Welcome to The Truth Hertz — where we apply a cold compress to your overheated nostalgia.
#1) Aaron Carter
RATING: ⭐
GENRE: Pop / Hip Hop
YEARS ACTIVE: 1997-2022 (6 Studio Albums / 1 Posthumous Release)
Aaron wasn’t so much a pop star as he was a marketing experiment designed in a lab by MTV executives who asked, “What if we made a Backstreet Boy, but smaller and louder and with more basketball references?” He was 13 going on excessive.
Later years brought reality TV meltdowns, eyebrow rings, face tattoos, and frequent public feuds with anyone who had ever once known him. Aaron Carter wasn’t an artist — he was a merch table with abs. A walking, lip-syncing poster for the rise and fall of early-2000s pop kid culture. And though he may have wanted candy… what he really needed was vocal training and a better lawyer.
#2) A.A. Bondy
RATING: ⭐
GENRE: Folk / Country
YEARS ACTIVE: 2007-2019 (4 Studio Albums)
You don’t listen to A.A. Bondy so much as sit near it while contemplating your existential disappointment with coffee that’s already cold. His first album, American Hearts, is basically Bob Dylan after a NyQuil chug, and it only gets slower from there. By the time you get to Enderness (2019), it’s less music and more a sonic guided meditation for people who regret ever owning a denim jacket.
WARNING: Listening to three Bondy songs in a row may result in spontaneous beard growth, seasonal affective disorder, and the uncontrollable urge to reread The Road.
#3) A Touch of Class (ATC)
RATING: ⭐
GENRE: Eurodance
YEARS ACTIVE: 2001-2003 (2 Studio Albums)
Let’s be honest: A Touch of Class is a band name that promises sophistication — Instead, what you get is “Around the World (La La La La La),” a song that sounds like a Teletubby fell into a glowstick vat at a Berlin nightclub. Built on a sample from the Russian band Ruki Vverh!, it’s one of those songs that gets in your head and slowly lowers your IQ every time you hear it. It’s not so much a melody as it is a threat: you will la la la and you will like it.
Their debut album was called Planet Pop, which is appropriate because most of it sounds like it was recorded on another planet, possibly by alien exchange students with a loose understanding of Earth emotions. Every track sounds like the music a hotel phone system would play when you’re on hold with lost luggage in Uzbekistan.
A Touch of Class gave us one undeniable thing: A song you’ll hear once at a roller rink and spend the next 14 years resenting your own brain for remembering.
#4) A Silent Film
RATING: ⭐
GENRE: Piano rock / Alternative rock
YEARS ACTIVE: 2008-2015 (3 Studio Albums / 2 EPs)
A Silent Film specializes in grand, swelling anthems that sound like they were written exclusively to underscore a montage of people staring out rain-streaked windows. Their breakout hit “Danny, Dakota & the Wishing Well” is less a song and more a teen drama plot summary set to piano. It’s got all the tension of a CW love triangle — and just as much subtlety.
If Coldplay is emotional comfort food, A Silent Film is the lukewarm cup of herbal tea you forgot you made.
#5) A New Found Glory
RATING: ⭐
GENRE: Pop-Punk
YEARS ACTIVE: 1999-Present (12 Studio Albums)
A New Found Glory emerged in the early 2000s during the golden age of pop-punk, armed with high school angst, three power chords, and a commitment to making every breakup sound like a skatepark meltdown. The band quickly found their niche in the over-caffeinated, under-reflective world of adolescent emotional outbursts.
Musically, they’re not untalented — just aggressively consistent. Like a Pizza Hut buffet: you know what you’re getting, and it’s all fine… until you realize it’s just the same three slices over and over again. They’re the musical embodiment of emotional arrested development: loud, fast, vaguely heartbroken, and proudly static. For some fans, that’s comforting. For everyone else, it’s exhausting and annoying.
#6) Aaliyah
RATING: ⭐⭐
GENRE: R&B / Pop / Hip Hop
YEARS ACTIVE: 1994-2001 (3 Studio Albums)
I listened to this Aaliyah character everyone talks about like she was the patron saint of soft-spoken sass, and I gotta be honest — I don’t get it. I’ve heard stronger vocals from the girl working the drive-thru at Arby’s. Half her songs sound like she’s leaning on a couch whispering “yeahhh… uh huh… okay…” Is that the chorus? Is that the hook? Is she texting someone mid-track?
Aaliyah was the queen of that slow, breathy, post-slow-jam-not-quite-banger space. It’s music that sounds like it was designed to play in a room filled with incense, lava lamps, and zero ambition. Every track felt like it was recorded while reclining. I don’t think she ever stood upright in a vocal booth. She didn’t sing the lyrics so much as gently suggest them from across the room.
#7) Aaron Neville
RATING: ⭐⭐
GENRE: R&B / Soul / Pop
YEARS ACTIVE: 1966-2016 (19 Studio Albums)
Let’s get one thing clear up front: Aaron Neville can sing. No arguments. No sarcasm.
