Worst of 2009: The 5 Most-Overrated Albums

One of the most frustrating things as a fan of great music is reading nothing but positive reviews about an album, only to pick it up and be blown away by how bad, mediocre, or disappointing it actually is. 2009 had its fair share of critically-adored albums that just never clicked with me (and a few more that just pissed me off entirely). The following list is for the 5 Most-Overrated Albums of 2009. Now excuse me while I go put on my flame-retardant suit.

#5. Bat for Lashes: Two Suns (Metacritic: 77) – No, no, no, there’s some good song’s on here, you have me all wrong, reader. But as far as it being one of the year’s best? Well, I disagree wholeheartedly. Natasha is an extremely talented young lady as evidenced here, and on her previous record, but Two Suns is too often an album that lacks consistency. “Oh this song is amazing, oh this one is alright; this one is totally crazy, this one just put me to sleep.” Thus concludes the insight into my thought process when listening to the album. So to close, allow me to reiterate: tons of talent, doesn’t come together well enough. Fin.

#4. Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion (Metacritic: 89) – Holy god there’s part of me that wants to put this one at the #1 spot on this list just due to the sheer amount of hype surrounding it. Positive review after positive review after positive review and the only thing I can walk away with after hearing this album is that there is one good song “My Girls.” My honest opinion is that this is Animal Collective’s worst album I’ve ever heard, and I’ve been listening since Sung Tongs came out. So technically that may make it the most overrated, but it’s not the worst album that got rated well…so we’ll move on.

#3. Fever Ray: Fever Ray (Metacritic: 81) – Okay so all I really know is that this album got fantastic reviews from several reputable sources. I check it out, listen to 6 songs and then never give it a serious listen ever again. This album is bad.

#2. Girls: Album (Metacritic: 79) – The most amateur crap I’ve heard since Boddicker. Each song contains mediocre music accompanying really awful (just awful) lyrics sung by a mostly terrible singer. This is why people don’t listen to indie music, because shit like this gets made. It’s one of those albums that you just have to think wouldn’t be around if the artist didn’t have a totally harrowing backstory (they do, I suppose). Personally, I don’t buy into this nonsense. This is easily one of the worst records of the year.

#1. Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest  (Metacritic:  85) – Yeah I know. Believe it or not, I had never heard Grizzly Bear before 2009. Now, like you, I’d been hearing amazing things for years. So when this album dropped at the beginning of the year, I didn’t waste a second picking it up. What I got was a collection of really uninteresting, boring music that did nothing but disappoint time and time again. I’ve seriously listened to Veckatimest several times through but have yet to grasp what the hell everyone is going on about. But hey, at least I know better now.