Eve 6: Horrorscope

Conventional wisdom states that you need to stand out from the crowd in pop music, whether it's through an unstoppable hook, a can't-miss gimmick, the perfect look, or a trendy sound. But conventional wisdom is routinely defied by bands that are just lucky, hitting big despite the fact that they're virtually no different from the thousands that make up each year's scrap heap of major-label casualties. There's nothing special about, say, Vertical Horizon, whose ubiquitous "Everything You Want" tore up the charts earlier this year. Same goes for Eve 6, the young trio whose insipid "Inside Out" ("Wanna put my tender / heart in a blender…") still had audiences asking, "Who are these guys again" after the 15,000th listen. If anything separates Eve 6 from the similarly faceless masses, it's Max Collins' head-slappingly dopey lyrics, which are built around groan-inducing wordplay ("Your heinous highness broke her hymen") and stupid rhymes ("Like Jessica Rabbit / she collects bad habits"). Horrorscope is glossy, artless, proficient, and dull enough to be easily tuned out, but Collins' smarmy lyrics and affected sneer are always there to snap you back to attention, reminding listeners that Eve 6 isn't just a forgettable also-ran one-hit wonder, but a forgettable also-ran one-hit wonder that revels in its own false sense of cleverness at every turn.