It’s the kind of sound you’d expect to hear while ascending a sunbeam or hugging a cloud.
So why does his discography sometimes sound like he’s trapped in the world’s longest adult contemporary waiting room or being held hostage by the producers of “Lite FM at Noon”? He sings with such heart — but often over tracks that feel like they were stolen from the background music section of a Hallmark movie.
A lot of his solo albums include instrumentation so inoffensive it might as well come with complimentary tea and a scented candle. You’ll hear him croon lovingly over strings, soft keyboards, and saxophones that seem genetically engineered to not offend anyone’s aunt.
Some may claim he’s a national treasure, I say he’s spent way too long in easy-listening purgatory.
#8) ABC
RATING: ⭐⭐
GENRE: Pop / New Wave
YEARS ACTIVE: 1982-2016 (9 Studio Albums)
Let’s get this out of the way: ABC knew how to dress. Frontman Martin Fry walked into the post-punk landscape wearing a gold lamé suit and declared war on subtlety. And for a moment — a very specific, shoulder-padded moment — it worked.
Their debut album, The Lexicon of Love (1982), was polished, melodramatic, orchestral pop. It was smart, stylish, and infectiously melodic. Once Lexicon was behind them, the production often got busier, the songwriting less inspired, and Martin Fry’s lyrical flair turned into winking self-parody. By Alphabet City (1987), the once-innovative sound had settled into yuppie cocktail bar territory.
For all the sparkle and sass, there’s a strange emotional distance to much of their work. Even when Fry sings about heartbreak, it sounds like he’s narrating someone else’s breakup through mirrored sunglasses.
Still, Lexicon of Love remains a classic — even if the rest of the dictionary is a bit overrated.
#9) A Flock of Seagulls
RATING: ⭐⭐
GENRE: New Wave / Synth-Pop
YEARS ACTIVE: 1982-Present (6 Studio Albums / 2 Orchestral Albums)
A Flock of Seagulls are remembered less for their music and more for pioneering a haircut so structurally ambitious it should have come with scaffolding. But somehow — in between the mousse, the laser beams, and the relentless pouting — they actually made… a pretty solid first album.
Released in 1982, their self-titled debut album is a surprisingly cohesive blend of sci-fi synths, icy guitar hooks, and Cold War paranoia. Like if the weird kid who always smelled like Dippity-Do showed up to prom in a DeLorean and somehow made it work.
After the debut, the band drifted into diminishing returns — like a Xerox machine slowly running out of toner. The hooks faded, the hair got sadder, and by the time they released their fourth album, it was clear they had become the synthpop equivalent of a novelty mug: briefly entertaining, eventually forgotten in the back of the cabinet.
#10) ABBA
RATING: ⭐⭐⭐
GENRE: Pop / Disco / Europop
YEARS ACTIVE: 1973-2021 (9 Studio Albums)
Few bands in pop history have managed to strike the delicate balance between immaculate craftsmanship and unapologetic camp quite like ABBA. They were four impossibly photogenic Scandinavians who managed to create songs that felt both heartbreakingly intimate and ready for roller rinks. They weren’t rebels. They weren’t critics’ darlings. They were melodic technicians — engineers of emotion wrapped in sequins and mod jumpsuits.
That said… it wasn’t all poetic breakup ballads and elegant key changes. ABBA could drift — occasionally — into the realm of pop operetta absurdity. They weren’t afraid of excess — in their outfits, arrangements, or ambition — which is both a feature and a bug, depending on your tolerance for falsetto backing vocals and glockenspiel.
ABBA may not have reinvented music, but they perfected their corner of it with sparkling precision and unexpected emotional depth. They didn’t just give us pop hits — they gave us polished sonic cathedrals with disco balls hanging from the rafters.
They didn’t try to be cool — they tried to be good.
And in the long run, good won out.
Final Scorecard
| Band | Rating | Short Summary |
| A New Found Glory | ⭐ 1 | Pop-punk on repeat |
| A Silent Film | ⭐ 1 | Sad-boy Coldplay Jr. |
| A Touch of Class | ⭐ 1 | Glowstick Teletubbies |
| A.A. Bondy | ⭐ 1 | NyQuil Folk |
| Aaron Carter | ⭐ 1 | MTV’s Sugar Rush Lab Rat |
| Aaliyah | ⭐⭐ 2 | Whisper-core pioneer |
| ABC | ⭐⭐ 2 | Glossy drama-pop |
| A Flock of Seagulls | ⭐⭐ 2 | One hit, one hairdo |
| Aaron Neville | ⭐⭐ 2 | Angelic falsetto, sleepy tracks |
| ABBA | ⭐⭐⭐ 3 | Sequins + songwriting = win |
RECOMMENDED:
ABBA: Any “Best of” Compilation
A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS: A Flock of Seagulls (1982)
ABC: The Lexicon of Love (1982)
Leave a Reply