Rolling Stone's Scores

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For 5,909 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: 3,627 out of 5909
  2. Mixed: 2,242 out of 5909
  3. Negative: 40 out of 5909
5909 music reviews
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    • 95 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Definitely Maybe [Remastered]
    Oasis' debut remains one of the most gloriously loutish odes to cigarettes, alcohol and dumb guitar solos that the British Isles have ever coughed up. This deluxe three-disc reissue captures the madness of the Gallagher brothers' early days.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Led Zeppelin I [Remastered]
    Made and issued between the falls of 1968 and 1970, the original LPs mark Zeppelin's rapid progression out of British R&B and psychedelia into a crushing-riff rock of unprecedented dynamic range, embedded with details from Fifties rockabilly and Celtic and Appalachian folk, blown open with volcanic improvising.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Led Zeppelin II [Remastered]
    II was still tied to straight-blues sources (the Willie Dixon elements in "Whole Lotta Love"). But the alternate takes highlight Robert Plant's ripening vocal poise and, in a rough mix of "Ramble On," the decisive, melodic force of John Paul Jones' bass and John Bonham's drumming.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    CSNY 1974 [Box Set]
    CSNY 1974 may be the closest we'll come to hearing a mid-Seventies reunion album from this band.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Houses of the Holy [Remastered]
    As with the reissue of the group's fourth album, Page has impeccably restored the glimmer of Houses of the Holy and uncovered an LP's worth of fascinating outtakes that show the band's headspace at the time.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Alpha Mike Foxtrot: Rare Tracks 1994-2014
    Taken together, it's a comprehensive document of a great band with endless secrets to reveal, even now.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Doolittle 25
    This three-disc 25th-anniversary package gives the Pixies' surreal 1989 breakthrough the monument it deserves.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Black Messiah
    Black Messiah shows how deep easy can go. D'Angelo and his band have built an avant-soul dream palace to get lost in, for 56 minutes of heaven.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    To Pimp A Butterfly
    To Pimp a Butterfly is a densely packed, dizzying rush of unfiltered rage and unapologetic romanticism, true-crime confessionals, come-to-Jesus sidebars, blunted-swing sophistication, scathing self-critique and rap-quotable riot acts.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit
    The tunes are tight and sticky; the guitars hit with real sizzle and bite, accented by flourishes like the garage-rock organ in "Debbie Downer" or the cowbell swing of "Aqua Profunda!"
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Star Wars
    The music's urgent, live-in-the-studio feel pairs well with Tweedy's lyrics, which seem more direct and compact than they have in a while.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Miles Davis at Newport: 1955-1975 The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4
    A four-CD, 20-year cornucopia of live performances that show that evolution in real time, drawing on his appearances at the globe-roving Newport Jazz Festival with diverse collaborators.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Secret History, Vol. 1
    In 2015, it sounds like Eden. But it doesn't sound dated--mainly because so many bands are still feasting on Pavement's ideas.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Hamilton: An American Musical [Original Broadway Cast Recording]
    Tickets to the show may be sold out until approximately forever, but this album is an excellent replacement.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Ties That Bind: The River Collection [Box Set]
    The music is full of teenage dreams crashing up against reality, dusting themselves off and trying to figure out the next move. If we're lucky, it's a story that never stops.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Life Of Pablo
    Pablo doesn't go for any grand musical and emotional statements on the level of "Bound 2" or "Runaway" or "Hey Mama." West just drops broken pieces of his psyche all over the album and challenges you to fit them together.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A Moon Shaped Pool
    As always, it's Yorke's voice that holds the emotional center, and it's never been more affecting. Credit both his delivery and the production clarity, a statement in and of itself.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Live at the Hollywood Bowl
    The way the screams and music dance across these 17 songs--recorded during three nights in 1964 and 1965 and spliced into a seamless rush of manic love--is what makes Live at the Hollywood Bowl such a thrill.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Complete BBC Sessions [Remastered]
    Zeppelin, ultimately, were their own universe, and this is the sound of them willing into it glory, bit by bit.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Chapter and Verse
    For Chapter and Verse he's chosen a revelatory mix of classics and obscurities.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Blue and Lonesome
    Made on impulse, as a much-needed break during other studio work, Blue and Lonesome is a monument to muscle memory. Solos are brief and tight, evoking the honed-punch effect of the original recordings.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Triplicate
    A song isn't a song without melody, harmony and voice. Time and again he proves the same thing on Triplicate.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    DAMN.
    Much like the recent A Tribe Called Quest record, Damn. is a brilliant combination of the timeless and the modern, the old school and the next-level. The most gifted rapper of a generation stomps into the Nineties and continues to blaze a trail forward.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Hitchhiker
    A buried-treasure mother lode. ... He's in peak lonesome-guy mode on the never-released failed-relationship chronicle "Give Me Strength." Another previously unheard song, "Hawaii," is a spooky mysterious-stranger ballad.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A New Career in a New Town (1977-1982) [Box Set]
    The only thing A New Career in a New Town is missing, at least for the diehard fans who would buy a lavish box set like this, is more of everything – more rarities, more photos, more stories. But that's also precisely why this period in Bowie's career remains captivating. There's enough curious music here to last several lifetimes.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Songs of Experience
    If experience has taught U2 anything, it is that a great new song can still feel like the first day of the rest of your life. Songs of Experience is that innocence renewed.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    On Air
    You hear the sound of songwriters flush with discovery, a dazzling glimmer of what lay ahead.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Dirty Computer
    In its own way, its as artful, ambitious, determined, joyous and inspiring, as Lemonade or To Pimp a Buttery. It's a sexy MF-ing masterpiece.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Appetite for Destruction: Super Deluxe Edition [Box Set]
    As with everything Guns N' Roses from the period, it's not so much all access as it is all excess. And that's exactly what you want from a reissue like this. It'll bring you to your sha-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-knees.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album
    For the die-hards, the ones who have charted the Classic Quartet's every move, from the early glories of the Coltrane LP to the fiery outpourings heard on albums like Sun Ship from 1965, it's another small but crucial puzzle piece in the group's still-stunning evolution during its roughly three-year lifespan. For everyone else, it's an unvarnished, day-in-the-life portrait of an icon--and the three musical giants that helped him achieve that status--at work.
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