Rolling Stone's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Still Within the Sound of My Voice
    Producer Fred Mollin provides atmospheric, country-tinged settings throughout Still Within the Sound of My Own Voice, lending consistency to the wide range of performers and material.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Bones of What You Believe
    belt. Even when Chvrches are just competently mopey, their neon-Eighties visions are far from retro pose-striking.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Diving Board
    With The Diving Board, Elton has regained his sense of musical possibility and taken a brave, graceful jump.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nothing Was the Same
    The more melodic his flow, the slicker he sounds, allowing him to get away with some truly corny lines.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pure Heroine
    Pure Heroine feels surprisingly real and fully formed, punching through sparse, cushily booming post-hip-hop tracks with vividly searching lyrics about growing up too fast that can seem at once arrogant and pensive.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New
    More than a sentimental journey, it's an album that wants to be part of the 21st-century pop dialogue.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fade Away [EP]
    On this seven-song EP, Bethany Cosentino combines the sundown power-pop buzz of Best Coast's 2010 debut with the Hulk-hug melodies and emotional gravity of last year's The Only Place to make for something masterfully archetypal but utterly her own.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Marshall Mathers LP 2
    He's playing his best character: the demon spawn of Trailer Hell, America, hitting middle age with his middle finger up his nose while he cleans off the Kool-Aid his kids spilled on the couch.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    On Air: Live at the BBC, Vol. 2
    The Beatles are enjoying the speed and lunacy of stardom here.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    There's a Dream I've Been Saving: 1966-1971
    This lavish multidisc set is as eccentric and compelling as its subject.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Live at the Cellar Door
    This handsome solo acoustic set overlaps a few songs with earlier entries in Neil Young's official bootleg series. But there's no shortage of standouts.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wig Out at Jagbags
    When he stretches out vocally, to match the high-register tremble of his guitar, Malkmus proves that he can come on like a soulman--even when he's wigging out.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lucinda Williams [Reissue]
    Finally back in print, every song burns hot as ever.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No Depression [Legacy Edition]
    This expanded reissue adds Not Forever the 1989 demo tape that got them signed.... It shows a vision startlingly complete, and its scrappiness occasionally serves the songs better.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Little Red
    Little Red showcases her vivid R&B songwriting over chic, chilly electro beats.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    From His Head to His Heart to His Hands [Box Set]
    "Hotshit player" doesn't begin to describe the underappreciated blues-rock figurehead, as this beautiful four-disc set makes clear.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    St. Vincent
    St. Vincent is her tightest, tensest, best set of songs to date, with wry, twisty beats pushing her lovably ornery melodies toward grueling revelations.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Oxymoron
    A not-as-good-kid traversing the same m.A.A.d. city as Kendrick, Schoolboy complements Lamar's narrative distance with evocative, unflinching first-person dispatches from the front lines.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    G I R L
    Girl is a simple, even slight record--and that's definitely meant as a compliment.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Say Yes to Love
    Say Yes to Love is a heart-punch of an album--eight songs, 23 minutes--where the words are mostly buried under guitar feedback and synth squeals. Yet the raw passion comes across loud and clear.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Your Arsenal [Definitive Master]
    with fits of glam flamboyance and a raw rockabilly bluntness, Moz's third solo LP made clear what Smiths fans already knew: Here was a new kind of superstar. For more proof, check this remastered reissue's must-see bonus DVD.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Future's Void
    Anderson's excellent second album builds on the stark confessional style of her low-fi 2011 debut, Past Life Martyred Saints.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Quack
    The interstitial skits can get irritating, but the edits come fast, and when those sugar-shock beats drop, all is forgiven. Facebook
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everyday Robots
    The results can often recall Seventies Eno at his most meditative and Village Green-era Ray Davies at his most world-sick more than Gorillaz's bounce or Blur's guitar buzz.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Diploid Love
    Dalle lets her voice flicker to an airy glow, with jittery strings providing the tension guitars might have in the past. Clearly, she never really needed an amp to unleash her strength.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Most Messed Up
    On this most Old 97's-ish of Old 97's LPs, the hard-partying twang-punk quartet throw a 20th-birthday bash for themselves.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nikki Nack
    Her third LP, cut with bass-minded partner Nate Brenner, suggests an innovator in for the long haul.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Upside Down Mountain
    A sumptuous immersion in Seventies California folk pop, it is the most immediately charming album he has ever made.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Are We There
    Her magnificent fourth LP grows her trademark examinations of romantic decay to cathedral-like scale.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Unplugged 1991 & 2001: The Complete Sessions
    This set of 33 songs, 11 of which never aired, revisits both [MTV Unplugged] sessions, boiling their magical greatness down to two base elements: achingly sugared melodies and Michael Stipe's potent voice, in all its deep grain, swooning vibrato and radiant empathy.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sunbathing Animal
    These Brooklyn dudes go even deeper on Sunbathing Animal.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Platinum
    Mostly it shows how Lambert earned her throne: by singing top-shelf songs in the voice of a woman getting real. Listening to her records is like eavesdropping in a hair salon.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lazaretto
    Lazaretto [is] literally a house of blues (the title is Italian for a lepers' hospital), with each room outfitted according to White's mood and trials.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Superunknown [Deluxe Edition]
