You may remember that I had a less than positive reaction to Beerbongs & Bentleys, Post Malone’s previous album. You also might not remember that, because why would anyone bother to remember that Beerbongs & Bentleys existed, much less what I, some rando on the internet, thought about it. But here's what I, some rando on the internet, thinks about Hollywood’s Bleeding, yet another almost entirely forgettable Post Malone album. So, look, I’m going back to the well here, but our boy Post Malone did it first, if you get my drift.
This album is different from Beerbongs & Bentleys in a lot of ways. In some ways, it’s better; in other ways, it’s worse and, ultimately, spoilers, I end up giving this one exactly the same star-rating as Bentleys. This album isn’t as overlong as Bentleys was and I think, as an overall average, the songs are a bit better; but on a track by track basis, there’s nothing here that’s genuinely great and I thought there were two or three genuinely great tracks on Bentleys. The bulk of this album is just bland and forgettable, which is better than being actively bad, which Bentleys was, I suppose. And there are a couple of good tracks here. Much as it was overplayed on the radio, Circles is a song I never got tired of and actually still really like a lot. And this album also features Sunflower, Malone’s duet with Swae Lee from Into the Spider-verse, which is a really good track, though I already own that one since it was, you know, a huge hit when it was on the Spider-verse soundtrack. And I really loved A Thousand Bad Times which has a kind of surprising, almost country-esque lope to it and a really catchy melody.
But that’s three songs and there are a total of seventeen here. And Malone loads this one down with some great guests, but even they don’t really do great work. And when SZA and Travis Scott can’t save a track, I mean that’s bad. That’s a really bad track if SZA can’t even be good on it. I did like Halsey’s swaggering guest verse on Die for Me. And that one is actually pretty smart because the body of the song is Malone whining, as he often does, about how betrayed he feels by another person and then Halsey enters the song as that person and neatly undercuts Malone in a way that gives the song a little more complexity. I do have to mention two more tracks specifically just because of how terrible they are. The most pretentious track here is a string-drenched orchestral track called Internet which is built around the hook, “I don’t get on the internet no mo’” and it’s so po-faced it’s ridiculous. And then there’s a guest spot by Ozzy Osbourne (!) on a really weird hard-rock pastiche called Take What You Want and it’s so terrible, it’s almost worth listening to. Almost.
But, look, this album wasn’t worth the time I spent listening to it; it’s not worth the time I’ve spent reviewing it and, if you’re actually reading this, it’s not even worth the time you’re spending reading this review. Let’s move on. Post Malone just isn’t very good. More than enough said.
tl;dr – mostly forgettable album has a couple of good songs and a couple of terrible ones; the rest just kind of all blends together. 1 ½ stars.