Rating: 5.5/10

After a surprise announcement last week, Post Malone has now released his third studio album ‘Hollywood’s Bleeding‘. There are a few highlights on this seventeen track project, primarily coming from the singles that Post released in the year leading up to this release. Sadly the album falls into the same trap as Post’s previous projects; lots of the tracks are forgettable, sound the same and lack any real depth and despite the eclectic selection of features, it just doesn’t really land.

The best track on this album is easily Post’s collaboration with Swae Lee that was released last year: ‘Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse)“, and yes, that is the full song name in the track-list on Post Malone’s actual album. The song is already triple platinum in America and if the title doesn’t already give it away, it was from a movie soundtrack. Don’t get me wrong, I love this song – but should it be really be on his solo album? The same goes for the single, ‘Wow‘ which is the album’s final track – it’s catchy, and again already has gone platinum since it was released in December of last year. Putting these songs onto the album, means that Post is almost guaranteed to get a number one album, and I’m not sure of the specifics, but on paper it makes it look like this album has already done amazing streaming numbers, even if people have only listened to these older tracks.

Let’s backtrack slightly though, as I’m getting ahead of myself. The album opens with the title track, ‘Hollywood’s Bleeding‘ which isn’t awful. Post sets the theme of the album as being slightly dark, discussing the toxic nature of Hollywood and the struggles at keeping friendships and relationships when famous. If this theme sounds a bit intense for you, don’t worry – by Track 11 I’d say Post himself has forgotten this theme completely. I still can’t work out if the album’s second track, ‘Saint-Tropez‘, is meant to be a joke: with most of the bars sounding like they’d fit in any parody rap song: “I’ve been doin’ what I want since fetus”. I’m not saying that I expected more from Post Malone, I know he’s not found fame from being the deepest or most lyrical rapper – but this track doesn’t have good lyrics, the production is pretty average, and Post’s awkward singing is just that: awkward.

We have to also take a moment to focus specifically on the track, ‘Take What You Want (feat. Ozzy Osbourne & Travis Scott)‘, because firstly, it’s 2019 and Post Malone and Travis Scott have collaborated with Ozzy Osbourne on a rap song. The track is obviously designed to get people’s attention and as it doesn’t feature any expletives they clearly wanted this track to get as many listens as possible. That said, Ozzy Osbourne’s feature is nothing but a novelty: he sings the chorus at the start and end of the track, but then Post sings the same chorus in the middle of the track and sounds basically the same, proving how redundant of a feature Ozzy is on the song. There’s a decent guitar solo at the end of the song, but it’s unclear if this is even provided by Ozzy Osbourne.

The rest of the features on the project are less bizarre than the aforementioned song, but I can’t say any of them particularly standout. SZA is enlisted for an appearance on ‘Staring at the Sun‘ which has basically the exact same beat as the Swae Lee collaboration ‘Sunflower‘. Then Future and Halsey feature on the track ‘Die For Me‘, and Halsey somehow manages to have perhaps the best verse on the whole album, as she takes Post’s singing/rap flow but actually sounds decent. Sadly, despite Halsey’s best efforts, the chorus of this track lets it down, as over the four minute track, we hear the phrase “die for me” repeated over 30 times.

The other weird thing about this album to me is that, out of the 17 tracks on the album, 10 of them are less than three minutes in length. Quite a lot of them, like ‘Allergic‘ sound like unfinished demos or snippets of pop songs that Fifth Harmony or Little Mix might have turned down. There’s just no substance to these short tracks – even the Kanye West produced song ‘Internet‘ is only two minutes and three seconds long. I just don’t understand the point of these being on the album at all. Part of me is glad that they didn’t drag on too much, so that it wasn’t even more of a chore to listen to, but if a track doesn’t add anything to an album, why put it on the album?

Even though this album is not a good album, it has hit songs on it. The four singles that were released before the album were all hit songs and will probably re-enter the charts with the release of this album. Even on songs like ‘A Thousand Bad Times‘, in which Post sings in complete seriousness, “You try to burn my house down / But what’s another house to me?“, the track is still a catchy enough pop song that I can see it being a hit.

Post said in an interview with Apple Music, “I’m not trying to make anything massive, I’m not trying to make hit records.” I don’t really think anyone can believe this statement. If he’s not trying to make hit records, then I don’t know what the purpose of this album is at all. He’s put out a project of 4 proven hit songs and 13 rap, rap-rock, pop-rock and trap songs which all sound the same, have no lyrical depth, but still all have the potential to chart and all will appeal to his fanbase. Given the quality of his last two studio albums, I can’t say I was surprised by ‘Hollywood’s Bleeding‘, but with each Post Malone album, I still listen and hope for the slick and concise project I feel that he is capable of making.