As early as his first official studio release, 2011’s Section.80, Kendrick Lamar’s albums have been intricate and conceptual, constructed more like ambitious theatrical narratives than mere collections of songs. Fifth album Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers follows this trajectory as a double-album’s worth of interconnecting statements that are relentlessly complex, emotionally dense, and sometimes uncomfortably raw. Unlike the lush, spacious sonics of DAMN. or the life-affirming funk of To Pimp a Butterfly, Mr. Morale is scattered both in terms of musical approaches and lyrical perspectives. The album’s first half is particularly messy, with themes of trauma, grief, society, and Kendrick’s own uneasy relationship with fame all overlapping. His technical abilities are stunning and versatile as ever, but the frantic flows and jarring beat switches of “United in Grief” begin an angsty catharsis that runs throughout many of the tracks. “N95” is a seething cultural critique where Lamar spits bile in multiple directions over a bleakly catchy, bass-driven instrumental. Issues with lust addiction and infidelity are put under a microscope on the tense and minimal “Worldwide Steppers,” and Lamar depicts his troubled relationship with his father in painful detail on “Father Time,” which features a gorgeous vocal performance by Sampha on the hook. There’s further exploration of deeply personal family history on “Auntie Diaries,” which chronicles Lamar coming to understand the experiences two of his relatives had with transitioning gender identities. Throughout the album he funnels all of these experiences inward, seeking to grow through his own changes and the changes he sees around him. This shows up as a dismissal of celebrity on “Rich Spirit” or as striving for self-acceptance on “Count Me Out.” The album’s quick musical and thematic shifts can make for an uneven flow. The floating R&B instrumental and tender introspection of “Die Hard” come just a few tracks before cacophonous swirls of piano on “Rich - Interlude” and the jagged cosmic hip-hop of Ghostface Killah and Summer Walker collaboration “Purple Hearts.” The album’s intensity reaches a full boil on “We Cry Together,” a song that sounds like live audio footage of the most vicious couple’s argument imaginable, and reaches the same levels of ugliness as Eminem’s “Kim,” a clear reference point. As always, the production is immaculate and Lamar is joined by a host of industry giants, with contributions coming from Baby Keem, Thundercat, and even a vocal cameo from Portishead’s Beth Gibbons on the stunning sadness of “Mother I Sober.” While not as immediately accessible as some of the work that came before it, there’s value in both the harrowing and enlightening moments here. Lamar puts everything on the table with Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, trying to get closer to his unfiltered personal truth, and creating some of his most challenging, expectation-defying work in the process. While not always an easy listen, the album shows more of its intention as it goes, and ultimately makes sense as the next logical step forward in Lamar’s increasingly multi-dimensional artistic evolution.© Fred Thomas /TiVo

It’s easy to be popular and commercial. It is less so to be popular, commercial AND brilliant. Yelich-O’Connor, aka Lorde, runs straight into this category reserved to a fortunate few. With Melodrama, the young New Zealander confirms a talent that was already impressive on Pure Heroine, her first album from 2013 released when she was only 16! All the elements of the pop identity are there. Lorde talks about herself, about being a 20 year old woman from the suburbs, about her dreams, solitude and ennui, about the transition to adulthood, about love of course, and also about disillusionment. In short, no pop cliché is missing. Lorde works wonders with the raw material accessible to all. Without trying to make the genre appear more complex, and staying firmly rooted in it, she establishes her singularity, her style, her name. “Writing Pure Heroine was my way of enshrining our teenage glory, putting it up in lights forever so that part of me never dies. Well, Melodrama is about what comes next... The party is about to start. I am about to show you the new world.” With this second album, she highlights even more the quality of her writing, and of her voice too. Musically, there is no lurid effect because everything is done to magnify the song, and nothing but the song. In a way, the mastery radiating from Melodrama puts her closer to Madonna, Elton John or Kate Bush than to Katy Perry or Miley Cyrus. And in her post teenager coating, she almost offers the ingenuousness of a rather mature soul singer… In short, such an understanding of the pop dialect at only 20 is rather astounding… © CM/Qobuz

