I think the word that most describes the worst of 2023 is "disappointment". Whether it is a long standing act releasing their worst album in years, or promising act fumbling the bag, this year at its worst gave a feeling of true disappointment. While I do think that this year was good for the most part, not all of it can be good and here are my 25 least favourites.
25. Macklemore - Ben
This exhaustingly long project rides a fine line between Macklemore continuing to try to be taken seriously while bringing back some of the energy that made him appealing to people in the first place and it ends up as a mess. Inconsistency is the core of the problem here, songs range from good (Tracks 6 and 7 are surprisingly solid) to absolutely atrocious like the entire first 5 song stretch and especially the obnoxious "Lost/Sun Comes Up" which thinks itself as a genius for making the observation that Pop is formulaic. The features here are strange, a weird mixture of decently sized names like NLE Choppa, Tones and I and DJ Premier and an ocean of no names. The saddest part is almost none of these features bring anything new to the table, they are pretty much all here to sing the hook in a way that feels as if it is aping the style of another artist and it gets tiring very quickly. On the whole this album feels sad. Macklemore is really trying to break out of the rut he has found himself in but his attempts come across as desperate. This album isn't terrible, but the lifeless performances on some songs and the weak features just turn this into a slog.
24. Swizz Beatz - Hip Hop 50: Vol 2
The first volume of the Hip Hop 50 project ended up being one of my favourite EPs of that year, it was packed with excellent production, energetic verses and felt like a genuine love letter to Hip Hop. This second volume is pretty much the exact opposite. Pretty flat sounding production met with verses that feel pretty effortless and soulless. The closing track is a big highlight but I can't see this project as anything more than a disappointment.
23. Connor Price - Spin the Globe
Conceptually I like this idea. Getting artists from all over the world and showing their unique skills and exposing them to a new audience, and most of these artists do really well. Each of them have a unique flow and delivery which makes all of their features interesting and fun. Sadly Connor Price himself has one of the most uninteresting flows I have ever heard, and his production is mostly mediocre, and sadly he dominates most of this project. When the other rappers come up it is pretty fun but most of this project is uninteresting and self impressed.
22. Inhaler - Cuts & Bruises
Y'know what, I have to say it. Inhaler are a band, and a band who have, multiple members, and those members have instruments, and oh the things they do with those instruments! On this album you can hear them: playing notes, hitting drum, singing words. Those elements are put together into songs and eventually those songs were put together into an album, which has a cover and a name. Surely this will be an innovation in the world of "music". I praise Inhaler for their daringness to make an album that I have this little to say about!
21. Dream - To Whoever Wants to Hear
You'd be hard-pressed to find someone with as poor an internet presence as Dream. The entire brand he has cultivated is one of obsession or hatred. The album winds up painfully generic, tracks like "Kind of Love" have completely ordinary instrumentals that don't impact me in any real way; they aren't pleasant enough to be good nor are they notable enough to be truly bad. What is bad however is a quirk that this album pulls several times, snap cuts. Moments like this can give a punch to big explosions in intensity but when they occur this often they just don't keep the power they should. The only point where the instrumental is poor enough to be interesting is the half-hearted attempt at Breakbeat drums on the opening track. While he has shown some vocal improvement, his vocal melodies are poor, especially on tracks like "Invincible (Like U)" where they are practically nonexistent. For a man who inspires such strong contrast in reception, I find myself depressingly close to being neutral.
20. Theory of a Deadman - Dinosaur
This ended up being one of the most bizarrely bad albums I have ever heard, it has a feeling of slap dash chaos that makes it feel surprisingly entertaining despite its low quality. Of course the normal Theory of a Deadman pitfalls pop their heads, the terrible lyrics and rough vocals are on pretty much every song and do make every track worse. But despite me still thinking this album is bad, I have some bizarre respect for it, it embraces a number of styles and while almost all of them fail, I have to give props to the band for trying to do something this wildly different.
19. Gorillaz - Cracker Island
Wow, what a disappointment. The album starts with its best foot forward with the excellent "Cracker Island" and then immediately takes a nosedive and is unable to capture any level of quality until "Skinny Ape". The whole album feels lazy, songs either lack energy completely or have weak and lazy hooks. Considering how long this album cycle lasted I can't help but feel completely and utterly disappointed in the heartless and soulless mess that we have been delivered. The two solid tracks do save this from being a complete wash but this is probably their worst album in a while.
