Year in review: The most disappointing albums of 2021

Ed Sheeran is very quickly turning into a one-person Coldplay, and that's not a good thing. Much like that other famed British collective, Sheeran has moved from scrappy sweet hits and fun co-writing stints to selling out stadiums at the sake of oversimplifying his sound. While 2017's "Divide" was filled with hits so inescapable they oversaturated the airwaves, "Equals" feels like Sheeran at his most unimaginative. Over unadorned and generic drum machines, he sounds out of touch with culture at large. At one moment, he's giving praise to his son and daughter, and at another turn is going for an all-night rager. There's nothing wrong with living a double-life, but "Equals" feels thematically scattershot.

His sentiments range from creepily-phrased ("I'm never gonna leave your life") to broad-swiping those darn millennials for being on their phones too much ("Seein' through a picture behind the screen and forget to be / Lose the conversation for the message that you'll never read"). When he runs into a solid pop melody like on "Stop the Rain", he of course decides to bury it on the record's back half next to first-dance-at-a-wedding pablum like "Love in Slow Motion". Judging by the trajectory of his recent output, his next record will be called "Minus".

Even today, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis are still innovators. While the former Prince proteges have carved out a musical identity for themselves, which helped define much of the '80s and early '90s (including their stratospheric run of albums with muse Janet Jackson), their work in the last few years has been sporadic. While even their 2015 Janet collaboration "Unbreakable" proved that the magic was still there, their own long-awaited debut album, "Jam & Lewis, Volume One", proves that not all good things last. Featuring a who's-who of soul guest vocalists ranging from Mariah Carey to Boyz II Men to Morris Day to Mary J. Blige, "Jam & Lewis, Volume 1" commits the ultimate musical sin of simply being boring.

No matter which vocalists tackle which songs, "Volume 1" stays rooted in a very staid sense late-'90s R&B. The drum machines rarely deviate from their paths, the basslines are workmanlike, and the guest spots are hit-and-miss. There are a few genuinely good takeaways here (the Usher collaboration "Do It Yourself" has them messing around with a fascinating array of textures), but when half of your album songs clock in at over five minutes, you know something's off. Maybe they can course-correct with "Volume 2".

It's hard to be disappointed on such a goofy one-off like this, but once the novelty has faded, this EP of the Foo Fighters covering the Bee Gees is astoundingly slight. The guitars are amped up and Dave Grohl is happy to flaunt his falsetto by fronting the "Dee Gees," but when the group leaves the songs basically unchanged, and, in the case of "Tragedy", actually go as far as to remove some melody lines, the impact is barely felt. While any one of these songs would be fun to break out during a live set (which could happen, given the back half of this album is live-in-studio cuts of songs from their 2021 album "Medicine at Midnight"), the overall feeling of the still-amazingly-titled "Hail Satin" is ... meh. The guys clearly had fun making it, but the produced-to-perfection coating over these disco-era classics prevents us listeners from having as much fun as they are. Grohl may have started a joke, but this EP sadly misses a punchline.

Do you remember when Kanye kept pushing back the release date of his new album, focusing less on promoting it to radio and instead having stadium-sized listening parties, only to drop a record that many referred to as "unfinished"? Yes, we too remember 2016's "The Life of Pablo", which looks like the Sistine Chapel compared to 2021's rambling "Donda". Clocking at nearly two full hours, it's clear that for all of his alleged perfectionism, "Donda" is a dumping ground of Kanye West's half-finished ideas. Even with a cavalcade of guest stars, the beats feel dry (especially after five minutes, which several songs hover around or beyond), and the often hilariously-too-obvious punchlines now feel phoned in ("I don't do commercials 'cos they too commercial" he smirks on "Keep My Spirit Alive"). The times he comes across a great musical moment (like with the lightly funky "Believe What I Say" or the emotional piano crescendo that hits the end of "Come to Life"), it feels less deliberate than it does stumbled-upon. For all of the hype, it felt like "Donda" was going to be a game-changing event, but instead, it ended up being "just another" Kanye album, and a lesser one at that.

