Adam Sandler: What's Your Name?

Adam Sandler's first two records were mostly appalling: There'd be one or two decent jokes—usually in Sandler's songs—but they'd be padded out with endless, wretched, jokeless skit comedy. Few listening experiences in the past few years have been as painful to endure as a 10-minute stretch of What The Hell Happened To Me, in which Sandler and his cohorts carried on with a goat sketch that never even tried to tell a joke. On What's Your Name, Sandler is smart enough to realize that his songs generally contain his funniest material—and that they're what helped his first two records sell as well as they did. As a result, What's Your Name is nothing but studio-recorded songs, covering subjects ranging from field-goal kickers ("The Lonesome Kicker") to being fat ("Corduroy Blues") to having pimples on your back (the awful "Zittly Van Zittles"). Sandler's Saturday Night Live-era song "Red Hooded Sweatshirt" is here, too, but that doesn't matter too much: Its impact is dulled by its new lyrics and studio sheen, and it's drowned out by lousy, staggeringly overlong material like "The Goat Song" (yes, it's the same goat from the last album) and the exceedingly tiresome "Dancin' And Pantsin'." Naturally, Sandler is appealing to slow-witted 15-year-olds here, and though their attention spans will be taxed, they'll probably be thrilled. Everyone else should run as fast and as far away as possible.