NOW Magazine's Scores
- Music
For 2,812 reviews, this publication has graded:
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43% higher than the average critic
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2% same as the average critic
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55% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 6.9 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 66
Highest review score: | The Life Of Pablo | |
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Lowest review score: | Testify |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 1,287 out of 2812
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Mixed: 1,452 out of 2812
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Negative: 73 out of 2812
2812
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Critic Score
Whether it’s Africa, Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, a-ha's Take On Me, their hamfisted Billie Jean or (say it ain’t so) No Scrubs, every cover is unnecessary and pretty much unwanted. Cardigan-toting, alt-rock covering R&B was played out before it ever even happened.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jan 24, 2019
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Now and then you get a glimpse of ideas that could’ve made the album more powerful if they’d been further explored. ... But the songs are so spiritless and phoned-in that those moments are too little, too late.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Dec 2, 2016
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- NOW Magazine
- Posted Feb 4, 2016
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- Critic Score
In lieu of artistry or any semblance of lyrical spark, DST offers monotonous production and relentless chanting.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jul 22, 2015
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These 14 purpose-punk "anthems" (songs with loud multi-tracked vocals during the choruses) sound like Anti-Flag hastily thawed them out of mid-90s cryogenic stasis in a moment of frenzied conviction that we've never needed them more.- NOW Magazine
- Posted May 28, 2015
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Songs you'd expect to swell and boil over--which is what Modest Mouse are good at--often end up trudging humourlessly (Ansel, Be Brave), and things get far worse in the moments where humour is actually the goal.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Mar 12, 2015
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- NOW Magazine
- Posted Oct 2, 2014
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- Critic Score
The album wobbles between Timberlake-style sexy-time R&B, Bublé-light standards and flat attempts at sincere John Legend-type balladry.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jul 3, 2014
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If maturing means 14 (regular edition) tracks of footy-stadium-worthy anthemic choruses ad nauseam, I don’t want 1-D to grow up.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Dec 2, 2013
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The most listenable song is the Chavril duet Let Me Go, which has zero of either musician’s “edge” and a whole lot of adult contemporary schmaltz.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Nov 7, 2013
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- Critic Score
Authentic is ridiculous right down to the heavy-breathing interludes, which worked for Usher circa 2003.- NOW Magazine
- Posted May 2, 2013
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- NOW Magazine
- Posted Jan 24, 2013
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- NOW Magazine
- Posted Nov 30, 2012
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- Critic Score
Past the dancehall signifiers (Paul's increasingly strained lilt and tepid syncopated pulse), the new record is brazenly mediocre.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Sep 20, 2012
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- NOW Magazine
- Posted Nov 7, 2011
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- Critic Score
You'd figure we'd at least get a one-off novelty track, but the flat, repetitive melodies and gimmicky rhymes even fail to do that.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Sep 8, 2011
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- Critic Score
Not sure what's more embarrassing: the Good Charlotte/Atreyu sleaze rock take on Dr. Teeth's Night Life or the idea that this tribute's hope is to make adults want to feel like kids again. Either way, the whole thing deserves a Miss Piggy karate chop.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Sep 8, 2011
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Here I Am concerns itself with the kind of bland, radio-friendly R&B pop that equates sex appeal with self-confidence.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Aug 8, 2011
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Over-emoting at every turn, she obliterates otherwise innocuous soul, R&B and reggae-inflected songs with gimmicky vocal histrionics, strident attempts at melisma and the kind of callow self-help lyrics that are apparently mandatory for all young pop stars nowadays.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Apr 29, 2011
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- Critic Score
Despite their brevity, the songs are repetitive, wanky and almost impossible to differentiate. They make you yearn for the days before genre cross-pollination.- NOW Magazine
- Posted Mar 2, 2011
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- Critic Score
Topping off this overproduced, underwhelming effort are Roberts's over-enunciated lyrics. Even at his best, he comes off like a guy crashing an Of Montreal album.- NOW Magazine
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This is not an observation about theme--the record is unremarkable in both sound and execution.- NOW Magazine
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While a hip-hop album that’s not a complete kielbasa festival is refreshing, Luda’s feminist intentions are horribly misguided.- NOW Magazine
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The closest this popportunistic foursome comes to satisfying songsmithery is "The Getaway," whose title is sound advice for potential buyers of this album.- NOW Magazine
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Robert Smith, Franz Ferdinand and Wolfmother offer glimpses of what this project might’ve been, but then along comes 3 Doors Down-clone Shinedown and it’s off with the heads of everyone involved in this nightmare.- NOW Magazine
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Rebirth is – without qualification – the most embarrassing album of the last 10 years. Embarrassing for him, for his audience, for rap, for humanity.- NOW Magazine
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The newest disc from the once-innovative Vancouver group assaults you with 18 contrived, lazy tracks. The best is a seven-year-old re-release, 'Red Dragon,' from when Moka Only gave this outfit some class.- NOW Magazine
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The problems that litter No Line fall into two categories: mind-numbing blandness on the part of the band or embarrassing, face-palm-inducing vocal choices by Bono.- NOW Magazine
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He rushes through the tunes, slurring syllables as if enunciating the lyrics would be too much work even if he could remember all of them. And clearly, one day wasn’t enough rehearsal time for his hired band, who are so often in vamp mode while trying to figure out where Morrison’s going that they lose track of the tunes.- NOW Magazine
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- Critic Score
There seems to be something unsettlingly artifical about the whole Beirut project, as if idea man Zach Condon is playing some strange cultural appropriation game for which he’s the only one privy to the rules.- NOW Magazine
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