Album Review: Hollywood's Bleeding - Post Malone

Post Malone has returned after the release of his two critically-acclaimed and highly-streamed albums Stoney and beerbongs & bentleys. His newest project, Hollywood’s Bleeding, promoted its release with multiple successful and impressive singles. Unfortunately, besides a couple of impressive feature tracks, this album disappointed me generally and is my least favorite from Malone’s discography. The highs are sky high here, but the lows are much worse than the standard of quality Post has set for himself.

Let’s start with the positives: every single released in preparation for this album was excellent. “Circles”, “Sunflower (ft. Swae Lee)”, “Goodbyes (ft. Young Thug)” and “Wow.” are some of the best tracks Post Malone has released in years. The featured tracks that succeed here could have gone very wrong, for example pairing Travis Scott with Ozzy Osbourne (“Take What You Want”) or Future with Halsey (“Die For Me”), but these pairings along with Malone’s presence lead to very successful tracks. The opening track, “Hollywood’s Bleeding”, sets the mood for things to come, and “Myself” was partially written by Josh Tillman, so of course I loved it. As previously stated, the highs are high on this album.

But the lows are low. It seems like Post Malone is embracing the role of being a pop star, which is fine, but some of the musical risks he takes because of that on this project are questionable. The lyrics on “Saint Tropez” and “Enemies” leave a lot to be desired. Both SZA’s and Meek Mill’s features are subpar to me and both artists feel underutilized. “Allergic” is Paramore-esque, but in all the worst ways. The lows are as low as the highs are high on this album.

I feel about this album how I feel about the rest of Post Malone’s discography. I absolutely love some of what he has to offer, and the rest is mediocre at best. I expect this album to enjoy commercial success and to break streaming records, and I’m glad it provided a lot of good songs to add to my ‘Best of… Post Malone’ (more coming about that soon) playlist on Spotify. Hopefully his next project is more refined and is less of a roller coaster than this one.

SCORE: 5/10