Entertainment Weekly's Scores

For 3,520 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 81% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 18% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 78
Highest review score: 100 My Savior
Lowest review score: 0 Playing With Fire
Score distribution:
3520 music reviews
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Simply put, Playing Favorites is their best work yet.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    It's never a guarantee that a collaboration from talented soloists will work, let alone multiple times. The Record navigates that hurdle deftly enough to suggest that none of these artists have reached their full potential. Neither has Boygenius.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Still, if the songs on Midnights aren't her stickiest, it doesn't much matter while they're playing, given how effectively they generate a mood and paint effective pictures.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Loneliest Time, Jepsen's sixth album (and the outcome of her being in pandemic lockdown), retains the ardor of her pop-cognoscenti-beloved albums Dedicated and Emotion, but it flaunts a new self-reflective streak that both energizes its highlights and opens the door for Jepsen to play with — and expand — her sound.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The catalog of touchstones, samples, and cameos on Renaissance could double as a syllabus for a master class on the evolution of dance music as it has unfolded during Beyoncé's lifetime.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Instead of taking a much-needed left turn and cranking it up to 11, he's settled for something safe — something too smooth, too worldly.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Styles has put together an album that's so solid, even moments that would be cringeworthy when handled by lesser pop stars feel earned. ... Harry's House is also emotionally heavy at times, with Styles' understated delivery adding power to his plainspoken lyrics.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Most songs on the brisk 37-minute LP unfold like a breezy coastal drive — you can practically feel the beachy wind in your hair and hear the lulling tides lapping at the shore, waiting to pull you in. This is vibe music. But more upbeat cuts like "Any Given Sunday," featuring blxst, and the Justin Bieber duet "Up At Night" offer more of a jolt.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ten years into her career — and despite the multitude of insecurities she addresses throughout Familia — the 25-year-old appears more sure of herself than ever.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    A woolly wall of sound from the chugging blown-out opener "Taking Me Back" to the spiraling title track. [Apr 2022, p.106]
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The student has become a maestro. [Apr 2022, p.106]
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Morris' full breadth is encapsulated on Humble Quest, and it's far more ambitious than the title suggests. The 32-year-old's third studio album mines a rich yet relatable personal life
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Not everything lands, and not everything that lands sticks. Even so, there aren't many 17-year hiatuses that end by presenting a group with plenty of gas left in the tank. "When I'm 40 years older/When I'm wrinkled and wise," sings Orzabal — and The Tipping Point makes a compelling argument that it will be worth the wait.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    If 2017's Strength of a Woman was her divorce record, chronicling the messy end of a 15-year marriage to producer Kendu Isaacs, Gorgeous is the sound of an artist slowly emerging from the other side.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The result is Lucifer on the Sofa, Spoon's loosest, liveliest album since 2010's unruly low-fi gem Transference, which combines that LP's spontaneous spirit with the meticulous production and sharp melodic hooks of their most memorable work.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    These nine songs are the most inviting and accessible Animal Collective have been in more than a decade, with lovely lazy-river synth squiggles and gangland vocals as smooth as melted butter. [Feb 2022, p.107]
    • 88 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Dawn FM might be just shy of summoning the truly divine, but its best moments provide enough blinding light to counter the increasingly enveloping gloom of 2022.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    30
    A surprisingly personal album that showcases how Adele has matured, both as an artist and as a person, since the middle of the last decade. She could have built on her blockbuster success in a cynical way, copy-and-pasting "Rolling in the Deep" and "Hello." Instead, she lets her emotions guide her, with triumphant results.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The pair are clearly having fun with their loverman shtick here — a knowing throwback to a more-cowbell era when all the cars were Monte Carlos, the lamps were lava, and #MeToo was but a distant, joy-killing dream. Mostly that comes through with an obvious wink; other times it lands somewhere between Pepé Le Pew and Ron Burgundy on the self-awareness scale.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Thank You is a powerful showcase for how good Ross is even after a two-decade absence.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    That Santana can still impose his stamp on a solid handful of tracks is absolutely worth celebrating. That he's unable to grab the spotlight on the rest of Blessings and Miracles offers a hint of what he's sacrificed along the way.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Seven albums in, Carlile has long since proven herself constitutionally incapable of making a bad record. She's not about to start now.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Her debut album Remember Her Name, which is full of heartfelt songs that soar and shiver alongside Guyton's majestic vocal, is a full-spectrum showcase of her long-simmering talent.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    If the tone for most of the record's first half tips heavily toward 2 a.m. regrets and tempos that rarely rise above a broken heartbeat, the BPMs shift, however briefly, on "Breadwinner." With its tart warnings to steer clear of a meal-ticket man who "wants your shimmer/To make him feel bigger/Until he starts feeling insecure," the track feels like a buoyant callback to the chicken-fried wit of past standouts like "High Horse" and "Biscuits."
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The new album is like watching the eighth season of a sitcom and growing hyper-aware of all the recycled jokes and actors' laugh lines.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Once again showcases her vulnerability, opening up old wounds from relationships with her father, a past lover, and, ultimately, herself. [Sep 2021, p.107]
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Even amid all the worrying, their defiant, quivering music vibrates with possibility in a way that plainly and passionately refutes even the darkest moments of despair their lyrics express. [Sep 2021, p.107]
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    There's a subdued quality to Solar Power that feels a lot like caution, or just self-protection — a deliberate retreat from the raw, unfiltered verve of her earlier output into the safer remove of a wry bystander more at ease with cool observation than confessional bloodletting.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The hooks are less immediately earworm-y than stomping When We All Fall anthems like "Bad Guy" or "Bury a Friend"; only rarely do the BPMs bump up high enough to transfer to the dance floor. Mostly, the beats are there to frame Eilish's singular voice: a smoky, silvery instrument that swoops and dips between vulnerability and bravado, jazz-bar bossa nova and confessional Gen Z poetry.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Pink Noise revels in the freedom of moving beyond stress for something peaceful, adding yet another layer to Mvula's already-rich tapestry of sound.