It seems like a minor miracle that Evanescence released their second album at all, given the behind-the-scenes toil and trouble that surrounded the aftermath of their 2003 debut, Fallen, turning into an unexpected blockbuster. Actually, so much drama followed Evanescence that it's hardly the same band anymore. Certainly, pivotal songwriter/guitarist Ben Moody is no longer with the band, leaving not long after Fallen had become an international success, and sometime after that, they lost their bassist -- leaving behind Amy Lee as the indisputable leader of the band. She always was the face, voice, and spirit of the band anyway -- dominating so that it often seemed that she was named Evanescence and not fronting a band called that -- but by the time the group finally released their long-awaited second album, The Open Door, in October 2006, there was no question that it was her band, and she has learned well from the success of Fallen. Pushed to the background are the Tori-isms that constituted a good chunk of the debut -- they're saved for the brooding affirmation of a closer, "Good Enough," and the churning "Lithium," which most certainly is not a cover of Nirvana's classic (that song never mentioned its title, this repeats it incessantly) -- and in their place is the epic gothic rock (not quite the same thing as goth rock, mind you) that made Lee rock's leading witchy woman of the new millennium. And she doesn't hesitate to dig into the turmoil surrounding the band, since this truly is all about her -- she may artfully avoid the ugliness surrounding the lawsuit against her manager, whom she's alleged of sexual harassment, but she takes a few swipes against Moody, while hitting her semi-famous ex, Shaun Morgan of Seether, directly with "Call Me When You're Sober," as blunt a dismissal as they come. To hear her tell it, she not only doesn't need anybody, she's better on her own. Yet artists aren't always the best judge of their own work, and Lee could use somebody to help sculpt her sound into songs, the way she did when Moody was around. Not that she's flailing about necessarily -- "Call Me When You're Sober" not only has structure, it has hooks and momentum -- but far too often, The Open Door is a muddle of affections. Sonically, however, it captures the Evanescence mythos better and more consistently than the first album -- after all, Lee now has no apologies of being the thinking man's nu-metal chick, now that she's a star.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

On his only major release of 2021, Nashville-based rapper and singer/songwriter Jelly Roll offered up the short and surprising project Ballads of the Broken. The brief album took a different stylistic approach than his usual countrified rap on almost every track, going from country-adjacent hooks ("Son of a Sinner") to eerie, remorse-filled pop tunes ("Over You"). His soulful vocals and the twangy backing are the main points of interest here, which might shock listeners expecting material like "Creature" or "Fall in the Fall." But for longtime fans, this evolution shouldn't be too much of a jolt, especially after all the hints on 2020's Self Medicated. In addition to eight fully-fleshed out productions, Ballads of the Broken includes two demo recordings.© TiVo Staff /TiVo

As Blondshell, Sabrina Teitelbaum manages to reflect the zeitgeist by channeling a past she's too young to know. Her debut sounds completely right now while also tapping into the same rage that has fueled the music of women such as Courtney Love, Liz Phair and Fiona Apple. Against a raggedly sawing guitar that explodes into a whole grunge landscape, she sings about watching Veronica Mars as a kid and how she realizes now how pop culture influenced her in all the wrong ways: "Logan's a dick/ I'm learning that's hot." Teitelbaum, who grew up in the center of Manhattan, has said the song is about how she wishes she had been more protected "from graphic TV and film, from New York City, overwhelming lyrics, etc… (for example, growing up to think men are hot if they're assholes)." It's a theme she echoes on "Joiner," which floats pretty and free as a cloud—"Think you watched way too much HBO growing up/ Now you got one arm cut/ And when you eat you throw up," she sings, punctuating that last line by exaggeratedly gagging. It's a form of irony at a time when adults are so worried about kids' exposure to TikTok and other social media; in many ways, the monster was in the house all this time. Teitelbaum shows how all those TV and movie romances confused her on "Kiss City," which starts off as a pop ballad before flying off the handle in a monstrous rage. "I felt like everybody just wanted casual things, and I don't want casual things. So what's wrong with me? That's why the song starts out so quiet, because I was like, should I be ashamed of these feelings? Is this embarrassing? And by the end I was like, fuck it—whatever. This is how I feel and I'm going to scream it," Teitelbaum has said. And when she sings a brutally honest line like "I think my kink is when you tell me that you think I'm pretty," you can't help but be reminded of early Phair. There are shades, too, of early Apple on "Olympus," about not being able to resist a romance even while knowing it's toxic and understanding it will cause self-harm. Like Phair, Teitelbaum is able to draw rich metaphors from ugly or everyday occurrences. She returns to a bad relationship on "Sepsis," which blooms from a languid mid-tempo number into a big rock power ballad—her out-of-control scream puncturing a swirl of guitar and  pummeling drum—and compares her love life to the sneaky, quiet infection that can so quickly turn fatal. And "Salad," with its ominous rhythm and badass guitars (circa Celebrity Skin-era Hole), acts out a revenge fantasy in the most Gen Z way: "Put some poison in his salad," Teitelbaum sings. "Look what you did/ You make a killer of a Jewish girl." A next big thing worthy of the hype. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz

