For 3,119 reviews, this publication has graded:
-
35% higher than the average critic
-
3% same as the average critic
-
62% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 7.7 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 65
Score distribution:
-
Positive: 1,689 out of 3119
-
Mixed: 1,319 out of 3119
-
Negative: 111 out of 3119
3119
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
-
- Critic Score
As a country album, a pop album, or something in between, Love, Pain, & The Whole Thing is simply bad.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The Raveonettes have always made use of heavy reverb on their albums, but the overall impact is that Raven in the Grave just sounds sloppy.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Apr 4, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It's not so much the shift in style that hampers Born Free, but rather the trite subject matter and gormless storytelling that Rock so keenly adopts.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Nov 15, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Fans of the old stuff who long ago wrote Morrison off will find their gripes sadly confirmed on Born to Sing: No Plan B, a recession album that's four years too late.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Dec 14, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The only personality displayed on So Amazin' is that of her contemporaries and predecessors.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Less a rebound from the indulgent for-friends-and-family-only nightmare of Rehearsing My Choir than a lateral side-step, Bitter Tea sounds like a desperate plea to be labeled as "clever."- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Undoubtedly crafted to be an easy listen, the overstuffed, lumbering, and joyless #willpower is quite the opposite.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Apr 23, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Their new album, Shall Noise Upon, is intellectually thinner, more musically pedantic, and not quite as tongue-in-cheek.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
If you were expecting some kind of creative transformation from the shakeup, this new album may be something of a disappointment, as Urie and drummer Spencer Smith return to the skittish, bombastic pop-rock of their debut.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Mar 22, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It's short, boring, and occasionally aggravating, recalling the flatness of acts like Maroon 5 and John Mayer while never coming close to their likeability, and when you're being rocked off the stage by Adam Levine, it's not a good sign.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Too much of Boy is the bad kind of theatrical, less an album than an aural assault.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
You can practically hear the energy draining away as the album progresses and one song slides into another, indistinguishable by either melody or lyric.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
God Did lacks an organized artistic vision, or at least a sense of purpose beyond engaging in purely attention-grabbing theatrics.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Aug 31, 2022
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Bloated, brainless, and completely lacking in self-awareness, it's a groaning monstrosity of an album, one that can't even put its overwhelming excess to any suitable use.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Nov 11, 2015
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The remainder of Teenage Dream is a raunchy pop nightmare, with A-list producers lining up to churn out some of the worst work of their careers.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The few tolerable moments across How Do You Sleep at Night? come from either outside voices, including a minute-long verse from Fousheé on “Sweet” that outclasses the bulk of Tezzo’s trite observations, or whenever Teezo is shamelessly copying from others, as he does on “Mood Swings” and the Steve Lacey-lite “Familiarity.”- Slant Magazine
- Posted Sep 12, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While Iggy's feral mischievousness may still be intact, the Stooges no longer feel like a band capable of anything but embarrassing themselves.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Apr 29, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Maybe pastiche is inevitable, even in the Japanese avant garde scene, but can't it at least be a little more fun?- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Avril Lavigne is filled with similar empty life-affirming mantras and boasts of rebelliousness. Lavigne has mined these themes with success in the past, but here the exploration feels forced, as if she's trying to capture an attitude, and craft a persona, that she no longer lives.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Nov 5, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Ignoring how incohesive Queen of Me’s track list proves to be—the schmaltzy “Last Day of Summer,” for example, is a pedestrian reflection of young love that feels entirely out of place on an album filled with tracks related to embracing one’s present image—the songs themselves are frivolous and lack both sonic character and catchy hooks.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Feb 3, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Sadly, the only compelling thing about the incoherent Graffiti is the material (both external and internal) that makes it even less palatable than a simply below-average collection of paint-by-numbers R&B beats.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Some singles may work their way loose, but as a whole the album will is too long and monotonous; the affected style of Paul's voice, fine for the occasional single, becomes a grating trial over 21 songs.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
In Your Dreams indulges in some of Nicks's worst tendencies as a songwriter and is slathered in chintzy, dated production values.- Slant Magazine
- Posted May 2, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The result is not a rock record as much as a total misperception of what makes a rock record. The base elements are all here (the sex and sleaze and guitar solos), but they're delivered in such a flat, awkward way that they feel interpreted by an alien.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Tacked on to this mediocre rap album is a ghastly and desperate bid for a hit single that sees Minaj and producer RedOne snatching items from a veritable sale rack of tired Top 40 tricks and tossing them hastily over the most basic synth and drum-machine presets.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Apr 2, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
