Rolling Stone's Scores

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For 5,922 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: 3,637 out of 5922
  2. Mixed: 2,245 out of 5922
  3. Negative: 40 out of 5922
5922 music reviews
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ratchet
    He isn't operating in the same romantic vein as, say, Sylvester, one obvious predecessor--just delivering a healthy dose of real talk, set to clean cuts of vintage Chicago house grooves.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    PC Music Volume 1
    Beyond Cook's own uncannily elegiac "Beautiful," the songs are only as good as the concept, which wears thin fast.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    To The Stars... Demos, Odds And Ends
    "Golden Showers in the Golden State" is almost as filthy and funny as early Blink at their best. But if this "Suburban King" wants to rise again, he may need some help from his friends.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    American Wrestlers
    While the low-fi mix distracts and some tracks run long, you can hear the bona fides of a skilled singer-songwriter. McClure's cool charm makes these homespun songs feel like long-lost guitar-pop gems, newly discovered and barely dusted off.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Froot
    In the end, Diamandis can't quite shape Froot into a coherent vision.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Jackrabbit
    Tag-team singers Charlene Kaye and Allen Tate flaunt killer instruments, though their performances can want for drama.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Barter 6
    Too often, it all sounds boastful and sad in the same moment, like a promising young fighter warning you he can hit so hard it doesn't matter if he's too messed up to form a fist.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fly International Luxurious Art
    Some of the Nineties-style boom-bap beats sound a little on the cheap side, but this stands as a worthy addition to the decent-to-great output of Raekwon's past decade.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Jekyll + Hyde
    On their fourth LP, they bang out styles with such preposterous ease--Seventies Philly soul, old-timey gospel, Celtic folk, metal, reggae, jazz--they could incorporate as a single-band music-placement agency. If only they reached a little further.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love Story
    Yelawolf's populist ambitions haven't gone away--check the wave-your-lighter anthem "American You"--but Love Story avoids sanding away all of his edges.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kindred
    Standouts [are] "Where the Sky Hangs" and "My Brother Taught Me How to Swim." But much of the rest of Kindred is so relentlessly up, it starts to feel suffocating.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Handwritten
    Mendes has more rhythm than you'd expect.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    New Glow
    The cuteness starts to wear thin pretty fast.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    No Pier Pressure
    There are missed opportunities--the She & Him track is slight, and a rumored Frank Ocean team-up is sadly absent--and a few too many retreads (the "Sloop John B"-ish "Sail Away"), although the harmonies do sound grand with Al Jardine and other Beach Boys teammates on board.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Blaster
    On most of Blaster, Weiland's first all-new solo album since 2008, he suffers from a bad case of Generic Rock Voice.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Scene Between
    These saccharine tunes and too-cute melodies could desperately use some of the band's old abrasive edge.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ludaversal
    On his first album since 2010, he's still the same elastically flowing shout-rap dirty bird.... At 37, Luda also indulges in some dad-rap introspect.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Postcards from Paradise
    Postcards From Paradise, his 18th solo effort, is a masterful summary of Ringo-ness: his cheer, his cheek, his wisdom.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Day Is My Enemy
    Unlike their funky, rap-informed late-Nineties peak, The Day Is My Enemy can be obnoxious and same-y after a while--but what good punk isn't?
