Sawyer Fredericks
“Simple Man”
#71
Mariah Carey
“Infinity”
#82
In her mid-forties, Carey is trying to prove she still has a voice. She does, but the strain shows, and the song itself is a jumble—it starts in the middle and never comes to a conclusion. A singer with more sense, or less pride, would take advantage of the changes in her voice to work deeper, more subtle, less spectacular material. But Carey has spent her entire career strip mining her technical gifts, and only rarely shown signs of being capable of anything else. Now she’s in Vegas, trading on a past she can’t recreate and that she doesn’t seem to realize is both beyond her and beneath her. She’s never understood anything but her own voice, and once that’s gone (and by the time she’s finished in Vegas it will be) she’ll have nothing left, at least in terms of a career. Maybe then she’ll find something real to sing about, but I wouldn’t count on it.
twenty one pilots
“Stressed Out”
#87
I like the concept of Blurryface—I imagine him as a guy who’s mistaken his out-of-focus selfie on Facebook for his actual self—but if they push it too far it will turn into self-pitying blather, and right now they push everything too far. They’re not stupid, but they think their sarcasm carries some deeper meaning (nobody’s sarcasm carries a deeper meaning; that’s why it’s sarcasm), and that that meaning is somehow important. That’s the perogative of the young, but it doesn’t mean it’s right or that I have to care when they get arch about it.
Chedda Da Connect
“Flicka Da Wrist”
#94
It’s getting so every time you hear a rappper with a weird name and a choked, stuttering flow over a minimal beat you can assume it’s a viral hit, and yep, here’s another one. The hook isn’t bad, and I like the way seemingly random noises pop up in the mix, never to be heard again, but otherwise this is another record in a style that already seems to have run its course. Someday, though, one of these viral hits is going to blow hip-hop wide open. This isn’t that day, but it’s coming.
Brantley Gilbert
“One Hell Of An Amen”
#97
All my opinions of Gilbert in the past have been negative, and this record won’t change them, but “One Hell of An Amen” is living proof that sometimes the hoariest cliches can rise above our expectations and illuminate the home truths that made them cliches to begin with. The comparison that sticks in my head is to Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On a Prayer”, another record that took the most banal ideas and breathed life into them by investing them with naive belief (which is what all belief should be). It’s not something you can do intentionally; Bon Jovi never managed it again, and I don’t expect Gilbert to either, but that only makes it more of a miracle, and more to be savored.
Brad Paisley
“Crushin’ It”
#98
The craft remains supreme, and Paisley is too honest and too devoted to his fans to give less than 100 percent, but the inspiration has flagged. The play on words of the title is nothing more than an excuse to write a couple of professional-plus verses, lay down some more matchless guitar, and fool around with new production techniques. Those are good enough reasons as any to make a record, but we all know Paisley is capable of a hell of a lot more. “Crushing It” is the one thing he isn’t doing.