KRIS AVALON'S BEST AND WORST ALBUMS OF 2012

As we get closer to the end of 2012 (and if you believe the Mayan calendar the end of the world), I thought it is my solid duty to give you my picks of the best and worst albums of 2012. I didn't want to go through an entire monologue on why I loved the albums I chose, because I didn't want my reasons to influence your reasons for liking or disliking my choices. I like for people to make up their own minds when they choose their entertainment, because music is suggestive when it comes to taste.

The same couldn't be said for my worst list choices. I couldn't hold back as to why the following albums disappointed me this year. So whether you agree ot disagree with my choices, feel free to sound off on your favorite and least favorite albums of 2012.

1. Santigold - Master Of My Make-Believe

2. Ke$ha - Warrior

3. Nas - Life Is Good

4. Garbage - Not Your Kind of People

5. Rye Rye - Go! Pop! Bang!

6. SIRPAUL - The Horse

7. Adam Lambert - Tresspassing

8. Dawn Richard - Armor On

9. P!nk - The Truth About Love

10. Bright Light, Bright Light – Make Me Believe in Hope

11. Frank Ocean - Channel Orange

12. Miguel - Kaleidoscope Dream

13. Swedish House Mafia - Until Now 

14. Aesop Rock - Skelethon

15. Scissor Sisters - Magic Hour

16. Roc Marciano – Reloaded

17. Hot Chip - In Our Heads

18. Deadmau5 - Album Title Goes Here

19. Example - The Evolution of Man

20. Calvin Harris - 18 Months

21. Saint Etienne – Words and Music by Saint Etienne

22. Solange - True

23. Killer Mike – RAP Music

24. Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do


   

  25. Rick Ross - Rich Forever

   

 26. Crystal Castles - (III)

27. Icona Pop - Iconic

28. Azealia Banks - 1991

29. Brandy - Two Eleven

30. No Doubt - Push And Shove


  WORST ALBUMS OF 2012

1. Nicki Minaj - Pink Friday - Roman Reloaded and the unnecessary Re-Up re-release

Nicki is having a bit of an identity crisis. She doesn't know if she wants to be an underground hip hop artist or a rapping Barbie (abandoning her hip hop roots to give us a bunch of shitty dance tracks designed for 5-year-olds and queeny gay men) It also doesn't help that she's been in more beefs this year than a slaughterhouse, getting into fights with Hot 97 DJ Peter Rosenberg, Mariah Carey, Barbara Walters, Steven Tyler and her own staff (in that ratchet ass E! reality show). She's not a great live performer and thinks she's the only femcee that deserves to be on the pop charts. Her lack of musical creativity and focus has shown in both albums she's released this year because they were both Billboard chart flops. Yes Starships was a huge hit for her (it would be for you too if radio played it on every radio show simultaneously and in every shopping store you walked into), but one hot sone does not a hit album make. She should be grateful that she scored that Idol gig (which I think will only last her one season, because when producers realize the mistake the made by hiring her heads will indeed roll) because at the rate she's going with disrespecting the legends that have come before her and continuously releasing shitty music, being a perfume girl and keeping her face on Tv will be her only source of income she can rely on.

2. Madonna - MDNA

After Lady Gaga almost solidified herself as the new queen of pop by snatching every used wig worn by many of the pop divas that have come before her to create Born This Way (including a certain pop icon I'm about to go in on), this should have been Madonna's opportunity to release some of the best songs of her career and remind Lady Copycat why she is the #1 dance/pop queen. Instead she put out an album filled with uninspired pop tunes and dated dance tracks. To be fair Madonna had just come off directing a movie no one but her hardcore fans would give a shit about seeing (W.E.), but that's still no excuse to lazily handpick a bunch of shitty demos for you to uninspiringly sing over and put on your album, knowing full well you have delivered better EDM songs in the past on your Confessions on a Dance Floor and Ray of Light records. Also instead of releasing songs that would have probably given her some chart success (Love Spent, I'm Addicted, I'm A Sinner, Turn Up The Radio - the most obvious radio hit should have been the first single) she gave us corny dance unes with shitty lyrics (Girl Gone Wild, Give Me All Your Luvin). I also heard that the next single and video that she's releasing is Spuerstar, another weak track in my opinion. I feel that while she performs her ass off in concert, but she seems bored with this record. It feels like she's just fufilling her obligation so she can cash that $100 million check she's getting from her 10-year Live Nation deal. If she would perform more of the classics instead of bombarding her fans with some of the worse songs of her career in concert, then maybe as a fellow Madonna fan I wouldn't squint at saving up two months rent on a Madonna concert. Many have coined

