Rolling Stone's Scores

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For 5,918 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: 3,633 out of 5918
  2. Mixed: 2,245 out of 5918
  3. Negative: 40 out of 5918
5918 music reviews
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    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Scratch My Back
    This tribute to 12 of Peter Gabriel's favorite songwriters is a cool idea that turns into a stone bore.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Love & War
    Love & War is sharp and bright, full of limpid melodies, punchy brass arrangements and, in songs like "Change" (with rapping by Wale), beats that gesture to 1974 but feel thoroughly 2010.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    What Is Love
    His first album, What Is Love?, is light acoustic pop on which he shows melodic skills. But Drew took some bad lessons from emo and his dad's folk record.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Head First
    This may be the most lovingly detailed synth-pop album since the golden days of Yaz and Kim Carnes. Yet expert execution doesn't always signal a good idea.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bionic
    Things stall mid-album with a string of dull ballads.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Weathervanes
    Mostly, though, Weathervanes is pleasantly nonconfrontational--like a Demetri Martin routine, minus the funny.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Adventures Of Bobby Ray
    Atlanta MC Bobby Ray's debut album can be filed next to those by Wale and Kid Cudi: He's a left-of-center rap hero whose skills lag somewhere several miles south of his hipster bona fides.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Defamation Of Strickland Banks
    You're advised to ignore the ridiculous plot particulars and concentrate on the album's modest pleasures: chiefly, Plan B's lovely, Smokey Robinson-style tenor and deft melodic touch.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rokstarr
    Cruz's singing lacks personality, and Rokstarr is ultimately a collection of decent, but generic, Eurodisco tracks without a star--"rok" or otherwise--to hold a listener's interest.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Black Dirt Sessions
    Dirt has more mood pieces than songs, and the lyrics get just plain goofy.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Korn III: Remember Who You Are
    The draw is Davis, who spits scarred-teen scat like a guy whose parents just signed him up for military school. Not easy when you're pushing 40.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    31 Minutes To Takeoff
    Mike Posner is at the head of a new genre: frat-house R&B.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
    The charm of those songs fades outside the film, leaving the Nigel Godrich- produced soundtrack to get over on a lush new Beck song, "Ramona," and some real garage rock, notably Plumtree's Nineties nugget "Scott Pilgrim," which proves naif enthusiasm doesn't need irony to be cute.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Alive As You Are
    Alive as You Are makes it a very different band, but not a worse one. The arrangements, as always, are totally immersive.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Junky Star
    On his third disc, his lyrics come off as more cinematic than believable; the title track finds him "sleeping on the Santa Monica pier with the junkies and the stars."
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kaleidoscope Heart
    Bareilles veers between fellow pianists Alicia Keys and Regina Spektor, avoiding either's extremes.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lisbon
    Sometimes the Walkmen's anthemic naturalism wanders without much direction.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Am the West
    His rants get boring over track after track of bland Nineties G-funk (a promised collaboration with his estranged N.W.A homey Dr. Dre never came through).
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Earth vs. the Pipettes
    The voices can't equal, say, Bananarama's depth of feeling. But in tracks like "Captain Rhythm"--which partly suggests "Da Doo Ron Ron" on Jupiter--the Pipettes still ride the dance beat like a rocket ship.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Incredible Machine
    Sugarland are ruthless in their desire to leave no radio-ready trick untried, but in the end it's too much machine, not enough heart.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Man on the Moon, Vol. 2: The Legend of Mr. Rager
    As Drake and Kanye West have demonstrated, there's room in hip-hop for melancholic MCs who upend the self-congratulation that dominates the genre.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cardiology
    Their fifth disc is rife with signs of rock ambition - acoustic songcraft, sweeping guitar solos - folded into their vaguely emo, synthed-up sound.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    5.0
    He essays a few fashionably global-sounding electro-club tracks, including an Auto-Tuned one with T-Pain and Akon, and at least four numbers where he swipes guys' girlfriends. Keri Hilson and Kelly Rowland help him stretch out; Plies, Yo Gotti and T.I. add muscle
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Only 1 Flo, Pt. 1
    Only One Flo embraces the electro pulse of international clubland, with hedonistic lyrics to match. But although Ludacris and Gucci Mane inject momentary charisma, Flo Rida mostly flows as anonymously as any dance diva.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Endlessly
    Her ballads and neo-disco songs are steeped in lovelorn melodrama, but her bland persona doesn't give the storms life. You're left with saggy stylistic gestures that seem to drag on, endlessly.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    No Boys Allowed
    Her second album is hit-or-miss, with failed attempts at pop crossover (the Timbaland collabo "Breaking Point") and sub-Rihanna reggae moves. Still, the high points are worth digging out.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Science & Faith
    The Script have enjoyed Euro-chart success with a mix of lite rock, rap rock and Guinness-informed crooning they call Celtic soul - at once soaring, melancholic and treacly.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Content
    Where Gang of Four's earlier work rode on a thrilling push-pull tension, Content either pummels your eardrums or just slogs along. It's anti-capitalist mainly because you won't enjoy owning it.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mine Is Yours
    On their third album, the Cali quartet swing for the fences - it's as if CWK, once a sharp band with retro leanings, have been gorging on Springsteen and Kings of Leon.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Different Gear, Still Speeding
    On Different Gear, the group attempts stripped-down, Stones-y rock but ends up with Be Here Now-style guitar bluster and Liam's blithely boilerplate lyrics.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Alexander
    If it's vaguely hippie-ish and vaguely Californian, count on Ebert to work it into his solo debut: acid-folk reveries, Beck-ish busker rap, lyrics about Vietnam, sensitive maleness, Dylanisms, yodeling, calling women "mama," reggae, bongos.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Raven in the Grave