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    We Fall
    The ornate tracks are as wow-worthy as the guest list--so it's surprising how same-y the mood of wallowing grandeur can get.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Eclipse
    The more muscular approach nearly always suits Lewis' strengths better; his contemplative moments, like "Alone," tend to get drowned out by pompous synths and howled pleas.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Spring Break... Checkin' Out
    There's a little heartbreak here and there, but drinking--a constant theme, naturally--helps wash it away.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Run
    [Singer Aaron Bruno's] ADD is still cooking on the band's latest album.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Seth Avett and Jessica Lea Mayfield Sing Elliott Smith
    You're left marveling less at these adequate covers and more at Smith's foolproof songbook.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Empire: Original Soundtrack from Season 1
    This soundtrack for the hottest show on TV could use more of the beat-you-with-a-broomstick fire of Taraji P. Henson's character.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Policy
    The running theme here is a giddy release--the Buzzcocks-style guitars and dark jokes about commitment in "What I Want," the helium-gospel rush of "Witness"--packed with care.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Want to Grow Up
    She kisses off her twenties with fuzz-pop guitars and breathy sighs in the Nineties mode of Juliana Hatfield or the Muffs.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Piece by Piece
    The OG American Idol manages to pull off that clock reversal, flooring her DeLorean back to the Eighties on her seventh studio album.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Aureate Gloom
    Sometimes his hydrant flow of ideas reveals a lack of good ones (see the proggy slog "Monolithic Egress"). But when Barnes figures out how to focus his brain dumps, dude gets more with less.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fan of a Fan: The Album
    Fan of a Fan has its share of low-end R&B bangers.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dark Sky Paradise
    His third and best record isn't that moment yet, but he's one step closer.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rose Mountain
    As always, frontwoman Marissa Paternoster's winding guitar solos and dogged vibrato vocals steal the show.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gliss Riffer
    His latest features his own zonked singing on tracks like the loopy, Tom Petty-referencing elegy "Feel the Lightning" and the head-spinning backwoods goof "When I Was Done Dying."
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Live At A Flamingo Hotel
    Live at a Flamingo Hotel (any Flamingo Hotel will do, apparently) has 19 swaggering, giddy takes of fan favorites like their better-than-the-original Architecture in Helsinki cover "Heart It Races."
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Guitars and Microphones
    A collection of brassy manifestoes about independence and, naturally, outer space.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Vestiges & Claws
    Swedish singer-songwriter José González's new album--which is just the third LP from the 36-year-old artist, in a 12-year solo career--sticks to the formula that has served him well in the past.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    True Romance
    It's a loose concept, but it delivers.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Smoke + Mirrors
    The combination of self-pity, grandiosity and leaden spirituality can get trying. And all those attempts at musical worldliness can feel like stylistic tourism.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tetsuo & Youth
    Lupe Fiasco's fifth album is a swirl of double meanings, extended metaphors about yoga and math, and increasingly labyrinthine ways to say "I'm dope."
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Time
    Ekko's debut solo LP similarly informs grand pop drama with indie idiosyncrasy – but never quite enough to distinguish it, his stirring tenor notwithstanding.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fifty Shades of Grey [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    Sexing up the affair are new songs by artists like Sia and Ellie Goulding, a couple of hot Beyoncé remixes and the occasional classic (Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra).
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    From the Very Depths
    The band's 14th studio album shows them clinging to relevancy with grim resolve, and occasionally hitting the mark.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Full Speed
    On his second major-label album, he has more artistic aspirations, though they're mostly flat Kanye retreads.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lost Themes
    The icy synths of "Vortex" and "Fallen" evoke vintage Carpenter dread. But the prog-pomp of "Domain" and "Mystery" are the aural equivalent of too much CGI.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wallflower
    This collection of favorites by the likes of Randy Newman, the Carpenters, Jim Croce, Bob Dylan and Elton John, among others, fits easily into her tastefully eclectic comfort zone.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    F.E.A.R.
