Editor’s Note: The following reflects the opinions of the author.

If there was ever an album that should be denied the right to ever be played out loud, it would be Owl City’s “The Midsummer Station.”

From a failed attempt to create an edgier, pop sound to featuring the “Call Me Maybe” girl Carly Rae Jepsen, this album is not at all something that should ever enter a human being’s ear canal.

With only five years of professional music experience and the quadruple-platinum single “Fireflies,” Adam Young – the young musician behind what we know as Owl City – has had a very quick and successful rise to fame and notoriety. 

So why would he release an album that sounds nothing like what got him where he is today and could potentially be career suicide?

Young wrongly assumed “The Midsummer Station” was a progression from “Owl City’s” soft, awkward and sensitive voice with lively little electronic variations. Instead, it sounds like he tried to do his own original material and now sounds like a pathetic 3OH!3 cover band.

Older “Owl City” was somewhat creative, but the new “Owl City” has lost it somewhere and the creative process that currently stands is weak. If you have to make sounds similar to police siren sounds with your voice in a song that uses a car chase as a metaphor – “I’m Coming After You” – you know you might be losing your touch.

The only redeemable aspects of the ablum are the tracks “Speed of Love” and “Silhoutte,” which sound the traditional Owl City songs with the airy, lighter voice.

But let’s not forget the unavoidable song with Jepsen, titled “Good Time.”

The two really fail to put together a substantial, satisfying song. They repeat  “Oh” and “It’s always a good time” so many times, it ends up being the majority of the track. 

The greatest thing that can come from this album is that the reviews all over the world that follow it will smack Young right in the face and wake him up. Artist progression is rarely a good thing and “The Midsummer Station” proves it.

The radio goliath “Fireflies” only proves that’s the style “Owl City” needs to stick with to be a good, influential and successful musician.

“The Midsummer Station” was released Tuesday and is available on iTunes.

Rating: One out of four stars 

Story: MICHAEL BRAGG, Senior Arts and Entertainment reporter