Selena Gomez recently released her third album titled “Rare.” While the album is not substandard for pop music, it is also not particularly alluring.

In the pop genre, where most everything sounds the same, thoughtfulness and depth are critical to separate a piece of work from the mass amounts of competition.  Gomez makes an attempt at this depth, but her effort ultimately falls short.

Gomez uses the 13 songs on the album to explore her heartbreak, doomed relationships and personal struggles as a foundation for her newfound sense of self-worth and appreciation.

The popular track “Lose You To Love Me” sums up most of the album as it describes the journey of an unhealthy relationship. The song begins by addressing the ways she allowed herself to be mistreated and underappreciated.  She ultimately says goodbye to not only that relationship, but presumably her lack of self-worth.

While I appreciate her effort to encourage self-love, the lyrics are extremely superficial and fail to delve into anything deeper or more specific than the mere idea of overcoming past relationships.

“Unfortunately for pop stars everywhere, exposing your soul does not equal examining it,” Pitchfork said.

This is true for Gomez.  The album is riddled with vapid, repetitive and easy lyrics that never feel truly introspective.

Appearing late on the album, the track “Kinda Crazy” begins with the awkward and almost painful lines, “Hey, you started out sweeter than hard candy/Words were like licorice to the taste/But slowly, all the sugar, it went to waste.” The song continues on with filler phrases comprised of the words “hey,” “yeah” and “oh.”

On the track “People you know,” Gomez sings the same four line chorus six times.  This chorus essentially repeats the lines “people can go from people you know to people you don’t.”  And in between this subpar chorus, the lyrics are filled with more colorless and uninspired nonsense.

As for the rhythms and musicality, the album sounds familiar and unoriginal.  In fact, I honestly am not sure that I could differentiate the songs on this album from those on any other recent pop album.

Thus, Gomez fails to introduce anything particularly innovative on “Rare.” With few exceptions, the music sounds like every other computer generated pop song that turns me off of the genre as a whole.