Rolling Stone's Scores

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For 5,913 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 34% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 62% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 6.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 Magic
Lowest review score: 0 Know Your Enemy
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,629 out of 5913
  2. Mixed: 2,244 out of 5913
  3. Negative: 40 out of 5913
5913 music reviews
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Misery Is A Butterfly
    A bang-up mix of electronic song structure and guitar impressionism.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    100 Miles from Memphis
    Her smoky rasp is thinner than many who've plowed these fields, but Crow is a hook-miner, and her phrasing is tough and sexy enough to put the material over.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Maximum Balloon
    or his solo debut, Dave Sitek adds schwing to his smeared synths and swarming guitars, while an A list of New York voices rock midtempo goth-soul beats.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Long Island
    Endless Boogie can't help sounding like hip rare-vinyl freaks. But it's a gag with legs--and hypnotic force.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shakira
    She pins huge choruses and a mercurial vocal tone to music that's so effortlessly eccentric and omnivorous you'll hardly notice when a banjo (and Blake Shelton) enter on "Medicine."
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Glitter And Doom Live
    Waits' second live retrospective plumbs his later LPs, especially 1992's Bone Machine and 2004's Real Gone; it misses classics like "Time" but shows off a deep oeuvre and a brassy, mischievous sextet.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    All Is Dream
    Their most precise work yet - it's both musically decorous and lyrically savage... But high-pitched repetition of the music and the inaccessibility of the lyrics means that all but the most seriously baked listener has to work to meet the band on their shifting, obscure landscape.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    God Hates Us All
    God Hates Us All is Slayer's most brutal record since 1986's immortal (or undead) Reign in Blood.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    And the Anonymous Nobody
    Tracks like the loopy "Snoopies" (with David Byrne) and old-school throwdown "Whoodeeni" (with 2 Chainz) are glorious bug-outs, but the urban cautionary tale "Greyhounds" (echoing Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City," with Usher on the hook) is a reminder that De La are often more powerful when they're less goofy.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Grand Don't Come For Free
    Is both simpler--in sound and scope--than Pirate and much more ambitious. [27 May 2004, p.80]
    • Rolling Stone
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Another Day On Earth
    A low-key but often lovely disc.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hysterical
    The low-fi haze and ramshackle post-punk of the first two records by these self-made indie heroes are mostly gone on album three, replaced by confident songs festooned with shiny hooks.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Things We Do To Find People Who Feel Like Us
    There's something refreshing about a bastard of old who doesn't try to slow down his band's headlong thwack with stubble-stroking musing on midlife malaise or clunky lit-seminar over-trying. For these guys, noise will always be enough.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Catastrophist
    Tortoise's anticipation of our retro-electronic-cratedigging-post-everything moment means the palette is less surprising than it once was.... Yet the Tortoise mix of pelvic trance grooves and jazzy changes remains distinctive.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Beat the Champ
    The music is fantastically rangy, with discordant strings and jazz piano nuzzling punk-busker guitar.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tribute To [EP]
    When George Harrison planned the reissue of "All Things Must Pass" in 2000, he fought the urge to simplify the original mixes. So he might well have loved this EP of his songs, most from All Things, recorded in 2001 by Jim James shortly after Harrison's death.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rock Action
    Eschewing the sprawling, double-album ethos that marked the group's early entries into indie rock, Rock Action is also more concentrated and less elliptical
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Midnight Sun
    Overall, the set could use some emotional weight to match the level of wit and craft.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sing When You're Winning
    On his second U.S. album, Williams and collaborator Guy Chambers achieve an audio spectacle showcasing their melodic wit and stylistic valor.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    It Still Moves
    My Morning Jacket are going nowhere fast - but in all the right ways.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fifth Harmony
    It's the group's most cohesive album yet and a satisfying introduction to what Fifth Harmony can be capable of in their new era.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Rattle That Lock
    Gilmour is, inevitably, most eloquent here as a guitarist.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nobody Is Listening