18. Babytron - Out on Bond
Babytron is a charming presence on the EP, he has a lot of charisma and his flow is solid. But the beats on this are terrible, all of them, they are utterly thin, beyond generic and extremely cheap sounding. This seriously has some of the worst production of the year, it is never good at any point in time and it really lets BabyTron down which is a shame. He is good enough to stop the EP from being terrible but not good enough to stop it being bad.
17. Iggy Pop - Every Loser
Iggy Pop has been very out of his prime for a while but that did not prepare me for how bizarrely dated this album would be, and to the 2000s of all decades. All throughout this album you will be greeted with songs that take from the sonic palettes of Velvet Revolver, Buckcherry and other various artists who have been well and truly abandoned. It doesn't help that Iggy Pop has lost a lot of vocal prowess so these over produced and very synthetic instrumentals aggressively clash with his rugged and aged vocals. I respect Iggy Pop for still going for it despite his age, and sometimes he lucks upon a sound that works more, but maybe a different avenue would be more suited to him than this style he is attempting on this album.
16. Godsmack - Lighting Up the Sky
Just painfully uninteresting and repetitive Rock that feels as if by constantly recycling well worn ideas it can find itself back on its feet again. The vocals are uninteresting, the instrumentals are bland and repetitive and the lyrics are absolutely nothing even remotely interesting. Every song sounds pretty much identical and none of these songs have any draw or soul. Why Godsmack are still necessary in 2023 I will never know.
15. Metallica - 72 Seasons
This album screams disappointment. This album comes years after Hardwired...to Self Destruct and the glimmers of hope seen in that albums highlights are pretty much gone here, replaced with a wall of uninteresting, unflinching, Dad Rock filler. For a band who used to be hailed as one of the best of all time within Metal circles, this is some of the most unengaging music I have heard all year. But hey, I'm sure the tour following this will be good, and the album will probably sell fantastically so I guess I am in the minority here. I am just personally disappointed that a band I have loved for as long as I can remember care so little about their music.
14. Sleaford Mods - UK GRIM
I like Sleaford Mods, or rather I liked Sleaford Mods. My experience with the duo is the pretty solid Divide and Exit, some newer singles and now UK GRIM, and I have disliked everything after Divide and Exit. This album is packed with boring instrumentation, lifeless vocals and weak lyrics that barely resembles anything they have done before. If it weren't for the surprisingly solid "On the Ground" this would be a complete waste because every other song is terrible.
13. Circa Waves - Never Going Under
Extremely boring Indie Rock that tries to pretend that it does new and interesting things but stays under every single Indie Rock cliche under the sun. Being cliched isn't in itself a bad thing but when the songs are this boring then it really just seeks to make it all the worse. The production is also pretty bad, with a level of pointless polish removing any bite the songs could have. Every now and then it does something vaguely interesting and there is promise here but it mainly remains entirely unremarkable and exhausting.
12. Pitbull - Trackhouse
When was the last time you listened to Pitbull? For most people, I'm sure the answer is somewhere between the mid to late 2010s. Well, would it surprise you that he has not changed in the slightest? The music surrounding him has, somewhat, the Reggaetón influence is something to grab onto but that isn't what I meant. Pitbull has not changed, remotely, his lyrics are the same as ever, and his flow is the same as ever, it feels as if this man has been frozen since I last heard him. As far as the instrumentals go, a consistent element is the reuse of music and melodies of the past, the House of Pain sample on "JUMPIN", covering the 4 Non Blondes for the hook on "Let's Take a Shot", the extremely lazy sample on "Roof on Fire" among many others, it all comes across as lazy, hoping the good memories attached to what is being sampled will transfer to the music. The other tracks don't fare much better, "Suave" has a deeply unpleasant beat, it is far too busy and just feels exhausting. On the whole, did Pitbull need to make new music this year? In my opinion no, but if you are really in the mood for Pitbull, well he is the same as ever.
