, for as much effort that seemingly went into this shit stack, Doug quickly moved on. He released another new video within a week. That showed to me that this was purely a business decision. There was no love for music, no love for the process, no love for anything but greed. Doug sucks, this album sucks, and you suck for making me think about this again. Just kidding, I love you. But I don't love this album one bit.

Don't Listen To These...

1. Nostalgia Critic - Nostalgia Critic's The Wall

2. AJR - Neotheater

3. GFOTY - GFOTV

4. Chance The Rapper - The Big Day

5. Avicii - TIM

6. Bastille - Doom Days

7. Mac DeMarco - Here Comes The Cowboy

8. Beck - Hyperspace

9. Weezer - Weezer (Black Album)

9

9

"All My Happiness Is Gone"

Purple Mountains