It's official: Chris Martin is horny for a hit. While Coldplay's 2019 effort "Everyday Life" was a deeply-compelling detour into worldbeat textures that effectively redefined what the band could do as musicians, 2021's "Music of the Spheres" was designed to get the boys back to the top of the charts no matter the cost. Produced and co-written by Max Martin (the defining hitmaker of the modern era), "Music of the Spheres" is as try-hard an album as they come, and lo and behold, their collaboration with BTS gave Coldplay their second #1 in the U.S. It's just a shame that the rest of his record features Coldplay at their stadium-ready cheesiest, as the band is once again incapable of preventing Martin from writing the most saccharine lyrics imaginable ("We're capable of kindness / So they call us humankind"). There's the forgettable Selena Gomez ballad, a song that uses pitch-shifted vocals to an unbearably annoying degree ("Biutyful"), and a somewhat inexplicable turn towards Muse cosplay ("People of the Pride"). As if that wasn't enough, most of the song titles on the album are stylized as emojis. Cool, guys.

At least he got the title right.

When you've been in the music industry long enough, most artists eventually cross a threshold with their songwriting to become craftspeople. After you've written dozens of songs, suddenly you're able to write like a machine, sometimes for better, sometimes for worst. Maroon 5 has very much crossed that threshold, wherein their albums are less artistic statements and more "collections of songs that they hope will chart," and that obviousness is all over the bland, uninspired "Jordi". A flop from a band that doesn't usually have them, "Jordi" struggles to have anything to say, which is a problem when the too-perfect production sheen puts a plastic seal over anything that could've been even remotely construed as interesting. Despite a plethora of guest stars (Juice WRLD, H.E.R., Stevie Nicks), the only appearance that has any life at all is Megan Thee Stallion on the lead single "Beautiful Mistakes", and even then, her explosive verse feels like it got beamed in from a different song altogether. Adam Levine and co. claim that drinks bring back all the memories, but the only reason we're drinking is to make sure we don't retain any of "Jordi" in our minds.

There was a time when the Kings of Leon were genuinely interesting. Starting off as Southern rock revivalists right along with similar stalwarts like My Morning Jacket, the group moved increasingly into a modern rock radio space, starting with 2007's blistering "Because of the Times" and having a genuine hit with their 2008 breakthrough "Only By the Night". While they became rock superstars in the U.K., their post "Night" albums have become increasingly muddled, workmanlike song bundles, getting more generic as time passes on. With "When You See Yourself", they have it their beige era, sounding like just about any other band. These songs don't play as much as they drift, often in one ear and out the other, with about as much effort put into them as they put into the album art. What's especially frustrating are the moments when some distinct ideas push through, like on the slowcore 4AD-indebted closer "Fairytale", but overall, the only thing we see is a band who's run their course.

Sia has had anything but a typical career, working as a pro songwriter and performer for years before finally gaining notoriety after putting a wig over her face. Having now had chart-toppers under her own name, she could write her own ticket and did so by creating "Music", a problematic musical drama that Sia wrote, directed and created the music for. Heavily under fire for casting her creative muse Maddie Ziegler as a non-verbal autistic character despite not being autistic, the film received dreadful critical notices and a swift death at the box office. Its one saving grace, however, is the soundtrack. While it does often delve into formula-driven radio pop tropes, a few numbers still feature Sia's notable creative spark, whether it be the genuine (if saccharine) bop of a lead single "Together" or the dramatic "Courage to Change" (complete with full classical piano breakdown). In terms of Sia albums, it would rank in the lower half of her discography, but as ill-advised as the project was, there are at least some worthy songs to come out of it.

The passing of DMX in April of 2021 was nothing short of tragic. While DMX's reign over gritty street-level rap made him a multi-platinum star in the late '90s/early 2000s, his various legal troubles prevented him from maintaining a consistent presence on the charts. By the time the 2010s rolled around, his output was sporadic at best. The comeback project "Exodus" was well in the works at the time of DMX's passing but was pushed out less than two months after this death. The production by Swizz Beatz is across-the-board fantastic, and X himself sounds energized and passionate about his verses. The issue? Too many guests. As exciting as it to have Jay-Z and Nas together on a track ("Bath Salts"), their verses -- like almost every other guest appearance on the record -- go first, pushing DMX to the back of his own songs. It happens repeatedly, reducing the impact of X's bars, meaning the times he does step up to the mic first (like on the sexy album highlight "Take Control" with Snoop Dogg) make those songs pop in comparison. "Exodus" isn't a bad posthumous release, but it's also clear that X's final musical testament deserved more reverence.

