Rolling Stone's Scores

For 5,894 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 6.2 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:
5894 music reviews
    • 89 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Apex Predator: Easy Meat is a pummeling listen that doesn't get old.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Miss E is a mess, of course, and not all the experiments work as brilliantly as the single. But if you prefer risky messes to tidy formula, tracks like "Scream a.k.a. Itchin' " and "Step Off" will freak you up something fierce.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A luxuriant union of black-ice electronics and chamber-pop instrumentation. [14 Oct 2004, p.98]
    • Rolling Stone
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    RTJ4, which the band rush-released a few days ahead of schedule, is laser-focused. ... Mike unloads on racist cops, systemic poverty, corporate media, and other eternal enemies. But the album never feels preachy, because the music bounces as much as it brays, with an elastic flow and deep history.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    It's a museum piece, a record that merits a display in the Smithsonian.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Combining crunchy nu-metal guitar riffs with a penchant for early-aughts R&B-pop production in the vein of Aaliyah and ‘NSync, Sawayama sounds like Britney Spears’ Blackout by way of Korn — and it inexplicably works.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tigers Blood is an album that makes you marvel at how much Katie Crutchfield has accomplished, over all the miles she’s traveled so far. But it’s also an album that makes you excited for wherever she goes from here.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's an album of tuneful, intimate pop-rock songs...
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Olsen’s up to something different here, inviting a different sort of attention to fully absorb. It’s worth the investment; the emotion’s as visceral as it is complex, and it ranks among the best sounding records this year, deserving to be cranked on a good sound system — an album to spend time with, to fall into, to shut up and let yourself be kissed by.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mannequin Pussy’s lyrical prowess is on full display with I Got Heaven.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    "Here we go to the main course!" ad-libs Van Morrison on an extended "Caravan," one of the shaggy outtakes on this five-disc unpacking of the Belfast bard's 1970 jazzy-pop masterpiece. That LP is nearly all main course, and if the numerous alternate takes here often feel incomplete without their sublime, brassy final arrangements, they compensate with intimacy.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This box set is the type of treatment usually reserved for Beatles reissues, but because it’s Zappa The Hot Rats Sessions is a more delightfully quirky. It doesn’t contain everything, the way something like the Stooges’ 1999 box set, 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions, did, but because of the Zappa-esque details, it feels more comprehensive, for better or worse.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Coloring Book is the richest hip hop album of 2016 so far.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sure, it's less focused than the reportage of 2015's Summertime '06, but the varying emotions and outlooks mark a full step forward into becoming a multi-layered, genre-crossing, emotion-spilling pop auteur in the vein of West, Drake or Childish Gambino.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ignorance, solidifies the 36 year-old as one of the most audaciously inventive auteurs working in the broad singer-songwriter tradition. This ten song collection broadens the Weather Station’s sonic palette by foregrounding fluttering flutes, crisp orchestral sections, and, most importantly, a propulsive rhythm section.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Though Golden Hour might take time to relax into, the set is a fine lava-lamp soundtrack, and if "country" suggests engaging American musical traditions with respect and pioneer spirit, then this album is as country as it comes.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A record more extroverted, flamboyant and hooky across the board, and which, depending on how you categorize Dirty Computer, feels like a frontrunner for the year’s hottest pop album.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Her minimalist distillation of R&B, which takes into consideration not just the genre's rich musical history but also its penchant for social commentary, has resulted in a stunning statement that redefines the old chestnut about the personal being political.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Elegant tech-house, sexy without being stoopid. [28 Oct 2004, p.100]
    • Rolling Stone
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Solange’s growth as an artist has been one of music’s most fascinating stories, and, like A Seat at the Table, When I Get Home serves as a thrilling reminder that this is just the beginning of the futures she still has yet to unpack. If she can make a party-friendly album so meaningful, we’ve barely even witnessed the tip of her vision.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    With all of the band’s nu-metal hallmarks at the forefront this time, We Are Not Your Kind sounds the more like the head-turning, self-titled debut they put out 20 years ago than any of their releases since. But what’s different here is a new sense of (gasp!) sophistication.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    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.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The ninth disc from this Brooklyn/Baltimore crew tries balancing shameless beauty with ecstatic weirdness, and when they nail it, it's breathtaking.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mostly her ear is unerring and her characters true--the kind of talent who makes the term "alt-country" unnecessary.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It’s a tight 10-track collection that lyrically and musically probes the concept of freedom—what it means, whether it’s a blessing or a curse.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mostly, her new album is businesslike, serious, sane.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    So why is it one of the best hip-hop albums of the year? For one, nobody gets the beats -- dry, hard and evil -- that Clipse get from Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's two discs of steady brilliance.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The most interesting stuff here is in the Blackberry Way Demos, some of which came out on a previous expanded edition of the album. ... Even the collection’s rough mixes — usually the most over larded part of a box set — offer new insights.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rosalía’s new album, El Mal Querer, is less rigorous than its predecessor, though even easier to like. ... It’s also extremely effective.