Los Angeles Times' Scores

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For 1,599 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 0.1 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: 1,361 out of 1599
  2. Mixed: 176 out of 1599
  3. Negative: 62 out of 1599
1599 music reviews
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    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tical 0: The Prequel
    There's a sense of urgency when he is inspired by the production backing him, but when the beats coast along without much flair, Method Man does the same.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Suck It and See
    Suck It and See (English slang for "give it a try"), slows the pace but ultimately feels even more detached.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    This Is Acting
    In almost every way This Is Acting feels safer and more ordinary than “1000 Forms of Fear,” with familiar (if sturdy) melodies and lyrical clichés about houses on fire and footprints in the sand.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Hunger Games: Catching Fire [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    Picked by music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas, the second volume has a lot of good makeout songs and just as many calls for courage.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Born This Way
    If Gaga had only spent as much time on pushing musical boundaries as she has social ones, Born This Way would have been a lot more successful.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends
    It seldom gathers enough momentum, and doesn't feel the least bit cohesive.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Empire
    It may not be fair to rag on the group for picking the wrong decade to rip off, but right now Kasabian's allegiance to the '90s sounds especially uninspired.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Dreamed A Dream
    Boyle is perfectly comfortable singing actual hymns like 'Amazing Grace,' though her take on them is pretty much on a level with any local church's choir star. She's at her worst when she pushes harder; she doesn't know how to build drama, and her throat seems to constrict as she reaches for bigger notes.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Babel
    What the album leaves you with is the image of a little lion man, rattling his ever-expanding cage.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Blurred Lines
    Blurred Lines is a celebration of plasticine funk, warbly bass and plump booties.... Just as often, though, Thicke and his producers, which include himself and collaborators Pro J, Dr. Luke and Timbaland, dip from the cheesier realms of '70s pop.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dark Horse
    The addition of superstar producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange to the mix ensures that everything here is as radio friendly and mainstream minded as heavy guitar rock gets.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Man's Thoughts
    With only a few exceptions, the material here doesn't live up to his performances, making the music easier to admire than to enjoy.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dr. Dee
    But extracting a narrative from these delicate sounds can feel like more trouble than they're worth--even if you haven't half as much happening as Albarn does.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fortune
    Fortune reveals an artist more concerned with calculating than creating.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Falling Down A Mountain
    If the style is intact, though, the songs here seem a bit lackluster; only the relatively jangly "Harmony Around My Table" and the Velvet Underground-ish "Peanuts" (think of O'Hara in Moe Tucker's role) really stand out from the tasteful mid-tempo blur.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Press Play
    It certainly weaves a wide range of up-to-the-second pop styles into the mix: throwback '70s funkiness, dance music's two-step and drum 'n' bass, new-wave soul.... Still, he is no Prince.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tha Funk Capital Of The World
    The characteristically festive result is generous to a fault: Collins triggers warm memories but leaves us with only a shallow sense of how precisely his four decades in the business have affected him as a man.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Two Lanes of Freedom
    The album should keep him atop the country commercial firmament, but doesn't really advance him as an artist.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kill the Lights
    Bryan, never a particularly flexible singer, sounds even more wooden than usual in these tracks; for the first time, this 39-year-old father of two seems a bit embarrassed here, which threatens to topple the whole enterprise.... The singer is far more convincing in the album’s slower, quieter tunes.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Thing Called Divine Fits
    As a set of songs, though, Divine Fits' debut feels pretty process-oriented, more workbook than showpiece.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Idlewild
    "Idlewild" leaves the ears longing for something. Coherence, basically. There's no sustaining mood, no clear message, only Benjamin and Patton's efforts to outdo whatever they came up with last.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fifty Shades of Grey [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    At 16 tracks, though, Fifty Shades of Grey is a bit of a slog, with too many dreary midtempo numbers--by Sia, Laura Welsh and Skylar Grey--that only feel more glazed (and less enticing) the longer you listen.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    This Is Us
    A competent but very late-adopted pop-trance slurry.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Black Butterfly
    Even in the heavier material on Black Butterfly these guys make more room for melody than they ever have before.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Exhibitionists
    However well-crafted and hummable it is, Exhibitionists is hardly groundbreaking. Each song feels borrowed rather than handmade.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    1989
    1989 is a deeply catchy, sleekly-produced pop record with the slightly juiceless quality of an authorized biography, a would-be tell-all bleached of the detailed insight she’s trained us to expect from her.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Tuskegee
    Acoustic guitars replace glistening synths, bittersweet steel guitars slide in to provide the patina of rural rootsiness, yet Richie still never really steps away from the polished sheen that characterized his musical heyday.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Emotional Traffic
    Emotional Traffic isn't dramatically better, worse or all that different from what he's been doing since the beginning.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Talk That Talk
    For all the innuendo and introspection, Talk That Talk contains little sweat, slobber or fluids and a lot of plasticized, inflatable insinuation.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Emancipation Of Mimi
    Her sadly depleted voice is again propped up by multi-tracking, and the occasional dog-deafening shriek hardly proves she's recaptured her early acrobatic power. [10 Apr 2005]
    • Los Angeles Times
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