All in all, Paul McCartney had a pretty great 2021. He published a book about the stories behind some of his most iconic lyrics, was treated as a bit of a trend-setter in Edgar Wright's "The Sparks Brothers" documentary, and then was rediscovered as the songwriting genius he is following the premiere of Peter Jackson's landmark "The Beatles: Get Back" documentary, where a clip of him effectively pulling the song "Get Back" out of thin air went viral. Yet in 2020, McCartney dropped "McCartney III": a pandemic-inspired record where he played every instrument on every song himself, carrying on the tradition from his other self-titled records. It was a perfectly pleasant if inessential affair, but given McCartney's clout, the inevitable "remixed and re-envisioned" form of that record, "McCartney III Imagined" was dropped early in 2021.

Featuring a who's-who of indie tastemakers, "Imagined" is a curious and sometimes confounding collection of songs. A few standouts are expected (like Khruangbin's smooth and gorgeous rendition of "Pretty Boys"), but oddball choices like St. Vincent's insistence on turning "Women and Wives" into a Bond theme song and Damon Albarn adding excessive robot vocoder to "Long Tailed Winter Bird" cause more confusion than they do delight. It's a weird little one-off project with few takeaways, but when you're Paul McCartney, you can get away with such flights of fancy pretty easily.

At some point in the last few years, Imagine Dragons replaced Nickelback as the go-to "bad band" to make an easy joke about. The band can weather the criticism just fine, sitting upon their thrones made out of platinum single certifications, but there was no doubt that Dan Reynolds and co. have heard these grumblings and wanted to prove themselves as more than just the current purveyors of meathead stomp-pop. For "Mercury: Act 1", the band enlisted the help of Rick Rubin to help guide and push Imagine Dragons to their sonic limits. Make no mistake: they certainly accomplished something with this record -- we're just not sure what.

Throwing every single style they could at the wall to see what works (like trying to make their own "Zooropa" with the sparse plastic funk of "Monday"), "Mercury: Act 1" jerks from one style to the next without much consideration for tone or consistency. Lyrically, the record goes from overly aggressive (the blood-curdling question mark of a song that is "Cutthroat") to obnoxiously optimistic ("No Time for Toxic People"). While Reynolds can certainly get credit for stretching his voice to wild extremes as the band experiments with sound, but "Mercury: Act 1" could've benefited from some drastic editing. If they're planning an "Act 2", we'll be leaving at intermission.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. In the back end of his career, the legendary Van Morrison has been happy to spend his time releasing an endless series of cover albums along with the occasional batch of new songs. Yet when the Covid-19 quarantines started, Morrison was not pleased and started releasing an increasing number of anti-lockdown standalone singles that were met with mocking derision. Now comes "Latest Record Project, Vol. 1", an exhausting 28-track behemoth that clocks in at over two hours. Over the most staid and unimaginative arrangements possible, Morrison cranks through generic modern blues-pop creations to talk about how he's a "targeted individual" and asks, "Why do you care who's trending / Or is it something that you're defending?" It truly feels like a soundtrack for an old man yelling at kids to get off of his lawn, and it has done more damage for his legacy than even he realized.

Lorde fans have learned how to be patient, as it now seems that four years is the standard wait between albums from the New Zealand pop firebrand. Coming off the slender heels of her critically-adored 2017 record "Melodrama", "Solar Power" again marks a change in musical direction for Lorde, trading piano-beat pop theatrics for a record of nothing but chilled acoustic musings. While Lorde has built up the kind of fanbase wherein she can endure a record that's not a commercial hit, few would've expected her flop era to happen so suddenly. While a warm beach record sounds like the perfect thing that would soundtrack all of our summers, the muted textures of "Solar Power" and almost too-laid-back vibes give the whole affair a sleepy vibe, no matter how many clever '90s drum fills Jack Antonoff pulls into the mix. "All the music you loved at 16 you'll grow out of," she warns on "Stoned at the Nail Salon", and while she's no longer the teenager who made "Pure Heroine" nearly a decade ago (and should be given credit for trying something new), one hopes that she grows out of her "Solar Power" phase sooner than later.