After a stretch of uncertainty and stagnation, blink-182 returned with their seventh LP, California, their best in 15 years. The debut from "blink v3.0" features new guitarist Matt Skiba, the Alkaline Trio frontman who replaced founding member Tom DeLonge in 2015. Skiba joins Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker on an album that is both a return to form and an admirable maturation of the band's classic pop-punk sound. Whereas 2003's self-titled album had its moments, the 2011 follow-up Neighborhoods was an uninspired, stale comeback from a trio that had lost its heart and sense of fun. In the end, they sounded like imitations of younger bands they helped inspire. With California, blink-182 are free from the drama, reinjecting much-needed vitality and spirit back into the catalog. Fortunately, this is not merely blink-meets-Alkaline. Skiba has assimilated, while introducing new angles to the longtime Hoppus-Barker relationship with deeper vocals and bolder guitar. Those trademark blink riffs and "na-na-na"s remain intact ("Sober"), which should please the faithful. While the loss of DeLonge's nasally whine is a departure -- for better or worse -- the harmonies remain tight between Hoppus and Skiba ("Rabbit Hole," "Los Angeles"). Producer and Goldfinger frontman John Feldmann -- the first outside man since longtime producer Jerry Finn passed in 2008 -- received songwriting credit on every track and captured blink's essence and tightened their focus. Lead single "Bored to Death" kicked off the new era with a reminder of blink's appeal: sunny harmonies, a catchy melody, and a massive singalong chorus. The pogo-ing "She's Out of Her Mind" is "The Rock Show" redux, and "The Only Thing That Matters" is a raucous throwback for the fans who miss the Raynor-era. And yet, while these are all nods to the past, California doesn't wallow in by-the-numbers nostalgia. It's not a desperate grasp at youth and faded glory, but rather a reflective look back and an expert execution of what they do best. In addition to those quintessential blink hallmarks, there are many big moments on California conceived with outside collaborators. Faint turntable scratching courtesy of DJ Spider can be heard on "Sober," an arena-ready anthem co-written by Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump. David Hodges (Evanescence, Avril Lavigne) contributes to a trio of tracks in the album's mid-section, including another big tune, the pounding "Kings of the Weekend." Boys Like Girls' Martin Johnson assists on the title track, a bittersweet love letter to their home state. Whether it's DeLonge's absence or an actual maturation, there's something less bratty and sophomoric about California. For the guys who once ran around naked for a video and featured a porn star on an album cover, this is actually a welcome shift, evidence of natural development and an eye to the future. Even with the inclusion of a pair of short, juvenile ditties, blink-182 can't fool anyone. The guys have grown up and the results are as catchy and enjoyable as anything they ever did in their youthful heyday.© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

As Imagine Dragons would say, "welcome to the new age," as Kauai is a benefit EP (money going to Hawaiian eco-preservation) that, when combined with the free STN MTN mixtape, forms a concept mixtape plus EP for a package that continues the story found on Gambino's 2013 album, Because the Internet. Complain that that's convoluted, or better yet, accept that distribution channels now allow for ambitious experiments such as this, because this is an attractive R&B-based EP where Gambino's character offers a smooth crooning appendix that's post-relationship, post-trust-in-the-world, and maybe even post-hip-hop. "Now that it's over, I"ll never be sober" goes the opener with a slow, nostalgic roll underneath, sounding as if the rapper joined the DeBarge family, while "The Palisades" is a calm-and-cool cut with guitars strumming and harmonies bumpin' while the genre of yacht-hop is further explored. Tack this on the mixtape, which was tacked onto the album, and this is an opus worth crowing about, but Kauai on its own is a weird and warm example of Gambino in a casual mode, strolling through pop music as if it ain't nuthin' and yet turning out memorable numbers that come in handy any time the ego swells while the world outside betrays. Snarky and hopeful play well together here, plus Jaden Smith surprises with his stern spoken word during "Late Night in Kauai."© David Jeffries /TiVo

During the short time since her last album, 2013's Stars Dance, and the release of Revival in 2015, Selena Gomez went through about a decade's worth of stuff. A label change (from Hollywood to Interscope), a very public breakup with longtime on-off boyfriend Justin Bieber, management issues, various rehab rumors, and even a few good things (a hit single, a charting collaboration with Zedd). Revival is something of a fresh start for Gomez, both musically and personally. Taking more control over the album, with more writing credits and production oversight, the sound veers away from the bubblegum nature of her early work or the genre-hopping aspects of other releases. Instead, the album sticks pretty close to a club bangers-and-ballads mix with a couple of R&B-inspired jams thrown in. Gomez sounds most at home on the uptempo dance tracks like "Kill 'Em with Kindness" or "Me & the Rhythm," where the smoothness of her voice fits in with the vacant abandon of the beat. She also does a fine job on the tracks that slip outside the bounds of the formula, namely on the snappy, sassy Charli XCX-written "Same Old Love" or the steamy, tricked-out Latin beats and weird synthesizers in "Body Heat." These tracks show at her best, dialing up her personality to match the wit and imagination shown in the arrangements. The songs that don't fare as well are those where Gomez sounds most personal. She aims for several kinds of maturity here, but in the process the music suffers. Whether on the confessional piano ballad "Camouflage," the bruising "Sober" or the cartoonishly sexy "Good for You," it feels forced and overdone. Despite a few too many songs like this, there is still much to like about the album. There are some songs as good as anything she's done and the production is professional all the way thanks to heavy hitters like Stargate, Max Martin, and Hit Boy. It makes for a solid pop album overall, but it's a little too formulaic and predictable to rate among her best work.© Tim Sendra /TiVo