    Like Dorian Gray with a blowout, nu-metal holdovers Papa Roach have made their latest album sound like an eerie time capsule from the early 2000s.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    On Your Own Love Again
    Pratt's jazz-steeped singing and rich guitar harmonies can recall early Joni Mitchell, or a nimble, less overbearing twist on the psychedelic folk of 21st-century artists like Joanna Newsom.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Non-Fiction
    The music, sadly, can be just as tough to follow.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Viet Cong
    Viet Cong hardly shy away from evoking that tragedy, and at times they seem to still be processing its long-term impact.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    B4.DA.$$
    His official debut LP still sounds like it's stuck in the past, with solid production from old-school legend DJ Premier and his latter-day disciple Statik Selektah.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance
    Like many songs here, "The Party Line" pairs vaguely political lyrics with vaguely clubby music – an unusual combination for this band, and one that doesn't always work. Thankfully, there are also a handful of inventive standouts.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    American Beauty/American Psycho
    When everything connects--like on the single "Centuries"--FOB are a glorious nexus of Seventies glitter rock, Eighties radio pop, Nineties R&B and Aughts electro stomp. But the LP still runs the risk of being too cutesy and referential.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Title
    While the 21-year-old singer rocks more sass and self-empowerment on her full-length major-label debut (which, confusingly, shares a name with the four-song EP she released in September), she's also charmingly old-fashioned.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    No Fixed Address
    They're masters of generality, packaging all the bland blue-collar fantasies and unrequited nostalgia of an According to Jim rerun into formulaic head-nodders. The Canadian rockers' latest set is no exception, though they've cast a wider net this time.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hood Billionaire
    The Miami MC's seventh LP explodes with none of the ambition or scope of March's Mastermind--playing it safe, like a knockoff version of Jay Z's back-to-basics speed bump American Gangster, from 2007.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Listen
    The songwriting remains basic, as always, and vocalist Sam Martin blandly belts "Lovers on the Sun" and the club hit "Dangerous." But the album sounds consistently great.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    2014 Forest Hills Drive
    He speaks some incisive truths about class, race ("Fire Squad") and relationships ("Wet Dreamz"), but those insights are too often undercut by crass humor. The production falls short, too, with dull beats to match his languid flow.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    La Isla Bonita
    What emerges is a basement-punk groove band where you're never quite sure where the groove will take you.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Better Tomorrow
    This is the sound of a team of great fighters competing in an uncomfortable new arena.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Monuments to an Elegy
    The latest installment in his band's multi-album cycle Teargarden by Kaleidyscope--is a surprise.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Going Back Home
    Brawling tunes steeped in vintage rock & roll, with Daltrey setting his maximum-R&B yowl on full bluster against Johnson's slashing attack.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Habitat [EP]
    The best thing about Habitat is how much less seriously Austra seem to be taking themselves than they often have. It's a promising sign for their future.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Classics
    The surprisingly loungy results are unusually daring for these two.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Avonmore
    Opener "Loop De Li" alone credits six guitarists, including Nile Rodgers, Johnny Marr and Neil Hubbard, the latter a vet of Roxy Music's Avalon, a set this LP recalls in more than just name.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Four
    The band mainly shows growth through the music.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Faith in Strangers
    Andy Stott cooks down the abstract beauty of his 2012 LP Luxury Problems to a new minimalism.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nick Jonas
    For Jonas, the new sound works well: He's sweetly confident while singing about all the adult lust that he has been suppressing in his music for years.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    With a Little Help from My Fwends
    Coyne's kaleidoscope eyes were too big for his own good this time.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Under Pressure
    This album is all surface-level, free of sharp punch lines ("I been Hungary like Budapest") or metaphors that connect.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Storytone
    Sure, these mirrored LPs--10 songs given lavish orchestral arrangements and also offered as solo performances on a bonus disc--might be stronger as one cherry-picked set of unrepeated songs. But it wouldn't be half as interesting.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Motion
    Harris is updating his EDM template rather than coming close to reimagining it.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Xen
    Arca has built a robotic, alien world strengthened by its beating heart.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Resurrection
