Billboard.com's Scores
- Music
For 825 reviews, this publication has graded:
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81% higher than the average critic
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3% same as the average critic
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16% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.5 points higher than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 76
Highest review score: | The Complete Matrix Tapes [Box Set] | |
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Lowest review score: | Jackie |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 750 out of 825
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Mixed: 75 out of 825
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Negative: 0 out of 825
825
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Critic Score
With these 13 tracks--nine of which the band had a hand in writing--One Direction does maturity much better than on its last album, 2014's ballad-heavy Four.- Billboard.com
- Posted Nov 11, 2015
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- Critic Score
Art Angels is a marvel of meticulous, even obsessive home-studio recording, uncompromised by bandmates or collaborators.- Billboard.com
- Posted Nov 9, 2015
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- Critic Score
At the very least, listening to The Cutting Edge 1965-1966 should send you scurrying back to the official versions of those three classic Bob Dylan albums. It’s his story, and it’s history, reconsidered one more time.- Billboard.com
- Posted Nov 6, 2015
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- Critic Score
The subtler, less stylized Wiped Out! keeps the palm-trees-at-twilight feel, but the sound is more hazy R&B than rock.- Billboard.com
- Posted Nov 2, 2015
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- Critic Score
All that retro angst is more rote and less involving than the way its debut tried to square loud guitars with the hooky imperatives of chart pop. In the last several tracks, though, the energy returns.- Billboard.com
- Posted Oct 23, 2015
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- Critic Score
On Storyteller, it’s striking to hear her respond to varied musical textures by expanding her repertoire, toying with inflection and phrasing, and bringing new wrinkles to the characters she’s inhabiting.- Billboard.com
- Posted Oct 23, 2015
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- Billboard.com
- Posted Oct 21, 2015
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- Critic Score
The whole endeavor has a “live and let live” feel that fits in perfectly with Strait’s laid-back, though never sloppy, attitude.- Billboard.com
- Posted Oct 21, 2015
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- Critic Score
Hamilton’s stage production should be required viewing for every American citizen, but this exhilarating listen is a much more practical, and every bit as enjoyable, stand-in.- Billboard.com
- Posted Oct 20, 2015
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- Critic Score
It’s evocative and vivid, recalling early Red House Painters, or even The Blue Nile.- Billboard.com
- Posted Oct 16, 2015
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- Critic Score
The Documentary 2, succeeds by reminding you what made the original so memorable.- Billboard.com
- Posted Oct 16, 2015
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- Critic Score
Deerhunter isn’t repeating itself: This creatively restless group doesn’t stand still for long.- Billboard.com
- Posted Oct 16, 2015
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Her willingness to own every step and misstep, and to show her audience how the rough times helped her become the woman she is, makes Confident a surprisingly compelling listen.- Billboard.com
- Posted Oct 16, 2015
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- Critic Score
His 18th studio LP, 35 mph Town, bypasses the cliches and tones down his sometimes overbearing bravado.- Billboard.com
- Posted Oct 9, 2015
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- Critic Score
Unbreakable is the mature album, free of commercial ambition, her all-too-breakable brother never made.- Billboard.com
- Posted Oct 6, 2015
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- Critic Score
As on True, the nondance tracks are more or less power ballads, albeit with fairly pallid vocals.... The dance tracks are actually where most of this album’s pleasant surprises lie.- Billboard.com
- Posted Oct 2, 2015
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- Critic Score
Reference points include Liars and The Fall, but Girl Band is very much its own beast.- Billboard.com
- Posted Sep 25, 2015
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He can sound awkward navigating Swift’s vernacular of haters and mad love, but when he plays up his strengths--the fingerpicking and strings on “Blank Space,” or changing the “Style” lyric “James Dean daydream” to “Daydream Nation,” a nod to Sonic Youth--the universality of great songwriting shines through.- Billboard.com
- Posted Sep 24, 2015
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The chemistry works as expected, even if it never exceeds, or even reaches, the sum of its artists. There's no transcendent moment here, because the project is essentially a meeting of opposites who mostly stay in their lanes.- Billboard.com
- Posted Sep 22, 2015
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- Critic Score
Under the cover of midnight, Del Rey has been exploring big ideas about eroticism, drugs, myth, the empty promise of YOLO, what it means to be a woman, and the American soul.- Billboard.com
- Posted Sep 21, 2015
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- Critic Score
Caracal is the kind of effort that diehard fans might convince themselves to appreciate, and then never play again.- Billboard.com
- Posted Sep 18, 2015
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On major-label debut GO:OD AM, his third and best studio album, Miller grapples frankly with fame, addiction, recovery and the struggle to be a decent person over taut, melancholy production that channels both bleary inebriation and hard-fought optimism.- Billboard.com
- Posted Sep 18, 2015
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- Billboard.com
- Posted Sep 18, 2015
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- Critic Score
The music is digital and danceable but with emotional depth--much of it thanks to Mayberry.- Billboard.com
- Posted Sep 14, 2015
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- Critic Score
While nothing on Repentless reaches similar heights of mayhem, overall the album is more focused and fierce than its predecessor, 2009’s Hanneman-assisted World Painted Blood.- Billboard.com
- Posted Sep 11, 2015
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- Critic Score
It doesn’t all click, like when Imbruglia smooths over all the emotional grit of Damien Rice’s “Cannonball.” But her charms on Male win you over in the end.- Billboard.com
- Posted Sep 10, 2015
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- Billboard.com
- Posted Aug 31, 2015
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- Critic Score
There’s a semblance of a flow to the record’s sprawling track list, but too many songs sound hastily written, and too often Cyrus acts as if her drug trip is more poignant than the average freakout.- Billboard.com
- Posted Aug 31, 2015
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- Critic Score
Stuff Like That There shows that Yo La Tengo is, remarkably, still effectively the same band it was a quarter-century ago: graceful, centered and eager to play its latest finds.- Billboard.com
- Posted Aug 28, 2015
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- Critic Score
The younger act strikes a posture of winsome self-assurance across these 11 tracks.- Billboard.com
- Posted Aug 26, 2015
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