Entertainment Weekly's Scores

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For 3,519 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 The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do
Lowest review score: 0 Playing With Fire
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,085 out of 3519
  2. Mixed: 407 out of 3519
  3. Negative: 27 out of 3519
3519 music reviews
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    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    From A Basement On The Hill
    The record is strong and radiant, if not always upbeat.... One of the best he ever made. [22 Oct 2004, p.92]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 88 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    The Blueprint
    But for an MC claiming to represent ''for the seat where Rosa Parks sat,'' one expects a bit more.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    In Rainbows
    Rainbows may be the gentlest, prettiest Radiohead set yet.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Woods
    While it's surprising to hear Sleater-Kinney act so traditional, it's more shocking how well such conventions suit them. [27 May 2005, p.135]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Kill The Moonlight
    Could be the Strokes in 10 years--if they work hard. [Listen 2 This Supplement, Aug 2002, p.14]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 88 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Dawn FM
    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
    Abattoir Blues / The Lyre Of Orpheus
    Cave... remains a singular sensation. [29 Oct 2004, p.69]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Best Of Blur
    The band has quietly crafted some of the best singles of the '90s...
    • 88 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    I Am A Bird Now
    It could have been mawkish, but the sentiments--and Antony's trembling falsetto--are so honest, you love it despite your jaded self. [4 Feb 2005, p.133]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Fishscale
    He may not be reinventing himself, but as a must-hear street storyteller, he's still at the top of his game. [31 Mar 2006, p.64]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Arular
    As instantly infectious as it is hard to pin down. [15 Apr 2005, p.85]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Remedy
    This blissful joy ride is hard to resist and easy to love.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Fleet Foxes
    Hushed and wistful, Foxes evokes the itinerant days of yore...you know, before gas cost four bucks a gallon.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Dirty Computer
    As a whole, Dirty Computer strikes the perfect balance between joy and sadness, offering a deeply resonant account of Monáe’s personal experiences as a black woman. Some of these experiences are unquestionably difficult. Yet in relaying them to us, Monáe never deprives herself (or the listener) of pride, joy, or autonomy.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Person Pitch
    A lovely, trippy kaleidoscope of sound. [13 Apr 2007, p.74]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    College Dropout
    West delivers the goods with a disarming mix of confessional honesty and sarcastic humor, earnest idealism and big-pimping materialism. [13 Feb 2004, p.71]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Blackstar
    There are more than enough narratives to follow down the rabbit hole here, and themes and imagery so dense they could probably be dissected for days or even weeks. Most of all, though, it’s the kind of album that works beautifully as a physical experience.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Something More Than Free
    His latest sounds happier, and it’s still steeped in the Southern mythology that’s his forte.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    In These Silent Days
    Seven albums in, Carlile has long since proven herself constitutionally incapable of making a bad record. She's not about to start now.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Argument
    Somewhat less focused and intense than much of their earlier work, their latest falters when it reaches for subtle musical textures. [9 Nov 2001, p.110]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Blonde
    With these 17 tracks, Ocean shows himself to be one of pop’s foremost innovators.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
    Cave spits out his woebegone lyrics as if he were a Holy Ghost-filled preaching machine leading the world's funkiest revival meeting.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Grohl Sessions, Vol. 1 [EP]
    Grohl can bestow headbanging muscle and arena-sized scope on this four-track EP without belying Brown's bluesy, twangy roots. [20 Dec 2013, p.60]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Dec 30, 2013
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Flies in All Directions
    Despite the heavy feedback and punishingly sharp sadness lurking beneath tracks like "Pagan Baby," "Bathin' in the Fuss," and "The Drones," they still dabble in radio-friendly sugar without ever weakening their teeth. [16 May 2014, p.64]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted May 13, 2014