    The record reaches its peak with the one-two punch of “Tightrope” and “River Road,” delicate closing statements and two of Malik’s best songs to date.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hozier
    His YouTube hit "Take Me to Church" won him a wave of insta-hype, and his debut LP earns it.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    True Romance
    True Romance is the pop-album equivalent of a wicked Tumblr.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Salival
    Salival's cool appeal is the DVD, compiling four of the band's videos and offering an extra scraplike song.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lifeline
    It's not that less is more--only that, in that moment, less is perfect.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Drastic Fantastic
    It's high-gloss folk pop, confessional in form if not in content, crafted with intelligent attention to every detail.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Peter Buck
    There is great fun here, including crackling garage rock ("10 Million BC"), acid-ballad whimsy ("Travel Without Arriving") and two dusky jangle-pop jewels, "Nothing Matters" and "Nothing Means Nothing" (the latter sung by Corin Tucker), that would have fit just fine on another, classic R.E.M. album.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Ride
    The influence of producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Explosions in the Sky) is clear, Furtado exerting pop-adjacent weirdness with a healthy dose of fuzz and charm. However, she loses the focus and simple brilliance of the more upbeat moments when she hits the ballads.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ghost on Ghost
    The overall effect can still be a little drowsy, but the best tunes here are the kind of dreams that will stay on your mind long after waking.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pizza Box
    Barnes is a clever lyricist with a punk-rock past who understands the raw simplicity of a good country tune.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful
    You'll get lost in the lush romanticism of "Why," and the terrifically titled "I Only Like His Hat, Not Him" oozes woozy charm.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Seven Swans
    Quietly beautiful.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Aquarius
    Throughout, Tinashe's sweet soprano sets up a hazy mood that's easy to get lost in.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love, Damini
    So much of Love, Domini’s appeal is due to its spicy elasticity. It, if anything, anticipates a global village of sorts, where the vibrant and eclectic sounds lose none of their authenticity, even as they hop across a couple of continents.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The New Abnormal
    Where Strokes albums since 2006’s First Impressions of Earth have felt grudging and defensive in their theoretical approach to the band’s cultural and career position, this time out the mood is less constricted.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Grand Theatre, Vol. 1
    This multivolume project will still trigger honky-tonk mosh pits: See "A State of Texas," which suggests you can be true to your roots even when you've outgrown them.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Higher
    At times, Stapleton’s latest feels like a more mature, seasoned sequel to his multi-platinum 2015 debut Traveller
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Adult Nights
    Adult Nights' guitar pop tugs at your heartstrings without sacrificing smarts. Not bad for a first go-round.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Underneath the Rainbow
    By now the Lips have made peace with modern-day production techniques, but the 12 licketysplit songs on their seventh studio album still feel righteously ragged, if not downright drunk.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Survivor
    The only real weakness on Survivor is the self-righteous tone creeping into the songs.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do
    The Idler Wheel... is a challenging album. The songs are intricately arranged but sonically stark, foregrounding Apple's piano and the stupendous drumming of Charley Drayton. There's not a single big, chewy hook on the album. Sometimes the songs drag... But Apple's kooky energy pushes through the slow spots.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Morning/Evening
    Club beats pound on "Morning," then dissolve; "Evening" flips and reverses the arc--an invitation to click "repeat" and play it all day.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sung Tongs
    One of the more creative and accomplished records you'll hear this year. [19 Aug 2004, p.118]
    • Rolling Stone
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hollywood Vampires
    What holds it all together is Cooper, who, at 67, still possesses one of the best and grittiest voices in rock and the endless charisma of the undead.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Black Radio III
    As an enjoyable fan-service sequel intended to offer music of comfort and solace, Black Radio III is fine. As an artist, Glasper is allowed to get into his beatmaker bag, relaunch the Black Radio brand, and leave the New Jazz Thing bleeding edge to others. But one can’t help but wish the stakes were a bit higher.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Appeal To Reason
    Rise Against may be nervous about leaving the underground behind, but with sharp songs like these, they're ready for the rest of the world.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last?
