Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 1,600 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 62% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 35% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 73
Highest review score: 100 Chemtrails Over the Country Club
Lowest review score: 25 The New Game
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,362 out of 1600
  2. Mixed: 176 out of 1600
  3. Negative: 62 out of 1600
1600 music reviews
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    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Platform
    On her second album she manages to sound both futuristic and steeped in history.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ratchet
    Shamir's marriage of club-pop and dance music is striking, if hardly revolutionary on the surface. But the devil-may-care ease with which he plays with his sexuality and dances through the drama pushes the record into the sublime.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Fun Rises, the Fun Sets
    Rich with echoed effects and a rolling momentum that hits heavy on the first beat, the 14 tracks showcase an inspired artist who has yet to make a commercial impact equal to his skills.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Colour
    Jamie xx proves adept at exploring the intersection of hip hop, Jamaican dub music, strange New York post-disco, British grime music and gritty new-era rhythm and blues.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    At.Long.Last.A$AP
    Raw, woozy, profoundly psychedelic and often brilliant, Rocky's second studio album is awash with hallucinogenic texture.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Star Wars
    Nothing ever quite feels certain on Star Wars, an album in which one of pop-culture’s most recognizable phrases--and a 20-year-old band--is flipped into something wholly unpredictable.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beauty Behind the Madness
    An impressive and revealing new album full of expertly crafted pop songs with clear-cut commercial goals.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Too
    This quartet appreciates dynamics, surprise noises and curious structural diversions to go with the fury.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Crosseyed Heart
    Crosseyed Heart could have been issued at any time in the past four decades. It’s full of influences he’s spent his creative life exploring, and there’s nothing viral or meme-worthy about them. That Richards keeps discovering nuance within those original texts is a testament to his seemingly infinite muse.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    1989
    The crafty alt-country singer reimagines Swift’s blockbuster pop album as a polished roots-rock disc.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Unbreakable
    Together on Unbreakable they [Jackson with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis] create grand-scaled but meticulously detailed songs that almost sound as though they’ve been under construction since 2008.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Meow the Jewels
    Meow the Jewels deliver emotional depth befitting nature’s most psychologically elusive creature.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Over and Even
    Most everything on Over is built with measured precision.... Equally striking is the musical depth.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    25
    Adele’s fans have been waiting for years for new Adele songs to explain their experiences to them. And they get a worthy batch on 25, an album so full of heavy-duty drama that it makes a more lighthearted peer such as Katy Perry seem like a Pez dispenser.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Loaded [Re-Loaded 45th Anniversary Edition Box Set]
    The release, available on the major streaming services and as a CD package with bonus DVD (featuring a high-resolution surround-sound remix and two other alternate mixes), offers rich perspective on the evolution of Reed's approach, highlighting an artist in transition, looking for a hit or two and adapting to a new decade.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    HITnRUN: Phase Two
    A proudly organic companion to the EDM-inflected "Phase One," Prince's latest album shows that he hasn't lost his interest in (or his knack for) the creeping funk and lush R&B balladry he was making in the early 1990s.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Royalty
    The music carries a convincing bad-guy energy that’s all the more potent for its sweet, often luscious textures. Its recklessness travels in a clear direction.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New View
    Like avowed influences Van Morrison and Neil Young, Friedberger on New View travels in fluid, seamless melodies, and uses them in service of lyrics that revel in poeticism.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Malibu
    Taken together, Malibu builds on the skills .Paak introduced on his first album, called "Venice."
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Anti
    Her most adventurous by far.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future
    Barbara, the duo's first album of original material together in five years, often stacks up with their best work and suggests that the ideas they pioneered in the '90s aren't just back en vogue--they've held up amid decades of fast-moving techno.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Emily's D+Evolution
    The album is an artistic statement album with a capital "A," complete with an alter ego and theatrical flourishes that hint toward something of a funk-rock opera about death, spirituality and personal identity.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This Is What the Truth Feels Like
    If these Top 40 fixtures make the album feel in keeping with current radio pop, they don't crowd Stefani with unnecessary bells and whistles. Her singing--and, more important, what her singing is saying--is always front and center, which gives the music an intimate quality even at its most polished.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    TWENTY88 [EP]
    Sean and Aiko make for a convincing couple. But what makes Twenty88 such a compelling listen is the startling honesty and rawness it captures--even if it's just fantasy.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    VIEWS
    ["Redemption" is] just one of the many deeply beautiful tracks here that further dismantles whatever barrier was left between rap and R&B following Drake’s earlier albums.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Take Me to the Alley
    Throughout the album, which the singer produced with Kamau Kenyatta, Porter matches these cozy sentiments with modest, small-scale arrangements--mostly keys, bass and drums--that sound shaped more by the gigs he's played over the last three years than by any desire to experiment in the studio. But Porter’s resting state is a compelling one.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Moon Shaped Pool
    An album that reaches for something far more organic and immediate [than 2011's The King Of Limbs].
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dangerous Woman
    Given that she started out as an actress, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Grande can work convincingly in more than a single mode. But it’s still impressive how fully she inhabits the emotional environment of each song here, even when one directly contradicts another.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Modern Country
    Tyler explores the boundless opportunities within a few great riffs, while drifting from time to time to explore odd structural detours.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Freetown Sound
    [A] lovely but searing new album that weaves 2016 racial, sexual and political tension into an album of immaculate, Prince-inspired funk and R&B.
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