    On their fifth disc, the Danish duo prolong their frigid endless summer, turning out songs full of surf-pop harmonies and film-noir ambience.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Euphoric Heartbreak
    If you like rock gratuitously big and laced with soggy self-pity, frontman James Allan, and his enabler, superproducer Flood, are here to help.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Here We Go Again: Celebrating the Genius of Ray Charles
    Here We Go Again feels like a missed opportunity. Nelson's nylon-stabbing guitar is too scarce here, giving way to Marsalis' jazz band, a slick cast that rotates solos exhaustively.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Wit's End
    As it lilts and sways, you can't help but wish that McCombs would just snap out of it.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Matthew Morrison
    Verdict: a mildly charming, sometimes gawky LP that will please Gleeks and befuddle everyone else.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Alpocalypse
    The jokes don't always relieve the earworm annoyingness of the Xeroxed tunes. Still, you can only hate so much on an accordion medley titled "Polka Face."
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Devil's Music
    Teddybears' second U.S. release seems designed to be a coming-out party, but it's just slick hodgepodge.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Red River Blue
    Shelton is the paradigm of the modern Nashville pro.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    If Not Now, When?
    Incubus retain some of their early, macabre nerdiness (the harmony-bedecked "Tomorrow's Food" reminds us of our dirt-bound mortality), but, for all the energy, the melodies fail to ignite.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Young Love
    The genre-mixing doesn't always work.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Welcome 2 My Nightmare
    The fun comes when he abandons the sequel concept in favor of a New Wave duet with Ke$ha and a decades- tardy anti-disco tune ("Disco Bloodbath Boogie Fever") in which Alice tries to rap. Slapstick was always his strong suit.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Night of Hunters
    It doesn't rock, but it waltzes, spinning a tale involving animated trees, demons and what may be peyote cactus tea.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Chickenfoot III
    The band plods more than pushes, and while the riffs stick, the songs generally don't.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Evanescence
    The sometimes syrupy mix of piano, guitar and strings feels more like a formula than a genuine catharsis.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Great Escape Artist
    Perry Farrell strives for a Radiohead vibe that leaves guitarist Dave Navarro confused (though he gets his on "Words Right Out of Mouth").
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fear of God II: Let Us Pray [EP]
    Pusha is too reserved to pull off the revamped sound--he's more Raekwon than Rick Ross, better suited to quick-tongued storytelling than to bombast.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fallen Empires
    Snow Patrol fall back to the blandly inoffensive safe zone--though at least they sound a little brighter.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Blue Slide Park
    His obligatory jet-setter brags about high-dollar shopping sprees and b-words he's f-worded strain for credibility, not fooling anybody.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Born This Way: The Remix
    The album has some diverting moments.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Immortal
    With Jackson's world-remaking grooves as a guide, even the gaudiest setting can be a party.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Resolution
    Mostly, Lamb of God stick to conservative values that metalheads can respect and everyone else can continue to ignore.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Remember Me, Vol. 1
    Nelson's voice is perfectly preserved, but an overstuffed band of Nashville pros provides stiff arrangements, and Willie has already released better versions of several tracks here.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Careless World: Rise of the Last King
    Tyga's strength isn't in introspection, but curation.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Radio Music Society
    Despite a charmingly lithe voice, her song writing has a way to go.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Up All Night
    One Direction are simply five pretty guys with a few decent songs and not much personality. Call them One Dimension.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Blown Away
    Underwood's voice is as powerful as ever, but Blown Away tries too hard, ratcheting up melodrama with strings and effects.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Strangeland
    At times it's catchy, but its maudlin ballads and monochrome synth-pop production are also kind of dull.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dr. Dee
    An ambitious and unexpected move, sure, but the mix of period strings, vocal choruses and West African percussion (plus Albarn's gloomy score) makes for a dense term paper.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Storm & Grace
    Splitting the difference between hooky modern tunecraft and old-school hush, "Un-Break" is a high point, a track fans of Pink and her papa might all get behind.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Spirit in the Room
    Covers of Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits are good fits; elsewhere, his off the leash vibrato oversells.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Magic Hour
    The Brit–pop and Elton John moves here feel phoned in.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Shape Shifter
    [Shape Shifter] has moments of s**t-hot playing (see the smeared runs on "Metatron"). But the arrangements, oversweetened with too many synthesizers, lean toward lite jazz.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Invisible Stars
    Often, meandering melodies make you wish [lead singer, Art Alexakis would] stop whining.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Uncaged
    Uncaged, sounds, well, caged.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    America
    The most enjoyable bits here are the least grandiose.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Soul Sessions, Vol. 2
    Her musical instincts are off, and she steamrolls nearly every song with her bombastic blues growl.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Charmer
    There's little new here, and even less charm.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kiss
    Kiss too often defaults to mediocre dance pop like the Owl City collaboration "Good Time" – heavy on Disney-fied thump, light on memorable hooks that might highlight her unassuming adorableness.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lightning
    The band's thrift-store pastiche, from that track's skidding-siren hook to a few not-quite-ecstatic EDM-style builds, has a manic, self-aware intensity – call it grandiosi-twee. And try to take it in small doses.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Heist
    The record has its charms (the single "Thrift Shop," a cheeky ode to second-hand duds) and its virtues (the marriage-equality anthem "Same Love"). Unfortunately, Mack­lemore's virtuousness overwhelms his far more modest charms.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    R.E.D.