    Their crafty wordplay of yesterday has been filed into more pointed jabs, bolstered by deliciously 2000s gang vocals.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cosmic Logic
    It's not all bad when we don't understand what's beyond us, Cosmic Logic seems to suggest. Just being moved can be enough.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    LP3
    When their trio of guitarists aren't busy auditioning for Ozzy or Springsteen, they summon dynamic, smartly-shaded echo caverns more reminiscent of Sunny Day Real Estate and Modest Mouse.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rock & Roll Time
    Despite its title, Rock & Roll Time actually ends up making a better case for revisiting Lewis' oft-ignored legacy as a country hitmaker.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tell 'Em I'm Gone
    With Rick Rubin co-producing, there's a bluesy toughness to the anti-capitalist jeremiads "Big Boss Man" and "Gold Digger," while "Cat & the Dog Trap" recalls the simple folky prettiness and direct, easeful messages that made him a Seventies icon.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ride Out
    At 69, Seger is just as ruggedly introspective as he was in his heavy-bearded Seventies.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nostalgia
    "Summertime," "Strange Fruit" and "God Bless the Child" show reverence and impeccable technique yet not quite enough signature to transcend mere impressiveness.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    We Come from the Same Place
    Their third album continues in this mild fashion, and though always pleasant, it's often unmemorable.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bringing Back the Sunshine
    Bringing Back the Sunshine brims with horn-dog hookup jams like "Sangria," where he makes a sloppy hotel-room encounter sound like the modern equivalent of a trip to Margaritaville.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Forget Where We Were
    As mild as the music might often sound, this is an album that cuts deep.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Kings & Queens of the Underground
    So much intensity can be unnerving coming from a man in his late fifties--but Idol makes up for it on the carefree "Can't Break Me Down," a punky pop tune with a "bang bang bang" chorus catchier than anything Fall Out Boy have written lately.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    .5: The Gray Chapter
    Their fifth album, inspired by the OD death of bassist Paul Gray, is quite the heavy-duty emotional enema.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Paperwork
    Nothing seems off-limits here.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sweet Talker
    Jessie's at her best when she's having fun. She just doesn't have enough of it here.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    ...And Star Power
    An 82-minute combo plate of half-finished songs, choruses unmoored from verses, bursts of skyscraping beauty and long passages of sonic murk, all vaguely redolent of the Rolling Stones and Jesus Christ Superstar.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    JHUD
    The modern R&B-as-disco-as-house thing is very well-trod territory (Kelis, Diddy-Dirty Money, Robin Thicke), but only Hudson has the range.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Taiga
    Too much of the LP sounds like someone cranked up the brightness setting on her early work, destroying what made her unique in the process.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Old Boots, New Dirt
    Even his big, guitar-driven songs owe as much to Nickelback as to Nashville – if the pedal steel on ''Two Night Town'' sounds forlorn, maybe that's because it’s competing for attention with gravelly alt-rock distortion.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    PlectrumElectrum
    Prince does his Hendrix thing over turgid live-band grind, and songs like ''Whitecaps'' and ''Aintturninround,'' where 3rdEyeGirl step out front, have a New Age-y alt-rock feel, like No Doubt in a Funkadelic phase.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hesitant Alien
    His emotional delivery drives highlights like ''Millions'' and ''Drugstore Perfume.'' Elsewhere, though, the disc isn’t urgent enough to pack the same punch as Way's best work.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wonder Where We Land
    The eclectic sounds are impressive, even if a tighter focus might have hit harder.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Weatherhouse
    The lyrical tone is often foreboding, but Selway's vaporous tenor, which suggests a less paranoid Thom Yorke, is reassuring.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Playland
    Marr’s singing is nice enough (check ''The Trap''). His most compelling voice, inevitably, remains his guitar.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Greetings from California
    The pristine production undermines any realness, like an amber-tinted Instagram filter.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cheek to Cheek
    She sometimes blasts away at these songs rather than relaxing into them. But on challenges like the subtle Billy Strayhorn ballad "Lush Life," the queen of the little monsters more than proves she can be a sophisticated lady too.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sundown Heaven Town
    It's hit-or-miss.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    X
    Chris Brown's sixth album is adventurous musically and a total mess lyrically.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Space Invader
    Space Invader does have a carefree abandon that Kiss' 21st-century LPs have lacked. It also contains any number of lyrics cringe-worthy enough for his old band.
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