    These are the sounds of adult emotional struggle, thirtysomethings trying to make sense of the end of young adulthood, and to the realization that your troubles won’t go away just because you’re not hitting a bar every night. But it’s Dessner who becomes the most intriguing vocal presence.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    White People
    The skits keep it realer than reality TV. [25 Nov 2004, p.88]
    • Rolling Stone
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Robert Ellis
    Ellis' sly, unsparing wit still defines the music.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Remember My Name
    Durk's major-label debut sticks to the mood of melodic exasperation that's carried throughout his previous work.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Take Them On, On Your Own
    Original it's not. But it still sounds awfully good while it's happening.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Settle
    The pair's debut is a modest masterpiece of production finesse, rooted in house but borrowing from hip-hop, dubstep and other club mutations.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Harrow and the Harvest
    The themes are often bleak: "Some girls are blessed with a dark turn of mind," Welch sings at one point, probably with a wink. But there's a light that never goes out on The Harrow & the Harvest.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    In the Grace of Your Love
    It won't get you shaking your ass, but swaying eyes closed on Sunday morning has its appeals too.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Celebration Castle
    The Ponys do what they do so brilliantly, and yet so casually, they make it seem simple.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Spare Ribs
    Written partly during lockdown, the record features some of the least-annoying songs about the pandemic recorded since the initial outbreak in 2019. And that’s heavy praise, considering some of the truly treacle-shellacked tracks that oozed into the zeitgeist last year.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Throw Down Your Arms
    The concept works better than you might think. [3 Nov 2005, p.94]
    • Rolling Stone
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Port of Morrow
    Port of Morrow has more of a studio-sculpture auteurist vibe than ever.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Subject: Matter [EP]
    He has a skill for wordplay that keeps you hooked.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Free the Universe
    It's less strictly Jamaican than Major Lazer's debut, connecting reggae's often-insular tradition to a wider world.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Reincarnated
    There's a winning sincerity to his sunny jams extolling peace, love and gun control; even the weed anthems feel less phoned-in than usual.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    She
    She does sultry and cool well.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Party Store
    Detroit's music has always driven across racial and genre boundaries. But when a longstanding garage-rock band with a black frontman loads its album with covers of Euro-inspired Motor City techno classics, galaxies implode.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cults
    Cults are excellent songcrafters, expert at boosting drama with dynamics and unexpected sounds. But what sets their music apart is feeling: the mood of wistful romance that hovers over the songs, the idea that love is an insoluble mystery.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Oops!... I Did It Again
    Under the cheese surface, Britney's demand for satisfaction is complex, fierce and downright scary, making her a true child of rock & roll tradition.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    End Of Love
    [Barzelay's] sharp eye and endearingly nerdy voice enlivens his band's meticulous acoustic pitter-patter.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ringleader Of The Tormentors
    You Are The Quarry... was Morrissey's strongest album in years, but Ringleader reframes it as mere foreplay. [6 Apr 2006, p.62]
    • Rolling Stone
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Terror Twilight: Farewell Horizontal
    The extras are a feast for serious Pavement lunatics.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mirrored
    Give Mirrored a handful of listens and you might just enjoy having your brains splattered against your speakers.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dedication 4 [Mixtape]
    When roused by witty company (Nicki Minaj on "Mercy," J. Cole on "Green Ranger"), he sounds like the greatest rapper ever to dream of competing in the X Games.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    untitled unmastered.