As early as his first official studio release, 2011’s Section.80, Kendrick Lamar’s albums have been intricate and conceptual, constructed more like ambitious theatrical narratives than mere collections of songs. Fifth album Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers follows this trajectory as a double-album’s worth of interconnecting statements that are relentlessly complex, emotionally dense, and sometimes uncomfortably raw. Unlike the lush, spacious sonics of DAMN. or the life-affirming funk of To Pimp a Butterfly, Mr. Morale is scattered both in terms of musical approaches and lyrical perspectives. The album’s first half is particularly messy, with themes of trauma, grief, society, and Kendrick’s own uneasy relationship with fame all overlapping. His technical abilities are stunning and versatile as ever, but the frantic flows and jarring beat switches of “United in Grief” begin an angsty catharsis that runs throughout many of the tracks. “N95” is a seething cultural critique where Lamar spits bile in multiple directions over a bleakly catchy, bass-driven instrumental. Issues with lust addiction and infidelity are put under a microscope on the tense and minimal “Worldwide Steppers,” and Lamar depicts his troubled relationship with his father in painful detail on “Father Time,” which features a gorgeous vocal performance by Sampha on the hook. There’s further exploration of deeply personal family history on “Auntie Diaries,” which chronicles Lamar coming to understand the experiences two of his relatives had with transitioning gender identities. Throughout the album he funnels all of these experiences inward, seeking to grow through his own changes and the changes he sees around him. This shows up as a dismissal of celebrity on “Rich Spirit” or as striving for self-acceptance on “Count Me Out.” The album’s quick musical and thematic shifts can make for an uneven flow. The floating R&B instrumental and tender introspection of “Die Hard” come just a few tracks before cacophonous swirls of piano on “Rich - Interlude” and the jagged cosmic hip-hop of Ghostface Killah and Summer Walker collaboration “Purple Hearts.” The album’s intensity reaches a full boil on “We Cry Together,” a song that sounds like live audio footage of the most vicious couple’s argument imaginable, and reaches the same levels of ugliness as Eminem’s “Kim,” a clear reference point. As always, the production is immaculate and Lamar is joined by a host of industry giants, with contributions coming from Baby Keem, Thundercat, and even a vocal cameo from Portishead’s Beth Gibbons on the stunning sadness of “Mother I Sober.” While not as immediately accessible as some of the work that came before it, there’s value in both the harrowing and enlightening moments here. Lamar puts everything on the table with Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, trying to get closer to his unfiltered personal truth, and creating some of his most challenging, expectation-defying work in the process. While not always an easy listen, the album shows more of its intention as it goes, and ultimately makes sense as the next logical step forward in Lamar’s increasingly multi-dimensional artistic evolution.© Fred Thomas /TiVo

Thanks to their power ballad "It's Been Awhile," it'd be easy for some listeners to forget that Staind got their big break thanks to none other than Fred Durst, the king of lunkheaded mook rock at the turn of the millennium. Not that "It's Been Awhile" was fun -- like all post-grunge hard rock of the late '90s/early 2000s, it was humorless and earnest, intent on catharsis -- but it had a strong hook that tempered the gloom and helped them cross over, even if their lead singer/songwriter, Aaron Lewis, remained fueled by angst even after selling millions. Released in 2006 -- five years after "It's Been Awhile" and a year after their fifth album, Chapter V, topped the Billboard charts without leaving much of a lasting impression -- the 15-track Greatest Hits downplays their early, churning Alice in Chains fixation and emphasizes songs in the vein of "It's Been Awhile." Not that the metal is completely absent -- their first single, the grinding "Mudshovel" is here, for instance -- but brooding ballads are pushed front and center; there are no less than four acoustic tracks tacked on the end of the record (including a cover of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb," which does produce the mild revelation that Roger Waters' narcissistic rock opera did indeed influence Lewis' lyrical outlook). In this context, such singles as "Price to Play" -- which aren't quite rock, yet not quite ballads -- sound akin to power ballads, which helps make this a good overview and introduction for those who were won over to the band via their big hit, yet for those who remember that Staind was once a protégé of Durst & Co., they'd be better off sticking with their old copy of Dysfunction.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo