Paste Magazine's Scores

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For 4,081 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 67% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 30% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 76
Highest review score: 100 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band [50th Anniversary Edition Deluxe Version]
Lowest review score: 10 Songs From Black Mountain
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,645 out of 4081
  2. Mixed: 400 out of 4081
  3. Negative: 36 out of 4081
4081 music reviews
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    • 70 Metascore
    • 43 Critic Score
    Mechanical Bull
    Unfortunately, they miss and it lands in the five-day-old dregs of a keg in an Anytown, USA backyard.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 43 Critic Score
    Chinese Democracy
    Too bad the epitaph’s already scrawled in Chinese Democracy’s anachronistic margins: a bottomless pit dug by disposable income, a persecution complex and egomania.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 43 Critic Score
    Piano
    While intimate and personal in nature, Piano combines minimalistic instrumentation with simplistic lyrics and makes for an album that turns lackluster as a whole.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Hands
    Little Boots’ problem may be that there’s little left to add to her genre: The synth-pop revival has nearly exhausted itself, and Hands ends up sounding like a B-sides collection cherry-picked from the catalogs of Kylie Minogue and Girls Aloud.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Look Alive
    The whole album sounds like it was recorded to be played in an H&M. It’s bland and forgettable, fuzzed with a faux-depth like an Instagram filter.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    After Robots
    Track after track is slathered in layers of horns and guitars and synths until the songs underneath are no longer discernible.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Marshall Mathers LP 2
    Technical proficiency is overrated. Taste has to account for something, which means Eminem isn’t the Jimi Hendrix of hip hop. Instead, he’s in danger of becoming Yngwie Malmsteen: incredibly agile yet musically soulless. He says a lot of nothing on MMLP2, but I guess you can admire the way he says it.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Dr. Dee
    Unfortunately, an undertaking as complicated as Dr Dee needs all the accessibility that would-be fans can get. And instead it's nothing more than rabbit-hole music for Dr. Damon.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 41 Critic Score
    I Told You I Was Freaky
    As much of Freaky wallows in the jokes, the record runs out of ideas astonishingly early.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Curses
    If you don't mind a little old-fashioned leering misogyny and plenty of lobotomized choruses, the power chords and snarling vocals will shake you all night long. [Sep 2006, p.81]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Lightning Bolt
    Essentially, the cruise control is running onward with disregard for all the maintenance and repairs that an engine needs, and the result is the worst album of their career.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Be Set Free
    These are mediocre, and sometimes painfully inept, approximations of classic lovelorn folk tunes. At a short 38 minutes, the times aren’t changin’ fast enough.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Viva La Vida
    Given Eno’s quarter-century of Bono-fides, this isn’t surprising. Martin’s interests are frequently vague--on 'Lovers in Japan/Reign of Love' he sings about soldiers who must soldier on and runners who must run until the race is won. Seriously?
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Have Mercy
    Unfortunately, “almost as good as Steve Miller” is about as good as things get.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Cross Of My Calling
    Mall-punk aesthetes might be convinced, but even before Cross of My Calling’s ponderous title-track closer comes around (with its near nine-minutes of lead-footed epilogue), most listeners owning a copy of Sandinista! will have put it on instead.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    MGMT
    MGMT chokes on its own forced sense of whimsy.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Outsider
    The Outsider consistently grabs at transcendence only to watch it recede. [Aug/Sep 2005, p.110]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 78 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain
    Ornate but unremarkable headphone listening. [Oct 2006, p.80]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Scab Dates
    At once punishingly long and oddly incomplete. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.110]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Psychic Lovers
    It sounds a bit like you took Captain and Tennille (or at least Captain) and down-sampled their music, ran the vocals through a pipe organ, and then shot one of their hits (say, “Muskrat Love” or “Love Will Keep Us Together”) full of amphetamines.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    NOW + 4EVA
    The result is one of the more confidently presented, mostly inoffensive and ultimately inconsequential albums in recent memory.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings
    It's only fair to consider Saturday Nights, Sunday Mornings in the context of the rest of the Crows’ catalog, and with that in mind--to borrow a phrase from Duritz--this one might fade into the grey.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Lucky
    While never unpleasant, Lucky represents a slowdown from the roll Nada Surf has been on.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    How To Walk Away
    The album has its moments but suffers from fussy production.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Highway Companion
    So why is his new album so underwhelming? Because Petty has gotten away from his strength--whipping pop hooks into an emotional frenzy of harmonies--and has focused on his weakness: overly ambitious lyrics.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Weezer (Red Album)
    Now we get Cuomo name-dropping Eddie Rabbit, Joan Baez and "a Cat named Stevens," which makes Weezer sounds like a retread of "Built To Spill," who did the recycled-classic-rock-cliché thing back in 1999. Did it better, too.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    All Jacked Up
    Half the album [is] mired in embarrassing heartland cliches. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.96]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tourist
    Instantly forgettable. [#16, p.139]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    I'm Not Bossy, I'm the Boss
    For an album that focuses on the theme of love, it’s really hard to find anything to swoon over on I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Night On Fire
    Night on Fire is going to need a gifted remixer to transform it into the dance-floor-packer it aspires to be.
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