"Fight"

by Ben Kweller

(ATO)

A pseudo country song that expresses its bland sentiment ("You've got to set your sight on the Lord in your life/You've got to fight till your dying day") with some genuine enthusiasm; it even devotes its first verse to a trucker, just to be completely shameless about it. Makes me wonder what some actual Nashville dude (or nondude) might do with it—probably a lot more.

"We Are the People"

by Empire of the Sun

(The Sleepy Jackson Pty Ltd.)

The music here contains unpleasant echoes of loads of mid-'80s stuff: It sounds like what a stereo salesman would play to demonstrate a system's bitchin' midrange between selections from Dire Straits, Peter Gabriel, and the calmer works of Rush. But the vocal is what really kills it for me: pinched on the verses and veering on the chorus into a falsetto that might as well evaporate.

"United States of Eurasia (Collateral Damage)"

by Muse

(Warner Bros.)

I was tempted to review this by simply banging my head against the keyboard and printing the results, but some explication is in order. This is a Queen rip-off. Since Queen sucked to begin with, you might expect someone retracing their steps to be worse, and you'd be right: By the time the stacked harmonies and hollow guitar prance fully into view, it's like getting rained on by bad milk. Or, more simply: qwwu8nnrtcd tyhlop;....uyd33v btg32d4c45.

"Notion"

by Kings of Leon

(RCA)

Speaking of horrible classic-rock redux, these bozos are long past their initial Southern-Strokes strategy: Julian Casablancas's blank affect would make the "Don't knock it, don't knock it" refrain of this majestic plod sound bored, but Caleb Followill just makes it sound witless. Or maybe that's just the way he grunts it out as if he were waiting for the Ex-Lax to kick in already. Okay, fine—it's both.

"Baseball Sex"

by Lil Wayne ft. Mack Maine

(MP3)

Not all that new, but a convenient intersection of several depressing trends of a bad year: the most pitiful-sounding Auto-Tune yet setting off a once legitimately great rhymer who should have taken a long vacation a while ago; stupid titular "metaphor"; guest appearance by Mack Maine, the most needlessly ubiquitous figure since Joe the Plumber if not Sarah Palin herself. Sure it's a freebie MP3-blog giveaway. It's still a rip-off.

"OK, You're Right"

by 50 Cent

(Shady/Aftermath)

Did you retire yet? Huh? Did you retire yet? recommended