11. TX2 - Randy McNally (No Love Like Christian Hate)
TX2 made themselves known to me due to the storm of mockery received by their song "I Would Hate Me Too" and sad to say I happened to agree. That song's empty-brained stomping instrumental with the complete lack of interesting melodic additions and poor vocal performance left it feeling pretty unbearable. Those same complaints go across this whole EP, as most songs tend to follow the same miserable structure. The lyrical topics are generally progressive and pro-lgbtq+ and I align myself with the artist's views, but agreeing with an artist isn't the same as liking their music so, sad to say this project does nothing for me. For a final note, I will comment on the surprisingly out-of-place and okay final track, which sounds like the artist's attempt at making a modernised take on "Brick" by Ben Folds Five, and while it is nowhere near as good as that song, it is definitely the highlight.
10. Kevin Abstract - Blanket
Each song feels like an unfleshed-out idea rather than a song, tuneless and hookless. Kevin Abstract's vocals, famously versatile and ever-changing lock themselves into this one soft delivery and never leave, and combined with the bland instrumentals it all comes together in this one monotone slog. On the base level, these songs sound nice, they are decently performed and the aesthetics blend well, but on a songwriting level, they are beyond shallow, with practically no definable elements to grab onto. Even the brief moment we get some more energy on the track "Mr. Edwards" is short-lived as it is a 52-second long interlude. You may think it is extreme to dislike a release this unremarkable this much but I feel that being boring is the worst thing an album can be and this album truly bored me to death. I have hope that Abstract could make good music again and hell I think this direction could work, but the songs here just aren't good enough.
9. Roger Waters - The Dark Side of the Moon Redux
This is one of the most self-indulgent products of the year, from his melodramatic spoken word to the bland and directionless new instrumentals, this all feels like this was made for only Waters. Most of the songs have been made worse but "On the Run" has been truly butchered, the iconic synth line is practically unrecognizable and replaced with this lifeless pulse, of course existing as nothing more than the bed for more of Roger Waters's terrible poetry. If Roger Waters's goal for this project was to make everyone hate The Dark Side of the Moon as much as he does he almost succeeded, however the version he managed to make everyone hate happened to be the version he deemed an improvement. For me I struggle to hate this, I am just horribly bored by it, and honestly, in my view, that is worse.
8. Ghost - Phantomime
This is a collection of sterile AOR covers that never do anything to engage in anyway other than genuine disgust. The EP opening with a 1980s workout music flavoured cover of a song by Television immediately sets the tone for the consistent misery that this EP has. Every song is frustratingly overblown with Tobias Forge refusing to use any form of delivery other than the most overdramatic wails. Beyond the songs that are genuinely painful everything else falls into a slop of nothingness with nothing of note to latch onto with the prevailing polished production soaking everything in this air of borderline stock music.
7. DaBaby - Call da Fireman
Why does DaBaby have no personality? Throughout this extremely short project that question was right at the top of my mind, his delivery is absolutely sterile outside of the occasionally interesting adlib and his lyrics are painfully standard, not just in choice of topics but the way he discusses the topics are also played to death. The production here tries its best to set itself apart and to make up for DaBaby's complete lack of any defining aspects but mostly comes across as annoying and tedious. The most damning thing I can say about this release is it gets tiring and it is only a bit longer than 6 minutes, avoid this.
6. Bilk - Bilk
A very uniquely dislikeable Indie Rock album. Instrumentally it is solid enough, the riffs and patterns are bland but competent, but the real issue here sits with the vocalist. Firstly with their lyrics, they are utterly hollow, relying on the most shallow references that never go any deeper than the most surface level mention. But it isn't just the lyrics, its how they are delivered, with the most bizarrely stilted rapping I have heard all year, it feels more like someone you know doing a mock rap voice than someone who actually earnestly wanted to. The parts of the vocals where they ditch the terrible rapping are okay and that combined with the fine but uninteresting instrumentations stop this from being truly awful and instead it just lands up being very bad.
5. Moon Hooch - My Head & My Heart
Some of the most utterly vapid music I have ever heard. It offers nothing of substance, it is nothing but generic stock music drums with the most safe, joyless sax playing of all time, with occasional additions of synths so basic that they could be found as a preset on every DAW in the world. This bland covers album is so devoid of anything that I genuinely want to believe this is nothing more than a spotify hack because there is no way a respectable band could put something like this out and be satisfied with it. Beyond its basic, pleasant, friendly sound this is utterly worthless, skip this one.