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Too Bright
    Even the moments between the standouts float by with a strange beauty. [3 Oct 2014, p.69]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Sep 29, 2014
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    World Without Tears
    A perfectly imperfect set, it's looser, blowsier, and more what-the-hell? than anything she's done.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Things We Lost In The Fire
    Just plain beautiful... carefully harmonized vocals and pellucid guitar hooks that rarely lapse into merely languid melodies. [2/16/2001, p.98]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Raising Sand
    These aren't "duets" but exercises in sublime harmony. [2 Nov 2007, p.65]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Let's Stay Friends
    The group is malevolent and charming at once, still a beguiling combo. [21 Sep 2007, p.82]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Random Access Memories
    It's a headphones album in an age of radio singles; a bravura live performance that stands out against pro forma knob-twiddling; a jazzy disco attack on the basic house beat; a full collaboration at a time when the superstar DJ stands alone. It's also quite moving; melancholy runs through every song.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Neon Bible
    In the bleakest songs, the polyphonic swirl of strings, horns, and voices... points toward transcendence.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
    ''Yankee Hotel Foxtrot'' is a subliminal album. Spin it once and it barely registers. Play it five or six times and its vaporous, insinuating, rusty-carousel melodies start to carve out a permanent orbit in your skull.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Norman Fucking Rockwell!
    Over its 14 tracks, Rockwell keeps its midtempo mood steady, whether Del Rey’s characters are rushing down low-lit California highways or hiding out in anonymous Valley suburbs. The songs tend to flow into each other, although Antonoff and Del Rey’s partnership does result in some lovely musical moments.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Stumble Into Grace
    Lovely, heartbreaking, and just diffident enough to get perspective on this bittersweet old world. [26 Sep 2003, p.94]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 87 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Phrenology
    Not all of the experiments work, but drummer ?uestlove's Clyde Stubblefield-cum-Chemical Brothers grooves and rapper Black Thought's mighty flow never waver. [29 Nov 2002, p.106]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Annie Up
    Annie Up is a more fully formed take on Southern sisterhood.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Suburbs
    The band certainly aims for transcendence on The Suburbs--a work of impressively fervent majesty.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Gish [Deluxe Edition]
    Fans will adore the numerous B sides and demos, and the concert DVDs provide a fun, flannelly time capsule.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Children Running Through
    It's the showcase of a confident singer successfully diversifying. [9 Feb 2007, p.72]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Seven Swans
    He shares [Elliott] Smith's gift for sketching in complex emotional states with telling details. [19 Mar 2004, p.66]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Kala
    Kala is propelled by genuinely stellar moments. [24 Aug 2007, p.133]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Phantom Power
    The Welsh quintet's concept-album ambitions are undercut by inherent goofiness, especially when the band parodies Robert Johnson (''Golden Retriever'') and Iron Maiden (''Out of Control'').
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    22, A Million
    It’s one of the year’s strangest albums, but some of the oddball arrangements work: On “10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⊠ ⊠” Vernon fuses Chipmunk soul with a booming low end to chilling effect. Still, he’s at his strongest when he keeps his outré inclinations in check.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Part Lies Part Heart Part Truth Part Garbage: 1982-2011
    There are three new songs, finished after this year's Collapse Into Now, and folky highlight ''We All Go Back to Where We Belong'' suggests that ­Athens' finest had more sweet jangle left in 'em.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    DFA Remixes: Chapter 1
    Great remixers, like great ballad interpreters, take songs to wildly unlikely places while respecting the material. [14 Apr 2006, p.85]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Let England Shake
    Harvey uses the bright grooves to present her grim thoughts on the world's armed conflicts. It's a hoedown for the end of civilization.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Sound Of Silver
    While Sound of Silver still delivers terrific buzzy dance-space jams ... it also contains wispy hints of New Order and Bowie... and Murphy's best song-making efforts to date.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Body Talk
