Twitter / Kendrick Lamar
The Razzies commemorate the worst movies of the year. Baywatch and The Emoji Movie, flaming dumpster fires masquerading as entertainment and flat-out insults to our collective intelligence, cleaned up this year.
But there is no corresponding non-award in music. Well, not really. Review aggregator Metacritic essentially decides what the worst album of any given year is based on critical reception. Business Insider laid out the worst album of every year since 2000 based on these metrics and plan to give you the best and worst of the last five years.
2013
BEST
Deafheaven — Sunbather
Critic Score: 92/100
You can spend hours dismantling Sunbather and cooking up a neat sub-sub-genre for it (post-black-metal-gaze-death-dreamcore-whatever). Or you can just call it one of the year’s best records.
WORST
Megadeth — Super Collider
Critic Score: 41/100
While there’s nothing abhorrent about this album, it’s so unobtrusive that it’s practically not there, just one more forgettable release from a guy we’re all secretly rooting for.
*****
2014
BEST
D’Angelo — Black Messiah
Critic Score: 95/100
It is masterful, it is heartening and it represents today’s best from an R&B/soul perspective.
WORST
Jennifer Lopez — A.K.A.
Critic Score: 45/100
The songwriting is lazy (“I feel good,” she coos, “’cause I don’t feel bad.” Logic!). The double entendres don’t make sense (is “Troubeaux” what they call trouble in Bordeaux?). And the guest stars, including Nas, Rick Ross, and Iggy Azalea, are so much more engaging than their hostess that Lopez sounds like she’s been relegated to playing the hook girl on her own album.
*****
2015
BEST
Kendrick Lamar — To Pimp A Butterfly
Critic Score: 96/100
This is an important–a very important–piece of work that will stand the test of time. It’s also an utter blast to listen to and live with.
WORST
Kodaline — Coming Up For Air
Critic Score: 51/100
It feels as if this is as calm as a placid lake. Sometimes, the record is as pretty as that, too, a nice, polite collection of adult alternative pop designed for young girls and their moms.
*****
2016
BEST
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds — Skeleton Tree
Critic Score: 95/100
From the first note to the last, you’re transported back to a time you lost someone close to you and then retrace the path you traveled as you dealt with it. I doubt this album inspires anyone to pick up a guitar or start a band and the experience it details is too personal to inspire other bands to make a similar album. But, if this isn’t a masterpiece… I don’t know what it is.
WORST
Charlie Puth — Nine Track Mind
Critic Score: 37/100
Nine Track Mind whimpers like a sick kitten.
-Q Magazine
*****
2017
BEST
DAMN — Kendrick Lamar
Critic Score: 95/100
Countless rappers claim to have transcended the game. Kendrick Lamar actually does. There’s the sense his ambitions on DAMN. are even larger, reaching toward something more universal, fateful even spiritual in its reach to find the link tying all contradictions together.
WORST
The Chainsmokers — Memories: Do Not Open
Critic Score: 43/100
Whether the album’s title is a plea or a warning does not matter, as the effect is the same: The Chainsmokers have one song, and if you don’t want to hear 12 versions of it, please do not un-click the latch holding this box closed.
–Spin
*****
2018 [to date]
BEST
Hookworms — Microshift
Critic Score: 87/100
Microshift manages to be both their most accessible work and their most intense: the sound of an already powerful band gaining not just clarity, but focus.
WORST
Justin Timberlake — Man Of The Woods
Critic Score: 55/100
JT’s smug family life is the single thread uniting this 16-track jumble of songs that swing between batshit and bland, and romance comes in two forms: soppy odes, or sloppy humblebrags about shaggings.
Too often, Timberlake sounds adrift.
Too much of Man of the Woods is musically and thematically shallow; at 66 minutes, it’s a mile wide and an inch deep.
It’s pretty clear that Britney’s ex can’t make good music anymore, the whole album is a mess.
-User review
[h/t Business Insider, Metacritic]