Worst Albums of 2024
Manning Fireworks - MJ Lenderman
There are certain albums you’ve got to accept aren’t for you. Charli XCX’s Brat was a full on cultural phenomenon this year, from endless memes to presidential campaigns. However, I’m a straight dude who just discovered chronic back pain, I don’t club and have never tried cocaine. That album ain’t mine and that’s fine.
But what about an album directly tailored towards your taste that only annoys you?
Enter the patron saint of the “Dudes Rock” canon, MJ Lenderman. It’s a label he’s attempted to shrug off, but since his breakout Boat Songs, he’s embodied a vision of cheap beer, good friends, and Academy fold out chairs next to the river. But on Manning Fireworks, Lenderman seems to have little interest in the “rock” portion of “Dudes Rock.” The songs meander, without a single one of them hitting above 90bpm. Outside of the legitimately excellent one-two punch of “Rudolph” and “Wristwatch,” the album seems content to stumble and snore. Lenderman’s voice, nasal and inexpressive, worked in quiet moments of detached irony, or paired with soaring guitar solos. Here it’s all laid bare, with his worst vocal and lyrical moments for everyone to see. “Rip Torn” is a lo-fi, nonsense rambler that seems ready to curl up into the fetal position, and closer “Bark at the Moon” does evoke Guitar Hero–a facsimile of better songs, clanking plastic replicas of superior music. But I guess you could say that about the whole album.
Two Star & The Dream Police - Mk.Gee
New Age, John Mayer, Mac DeMarco; at their worst they’re all music to be ignored. Impressive then that Mg.Kee combines all of the most insipid elements of his influence to produce a bland paste best marketed as “Easy listening(™)”. From the short song lengths to the incomprehensible lyrics, Two Star & The Dream Police seems like a demo collection from the worst days of 2010s slacker rock. Someone more curious than I might write on why Gen Z’s first guitar hero barely seems interested in playing guitar. But, just like Mg.Kee, I’m just too bored.
The Tortured Poets Department - Taylor Swift
Excess is a popstar’s most volatile weapon. Prince’s Sign O’ the Times, Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, Madonna’s Ray of Light, these were the pinnacles of superstar ego. Artists in their imperial phase that wouldn’t let CEOs, God, or common sense get in the way of hedonistic excellence. But the scrapyard of forgotten albums has just as many bloated, overstuffed records made by stars indulging their worst impulses.
Enter Taylor Swift. After reaffirming her spot as the biggest artist on the planet with 2022’s Midnights, Swift could have done anything she wanted. And she did, Jackson Pollocking her her emotions on an oversized canvas. The Tortured Poets Department has both her worst lyrics and an intolerable length, all dedicated to bad exes and petty feuds. Midnights focused on a meta view of Swift’s own fame, but The Tortured Poets Department is an entire album based on how Swift is the world’s main character. From uncomfortably funny lines about her boyfriend (“Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto”) to her usual production problems with songs melting into genre-less sludge, The Tortured Poets Department is Swift, in all of her worst moments. The really telling data point? This is the first T-Swift album my superfan friend hasn’t bought on vinyl.
Mind Burns Alive - Pallbearer
Hey sorry y’all, classic rock stations aren’t accepting new music.
The New Sound - Geordie Greep
Every genius needs an editor. So do the idiots.
Geordie Greep, once the frontman of jittery prog-rock outfit black Midi, unceremoniously broke up the band on instagram and dove into his pretentiously named (and just pretentious) album The New Sound. Greep had proved himself a guitar virtuoso, polarizing singer, uncertain lyricist, and his worst instincts became obvious without his bandmates by his side. There are moments of Zappa like dexterity, but, just like Zappa, the sheer crude excess weighs the album down like an anchor. Greep sings like his name sounds and shines an unflattering light on a parade of lecherous fools, but fails to nail the balance Warren Zevon or Steely Dan achieved while painting portraits of the pathetic. “Do you cum…..here often,” he slurs, and the entire crowd sighs at his bullshit.
Worst of all, Greep’s flirtation with samba, prog-rock, jazz, and a smattering of other sounds he’s briefly interested in mixes into a slurry. Listening to The New Sound becomes white noise briefly punctuated with some of the grossest lyrics of the year. When indulging in everything, everything eventually becomes nothing.
Fate & Alcohol - Japandroids
The “dudes” in “Dudes Rock” does not need to be gender specific. Have you ever drank a Coors Banquet while Thin Lizzy plays in the background and you think to yourself “hell yeah”? You’re a dude. The “rock” part is more stringent.
An early progenitor of Dudes Rock was canonized with Japandroids’ Celebration Rock. It’s an album I personally think is massively overrated, half of it brilliant arena anthems, the rest re-fried Springsteen nostalgia. The Canadian duo unfortunately leaned into the latter on their next album Nearer to the Mild Heart of Life. And Fate & Alcohol, we’re now at the point of microwaving moldy leftovers of what might once have been rock. Brian King’s lyrics have never been lazier (“Now I’m drinkin’ and I’m thinkin about you), and the production has never been less convincing that these guys once destroyed festival stages. A great Stereogum article on the band’s breakup revealed being a Japandroid was exhausting and deeply annoying. Just like the album.
Ohio Players - The Black Keys
Djesse Vol 4 - Jacob Collier
All the talent in the world doesn’t translate into taste. That’s the basic Jacob Collier experience. But there’s a more insidious plot going on here. I truly think wunderkind Collier is a net negative on the world of art. His obsession with technical glory has infected a generation of music school dorks who think adding a Dmajsus6/9add420 chord makes them better musicians. At least Yngwie Malmsteen had the tack to keep his masturbatory work in metal. Collier has infiltrated pop music, injecting atonal passages and whacky jazz chords into songs that would be better off without them and him. Much like Collier's voice, which is a baritone that somehow doesn’t seem like it’s hit puberty, there’s a wretched uncanniness to the proceedings, pop music fundamentally misunderstood.
…is Committed - Say Anything
B-movies are a hallowed tradition. Movies so terrible, their lack of quality becomes a quality. But there are few Plan 9 from Outer Space or Sharknados in music. It’s simply too annoying to hang around for long. But Say Anything have made the first b-album since…what—Riff Raff’s Neon Icon?
It’s a deeply unpleasant and unnerving reflection on frontman’s Max Bemis' sex life and obsession with rapping (which he cannot do) that’s so convoluted, so insane, so baffling that it becomes car crash fascinating. Every choice here is wrong; the trap hi-hats, Bemis attempting to croak back and forth between a death metal growl and a DMX-type shout, the lyrics oh god the fucking lyrics. If you made the opposite choice that Say Anything took on …is Committed you could create a perfect album—but it might not be as interesting.
Family Business - Lawrence
Should all White People be killed?
It’s a touchy subject, but between the Trump campaign and this Lawrence album, I think The Hague will have no choice.
Brother/sister act Lawrence create songs that somehow sound like they’ve already been covered on Glee. Lead...vocalist Gracie Lawrence’s ear-piercing screech conveys nothing but volume, and her brother Clyde is well on his way to becoming Jack Antonoff’s Wario. In total 7 out of the 8 band members attended Brown, foolproof evidence that the Ivy Leagues should be abolished. These Mormon kids gone theater kids have produced anti-pop, not that it changes the conventions of the genre, but makes the argument that the sound should’ve never been invented in the first place. When Oppenheimer said “now I have become death, destroyer of worlds,” I wonder if Prince or Michael Jackson are doing the same from their graves in response to Lawrence. If all of this sounds vaguely jokey, I’m being completely serious. The world would be a better place if this album, and this band, never existed.