    Even without any very particularly illuminating extras, though, Superunknown is a Nineties benchmark.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    1000 Forms of Fear
    Her knack for heart-swelling choruses shines through on a set of tracks you might play while winning a marathon.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    For The Recently Found Innocent
    The ample guilt Presley purges from his heart and head unfurls into an excellent set of songs that are equally suited for an aimless afternoon drive or a night of serious life contemplation.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Alvvays
    Whether you’re looking to fall in love this summer or pine away unrequited, you won't find a better soundtrack than this.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hypnotic Eye
    This is the Heartbreakers four decades and a million shows later, deepening their attack with sturdy reliability.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    They Want My Soul
    Spoon's eighth album is an immediate grabber on par with the group's best work to date.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Face the Music [Box Set]
    You also get 132 pages of liner-notes-cum-memoir that can be just as entertaining as the music.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    V
    It's hard to care about any shortcomings when the tunes are as masterfully crisp as they are on much of V.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This Is All Yours
    Some of the most enjoyable music on This Is All Yours is the simplest, kindest and funniest.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sukierae
    It all adds up to another tour de force from a guy who's made a few.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Syro
    Graying snobs once called this "intelligent dance music." Even now, few do it better.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Live
    This release buys Clark some time to refine his studio vision of modern blues. It also shows that wherever he chooses to go from here, he has what it takes to get there.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Offering: Live at Temple University
    It’s the sound of longing unbound.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everything Will Be Alright in the End
    All three subsets [songs about fatherhood, girls and the audience] contain songs that are profoundly odd and reliably catchy.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tomorrow's Modern Boxes
    Yorke has written an album's worth of disarmingly straightforward pop ballads, dressed up with affectionately retro turn-of-the-century glitchcore effects.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    You're Dead!
    Ellison makes the boldest, most fully engaged fusion of the hip-hop-laptop era.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Standing in the Breach
    Freedom, compassion, generosity--remain vibrantly alive for him, and on this superb, inspiring album, he once again stands waiting for everyman.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    1989
    Deeply weird, feverishly emotional, wildly enthusiastic, 1989 sounds exactly like Taylor Swift, even when it sounds like nothing she's ever tried before. And yes, she takes it to extremes.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    RTJ2
    On their second album as Run the Jewels, noise-loving Brooklyn rapper-producer El-P and Atlanta's Killer Mike make the most explosive hip-hop you'll hear all year.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sucker
    Sucker is no retro gesture: Charli runs the album's rock & roll guitars and attitude through enough distressed digital production and thumb-type vernacular to make this the first fully updated iteration of punk pop in ages.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Pinkprint
    This is a rap royal in full flex. We're lucky to watch the throne.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    SremmLife
    This brother duo from Elvis Presley's hometown of Tupelo, Mississippi, radiate an inescapable exuberance, shouting with the zeal of freshly minted stars.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World
    Maybe because Meloy is now a published author (he's penned a trilogy of popular children's books), his songwriting wit seems to have grown sharper and less showoff-y.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No Cities to Love
    The most exciting thing about No Cities is that Sleater-Kinney are one of those bands again--they sound as hungry, as unsettled, as restless as any of the rookies on their jock.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Vulnicura
    Whatever informed it, this may be the most heart-rending music she's ever made.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Shadows in the Night
    [A] quietly provocative and compelling album.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Love You, Honeybear
    Upping the spectacle from Fun Fear his 2012 debut, I Love You, Honeybear is an autobiographical set about love, marriage and derangement that's both ironic and empathic.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    If You're Reading This It's Too Late [Mixtape]
    The 17 tracks that Drake released at midnight on a recent Thursday hit harder and hold together more cohesively than most big-budget event albums.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Future Brown
    This timely set from four style-hungry producers recalls Elliott's turn-of-the-century heyday, with post-national street beats and an army of fresh MCs and singers. It feels like a genuine next-generation moment.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    First Kiss
    First Kiss presents few surprises, mostly because Kid Rock's journey from abrasive rap metal to unreconstructed heartland rock has landed him in a sweet spot: big guitars, big drums, big choruses and gravelly vocals.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Don't Lose This
    Along with the new reissue of 1965's Freedom Highway, it's a worthy tribute to a gentle giant of American music.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Carrie & Lowell
    Stevens strips his sound far enough to reveal his deepest anguish; neither the Disney-style orchestras of 2005's Illinois nor the synth-pop-as-craft-project of 2010's The Age of Adz peek through his acoustic fingerpicking and warm-milk voice.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Bouquets from a Cloudy Sky: The Complete Pretty Things Collection [Box Set]
    The Pretties were impatient modernists, carrying that blues zeal to psychedelia (1967's "Defecting Grey"), rock opera (ahead of the Who, on 1968's S.F. Sorrow) and progressive rock (1970's Parachute) with spectacular if commercially dire results. This grand box takes that tale, across 11 studio albums and a feast of extras, up to the present day.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This Is the Sonics