    As peers like Frank Ocean and Miguel boldly reimagine commercial R&B, this often feels less like vision than parsing market research.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lotus
    This vitriol-tsunami of a record misses a chance to connect Aguilera's music with her warm, empathetic TV presence.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Trilogy
    The Trilogy collects three of the Toronto singer's 2011 mixtapes, but some editing might have better introduced him to the world outside Tumblr.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    World From the Side of the Moon
    He's far better in originals like "Gone, Gone, Gone" and his hit "Home," which build from folksy picking to hooting power-ballad choruses, a pleasantly popified take on Arcade Fire. Those songs are redundant too--but the tunes leaven Phillips' overbearing self-seriousness.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    True [EP]
    The 26-year-old goes all-in with the hipsters, swathing herself in melancholy synths. It's an awkward pivot.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jamie Lidell
    He does it [copying Prince and Roger Troutman] well, at times, but he usually makes you want to YouTube up the originals.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Confessions
    If not many riffs or choruses grope your hindquarters like their biggest hits did, the recurring Eighties Billy Idol pulse beneath still grinds tawdry enough for strip clubs.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Spring Breakers
    It's refined, minimalist, often quite lovely and even chiller than Trent Reznor's Social Network score.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Native
    The main problem is also the main asset: Tedder himself, a song savant who's a boring and characterless singer.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    R.E.V.O.
    Their debut feels equally crowdsourced for maximum popularity, but fractures under its many moods.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Indigo Meadow
    It's a pleasant-enough swirl; more so whenever vintage organs pipe in. But it never expands your mind.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Indicud
    Cudi’s pitchy-dawg voice remains his own worst enemy.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Head in the Dirt
    He's less convincing as a badass ("Family") than as a guy who fights desperation by partying ("Low").
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Partygoing
    His wit is always comforting, but more predictable and less durable than before.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ghost Brothers of Darkland County [OST]
    While a few songs stand apart (Case's wickedly sexy "That's Who I Am"), the set mostly makes you want to see the blood spilling onstage.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pythons
    Producer Gil Norton smooths the foursome's edges while interjecting horror-comic backup yelps that marked his Pixies work decades ago; little else here would befuddle aging Cure or Weezer fans.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ice on the Dune
    The vintage-Daft Punk cheese platter "Celebrate" and album-ending­ Bowie joke "Keep a Watch" are foamy fun, but too often Ice on the Dune just feels like a lobotomy on the dance floor.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bosnian Rainbows
    As art-rock abnegation, it's impressive. But when he teases flamboyance on the death disco "Morning Sickness," you long for a little more excess.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Summer Knights [Mixtape]
    "Death of YOLO" and "Word Is Bond" show promise, but the tape feels like little more than background music for blunt sessions.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Blessed Unrest
    The Blessed Unrest is full of broad, exposition-heavy vignettes of heartache and resiliency; the songs feel groomed for rom-com soundtracks.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Don't Look Down
    Even a goofy Eminem cameo (the "Allen Iverson of safe sex") can't save "C'mon Let Me Ride" from sounding like an over-the-top hookup plea, and "Final Warning," a domestic-violence drama, feels vaguely like tabloid fodder.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Prince Avalanche [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    As EITS's music for Friday Night Lights proved, they really need a stage as big as a football field.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Crash My Party
    Bryan just can't match, say, Kenny Chesney's knack for lonely contemplation. Given the drinking songs he's best at, he'd be better off pretending spring break lasts all year long.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Repave
    Highlights "Comrade" and "Alaskans" are abstract but inspiringly muscular, while other songs drift into panoramas of tentative guitar lines, distant whooshing sounds and Vernon's wounded falsetto singing couplets not even he would dare make sense of.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    EP-1
    At 48, Pixies singer Black Francis has either lost or abandoned his flair for sounding like the most unhinged man in indie rock.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Brass
    Royal Bangs have slid from the noisy toe-tappers of earlier records to a brighter pastiche of styles heard on their fourth album.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Atmosphere
    The problem is that he brings the same vague, feathery touch to everything he does.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rapor [EP]
    There’s a lot of feeling here, sometimes too much.
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