While Logic's Rattpack collective of fans continue to fawn over whatever new venture he's getting into next (be it his game streams or his ill-advised novel), the announcement that his 2020 album "No Pressure" would be his last felt dubious. Logic loves the spotlight, so it's of no surprise that a year-to-the-day after his retirement proclamation, he announced that he was coming back with the third iteration of his famed "Bobby Tarantino" mixtape series. The only issue? After becoming a father and taking a year off to focus on raising a kid, most of "Bobby Tarantino III" focuses on that subject matter alone, with lead single "Vaccine" dismissing his haters by saying that he "Got no time for these rappers / I only got time for my son." It's a fine sentiment, but it makes for an album with zero stakes and very little material to engage with. The fans seem to agree, as "Bobby Tarantino III" became his lowest-charting release to date, with none of the singles catching on. He may not have time for these other rappers, but it seems that rap fans increasingly have no time for Logic.

There is no denying Drake's popularity. When "Certified Lover Boy" debuted and smashed streaming records, he pulled off the unprecedented feat of landing nine of his songs in the Top 10 of the Billboard charts. It's a record that likely won't be topped anytime soon, but the question on so many people's minds was simple: all that hype was for this? The much-delayed "Certified Lover Boy" felt like it was going to be an event album, but it's hard to hold an event when Drake sounds so sleepy, so unengaged with his own performances and writing. The beats consist of the cold, claustrophobic atmosphere that has increasingly come to define Drake's sound, and when that's all you hear over 70 full minutes, it's a slog to get through. A brief standalone number for the great singer Yebba and the decent personal inventory of Drake's own life that is closer "The Remorse" point to what this album could've been. Unfortunately, "Certified Lover Boy" ended up being a certified bore.

Love him or hate him, Justin Bieber has managed the near-impossible feat of staying at the top of the charts for over a decade. Following the decidedly muted reception to his confusing 2020 loverman album "Changes", 2021's "Justice" put Bieber back in the Hot 100 penthouse, even as his album's interspersed use of Martin Luther King, Jr. soundbites raised some eyebrows. Yet shortly after the release of "Justice", Bieber surprise-released an EP full of new original Christian songs called "Freedom". While Bieber has been very upfront about his religious convictions, the six songs on "Freedom" play with the dancehall-lite sound that has defined his last few full-lengths, giving the record a very contemporary-if-not-generic feel. Yet the worst sin that "Freedom" commits is how it doesn't have anything new to say. Multiple songs have messages about being broken or celebrating the story of Jesus. Only "We're in This Together" pushes through the noise by mixing its lyrical hagiography with Bieber's own biography. Had he leaned more into the personal, "Freedom" could've been an interesting insight into Bieber's faith, but as it stands, this EP feels like a sonic souvenir from the church gift shop.

If Sleigh Bells are known for anything, it's being loud. Extremely loud. Brooklyn's Derek Miller and Alexis Krauss have found a formula in which they produce albums of thundering impact, with slamming beats married to guitars that wallop through the mix. Their 2010 debut "Treats" put them on the indie-rock map, but their subsequent albums found the group, in essence, doing the same thing over and over again. While some fans hold up 2016's "Jessica Rabbit" as the album where they tried to pull in some new textures, their long-awaited new full-length "Texis" unfortunately gets trapped into the group's usual holding pattern. The synths are in-the-red, the drums absolutely pummel, and the guitars are loud and raucous once again. For fans who can't get enough of Sleigh Bells' signature, "Texis" is another helping of what they know. To everyone else, outside of playful moments like the almost-acoustic-pop of "Rosary", Sleigh Bells have released "just another Sleigh Bells" album.

This one hurts. Following Pop Smoke's tragic murder in 2020, the on-the-rise Brooklyn-born rapper became a star on the level he never got to see in his lifetime. Draped with guest features, 2020's "Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon" was a surprising success, as many people heard this studio debut and were introduced into Pop Smoke's gritty drill rhymes for the first time. The album topped the charts and kept on selling for months on end, up to the point where the following year, his label capitalized the moment by releasing yet another posthumous collection called "Faith". While "Shoot for the Stars" still retained Pop Smoke's grit and wit despite the roster of talent on loan, "Faith" feels like a violation of his legacy.

