THE TOP TEN WORST ALBUMS OF 2026

Oh, hey.  Didn't see you there.  You're a bit early, aren't you?  Well, to be honest, I could use the company, so since you're here, why don't we crack into this, eh?  We all deserve a treat now and then.  We're adults (mostly); we can open Christmas presents in November.

So yeah, here's my first contribution to list season, a full month early.  I've listened to enough albums this year, to the point where I ain't trying to seek out garbage to curate a truly terrible list (but holy shit did I have to in the end, more on that later).  I got ten I want to talk about, let's leave it there.  's all good.

No.  Wait.  It's all BAD.  Forgot what list we were doing for a sec.

MEH

Before we dive into the truly wretched, first we should take stock of the albums that didn't make that cut.  Albums that just didn't click with me, had one or two good songs that save it from total disaster, projects that were highly anticipated and failed to attempt clearing the bar, or efforts that didn't have much effort put to them.  Roll this year's first collage:  

 

Andrew Bird "Borrow Or Rob"
Angelique Kidjo "Hope!!"
Bleachers "Everyone For Ten Minutes"
Christopher Cross "Doctor Faith"
Clark "Opponent Stims"
Converge "Hum Of Hurt"
Dave Holland, Norma Winstone, Kenny Wheeler & London Vocal Project "Vital Spark
    (Music Of Kenny Wheeler)" (feat. Mark Lockheart & Nikki Iles)
Death Cab For Cutie "I Built You A Tower"
Dexy's Midnight Runners "Love"
Gayle "Observing Chaos"
The Head And The Heart "Ghosts In The Machinery"
The Holydrug Couple "Sesion En Vivo Estudio Novena"
Immolation "Descent"
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard "Alien Metal"
Kokoroko "From Metropolis Studios"
Look Outside Your Window
Melody's Echo Chamber "Unclouded"
Nellative "Just Spark"
Nems & Ron Brownz "I Should Boom You"
The New Pornographers "The Former Site Of"
Nightmares On Wax & Adrian Sherwood "In A Space Outta Dub"
North West "N0rth4ever"
Oddisee & Heno. "From Takoma With Love"
Paul McCartney "The Boys Of Dungeon Lane"
Peter Erskine "Four Gentlemen Of Verona"
Poppy "Empty Hands"
Prettifun "Pretti Loves U 2"
Rob Zombie "The Great Satan"
Rotate "Fogfall"
Squarepusher "Kammerkonzert"
Stick Men "Let's Thrak Again (Reel One)"
Temples "Bliss"
Toby Fox "Deltarune Chapter 5 (Original Game Soundtrack)"
Ulver "Neverland"

• Angelique Kidjo isn't the problem with that album; her duet partners made it a slog.
• Clark is incredibly hit or miss for me, and this was a suuuuper miss.
• Hum Of Hurt is only the third Converge album I've ever listened to (the first was Jane Doe for #MWE this year; the second is in a higher tier this year).  It just felt very whatever.
• Death Cab For Cutie has officially lost me.  The two singles were good, but the rest of the album is the same boring crap they've been pumping out post-Kintsugi.  That bait and switch got me to finally stop holding my breath for them to ever get better.
• Bleachers and Dexy's Midnight Runners were, until the last minute, number 5 and 7 on the Worst List respectively.  I went to write about them and found they didn't suck enough to honestly rate them that low, which led to a mad scramble to replace them (and as it happens, I was not only able to do so, but they kept the same spots!).  But make no mistake, they do still suck.
• I was really rooting for Gayle.  Yeah, I clowned on "ABCDEFU" when it came out just like everyone else, but then I heard her EPs, and I reassessed.  The more people complained about her being "allowed" to be in the mainstream (like that's some pure, sanctified ground or something), it seemed the more I liked her stuff.  (I also, out of all things, give a fuck about "Industry Plants" the least.  About maybe anything on the planet.  I DO NOT CARE.  Everything is the industry now; purity is a myth; people are more complicated than that.)  I heard promise in the music she was making: "Okay, she's kinda rough now, but a few years down the line, she could make some really cool shit."  Then this came out and, though that promise shows up in tidbits and smidgeons, this album sucks.  Two melodramatic ballads in a row are fine (especially if the lyrics are really good), but FIVE kills the momentum of the project stone dead.  And yeah, she's trying to be edgy Olivia Rodrigo still, and...I dunno.  I still want her to prove everybody wrong (myself included), but this isn't a good sign.
• There was a single that got me to check out The Head And The Heart's project this year, but damned if I can remember what it was.  This is just blah.
• Immolation's Descent is extremity for extremity's sake.  It feels like they're just running down a checklist of extreme metal tropes and...that's it.  Couldn't get into it.
• Alien Metal is King Gizzard's first abject failure at a genre experiment.  It's really whack, boring house music and I think it was meant to come across darker based on the videos.  It does not.
• Melody's Echo Chamber was this close to being #10 on the Worst List, but I ultimately talked myself into a different project that disappoints me on multiple levels instead of just one.  The songs all sound the same and they all sound like fog.
• Honestly, the Ron Brownz project isn't that bad; it's more than competent boom-bap rap; not at all what I was expecting from Ether Boy.  The problem is, a little Nems goes a long way, and I was done with him by track 4.  I did not listen to I Should Boom You Too.
• The New Pornographers follow up their second-best album ever with their most forgettable one.
• Quality wise, North West's EP belongs on The Bottom Ten, but she was frickin' twelve when she made it.  I'll give it a pass.
• More like Dungeon Lane Demo Tapes, amirite?  (No, I don't mean it sounds like Drake (thank God); it sounds like Paul McCartney just made some demos and fired out the first drafts here.  Maybe that was the point; the songs are about the early days of his friendship with John Lennon.  But I still don't have to like how it sounds.)
• Ulver's Neverland is perfectly serviceable background music.  The cover art pops.  That's about all it has going for it.

 

THE BOTTOM TEN

10. Devin Townsend "The Moth"

This one's gonna take some explaining.

I've loved Devin Townsend's music for close to 20 years.  (I got on board around 2009, when he posted the video of himself recording vocals for "Supercrush".)  I haven't been ga-ga for every single thing he's put out, but some of his projects are some of my favorite from the last two decades.

So when he finally releases his long-awaited magnum opus after ten years of labor and a mountain of debt, I...expected to feel something listening to it.

It's big.  It's loud.  It sure sounds epic.  And expensive.  There's an orchestra and a choir throughout.  It gets heavy at times; it strikes a nice balance between what "old" and "new" fans of his might want.

It just sounds so empty.

What could have saved this thing was a concept, or a structure, but, as usual, Devin be spitting lyrics based purely on vibes.  He's done this before, and it has worked on occasion, but there really really needed to be a point here.  There needs to be a reason for all this orchestration to happen, a theme, a concept...anything...but no.  It's some of the vaguest bullshit he's ever sang.

The reason this makes the list is not because The Moth is so terrible.  No, it's passable, but forgettable (which is not what you want out of a decade of work and a decimating expenditure).  What got me to lower it from "Okay", to "Meh", to eventually "The Bottom Ten" is the realization that an album like Powernerd (which was good, but not something I'm realistically gonna go back to) is the best we're ever gonna get from him again.  2022's Lightwork was also decent, but I only remember one song title from it ("Moon People") and not even how that song goes.  But he's done side quests before, right?  For every Casualties Of Cool, we end up with a Sky Blue.  For every Terria we end up with a Physicist.  Man's not perfect.

But his last passion project before this was The Puzzle (2021), which was...y'know, I don't actually know what that was.  Not after hearing the album multiple times, not after listening to multiple podcasts where he rambled about it for hours (which were supposed to be about other albums he'd done, but he was so into The Puzzle, he just hijacked the topic on himself).  It was a fragmented mess that not only didn't coalesce into anything, it didn't have any pieces that even stuck with me.

His big, passion projects used to yield stuff like the original four Devin Townsend Project albums (which are his best work).  Or Empath (which is also some of his best work).  Or...Z2 (which was...not).  The guy would swing for the fences and connect a good chunk of the time is what I'm sayin'.  But that hasn't happened post-pandemic yet.

Will Devin Townsend put out another good album?  Of course he will.  The next one won't be at this scale (I hope), and we'll get another decent set.  But man I'm not looking forward to whatever his creative muse is really cooking up.  I don't think it'll be for me.

9. Wicked Meets Metal

THEATER KID ENNNNERRRRGIIIIIEEEEE (derogatory)

8. Beck "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime"

A bunch of shitty covers (and I mean shitty) plus a few okay songs from soundtracks in Beck's sad bastard mode (which usually doesn't work for me in the first place) and you've got a lackluster pack of tunes not worth your time nor tolerance.

7. Sienna Spiro "Visitor"

She just has a prepared piano of a voice, doesn't she?  Plinky-plunky with no sustain.  And she's trying to be Adele.  It just doesn't work.  (Did like the piano line on "Great Expectation" though; the actual piano line.)

6. My Morning Jacket "Peacelands"

HOOO this stunk.  I've been wildly up and down on My Morning Jacket over the years, somehow without hearing a full project.  Lead vocalist Jim James's "Throwback" on 2018's Uniform Distortion was one of my favorite songs of the 2010s.  It was also from one of the worst produced albums I've ever heard in my life.  Their single last year "Time Waited" got me to put Is on my list to check out (of course, because of how 2025 went, I didn't get to it.).  So when this dropped, I figured I'd make up for lost time.

His voice is.  So.  WEEDY.  So weak.  So weasely.  Intimacy, closeness, what have you, do them whatever the opposite of a favor is.  On top of it all, it sounds like the vocals are peaking on track 1; it's not even recorded well.  Doesn't help that all there is to accompany it is an acoustic guitar.  I know this is a compilation of covers and acoustic re-dos, so it's not like I'm never gonna give My Morning Jacket another chance, but WOW did I pick the worst place to try to get on board.

5. The Strokes "Reality Awaits"

Why does he sound like a wounded cat with occasional autotune?  I'm sure that's what even the fans of this band were wondering when they clicked play.

[Confession time: I've never liked The Strokes and never will.  I only listened to this because Bleachers failed me at the 11th hour on a re-listen and I needed something that obviously sucked to stand in its place.  What I'm saying is normally I wouldn't have bothered, but circumstances being what they were, this'll do.]

4. Pat McAfee "The Diary Of A Polarizing Figure"

Heard this on a reaction stream.  It's really a nothing-burger ass album, but because of how nothing and safe it is, it winds up being worse for it.  The idea around this album is Pat McAfee is a man with polarizing (implied: dangerous) opinions, and you should beware!  He's gonna let it all out right here, right now!  And then most of these songs are about nothing.  Not in a Seinfeld way; in a Centrist way.  I could break down what I mean by that, but that wouldn't be in keeping with the spirit of The Diary Of A Polarizing Figure, so I shall refrain.

3. Drake "Iceman"

Why...do we keep giving him attention?  Y'know what?  Pause on this one; we'll get back to it.

2. Drake "Maid Of Honour"

At least this one was funny bad.  

1. Drake "Habibti"

Whelp.  Drake wanted to be #1, 2 and 3 so bad, I GUESS HE CAN HAVE IT!!!!  AHAHAHAH!

Full disclosure: I only heard the back third of Iceman.  It sucked, but not nearly as bad as like Pat McAfee or even My Morning Jacket.  It probably would've still made this list, but at # 9 or 10.  I just couldn't pass up the joke.

Also, I don't care if people liked parts of it.  It's Drake; he'll be fine.  Cringe has always been part of his brand, now he gets to embrace LOLCow-dom.

Getting back to what I said for the Iceman entry up there, I am part of the problem.  Just because I tuned into a reaction stream of this shit rather than clicking play and giving him more numbers didn't really matter; he still broke all sortsa records, he still got his 40 songs to flood the Hot 100, he got his 13th #1, he still got #1, 2 and 3 on the album chart as a living artist.  And here I am still talking about him.  Mainly because I needed to fill out this list.

I don't do it out of obligation; I make this list, and look forward to doing so, because shitting on bad albums is fun.  Problem is, there are so many more degrees of bad below "Wow this album SUUUCKED" that I don't wanna touch.  So many repeat offenders in those degrees and so many fish in a barrel that making these lists is becoming tougher.  I'm not going to listen to Tom MacDonald and you can't make me!

Especially because Tom MacDonald's core audience is now the people that react badly to him and he knows it.

There is far more attention given to these grifter assholes because of reactions and reviews rather than them getting popular on their own.  Their intended audience is there...no, what we're led to believe is the intended audience is there, but the people that really get his numbers up are all the people shocked and offended or mass cringing at his music.  That's why I even know who he is in the first place.

And he just keeps making mostly the same old shit.  McDonald's glommed onto country/folk stuff recently because that's bigger than hip hop on the charts now, but it's still the same schtick, as it always will be.  Just because Drake's music isn't as overtly offensive, doesn't mean it doesn't share a commonality:

They're relying on you to click play.  It's all just ragebait.

It's content.

No, even I won't call Tom MacDonald nor Drake's music slop, because it isn't all (totally) AI (yet).  We need to reserve words to have meanings.  But it damn sure isn't intended to be music.  It's just product.  And we know that, but line up to say it tastes like shit just the same.

So why am I still covering Drake?  I dunno, thought it would be more fun than this.  Because I at least had fun hating on For All The Dogs (2023).  (Less so with Certified Lover Boy (2021), but still.)  This shit...it's just bad.  You'll notice I haven't said a word about Habibti, my #1 Least Favorite Album Of 2026, until this sentence a page down.  Because there's nothing to talk about; it sucks.  The end.  Whadaya want me to say?  It's Drake's worst album, he didn't try at all, he just wanted to pad his numbers and it worked.  Who cares?

And "Who Cares?" is not why I started writing Worst Lists, dammit.  Gimme something to work with!  THIS SHOULD BE FUN.  And it certainly used to be.  It may be again, but I don't wanna bother giving attention to the truly heinous garbage that's out there.  No AI "Artists" (lookin' at you, Wendy's), no Onision, no Tom MacDonald (or his Adam whateverhisnameisIain'tlookinitup partner), no Five Finger Dick Punch...none a that.  I love myself too much to put up with the stink of a barrel of fish that I don't care enough to shoot.  If I happen to catch one of these albums and I don't have the choice of clicking away or leaving the room/vehicle, then they'll make the list.  I heard it, it counts.  But not otherwise.

Realizing there's a ceiling to how bad of an album or artist I'm willing to put up with does hamper these lists, but it also makes them more fun (for me, at least).  I hated writing the Number Zero entry for my Worst Songs Of 2025 List (which I'm not linking to, because it's literally an infohazard I wish I didn't know about, but it's still there if you really feel like being ruined forever), but I heard just a few seconds of it and I couldn't turn away.  I fell down a rabbit hole, and that's the reason I made a Worst Songs of 2025 List in the first place.  (Though because of Kanye's apology tour working for some fucking reason (because of course it has), I think a record of what he himself alleges he did is worth keeping around).

Wasn't I supposed to talk about Habibti?  Eh, who cares.  Listen to something better.


And something better is coming up!  Next up will be my Top Songs and Top Albums lists, coming...soon.  I would think definitely before the end of the year, since I've listened to a ton of albums and feel pretty full.  So stay tuned!

Don't give up.