    Spectacular Swedish import Robyn continues to languish in the cult-act remainder bin, but these 15 excellently curated tracks (culled from three 2010 EPs) deserve to change that.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Time (The Revelator)
    Ironically, while this is Welch's quietest album, with nary a drum or electric instrument in earshot, it's even closer to the spiritual vicinity of rock.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    thank u, next
    It’s a lovely, intimate collection that embraces its essential paradox of being both a grand pop statement and a bedroom-pop wonder.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Welcome To Mali
    The old formula, while rootsy, gains much from the injection of variety.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    A Sailor's Guide to Earth
    Overall, the album is strikingly intimate.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Bon Iver
    On Bon Iver, his second full-length, an emboldened Vernon achieves a beautiful fantasy all his own, backed by a full band and buoyed with horns and pedal steel.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    How I Got Over
    The venerable hip-hop band's first effort since joining NBC's late-night lineup delivers all the funk/soul/jazz vibes fans have come to expect.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Love & Hate
    References to that style [Morricone’s sound] may have become cliché, but Kiwanuka personalizes it through the individuality of his melodies, the dynamics of the instrumentation and his lyrical point of view.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Syro
    A startlingly accessible, possibly even pop-friendly effort. [3 Oct 2014, p.69]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Sep 29, 2014
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    blackSUMMERS'night (2016)
    It exudes enough confidence to let his heart show and to let his music grow in any direction his muse demands.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Estudando o Pagode
    A sprightly psych-pop disc overflowing with exquisite melodies and cooing female voices. [14 Apr 2006, p.86]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Robyn
    Fantastic all of the time.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Separation Sunday
    Bar rock for the smart set. [3 Jun 2005, p.82]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Process
    Over Process‘ 10 songs, Sampha executes a sonically adventurous vision that’s entirely his own and builds on his enormous potential.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Decline Of British Sea Power
    It's not all darkness: The Brighton, England-based quintet offers enough straight-ahead rockers to keep the CD from turning into dirge overkill. [Oct 2003, p.95]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Rings Around The World
    Unfortunately, that extraordinary core is at times marred by forced eccentricity.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Deacon
    Where Soil embraced the discord of romantic entanglements, Deacon, its follow-up, is a celebration of the opposite: the comfort and assurance that swells from deep connection. [Apr 2021, p.73]
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Thunder, Lightning, Strike
    Full of exuberant, childlike pastiche pop. [7 Oct 2005, p.76]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Welcome Interstate Managers
    Parkway didn't take Fountains of Wayne to the charts, but let's hope the Interstate will. [13 Jun 2003, p.92]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Beautifully Human: Words And Sounds Vol. 2
    She's as comfortable sighing like a muted horn as she is wailing in big-band fashion--though it's the infusion of tenderness in her homespun tales that seals the CD's lasting appeal. [3 Sep 2004, p.74]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    45:33
    45:33 deftly segues from the smooth funk favored by Levan to synth-pop and Talking Heads-style polyrhythms before opening into serious space-party territory.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Platinum
    On Platinum, an old-school country wisecracker that's one of her all-time bests, she's funny as hell.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    LCD Soundsystem
    Unites the club and indie-rock crowds in ways few have attempted since the '80s. [25 Feb 2005, p.100]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    3 Pears
    Yoakam's first release in seven years is a smashing return to form. [14/21 Sep 2012, p.141]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Sep 18, 2012
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Koi No Yokan
    The album continues where 2010's Diamond Eyes left off, bonding streamlined mosh-pit daggers with floaty space-station distress calls. [23 Nov 2012, p.70]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Nov 21, 2012
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    LP1
    She exerts enough of a magnetic pull to lure listeners into some challenging territory.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Feast of Wire
    Songs full of Sergio Leone set pieces and Mexicali blues. [14 Mar 2003, p.66]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Stone Rollin'
    Stone Rollin' is old school for sure, spun fresh.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Futureheads
