These are my personal Top 10 Worst Albums of the Year.  The rankings of these records only reflect my personal lack of enjoyment of each album.

10. Justin Bieber - Changes

Listening to this record was like accidentally grabbing for the paprika instead of the chili powder. I would not have guessed this to be an R&B record if Justin himself didn’t refer to is as an R&B record. The grooves are stiff, the production is overproduced, and Justin’s performances were painfully boring. He really brought that yucky on this album.

9. G-Eazy - Everything’s Strange Here

Yet again, we have another rapper thinking that they can make a rock album only for it to come together into a spectacular mess. No question, Gerald absolutely butchered every song that he chose to cover on this album. His vocal performances are consistently anemic and get increasingly unlistenable the longer I listen to the record. The lyrics are so bad that his themes of heartbreak and depression on the record don’t even end up translating into anything relatable or compelling. Because each song is so overproduced and his singing is so weak, the album doesn’t come together as this dramatic & cathartic exercise of real grief. Instead, he just comes off super desperate and as cringy as ever, especially on the song Had Enough. That song makes me want to put my head thru a wall. I think Gerald might need to take some time to focus on himself.

8. Green Day - Father of All

This album officially defines Green Day as one of the most out of touch bands in modern music. I couldn’t have told you that this was a Green Day album only listening to it. This record is everything that Green Day was making fun of on their best records, only for them to emulate it almost 20 years later. It is an amalgamation of the worst that glam rock, garage rock, alternative rock, and ButtRock have to offer, packaged like a 15-year-old piece of stale gum that you found from underneath your couch. The production is almost nonexistent, and each song runs like an awful YouTube ad pre-roll that you’re rushing to skip. This was repulsive on impact and continues to worsen over time.

7. Machine Gun Kelly – Tickets to My Downfall

Let’s be honest with ourselves here: MGK got bodied by Eminem so hard that he had to switch genres. The sooner that we internalize this, the sooner we can come back to reality and acknowledge that this album is a focus grouped attempt at MGK going pop punk. There’s absolutely nothing edgy or rebellious about any of the songs on this album. It’s insulting how inoffensive and tame these songs are. The production is over compressed and headache inducing. The trap beats laced into the rock songs are total garbage. MGK’s performances are so nondescript for this style of rock music that I couldn’t point him out of a lineup of pop punk singers if I tried. If MGK and his label can convince you that he’s making great pop punk on this album, they can probably convince you of anything.

6. Sam Hunt – Southside

It’s pretty hard to sit thru the entirety of this record. The blend of country and trap music on this album is like bleach & ammonium, and it’s super hard to consume any of it. The production is more overblown than a Nickelback record and has that infamous Bro Country sleekness that Nashville made records often come presented with. Thematically, we have another sad (and slightly creepy) case of rejection and the subsequent indignance that comes from a lack of self-reflection. Overall, it’s completely neutered of any gritty storytelling or rustic instrumentation that you want in a good country record. Instead, we hear Sam pour his heart out like a lukewarm can of Bud Light that was left out in the sun for too long over lazy trap country beats. If you want to hear your ex’s “Please Respond!” texts in song form, feel free take a swig of this moonshine right here.

5. Trapt – Shadow Work

mr trapt.jpeg — Genre: Headstrong

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I had to back off from this before it took me on. This album was so Headstrong, it was ready to take on anyone.

4. Psychosexual - Torch the Faith

Genre: Industrial Metal, Nu Metal, Alt Metal

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This album is arguably the worst that Nu metal and alternative metal has ever had to offer on a single record. The production is consistently unpleasant, and the vocals are so bad that they become hilarious. The hypersexual themes running throughout the album are presented in this awful Mountain Dew fueled edge lord aesthetic that makes me instantly run the other direction. It’s like if Five Finger Death Punch really needed to rub one out before they hit the studio. I felt like I needed to take a shower after listening to it.

3. Danzig – Danzig Sings Elvis

How anyone, let alone one of the greatest frontmen in punk ever, can mess up a covers album up this badly is beyond me. It just sounds like he performed the whole album completely hammered at the local bar band and recorded the performance with the Voice Memo app on his iPhone. If any of these renditions were your first impression of Elvis, they might actually be ruined for you. The instrumentation is consistently shoddy and badly performed, and Danzig missed almost all of the notes in his vocal performances throughout the record. If this was Karaoke Night, he’d be booed off the stage instantly.

2. Tom MacDonald – Gravestones

Let me get this straight: viral video after viral video, single after single, Tom MacDonald displays this painfully corny and unlikable anti-SJW persona. It’s apparent from the beginning that he makes these songs intentionally to get a rise out of his haters. As a result, his songs galvanize his hardcore fanbase into believing that he’s this antiestablishment truth teller that’s calling it as he sees it and sticks it to his triggered detractors.

Yet when he announces this very album Gravestones for release this year, not only does he opt not to post the album on any digital streaming platform for the greater public to hear, but only sells CD copies of his album through his own website along with merch for the album rollout. Normally, logistical facts like these are not relevant to my personal enjoyment of an album. Tom MacDonald has the right to release his music however he chooses to do so. My greater issue with having known this, however, becomes clear once I hear the track list of songs according to the CD.

Luckily, half of the track list is already in the form of music videos, so half the battle was already won once I found the rest of the album. Musically, the songs are painfully formulaic: A generically inspirational or dark Recovery era Eminem type beat gets looped, and Tom uses the same repetitive lyrical miracle flow on every song. But the musicality is never the cardinal sin of any Tom MacDonald song. It’s always his lyrics and his themes. Consistently throughout this record, Tom yet again finds himself on his expired anti SJW high horse. He keeps whining about how easily offended people are, how real he is & how the industry is full of fakes (along with a hearty amount of blatant bigotry and his subsequent justifications for it)

What the hell is there more to say about Tom at this point? His album is the lowest hanging fruit that you’ll sink into this year. He’s the Indignant Macklemore: a triggered anti-SJW snowflake that whines about how soft everyone is, while simultaneously being soft enough to withhold his own music on any digital streaming platform for the greater public to access and process on the merits of its own quality. He makes music for your creepy gym teacher that has a Punisher logo on the back of his SUV, and all he can do at this point in his career is troll people while concurrently grifting off of the victim complex of his sad white male fans that can’t get enough of the libs being triggered.

1. Jay Electronica – Act II: The Patents of Nobility

I’ll just come clean: This is the most Overrated Hip Hop Album of All Time. Out of all of the Hip Hop albums ever made in the history of the 47-year-old genre, this one is the most disappointing hip hop album ever released. I’ll grant you that it’s a leak and that it’s demo quality. But we did not wait ten full years of album silence from Jay Electronica just to get a demo quality version of the album we were expecting. An entire generation of rappers has emerged and eclipsed Jay Electronica’s legacy in the process, as fans constantly pleaded for Act II to come out. The longer I sit with this album over time, the deeper my disappointment for Jay Electronica as a rapper and a figurehead in Hip Hop grows. My expectations for it were not even very high going into it following A Written Testimony, yet somehow Act II comes out a lot rougher & aged worse than A Written Testimony. No doubt, this album disappointed me the most this year. This is almost the St Anger of Hip Hop. Almost.

Top 10 Worst Albums of 2020