What is a "template album"?

Back in 2010, I coined the phrase "template album" in the context of Christgau's reviews, but I never told anyone about it (until now). A "template album" is one where the music has the potential to be good, if it is accompanied by good lyrics, but the lyrics actually on the album suck, which results in the album being much worse than it could be. These albums can be identified because in Christgau's reviews of them (which are always negative, of course), he does not discuss the melodic/rhythmic/etc. aspects of the songs on these albums; instead, he only ever discusses the lyrics. I have long thought that the two best examples of template albums are:
1. Grace by Jeff Buckley (grade: C, review here)
2. 21st Century Breakdown (grade: C, review here)

Note that the review to 21st Century Breakdown seems to contain an exception to the rule I noted above that Christgau doesn't discuss non-lyrical aspects of template albums in his reviews of them. Specifically, he criticizes "the slow ones that set up the fast ones within the same song, a hotcha-gotcha device with which the Broadway-bound ex-punk is deeply smitten." That's speed, that's not lyrics--which is true, but I still don't think it really counts, because the problem of slow songs that suddenly become much faster is a manifestation of the underlying problem with the album. This problem has nothing to do with its melodies or the sounds of any of the instruments, including Billie Joe's voice: instead, it's the pretentiousness with which Billie Joe wrote the songs on the album combined with the fact that he doesn't know jack shit about the subjects the album's songs are about. Or, as Christgau himself put it in that same review, "I don't like right-wing Christianists either. But as every oppressed teen in the right-wing orbit knows full well, they're not as garbled and simplistic as Armstrong's anthems insist."

Other albums that I have concluded might also be template albums include the following:
• Blood Sugar Sex Magic by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
• Bat out of Hell by Meat Loaf
• The Battle of Los Angeles by Rage Against the Machine

I am less sure about Bat out of Hell than about the other two above, partly because Christgau's review of it specifically slams the ridiculously overwrought, pretentious music, writing that it "pulls out the stops quite knowingly." In the past, I have also been turned off by this aspect of the album's songs when I have listened to them.