Hey everyone, Anthony Fantano here, internet's busiest music nerd. Hope you're doing well. And today, you know what, I'm going to start this video by saying I am feeling hopeful and feeling positive because of human creativity and ingenuity.

In an age where it seems like robots and AI are just about ready to replace humans in every way, shape, and form, especially on the front of terrible, garbage, awful, trash-ass music, there are still artists and bands out here who are not going down without a fight and are insisting that no, it is mankind that will continue to make some of the worst music under the sun.

Not only have we seen that with the new Avenged Sevenfold Statica EP, which is most definitely the awfulest racket that band has ever mustered in their entire career, but now we have the one and only Benny Blanco stepping up to the plate with this new "Hermoso" record, which is not only proving to be a pretty awful album, but also the awful awful album, but also one of the weirdest album cycles of 2026 as well.

Let's start with this awful, nightmarish-ass cover. I mean, clearly this cover is Benny kind of poking fun at the fact that the internet is pretty merciless when it comes to his looks, I will say.

Something that, regardless of how you feel about the guy, I just don't really think he deserves. In fact, that may be an entirely different video for another time, because I have been noticing, as of late, really an uptick in people just willing to go out of their way to be absolutely nasty, disgusting, and vile to other artists and other figures in the music space, merely because of how they look.

Why do we need to be this fucking nasty about Audrey Hobart? Jesus Christ, if it's that you don't like the woman's music, can we just leave it at that? But either way, in addressing this nastiness in the way that he is with this cover, I feel like Benny is inadvertently implying other things that, for this album and him, are not very flattering.

I mean, for one, apparently Hermoso here is Benny Blanco's only Latin album to speak of. Yes, this man is going in a Latin pop and reggaeton direction a little bit with the music on this album. And he is doing this without another entire Latin project under his belt at this time. But he's also doing this while not being Latino. Honestly, I never really thought Benny was Latino despite his stage name, but that has become a massive point of contention with this record, with many critics asking who is Benny to be representing this sound and this style, even if he is willing to get a bunch of collaborators from other countries to make music with him on this album.

And while personally, I'm not one to necessarily step on the idea of, dabbling in genres and sounds that you don't have any sort of personal, cultural root, in out of the gate, I feel like if you as an artist are going to be going out of your way to do that on a song, on an album, you better make sure your attempt at recreating a sound with deep cultural roots that you personally don't have any familiarity with is done tastefully, is done thoughtfully, is done sincerely.

And I just don't think those are terms you could apply to this Benny album, honestly. Not only because, again, the only Latin album to your name is being fronted with you looking absolutely fucking hideous, but also on top of it, this thing is an album in name and in name only. It is only eight songs long, 17 minutes in length, and working backwards through the track list, it is a completely thrown-together hodgepodge of crap that really makes you have to question why Benny would come out with this record in the first place.

For sure, the guy isn't known for his solo albums, and even his recent collaboration with his partner Selena Gomez kind of flopped and was famously not that good. But still, this guy is a very famous producer and songwriter and has had multiple hits launched onto the charts because of his creative input. You would think at this point this guy knows the basics of how to formulate and build an album and not make something that sounds so effortless, so slapdash, like he kind of abandoned it part of the way through.

Because the closing track is hardly a fitting finisher and is more of a Mike Tower song with a Benny Blanco feature than vice versa, and feels kind of tacked on.

You have the "Cinco" interlude, which of course lasts five seconds and is utterly pointless and adds nothing to the record, honestly. The track "A Bendito" is chill, forgettable, generic autotune slop with a light reggaeton feel to it. It mostly kind of feels like a dream, is very breezy, very in one ear and out the other.

"Te Amo" is another interlude that further pads out this already pads out this already very brief track list and once again doesn't add much to the project. The track featuring The Marias more than anything just feels like a Marias song. This really could have been a Maria's single or a song on a Maria's album with maybe a light Benny Blanco credit kind of in the liner notes or something.

Then "Joven y Salvaje" is maybe the laziest song on the entire record. It's a very bland, formulaic bit of guitar-driven bedroom pop with a basic kick-snare pattern and lazy guitar passages. And even Bb Trickz, who features on the song, sounds like she doesn't really want to be there, just putting in as little effort as possible into whatever the hell this is. The opener does kind of hit hard out of the gate. It has its moments, but it's very clear Benny didn't really know how to end this one because it finishes off in the most hideous and garbled and gnarled way.

Sort of like he didn't know how to cut this one off, so he just fed the back end of it into a wood chipper. And then the song featuring Selena Gomez and Becky G really is the only track that feels like a full-fledged tune with actual focus and effort put into it, which in my eyes kind of makes this thing more of a glorified single than an album. But again, to call this thing an album is an insult, and to have this be your first Latin album and it be so famously lazy and basic and boring and thoughtless.

Combined with this cover just is such a bad optical read. In a way, it kind of makes the album unreviewable. I mean, yes, make no mistake, this thing is awful and disappointingly offensive on so many levels. But simultaneously, I feel like Benny didn't really put enough of himself into this project for me to really make too much of any heads or tails of it.

Because I mean, honestly, the album has no voice. It has no vision. Most of the vocals are brought over to other artists entirely, whose presence and influence on any given song is so overpowering. I couldn't really call any of these tracks truly and honestly call any of these tracks truly and honestly, a Benny Blanco track.

Which maybe he's doing kind of more of a curator-produced project, something maybe along the lines of a Gorillaz or something like that where Benny's in the director's chair. But even that he is failing at miserably. But yeah, if somebody of Benny's music industry status can put this out and call it an album, geez, what the hell is the state of the album right now?

Does the album mean anything anymore? That you can lazily mix a handful of songs and interludes together? That don't even span 20 minutes. It just feels kind of insulting to serious musicians, pop singers and producers, to people on the Latin scene, to anyone who thought Benny Blanco, as a proven successful songwriter, might actually care enough to put out a project that very clearly has very little care put into it.

But yeah, there you go. If you even took the time, wasted your time, to listen to any of this thing, what did you think of it? Let me know in the comments. I'm sure you will. Over here next to my head is another video that you can check out. Hit that up, or the link to subscribe to the channel.

Anthony Fantano, Benny Blanco, forever.