    They can still teach their garage offspring a thing or two.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Fool to Care
    These 12 songs map out a concise history of American soul, with a heavy dose of New Orleans strut.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Magic Whip
    Blur have returned with inspiration to spare.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Painted Shut
    Hop Along know how to make these tiny moments feel huge.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Can't Forget: A Souvenir of the Grand Tour [Live]
    The fourth live album to come out of Leonard Cohen's 2008-2013 world tour is a fascinating glimpse into his creative process.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Colour
    What Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" was to the hippie era, Jamie xx's solo debut is to British club culture: a wistful valentine conjuring a more innocent time.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Drones
    The heart of the action in most of these songs is a chunky update of the guitar-bass-drums charge of Origin's "New Born" and "Stockholm Syndrome" on 2003's Absolution. It's what Muse do best; it's good to hear a lot more of it.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wildheart
    Wildheart is an even bolder move: an intoxicating master class in electro-porn R&B--the coin of the modern genre--that's also a soul-searching critique of same.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Something More Than Free
    This time around, he trades in that album's personal tales of crisis and redemption for a more nuanced, wide-angled form of storytelling, packed to bursting with evocative specifics.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Blade
    Her third LP imagines a 2015 mainstream by reflecting what it once was--Loretta and Dolly in the Sixties, sure, but also Emmylou in the Eighties and Reba in the Nineties.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Coda [Remastered]
    Three decades later, Coda is the unlikely closing triumph in Page's series of deluxe Zeppelin reissues: a dynamic pocket history in rarities, across three discs with 15 bonus tracks, of his band's epic-blues achievement.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Compton
    It adds up to an album by turns confounding and enthralling. It's no Detox. It's something realer, and better.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dry Food
    Her debut is antsy and ambivalently sexy.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What Went Down
    Their fourth and best album plays up a dark, bracing urgency, especially on the explosive title track.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Yours, Dreamily
    Yours, Dreamily, takes what Auerbach does at his best, in and out of the Keys--confessional, texturally enriched blues propelled with garage-rock force--and adds a riveting jump in eccentricity.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Faith in the Future
    The arrangements trump Finn's 2011 solo debut, upscaling that album's roots rock with choral backdrops and horn charts that recall the Van Morrison gestures of The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle. It's a good call for a literary songwriter who deserves, and earns, a broad canvas.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sun Coming Down
    These Montreal post-punks write harsh songs for harsh times on their excellent second album, building on last year's debut More Than Any Other Day.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Honeymoon
    Whatever her intentions, they've led to her most genuinely thrilling music ever.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cass County
    Cass County is meticulously crafted, sharply written and absolutely free of neo-country additives like reheated Seventies-rock bombast and Twitter-verse vernacular.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Agent Intellect
    Their third and best full-length.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Revival
    Revival is an audacious name for a 23-year-old singer's second album, but from start to finish, Gomez earns it. This is the sound of a newly empowered pop artist growing into her strengths like never before.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Divers
    Ultimately, Divers, is about things lost with age and progress--wisdom, beauty, innocence, love, mystery. Yet this music always seems to look ahead.... Questlove, Kanye, Kendrick and all other curators of hyper-literate avant-pop: Ball's in your court.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Over and Even
    Subtlety and simplicity also define this set of acoustic songs. But like the verse, the terms understate the power and beauty of the subject at hand.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Teens of Style
    It's the best classic-rock record anyone under 50 is likely to make this year.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Elaenia
    Shepherd is among London's most sought-after DJs, known for marathon sets that span everything from disco's deepest cuts to feel-good hip-hop. But here he steps away from those club sounds in favor of a fully immersive experience that's unbounded by genre.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Montage Of Heck: The Home Recordings
    Some of the 31 tracks will resonate only with deep Nirvana scholars, and the album could be seen as stretching an incredible legacy a little too thin. But it’s surprising how much of it is compelling, even revelatory.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Garden of Delete
    Lopatin has also called "Lift" a love song of sorts, and it's where his Garden most clearly bursts into bloom.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Made in the A.M.
    It sure doesn't sound like a band that's hanging it up, because all four are on a roll musically, chasing the rock vibe of Midnight Memories and Four.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mr. Misunderstood
    Recorded in about a month and surprise-released to fans, it's full of casual stunners.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All of Something
    All of Something is full of smart, sweetly slashing indie-rock that recalls peers like Swearin' and Waxahatchee, with wonderful tunes about wasting anxious hours on nervous boys, "biting my nails and biting your tongue."
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Complete Matrix Tapes [Box Set]
    It's a startlingly vivid picture of the artist as a young man.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Head Full of Dreams
    [Chris Martin's] hinted that this could be Coldplay's last album; if so, they're going out on a sustained note of grace.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blackstar
    Blackstar is a ricochet of textural eccentricity and pictorial-shrapnel writing.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New View
    The Chicago-bred singer-guitarist works one of rock's finest faux-British accents, sounding like an early-Seventies prog-folkie. It's a perfect vocal vibe for music that can recall the very late Beatles and New Morning-era Dylan.
Page: