Reviews by dutch-point-pro

Quintessential 1980s synth pop. Softer than Boy George at a Hooters with tracks that make Spandau Ballet sound like a biker gang.

Mom Jeans in the form of an album.

Lots of different sides of Dylan on this one: love-lost, playful, political, metaphorical, just plain stoned. You can feel that he’s having fun in a way that his sway over the years. Yes, it’s a bit too long but there’s so much good stuff here.

My Lotd, how much cocaine was consumed during the making of this album?

There’s no need for all of this, but who is going to be surprised that Sir Elton John doesn’t fully comprehend excess?
Even if this isn’t your taste in music, this is, essentially, the definitive K-Billly Super Sounds of the 70s, and it’s hard to hate on that. 3.5 rounded down.

As a young man, I enjoyed this album and rocked out to it. Now, as a gentleman of a certain age, I acknowledge the folly of my youth.

This is poorly crafted rap about ludicrous topics layed over generic rock beats. The idea of Mr. Rock being some sort of transplanted Mid-Western pimp is laughable - The Game would literally smoke his ass while the rest of G-Unit played whack-a-mole with Little Joe C for fun.

However, do not dismiss my review as just opinion. I have conducted a scientific analysis of this album to prove its true identity as the basic bitch that it is. Enjoy!

Using statistical analysis of several musical elements, I am now able to unequivocally offer the following results:
Across Devil Without a Cause, the rhyming structure is overwhelmingly dominated by monosyllabic end rhymes, accounting for 88.6 % of the rhyming words throughout the record, with polysyllabic rhymes making up less than 7% of the overall rhymes. The remaining amount ( ~ 4.5% ) is a combination of the same word repeating itself (Mr. Rock is particularly fond of rhyming diggy/diggy and boogie/ boogie in Bawitdaba for example) or a monosyllabic word being rhymed with a polysyllabic word, thereby creating a hybrid (such as ‘Bayou/ buy you’ in I Got One 4 Ya).

Statistically, the most complex polysyllabic rhyme: Yzerman/Heinekens (Wasting Time)

Statistically, the least complex monosyllabic rhyme:
Goo-goo Ga-ga/like piranha (Welcome 2 the Party)

Couplet Patterns: The primary rhyme schemes used across almost every track are simple AABB and AAAA end-rhyme quatrains, the most rudimentary form available.

Line Placement: Rhymes are positioned squarely on the 4th beat of a bar to emphasize heavily accented end words, showing the least amount of subtlety, variation or style and the most basic use of rhyme technique.

Internal Rhyming: Minimal internal rhyming is used across Kid Rock's verses, keeping lines structured around distinct, single-word line endings. This results in a lack of complexity in sentence construction.

Rhyme Type: The majority of the writing on Devil Without a Cause relies on Perfect or True rhymes, where words share the exact same stressed vowel and final consonant sounds. This foundational rhyming structure offers little variation or nuance. Upwards of 72% of the successful rhymes on this album are examples of Perect rhyme, with the remainder being a combination of Imperfect, Identical or Masculine rhymes. Some of the Perfect rhyming gems that Mr. Rock has crafted include: cup/up, sun/gun, place/face, rock/block, bitch/rich, name/game, seat/street, and west/breasts. He also doubled down on four line runs with gems like know/pro/go/low and room/boom/boom/boom. He is a true auteur.

Lastly, I ran the full lyrics of the album through an educational Lexile program, which deciphers any readable text by analyzing a number of key factors to determines a score that can then be translated to an approximate reading level and average grade ability. It’s the way us teachers decide if a book should read by fourth graders or eighth graders. The results:

Devil Without a Cause - Text Set Estimated Lexile Framework Score 350L – 450L Early Elementary

Key Structural Factors Behind the Low Reading Level

High Ratio of Monosyllabic Words: Over 88% of the words on the album consist of single syllables (rock, block, town, down, sun, gun). Readability formulas penalize complex multi-syllabic words, so high single-syllable density drastically lowers the calculated score.

Short Line / Sentence Length: Lyrical couplets average 8 to 10 words per line, keeping syntactic complexity low compared to prose literature or dense narrative verse.

Repetitive Vocabulary: Choruses and refrains (Bawitdaba, Cowboy, I Am the Bullgod) rely heavily on repeated phrases, lowering the unique word count and word length averages.

Low Polysyllabic Percentage: Complex words containing three or more syllables (such as desperation or consideration) make up less than 3% of the total word count on the album.

Lexile Score Grade Band Benchmarks
Grade Level Typical Lexile Range
Kindergarten BR (Beginning Reader) –190L
1st Grade 190L – 530L
2nd Grade 420L – 650L
3rd Grade 520L – 820L
4th Grade 740L – 940L

That’s right, second grade reading level rap, y’all. And that’s being generous.

May I say,

Mr. Rock is a devil without a CLAUSE and
Somebody’s got to FAIL this.

I believe I just did.

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I can’t believe these two guys are allowed to make this much noise without their parents opening the basement door and yelling at them.

Like a bad Superbowl halftime show - too many styles combining over a vaguely “multi-ethnic” groove featuring terrible rap “I rock steady like the LA breakers?” Really? No, you don’t, sir. You do not.

I think this is as close as I’ll ever get to liking an old school country record. Great voice and delivery. Still dislike the style but respect the performance.

The reason there’s so many Elvis Costello albums on the list is on full display here: each one has a few flashes of true potential (I Want You) but ultimately, the whole package under-delivers. The moments of inspiration make us hope for all the songs to be better than they actually are. When he gets it right, it’s genius, but scouring through 6 albums is betting that something will occur far more often than it actually does.

So fucking boring though, mate.

Elvis Presley is just 1950s Rick Astley with tighter pants. There’s some cosplay at work here, and it’s dressing him up to play the part that belongs to soul singers of a darker hue. He mumbles, he shakes, he broods, but he doesn’t do much in the way of music. Hard pass on this and the racist indoctrination that made him popular.

One of the most overrated bands in the history of rock. Remarkably boring music, unimaginative lyrics and uninspiring grooves. Every song feels like it’s a cover of another band’s song.

This was fine, but the same feeling song after song throughout the whole album felt long. I wish I could have purchased this as a cass-single instead.

Music by which members of the death cult furiously flagellate.

This one takes a while to get going and that is time I just don’t have to give. I guess I disagree with the critics … again.

Ah, AC/DC - Power chords and poorly written metaphors about vaginas. That’s all folks.

It rocks. Defined the era with a playful swagger that is notable for a debut album.

You know that guy who buys the huge pack of fireworks in June and starts lighting them off for an hour or so each night throughout the month leading up to July 4. It’s fun at first but, quickly, the colorful showers and explosions become predictable, annoying and start pissing off the neighbors and the dogs.
So, too, this album.
Xtina is blasting Roman Candles and Skyrockets left and right and we all have to watch the show whether we like it or not. Aguilera comes with a sense of entitlement on this album, a ‘sit up and look at me sing’ attitude which she has not earned. Yes, she has a big voice, but little else to offer. No intricacy, no nuance, neither depth nor sensitivity. In truth, the corpse of true soul music is unnecessarily dragged into the 2000s by her big voice and her bigger ego. The lack of control, restrain or tact in any of the arrangements or the runs leave me hating almost every song for want of simplicity.

This falls into the generic, alternative female singer songwriter 90s bin. Interchangeable with many others and nothing to make it stand out from the pack.