3. Chris Brown - Fortune

Chris Brown has been in the headlines more for his crazy antics than his music, and while I did enjoy the tracks on his previous album F.A.M.E., his latest album Fortune sounds like an unfocused mess. One minute we're listening to some autotuned dance track that not even a coked out DJ would be caught playing in the club, the next minute we're listening to some uninspired paint-by-numbers R&B song and then he's all of a sudden turned into some thugged out rapper who probably drove past the hood instead of actually being from the hood. If Breezy spent more time in the studio making good music instead of trying to act like a thug who gets off on posturing and getting negative attention (like his equally fucked up girlfriend Rihanna), then maybe Fortune would have actually made a fortune.

4. Rihanna - Unapologetic

 When will this heifer ever learn to take a damn break? I'm sure she's glad that it took seven years and seven albums for her to finally get a #1 album, but to be fair it came out around a time when there wasn't really mushc music competition on the Billboard charts. Rihanna is a manufactured singles artist who has good songs, but has never released a cohesive album, and just like Talk That Talk the unevenness shows in the music. Maybe she's afraid that if she takes two years off Jay Z will create another RiRi to take her place, but at this point if she continues to overstay her welcome and bombard us with hookless R&B tracks (which dominate most of Unapologetic instead of the hot dance tracks that were the best songs on Talk That Talk), she may put the final nail in her own music career coffin. 


 

 5. Fun. - Some Nights

Even though they were just nominated for a Grammy, We Are Young is their only huge hit (thanks to radio overexposure and getting their song in a TV commercial). The rest of the album isn't has memorable as their huge one-hit which is why it's on the worst albums list.    

 

6.  Aerosmith - Music from Another Dimension!

Steven Tyler had to resort to picking a fight with my #1 worst albums pick in order to bring attention to the new Aerosmith album, and it's really kind of pathetic, since the songs on their new album are a hot ass mess. They haven't put out an album in 10 years, and when they finally got back in the studio, you would think that getting with producer Jack Douglas, who has helped Aerosmith create some of their best work would get the juices flowing again. Instead we got a bunch of songs that were all over the place and mediocre at best. I hope he saved up his Idol coins because the only way he's going to recoup the flop sales of this album is by touring like a field slave.

7. Linkin Park - Living Things


For the record I love Linkin Park. Hybrid Theory and Meteora were two of my favorite albums from them. But they seem to have not gotten the memo that since working with Rick Rubin (who is a music producer legend) their mix of electronic beats, Nu-Metal and Rick's rock style doesn't seem to mesh. This is the second album they've worked on with Rubin, and if their first collaboration was a hugt flop, why would you go back for seconds. it also didn't help that they performed Burn It Down, a flop of a single that came out over the summer at the American Music Awards. I was expecting more from a band that's been mainstream for over a decade, but when you can't even crack a dent in the oversaturated dance/pop market, you know it's time to regroup and come up with a better hit music strategy.

8. Maroon 5 - Overexposed

Clearly the band that Adam Levine fronts picked the right title for their album, because not only has he been overexposed by The Voice, but their album reeks of insecurity and uncertainty. Sure they had to catchy ass songs like Payphone (with Wiz Khalifa) and the huge pop hit One More Night, but my issue with this album is that it sounded noting like the music that put Maroon 5 on the map in the first place. Gone are the soulful rock/pop songs from Stories About Jane and they've been replaced by overproduced studio trickery. At this point if you look up sell outs in the 2012 Webster's dictionary. the album cover for Overexposed would be the first picture you see.


 

  9. Die Antwoord - TEN$ION

I love the idea of Die Antwoord and their music videos are pretty genius. I also loved the video where they poked fun at Lady Gaga. My problem with the South African hip hop duo is that their music is horrible.



 

 
10. Katy Perry, Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection

Nothing screams desperation when you re-release your Teenage Dream album with pop songs that sound worse than the songs you released from your hit album just so you can beat Michael Jackson's Thriller record as the pop star with the most #1 songs to come off of one record (she is the first artist to tie MJ with five #1 hits off one album). Yes all her singles are catchy as hell (thanks to Dr. Luke), but I have to shake my head with disgust when you pull a shady stunt just so you can beat the record of a legend.