For one, the label limited the input of Pop's long-time collaborators like 808Melo, Swirv, and YozBeats, instead favoring Rico Beats, The Neptunes, and countless other cooks in the kitchen that seem to be here to jump on the bandwagon instead of honoring Pop's legacy. Secondly, much like DMX's own posthumous "Exodus", Pop Smoke has very little time on his own album, pushed aside for the many guests to jump onto verse fragments Pop left behind. Did we need a Pop Smoke / Dua Lipa collaboration? Absolutely not. For anyone who's ever had a conspiracy theory about the evil of label interference, "Faith" is a prime example of how not to honor a fallen artist. Disappointing on every front.

"The Lockdown Sessions" wasn't even supposed to happen. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Elton John was supposed to be saying goodbye to the touring world by going on one last "Farewell Yellow Brick Road" tour that encompassed more live dates than you could imagine. Using his time in lockdown to be productive, "The Lockdown Sessions" is an amusing hodgepodge of collaborations and ideas. John netted a real hit with his funky Dua Lipa duet "Cold Heart (PNAU Remix)" and manages to emotionally bring in a clip of the late Glen Campbell to make "I'm Not Gonna Miss You" an effective closer. Some of his collaborations that appeared in other places first (like his "It's a Sin" duet with Years & Years) still sound great here.

On the flip side of the equation are some real head-scratchers. The Young Thug and Nicki Minaj track sounds just as confusing in your ears as it does on paper, and the well-intentioned Rina Sawayama song "Chosen Family" is almost cringe with its level of earnestness. "The Lockdown Sessions" makes no bones about being a patchwork collection of songs, which is simultaneously its key charm and also its detriment. There are far worse albums out in this world (and even in John's own discography), but "The Lockdown Sessions" is certainly a wild curiosity in a career that's already full of them.

Weezer's 2021 was probably better than your 2021. While the eternal love-them-or-hate-them debate rages on in regards to the band's legacy, their surprise-released chamber-pop record "OK Human" and their long-in-the-works hair metal tribute "Van Weezer" were both greeted with moderate sales and a decent amount of acclaim. Yet tucked underneath these releases was a peculiar pet project of frontman Rivers Cuomo: the soundtrack he released with Kelsey Grammer for the film "The Space Between". The already-forgotten comedy about an aging Brian Wilson-esque rocker finally being cajoled out of retirement features a litany of songs written by Cuomo that are intended to reflect the hits of a bygone era. While this project sounds right up Cuomo's alley, the voice of Kelsey Grammar does not help matters, as his guttural, theatrical, throaty voice immediately robs the songs of any nuance, romance, or power. While Grammar's Micky Adams character is supposed to be an eccentric has-been, the songs and performance on "The Space Between" make it hard to believe he was ever popular to begin with.

Amazingly, ABBA's last album of original material came out four decades ago. What's even more amazing is that for "Voyage" -- the long-awaited, long-threatened new record from the Swedish superstars -- it sounds like the quartet hasn't missed a single beat. If you're an ABBA diehard fan, this album gives you everything you want and more, from the overt pop singalong choruses to an unbelievable amount of schmaltz. Yet to the casual "Mamma Mia" DVD owner, this album suffers from overt pop singalong choruses and an unbelievable amount of schmaltz. While it's undeniably fascinating to hear a "time-locked" album like this that seems to be unaffected by the past several decades of music, it's also a bit disappointing to hear not even the remotest wrinkle of new in their sound. "Voyage" is unmistakably an ABBA album, and from wherever you're sitting, that could be a blessing or a curse.

Even now, we're unsure of what the release strategy was for OneRepublic's "Human". Lead single "Rescue Me" came out in May ... of 2019. Then a litany of other songs and almost-hits percolated throughout the two years that followed, but given that OneRepublic is now basically the Ryan Tedder show, it feels like all of the "Human"-era singles were being tested to see what would impact the market the most, and outside of a moderately-successful Kygo collaboration, OneRepublic has become the definition of Top 40 fodder.

While even Tedder's most ardent of haters must acknowledge his occasional bout of undisputed pop genius, "Human" is a record that collapses in a puddle of its own generic sentiment. While numbers like "Run" are imbued with pep and energy sorely missing from most of OneRepublic's catalog, most of the tracks on this record sound like every other wanna-be adult-contemporary smash, with songs like "Savior" and "Take Care of You" floating in one ear and out the other. The album may be called "Human", but these songs sound like they were created by a songwriting robot that doesn't know anything about emotion.