Five WORST Albums of 2008

Welcome to the new year, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to personally congratulate you on making it through a year full of terrible things. For starters, Katy Perry proved that, as a society, we are still too shallow to accept guy-on-guy homosexuality; but girl-on-girl is a-okay. Do you really think "I Kissed a Girl" would have been as popular as it was if it was actually, "I Kissed a Guy"? Cobra Starship thought it might, but that didn't get anywhere. Here are some other atrocities of the year we just barely survived:

Kanye West proved that he's an asshole.

George Bush tried to help Americans better afford life. EPIC FAIL.

Dr. Pepper tried to give everyone in the U.S. a free soda. As if that sounded like a plausible idea in the first place.

California passed Prop 8, pissing off a whole bunch of gay-rights advocates and starting a mini war between the gay community and the black community.

But let's get on with it, shall we? With no further ado, her are the five worst albums of 2008. (Please note: These aren't really the worst albums of the year...I'm sure some nobody in Tulsa, OK wrote a real piece of junk that nobody would be able to listen to without bleeding profusely from his ears. Simply put, this list is a collection of albums that essentialy failed to live up to their expectations. Keep that in mind).

5. Weezer - Weezer (The Red Album). TinyMixTapes.com had this to say about the band's 2008 release: "It is a sad portrait of a band that has been totally destroyed by fame and the pressures that come along with it." But TinyMixTapes is completely wrong. The reason this album is number 5 on our list of the year's worst releases is simply becuase it is the worst recording the band has ever produced--but still a heck of a lot better than the albums that follow below. There are 3--and only 3--good songs on the entire album that, fortunately for Weezer, are good enough to prevent The Red Album from being catapulted to number one on this list. "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived" is an epic song--and ironically, one of my favorites of the year--that nobody could have pulled off quite like Rivers Cuomo. "Pork and Beans" isn't bad, and "Troublemaker" also has qualities unique to Weezer's style. But venture past track 5 and you move from mediocre alternative-rock to a sonic collection of crap not even worthy of placement on a b-sides album. Yeah, I said it.

4. Jack's Mannequin - The Glass Passenger. These are the songs that you should rip off of the internet so as to spare yourself from buying the entire album: "Miss California," "Bloodshot," "The Resolution." The rest of the collection feels unfocused and scattered. Outside of these three songs, the album is hard to get into and gives the listener nothing to hang onto; at least not as much as 2005's Everything In Transit. "What Gets You Off" just seems inappropriate and, honestly, it makes me uncomfortable. All in all, it feels like Andrew McMahon got lazy with his songwriting.

3. Panic! At The Disco - Pretty. Odd. When Panic! released A Fear You Can't Sweat Out in 2005 everyone was afraid that this band was nothing more than a synthetic piece of crap thrown into the spotlight by Pete Wentz's affection. But we tried not to think about it becuase, let's be honest, it was damn catchy. And I think that Brendan Urie and bandmates realized that they needed to prove themselves as real musicians. So they decided to strip it down, listen to the Beatles, and write some honest-to-god music. Here's the problem: the songs sucked. And everything we liked about the 2005 release is absent from Pretty. Odd. And what's more, the group of pre-pubescent, ought-to-be-nobodies is still hiding behind wild orchestral arrangements and synthetic production. You think you're so clever because you put a period between Pretty and Odd. Grow up. If you're gonna do anything, bring the catchy stuff back.

2. She and Him - Volume One. Writing this hurts me. It really does. I love Zooey Deschanel. Next to Michelle Nolan, I'd marry her in a heartbeat. So let me say this before I send her record to the shameful spot of #2 on the list: She's got the look and she's got the voice, but she lacks the hook. She did a smart thing when she paired up with M. Ward, but she needs to be smarter when she's arranging her songs because sometimes they just sound annoying. I commend her for breaking the actor-musician barrier and I look forward for a second attempt.






1. Guns and Roses - Chinese Democracy. If it takes you 17 year
s to write an album, you must be in over your head. Can it and start over. 'nough said.