New Musical Express (NME)'s Scores

  • Music
For 5,983 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 41% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 to hell with it [Mixtape]
Lowest review score: 0 Maroon
Score distribution:
5983 music reviews
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Again, he has made another record that will stay close to the hearts of a generation of rap fans. He is surely our generation’s Lil Wayne.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    This record isn’t a monument to His Royal Badness. It’s one of the greatest artists of our time carrying Prince’s baton into the new world.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ultimately this record – her best yet – is about finding a different kind of love: the quiet self-examination after the dust of a break-up finally settles.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Sheeran-featuring ‘Peru”s inclusion on the tracklist of ‘Playboy’ is a further nod to his rise. But this album more than demonstrates that its creator is no one-hit wonder.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Let England Shake is an album that only the Polly Harvey of today could have written.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A remarkable album, one that only grows more awesome with each listen.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    It flows in a way that makes it a treat to enjoy from start to finish rather than dipping into songs at random. ... Thought-provoking and full of fresh new flavour.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ultimately it’s the album’s sense of humanity, not its innate clever-cleverness, that elevates it to something special.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    This new record not only keeps up that 100 per cent strike rate of golden tunes, but also gives us their best release to date. It’s an album that represents huge growth. Their vocals are more powerful and emotive than ever. ... Like true Gen Z artists, they pull from an extensive palette of genres, but manage to make each – be it angsty rock or a return to disco-pop – feel like it’s a sound they’ve been honing for ages.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Rodriguez has turned heartbreak into a glorious 30 minutes of club-ready electro-smashes. ‘I’m Your Empress Of’ is nothing short of breathtaking.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Cribs’ best album in 11 years.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    With ‘Kings Disease II’, he has delivered a masterpiece of monolithic measures, completing arguably the best two-volume series in hip-hop.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A record that, when given the requisite time and attention, offers unfathomable depths to explore.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Even if you've been fortunate enough to live with these tracks over the last year or so, they still sound more vital, more likely to make you form your own band than anything else out there.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Mournful acoustic strumming, slide guitar, hushed percussion, strung-out woozy piano – there’s consistency and clarity to ‘Curve Of Earth’; perhaps more than you’d expect of a record 15 years in the making. What this album does, though, is contain the chaos of addiction, crystallising mistakes into something much more beautiful. The result is extraordinary and life-affirming.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Two empowering protest-techno-with-a-message juggernauts, ‘They Told Us It Was Hard, But They Were Wrong’ and ‘Megapunk’ mark a distinction and sonic evolution from the floaty dream-pop of 2017’s ‘Adapt’ EP and 2018’s rumbling club-driven ‘OK/‘So’. ... This debut harnesses the spirit and will to overcome forcefully and with inclusivity.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    It’s a record that’ll please newcomers and existing fans alike, but, given the backstory and heart poured into ‘Wait Til I Get Over’, the record existing for Jones feels like a triumph. Whether or not he brings these sounds or elements back to the group is yet to be seen, but this record will shake the walls of Hillaryville and beyond.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Energy, desire and that indefinable cool that any great rock band must have burst from every angle. This album feels like a celebration, and Sheer Mag sure deserve one.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    As a whole, the album is confirmation of two young artists at the top of their game, watching the landscape unfold from the throne they earned themselves four years ago.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    For someone who helped to invent modern metal, he’s held a stunning number of surprises up his cloak sleeve (see: a wildly successful solo career and genre-defining reality TV show). This rollicking album is yet another.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    This is a dynamic album that is reflective of the muddled world we find ourselves in – delivered with a fortifying sense of honesty from an essential emerging band.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Porridge Radio nail some of music’s hardest tricks – breathing fresh life into indie and making a record that can loosely be compared to other bands in fragments, but also feels entirely their own. ‘Every Bad’ is a breathtaking step up from their bedroom-recorded 2016 debut, ‘Rice, Pasta And Other Fillers.’
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    ‘On Bright Green Field’, in all of its weird, frantic and fantastic glory, they’ve gone above and beyond.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    ‘Happier Than Ever’ fully establishes Billie Eilish as one of her generation’s most significant pop artists – and, better still, does so without repeating a single trick from the debut that turned her life upside down.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Parks has a singular talent for tapping into sadness and turning it into something uplifting. ... Arlo Parks may be the voice of Gen Z, but there’s no doubt that this is a universal collection of stories that’ll provide solace for listeners of all ages and backgrounds for decades to come.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    It’s one of the deepest cuts we’ve had from Kendrick. While ‘good kid, m.A.A.d city’ showed the world what it’s like to grow up as a kid in Compton, his fifth album serves up vignettes about what it’s like to be a Black adult whose trauma still haunts them.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    An album packed with shimmering highlights.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Genres may come and go, but Sawayama’s second album is defined by her ability to fashion each of these sounds into big, brilliant pop songs. The best British pop album of the year.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    No other record released this year will provoke such conflicting emotions in you. Skeleton Tree is both beautiful and harrowing, hard to listen to but even harder to look away from.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Lana Del Rey is large – she contains multitudes, and the way she balances and embodies them on her fifth album is nothing short of stunning.