Quick Hits, Vol. 196 (Nicki Minaj, Fall Out Boy, Death Cab For Cutie, Future, Gorillaz)

Before I get to the albums, I just have to give a shoutout to Maggie Rogers' new song "Light On," because its a perfect slice of emotional rendering filtering the synths from the Stranger Things intro music through HAIM.  And it makes me want to shout it from the rooftops.

Nicki Minaj - Queen.  This album sucks.  19 songs, over an hour, with two or three worthwhile tracks.  I don't even want to talk about it.  I already suffered through listening to it several times.  Lots of bad R&B singing to go with a lot of medium-level OK rap and A-list guests.  This one doesn't have the most streams, but "Barbie Dreams," which echoes Notorious BIG, is the best track.

Which just steals a beat, steals a theme, and calls out a bunch of rappers who she might bone.  None of this is good enough to keep.

Fall Out Boy - Lake Effect Kid EP.  Horrible.  Like, brutal and life altering.  Not even going to link to a song.  If you're gonna suck, man, just stop making music.

Death Cab For Cutie - Thank You For Today.  Sooooo boring.  Earlier this week, I tried just shuffling through all the music in my new music Q.  I was busy at work and it was nice to just try out new stuff without feeling a compulsion to write about it or really heavily listen.  Every time a song from this album came on, I looked at Spotify just to see who was crushing my soul.  I like me some old Death Cab, but this does zero for me.  "Gold Rush" is the hit so far, with about 6 million streams.

Sounds like KGSR, now "Austin City Limits Radio" (voooooooomit), in 1992.  And not in a good way.  Each song is just super milquetoast and gentle.

Let's find one more that I hate, or maybe two, to make this whole post all about terrible music.  HATERMODE 2!

Future - BEASTMODE 2.  I don't get it.  At all.  The continued robot voice fascination.  The good ratings.  Nothing on here piques my interest at all.  It just bangs and stumbles its way through each song like a depressed robot croon-rapping as his batteries run dry and he dies.  Nothing on this album, released in 2018, is in his top ten on Spotify, so maybe no one else gets it on this one either, but blurg... nothing special on here that needs to be retained.

Gorillaz - The Now Now.  Nope.  Very heavy on the catchy, sunny beats based on, like, a samba preset from an old casio keyboard.  Are people loving this stuff?  Anyone?  It seems generally happy and upbeat, but it also seems utterly devoid of calories or anything that would stick to your bones.  Somehow, the opening song has 32.5 million streams.

Jack Black is kinda funny in the video.  But nothing about that song invites me in for more, and the rest of the album is pretty much more of the same, just meandering synth grooviness.  No thanks.