4. Otep - The God Slayer
Cover albums are bad. I know that is a bold statement to make but I'd say 99% of the time it is true, it is the final refuge for a band or artist who have run out of ideas and need an easy release to pump out to leech onto the relevance of whoever they are covering. This is absolutely true with The God Slayer. Otep has not been relevant for a while now, mostly due to them putting out a series of especially poor releases and it only makes this album feel all the more desperate and sad. While the album isn't exactly a covers album, it's a blend, some covers, some reinterpretations, and some originals. None of it works. This is the first album in a while to leave me well and truly bewildered. I have been struggling to understand how and why an album like this would even be released. The vocals are bad, the production is bad, the writing is bad, the choice of covers is consistently questionable and more than anything the songs are just poorly made. Otep have done good things in the past, it was a while ago but they have, what happened?
3. Lukas Graham - 4 (The Pink Album)
Lukas Graham are responsible for one of the most detestable one hit wonders in history with the utterly soul sucking "7 Years", the most impressive accomplishment of this album connects directly to that song, in that every single song on this album is somehow worse than it. This is some of the most vapid, flavourless and lifeless music I have ever heard, every single aspect of it feels as if it is doing the bare minimum to be considered music as it repeatedly lazily riffs on the sonic palettes of AJR and Maroon 5. The idea that this is a band is equally confusing to me. A group of people sat and wrote these songs? I find that extremely hard to believe. This sounds like the product of one writer who has to turn in their final draft the day before the deadline because they spent the rest of that week writing for another artist they like more. Some of the few breaks to the monotony of this album are the features, and this isn't a complement frankly. Khalid and Mickey Guyton are fine, they do their job well enough and give a well needed break from the lead vocalists voice. G-Eazy is a different story. G-Eazy has been making music for well over a decade now, so how does he still sound like he just started yesterday? There is an air of inexperience in everything he has ever made and it even comes across in his features.
2. Sleep Token - Take Me Back to Eden
It's been a while since I was reminded of the horrible state that the metal mainstream is in, and Sleep Token might be the most horrifying reminder of said state. This blend of soulless Art Pop combined with the most generic and empty Metal chugging is never once seamless, it always feels flabby and abrupt in how it jolts and shifts and even when it is blended effectively it still sounds terrible. The worst aspect however are the vocals, which take on this tone of yarling melodrama, which sounds absolutely insufferable and the painfully generic rough vocals are just as insipid. The only upside I can see to this album is that it may be a good gateway into metal for someone unfamiliar, but otherwise this feels pretty worthless to me. This is pretty much everything I dislike about modern Metal rolled into one release.
1. MÃ¥neskin - Rush!
Rock has been a joke in the mainstream for years. People who are self proclaimed "Exclusively Rock Fans" will flinch at admitting this but they know it is true. Institutions in the mainstream eye have long rewarded the work of nostalgia miners and the creatively bankrupt. Mainstream Rock never evolves because to evolve is to stop being supported by Rock fans and radio, so bands must remain firmly and unremarkably in their own lanes in order to stay relevant. Rush! sees a band at their most derivative. Complete with atrocious lyrics (especially on the agonising "Kool Kids") and uninspired instrumentals. This album fails as both a Rock album, as it lacks any grit or intensity and as a Pop album, with some of the most appalling and repetitive hooks I have heard from any band. Especially apparent in painful songs like "Bla Bla Bla", with noxious onomatopoeia being used in the place of any form of clever song writing to create its atrocious hook. Another thing that weighs on the listener as the album continues is it's crushing length. This album doesn't seem that long, 52 minutes isn't too much all things considered. But what makes it feel like an eternity is its 17 tracks, and when you have 17 tracks that all sound either the same or make no impression it gets agonising extremely quickly. When a song is a "Rocker" it is nothing more, when a song is a ballad you can be assured that it delivers it in the most plain and empty way possible. The albums one redeeming element is found in the song "Gasoline" which is the only time the band manage to find themselves a decent groove, and even then it is spoiled by the vocals. On that topic, vocally this album is equally frustrating. Damiano David has one of the most hateable and snide voices of any frontperson, with every word having the self impressed sneer of the worst of the Hair Metal vocalists. You get the impression that he doesn't feel the need to try because by appealing to close-minded rock dads and hate listeners (which I am sadly feeding into) he knows he can continue to rake in lucrative profits.