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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    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Not the Actual Events [EP]
    You can sense their attention to detail in “Dear World,” with a machine-tooled drum track that keeps shifting to emphasize unexpected beats, and “She’s Gone Away,” which features Maandig singing in ghostly harmony with Reznor, her voice nearly imperceptible in the mix.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Christmas Party
    Sincere romanticism is balanced with a knowing sense of humor.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    DNCE
    Now Joe’s back again with DNCE’s first full-length, and this time he’s dispensing with metaphor altogether.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nightride [Mixtape]
    As the double-entendre title implies, Nightride mixes themes of both cruising and loving, and does so through tracks produced by notables including the-Dream, Boi 1da and Dev Hynes.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Weight of These Wings
    Produced by Frank Liddell, Glenn Worf and Eric Masse, the music deepens that unsettled feeling with arrangements that feel raw--sometimes even incomplete--by current country standards. ... Yet none of this is the product of indifference or fuzzy thinking.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    New Skin
    Valensi clings to the crisp tick-tock guitars he favors in his day job. But CRX juices those tidy riffs with ’80s-style synths that give tunes like “Anything” and “Ways to Fake It” a serious Cars vibe.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Black America Again
    The self-professed rapper-actor-activist has delivered a modern-day hip-hop answer to Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” tackling everything from romance to the wage gap to the lack of diversity in Hollywood with a political bent.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    FLOTUS
    He's simultaneously explored meditative electronic beat music, and on the remarkable FLOTUS (For Love Often Turns Us Still), Wagner has drenched his baritone in vocal effects and, with two collaborators, woven downtempo beat music and his effervescent lyricism into something really magical.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    American Band
    This is an album as much as about emotions as it is topics.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Front Row Seat to Earth
    Breezy and sunset-hued, the tone of the album is calm--a reassuring piano buoys the melody one moment, and, later, delicate woodwinds fade a song to black.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Yes Lawd!
    Yes Lawd! maneuvers through its 18 tracks with a gleeful sense of abandon. Like the work of the late producer J Dilla, Knxwledge’s rhythms take a few measures to lock into place, but when they do, weird patterns emerge.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Big Baby D.R.A.M.
    With Big Baby D.R.A.M. he comes into his own, rapping with verve and sensitivity while fully capturing 2016’s loopy, soulful moment in hip-hop. No wonder he’s smiling.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    All Wet
    The album is a hoot, and it adds to the allure with guest spots from Canadian performance artist Peaches, L.A. beat producer Skrillex, avant-pop singer and songwriter Charli XCX and others.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    22, A Million
    Vernon is in no rush to clear up any of this--to harden ideas about himself or his art--on 22, a Million, which represents an even bigger leap than Bon Iver’s previous record.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Seat at the Table
    It’s her exploration of the nuances of black life that makes this one of the year’s standouts. Even in a time when black pop artists have grown especially political, the work feels critical.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    ArtScience
    Though an occasional fondness for quiet storm R&B weighs down tracks like “Let’s Fall in Love” and the Herbie Hancock funk ballad, “Tell Me a Bedtime Story,” there’s plenty here to show Glasper’s Experiment is still driven toward discovery.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Glory
    Spears is back at 34 with an album that carries her one-of-a-kind electricity without depicting her as a victim or an avenging force; here she seems in control, a grown woman having a laugh on her own terms.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blonde
    This surprising effort answers breathless hype not with shouts but with one long exhalation.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    SremmLife 2
    Throughout the album, the duo is still working with Mike Will Made It and his stable of producers, who provide Rae Sremmurd with infectious beats set at precisely the right shoulder-rocking tempo.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Detour
    Whether Lauper will replicate the commercial success of “Tuskegee” is doubtful, but this is Cyndi Lauper we’re talking about, so only a fool would bet against it.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Black Bubblegum
    For Black Bubblegum Copeland turned his ear toward electronic pop music, but in a typically oblong way.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Take Her Up to Monto
    A curious, engaging work that mixes electronic and acoustic elements to create kaleidoscopic tracks.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Into The Light
    Though never flaccid or soft, Into the Light possesses a lightness of touch, a deft empathy, a dreamlike aura.
    • 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.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    blackSUMMERS'night (2016)
    Maxwell’s transcendent falsetto and the soulful jazz, electronic and soul arrangements need no cohesive story line to make them resonate.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Stranger to Stranger
    A distinguished and captivating extension of, rather than a dramatic departure from, his rich body of work.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    7/27
    7/27 mostly rises to the occasion.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Fallen Angels
    He’s back with a second deeply felt, imaginatively reworked batch [of songs from the Great American Songbook] on Fallen Angels.
    • 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.
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