The Worst Albums of 2021
Written, Designed by Nathan Evans
Every year comes with its surprises, and that happens nearly every week with each new set of albums to eat up. 2021 went largely as expected - if you gave me a list of the releases for 2021 at the start of the year, my expectations and the outcomes would be roughly the same. Artists I love came good and sometimes better than expected, and the uninspiring artists, naturally, delivered a cold takeaway meal full of mealworms and body hair.
(Side note: We need to talk about the album covers of this year, and how bad they were. Even the biggest albums of the year had cover designs ranging from unimaginative to downright grotesque - this became somewhat of a defining characteristic of the year in music for me.)
Aside from another entry into the poorly-managed work of a deceased young artist, and a cringe-worthy addition to the rap-rock canon, the albums that hold a spot here are popular artists that see a lot of criticisms come their way. There has been a growing trend of poptimism in the past few years as more underground artists have flipped the script to ride for the pop’s elite, but the records that fall into this category exemplify pop music at its very worst - cold, manufactured feelings that should always be in the back of the mind when praising pop. These are the boardroom-controlled products the industry pushed for - lazy, trend-chasing works that do the very worst thing for culture - nothing.
So let’s bash the obvious sinners. Let’s go for the low-hanging fruit. Let us smite the easy targets, because they have earned nothing but scorn in 2021.
5: Pop Smoke - Faith
Pop Smoke was a Brooklyn hero, rising to the top and carrying his city with him. Despite his first posthumous album being a resounding success, the rapper’s second is a show of the true colours of those who arranged it, more concerned about banking on his star power than keeping his legacy in good shape.
After a 34-song deluxe album just the year before, those managing his recordings in his absence saw fit to triple-dip, this time resorting to even more guests to pad out songs. Smoke’s contributions on Faith are stretched so thin, it feels like he lingers on here like a poltergeist.
Even more questionable are the directions he’s pushed in, some of which border on shameful. KEYMAG has covered the genius of Pharrell and the Neptunes before, but the plastic tropical beats Smoke is laced with by them are eyebrow-raising to say the least. The biggest sin on Faith, however, is Smoke being coaxed into a filth-encrusted Dua Lipa collaboration. A po-faced stab at top 40 pop with overly-sanitised disco production, ‘Demeanor’ is an uncomfortable listen - there’s no way he would have entertained this idea.
In an ideal world, there would be repercussions for how Victor Victor and Republic Records dealt with this utterly repellant release. Sadly, the exploitation and mishandling of artists who die young will likely only ever have a few rare exceptions.
4: French Montana - They Got Amnesia
A top to bottom embarrassment, French Montana is deserving of placement on this list. Reviewing this album is honestly like doing a comedy routine - the least necessary figure in rap recently bafflingly claimed that he’s a better hitmaker than Kendrick Lamar against objective judgement. The 37-year-old should be comparing himself to the likes of Tyga and the individual members of the Black Eyed Peas. However, with less desperate ploys at radio records, They Got Amnesia could well be his “rappers’ album”. And with lyricism that could maybe hold its own at a primary school poetry contest and a lineup of the most disposable beats from hip-hop’s hottest producers, it’s hard not to see why.
The man who was exposed for faking his streaming numbers has roped in a yachtful of rappers and producers far more relevant than him, and for his troubles, he sold 15k copies first week, which in the streaming era probably gives him enough to buy a used pick-up truck. The album is defined by bold statements such as ‘I Don’t Really Care’ (at least we're on the same page) and “Fuck With Me, Get a Bag”, which is doubtful looking at the last sentence. Elsewhere, ‘Bad Season’ has an ear-wrinkling hook that sounds like someone opening their mouth for the dentist, and ‘The Paper’ is a come-up story with some laughable boasts at his value for a show as if his entire past 5 years hasn’t been defined by Drake and Swae Lee. If a genie came to me and asked for one rapper I could remove from the hip-hop landscape, French Montana’s name would come out two months after I made my decision because I completely forgot about him. His new, certified triple-paper album is as plain as the wallpaper in a Scandinavian showhouse. Just try and not have amnesia over this album.
3: Coldplay - Music of the Spheres
One notion that needs to be stamped out concerning Music of the Spheres is the idea that this record is ambitious. Everyone from social media figurines to credible journalism outlets has used the word when describing Coldplay’s ninth album, even going to bat against Radiohead as if the two bands compare like it’s 2005 again. It’s not even that Coldplay aren’t an ambitious band - in fact, their 2021 LP ranks rock bottom for that.
Ambition is not about chasing a trend years too late and wearing it like a ghoulish mask. There’s nothing brave in grabbing Max Martin, BTS and Selena Gomez by the scruff of the neck and racking in the profits off their names. This album reads like a series of attempts to craft the fake euphoria primed for television syncs. From the gate, one can practically see the adverts that ‘Humankind’ and ‘People of the Pride’ will one day soundtrack, and there’s no doubt that the plastic balladry of ‘Let Somebody Go’ will one day be included in an inevitable remake of Love Actually starring Chris Pratt. With MotS, Coldplay promised a trip across the stars. Well, they certainly took their fans for a ride.
2: Trippie Redd - Neon Shark vs Pegasus
Taken from a Clash article written by the author on the recent trend of rappers making shoddy rock albums:
Trippie Redd has threatened more rock-leaning songs on past projects, but Neon Shark vs. Pegasus packs all that into one diabolical weapon of mass destruction. This is a deluxe re-release of the rapper’s third studio album Pegasus, possibly as a cruel joke because the original album was such an indignant assault on the ears as it was. He enlists Blink-182 member Travis Barker to lend some surprisingly decent rock instrumentals, even if they sound like they were picked off the shelves. Redd’s goofy vocals deserve a full recall, clipping the mic on the hook of ‘MEGLADON’, and rampaging through ‘FEMALE SHARK’, whose lyrics were seemingly scrawled in crayon.
Trippie even managed to drag Chino Moreno of Deftones on here, which went over as well as a whoopie cushion in a coffin, and for contrast, the only solo cut without even Travis Barker ‘DREAMER’ is a concussion of 808s and the shrillest of guitars. The music on here is perfectly represented by its album cover and title - a bad product made with too many E-numbers, left to be covered up by someone competent.
1: Ed Sheeran - =
As Ed Sheeran soldiers on to complete his BIDMAS collection, his 2021 entry reads like he’s making his 1989, six years after Taylor Swift made the full leap into pop. But low and behold, = is a strength-sapping waste of 48 minutes. How can the album be engrossing when lifeless production backs up predictable songwriting? And it is predictable - it will make you feel like Mystic Meg, as you know practically every beat that is going to hit just by looking at the track titles. It’s the rom-com that plays into every trope of a rom-com.
The surprises come in the form of the tasteless ventures into hip-hop and dance-pop that bring out a reflexive scoff of disgust. ‘Collide’ is a desperate attempt to capture the sound of jungle. We all know about Sheeran’s ‘jungle fever’ from the previous album, but here, the incessant vocal tic that loops throughout is indicative of an embarrassing mishandling of the genres he plays with. Moreover, ‘2step’ sounds like the result of a boardroom meeting with a whiteboard reading ‘how do we get wine-mums to like trap music?’, and hearing Sheeran sing over the Love Island-style house music of ‘Bad Habits’ is the type of cosmic horror that had to have been commissioned by Jigsaw himself. Nothing, however, compares to the YouTube vlogger-core of ‘Sandman’, a xylophone and ukulele special written for his newborn that he chucked onto the album expecting fully-grown adults to listen to. Ed Sheeran’s fifth album equates to a batch of ready-meal pop music that shows the singer/songwriter at his most undignified.