    Wisely keeps things short, sharp and shocked. [19 Nov 2004, p.85]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Locked Down
    There's no denying the vintage voodoo--or the palpable disgust--the Doctor summons with Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place
    It seems like ideal film-soundtrack music, except that its gargantuan beauty would probably overwhelm any image you'd match it to. [Listen 2 This supplement, Dec 2003, p.18]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Transcendental Blues
    Winding through the psychedelic title track, the ''Rubber Soul''-ish pop, the garage rock, and the lovely ''Eire meets Tennessee'' ''The Galway Girl,'' ''Blues'' is his musical road map.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Chavez Ravine
    A ghostly meditation on the culture of forgetting. [8 Jul 2005, p.68]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Harps And Angels
    The stunning title track proves that Newman, at age 64, has more healthy bile in him than 64 twentysomethings....Harps has a couple of duds, though. [8 Aug 2008, p.68]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    American Dream
    As gratifying familiar as much of American Dream will be to longtime fans, it also feels like exactly the album 2017 needs--urgent, angry, achingly self-aware. And catchy as hell, too. [1 Sep 2017, p.53]
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Little Sparrow
    In wedding bluegrass with the Appalachian sound of her youth, Parton, who wrote half of the material and reprises her classic ''Down From Dover,'' repeatedly explores her favorite theme -- romantic betrayal -- and turns in a powerful performance, augmented by the best of bluegrass' hot pickers
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Wind
    If The Wind is unsentimental, it's also happily unhygienic, sounding as ramshackle and energized as you'd hope a nothing-left-to-lose last blast would. [5 Sep 2003, p.75]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Cee-Lo Green Is The Soul Machine
    The forays into "soul"... sparkle, as do his playful raps. But boast-heavy collaborations with Timbaland and Ludacris drag things down. [19 Mar 2004, p.66]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8
    Excitingly, Tell Tale Signs jumps decades ahead to offer an alternate history of a less leaky period: the creative renaissance that started at the end of the 1980s and has been bearing fruit ever since.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Happier than Ever
    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.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ocean's Eleven OST
    It's fine for what it is, but someone decided to spice things up with annoying snippets of film dialogue, which help to derail the flow.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Convincer
    Old soul and country records hover like guardian angles over trim, unhurried tunes... [14 Sep 2001, p.94]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Poison Season
    His follow-up is his most adventurous collection yet. Over 13 tracks, he unspools anthemic power chords, swaggering horns, and gimlet-eyed tales of his journeys around the world.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Mysterious Production Of Eggs
    Peaks again and again. [11 Feb 2005, p.63]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Lucifer on the Sofa
    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.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    BLACKsummers'night
    His sentiments rarely transcend the boudoir--and listeners lulled by the album's unvaryingly sleek, high-gloss beats may just drift off to dreamland before they get there.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Stranger to Stranger
    Stranger to Stranger is, finally, Simon’s most interconnected work, a self-contained world unto itself full of backing tracks that wind up in multiple songs and recurring characters (“the Street Angel”) who pop up in unexpected places.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    50 Words for Snow
    It's all ­gorgeous.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
    Moving futher away from her early alt-country sound has sharpened Case's songwriting instincts. [10 Mar 2006, p.68]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
    For the first time, Oberst sounds as if he's trying to conform his lyrics to his tunes, not the other way around. [4 Feb 2005, p.130]
    • Entertainment Weekly
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Malibu
    Malibu defies categorization, which is a testament to Paak’s versatility and his willingness to take detours, not all of which work (the well-meaning but dopey celebration of boobs “Silicon Valley” is exhibit A). But even when his muse leads him astray, it’s easy to see why Dre got in on the Anderson .Paak business early and often.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    So Beautiful or So What
    This cagey old pro makes room for stray nonsense phrases like "bop-bop-a-whoa" as well; spirited spirituality is his goal these days.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Third
    Third is indeed a less immediately accessible effort than Portishead's more groove-oriented earlier work, but it's no less gorgeous.
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