    Ultimately, this is a set of odds and ends, inspired freestyles and funk jams; many are likely Butterfly outtakes, albeit none with the laser-focused resonance of "The Blacker The Berry" or "Alright." But there's brilliance in even Lamar's cast-offs, and an intimacy here that makes this more than just a gift for his ravenous fans.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hard Working Americans
    [Todd Snider] convenes a tough, versatile band for a set of rootsy, lefty covers like the Bottle Rockets' "Welfare Music" and Frankie Miller's desperate 1959 hit "Blackland Farmer," which is redone with taut New Orleans swing.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Here Before
    Picking up pretty much where their last set, 1991's Time for a Witness, left off, the Feelies' music remains a template of formal perfection, like a holiday service at the VU Episcopal Church.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Live: The Storyteller
    Todd Snider decided to quit his high school football team during his first mushroom trip; years later, he got conned by someone impersonating a NASCAR driver and found himself fronting a country cover band after a drunk woman knocked the original singer on his ass. It's all there on The Storyteller, the populist folkie's career-spanning concert LP.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Streams of Thought, Vol. 1 [EP]
    His voice sounds gravelly--two decades of constant touring will do that--and substitutes tonal nuance for raw power, like a horn player blowing his lungs out.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Go-Go Boots
    It's a slight shift from DBT's usual muscular alt-country, but the rest is familiar: great storytelling.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bon Iver
    Bon Iver isn't quite a crossover move. Big-pop synths appear, but more in the way a radio hit sounds leaking out of your lover's earbuds.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT
    The grandiose title betrays an even greater (purported) mythology: New York/Portland psych-rockers Akron/Family claim to have written their fifth album in a cabin built into the base of Mount Meakan, an active Japanese volcano.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Queen of Me
    She still has plenty of fun, even as she’s fully aware that it’s not the Nineties anymore. ... Sometimes the production choices feel conspicuously dated. ... Queen of Me is more successful when its pop references feel attuned to her sensibilities as a global pop O.G.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water
    It was only natural to suspect that Limp Bizkit would fall on their faces this time by getting serious. But Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water is looser and livelier and just plain better than anything they've ever tried before.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shooter
    Jennings may be most comfortable in front of a synth or computer, but on Shooter, he proves he’s never too far from his rootsy outlaw heritage.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Woman Worldwide
    Overall, Woman Worldwide improves the songs from Woman--Justice’s own ascent/descent into the disco baroque--and does, erm, justice to the rest of their catalog.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Weight Is A Gift
    Like their last album, 2003's Let Go, The Weight Is a Gift is a top-notch collection of sad-eyed guitar ballads.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    What Will We Be
    The sixth studio album by Devendra Banhart is the best he's ever made. What Will We Be is also great enough in patchouli-scented spurts to suggest that the 28-year-old singer-songwriter's defining classic is one more record and a little more focus away.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dynamite Steps
    Unleashing a persona that's part barroom romantic, part serial killer, Greg Dulli's Twilight Singers project has now eclipsed his Nineties soul-grunge outfit Afghan Whigs.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Pictures
    The whiplash reverberations of the 1964 Kinks and '65 Who on the LP3's third album, Pictures--the metallic thwack and buzzing sustain of singer-guitarist Glenn Page's Rickenbacker; the fast martial step and chrome-glaze harmonies in "I Don't Believe You" and "Nothing Like You"--are authentically vicious.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ghost Notes
    The group's first with its original lineup since 1997, is great by any standard.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    re:member
    Clicks and clacks of the robotic processes add an extra textural layer for music that’s part Conlon Nancarrow’s 20th Century player piano compositions, part Aphex Twin Satie-and-skitter. A gentle mix of the stiff, sad and soothing.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mr. Beast
    With its plodding tempo, slow-woven guitars, melancholy piano chords and moments of crushing loudness, "Friend of the Night" is representative of much of the album, but Mr. Beast's best bits are those that dare to be different.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ontario Gothic
    Lush yet understated string arrangements by Arcade Fire collaborator Owen Pallett help make this a dream you'll want to get lost in.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    No One Ever Really Dies
    The fifth N.E.R.D LP, and first since 2010's forgettable Nothing, feels urgent in a way their music never has, fitting our political moment while remaining as stylistically looped-out as ever.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    We've Been Going About This All Wrong
    All told, the singer-songwriter’s latest is a testament to her dedication to songcraft and an impressive mid-career statement on restlessness, contentment and everything in between.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Purple Snow: Forecasting the Minneapolis Sound
    This two-disc set tells the story of that sound ["The Minneapolis sound"], from the proto-disco Seventies to the synthed-up Eighties.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    National Ransom
    Elvis Costello traffics in so many genres, it must be hard to focus on one. Here, he doesn't.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Call And Response: The Remix Album
    These remixes of the group's hits by indie acts like Of Montreal and Deerhoof make the idea seem oddly plausible.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bigger Love
    Bigger Love, his seventh album, shows off the emerging subtlety of his musical craft and social messaging.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Belong
    Its sound is now massive enough to match its big-hearted emotion.
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