50 doesn't fare any better on the softer side: 'Amusement Park' proves he's one of the worst lyricists alive.... It's not just the metaphors, though, it's the execution.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Were the central conceit not so half-assed and Lee's lyrics not so shallow, Venus might qualify as actively misogynist in a way that could be interesting to engage and dissect. As is, the album is simple to an annoying, tiresome degree.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Many of the album’s nine songs feel unfinished, with only half managing to crack the two-minute mark.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Dec 10, 2018
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
For the most part, All of You is virtually indistinguishable from Caillat's previous work, though the appearance of Common on "Favorite Song" does threaten to disrupt business as usual.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jul 14, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The collaborative efforts of tracks like "Bitch Please II" and "Under the Influence" make Eminem seem like an ornamental prop in Dr. Dre's ever-growing hip-hop dynasty.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Feb 13, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The slapdash nature of these 16 (!) songs doesn't make them feel visceral or honest (which was clearly the artist's intention), but haphazard and disposable.- Slant Magazine
- Posted May 24, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Here there are few bright spots and barely any prevailing concept to blame that fact on, leaving Realism as a bad album with nothing but the band behind it to blame.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Too often here, Sheeran feels like a supporting player, especially when he strays from his wheelhouse. For instance, if the singer wants to lean into rapping more, he’s not likely to benefit from doing so on the same track as Chance. And when Sheeran trots out his bad-boy routine, his music feels ersatz. It’s playacting of the worst kind.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jul 18, 2019
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While the juxtaposition of upbeat music and melancholic lyrics has succeeded for artists from the Beatles to David Bowie, here such tactics, amid music that betrays so little originality, render these hackneyed emotional confessions nothing more than indulgent.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Feb 22, 2016
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The rest of the band, a soulless cooperative between Sweden and the U.K., does their best to back him up, issuing rote, lifeless rock tracks that build appropriately to fist-pumping peaks, but it's Borrell's vocals that press this album past mediocrity into embarrassing territory.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
For the most part, she doesn’t have the chops or soul of contemporaries like Florence Welch, who sings of similar subject matter with a real torch, and who shares a collaborator in Joseph Kearns, who produced almost every song on Brightest Blue. At Kearns’s behest, the album takes a relatively new tack for Goulding, trading the garish for the palatable, but it’s no less grating as a result.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jul 21, 2020
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Because the songs are so riddled with cliches and are largely too familiar, and because the music is so tepid and tasteful to a fault, the album simply isn't able to overcome that lack of depth.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While the album’s sheer eclecticism is admirable in theory, each foray stops short of reaching its full potential, leaving listeners stranded in a musical no man’s land of half-baked ideas and missed opportunities.- Slant Magazine
- Posted May 12, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
No matter how much aesthetic cosplay Sheeran is willing to engage in, though, he’s still pumping out the same cheese-filled anthems that have plagued his previous albums.- Slant Magazine
- Posted May 10, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It's clear that he's capable of far more than this. What's most puzzling and disappointing about Battle Studies, then, is that its banality seems like a deliberate choice.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Listeners are subjected to nothing more than a glorified boy band trying desperately to recapture a second wind.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
A reminder that "adult" pop can be every bit as vapid and formulaic as its teenage counterparts.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Unfortunately, Kindred only loses the plot further, entrenching itself in a sonically limited pop vocabulary (starchy synth lines; bristling, reverb-doused percussion; and huge, multi-tracked choruses) that's even further away from the chaotic chemistry of his debut.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Apr 20, 2015
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There's no trace of Coheed's oddball eclecticism here, or of their dynamic pop sensibilities; instead the emotionally and tonally monochrome Black Rainbow gives the impression of a typically humorless metal act.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Much of Recovery centers around such themes as romantic devotion and anxiety, but the resulting material rings unsurprisingly hollow.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Get Hurt is a shockingly misguided assemblage of over-processed hair-metal guitars, '80s adult-contemporary keyboard swill, and hilariously overblown skullduggery.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Aug 5, 2014
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Look What You Made Me will burn brightly for a few more weeks on the strength of its club readiness, but with Berg's flaccid delivery, misguided confidence, and no desire to shake up well-worn subject matter, the album should fade into oblivion like so many other disposable pop-rap LPs.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Even by the standards of the arena-pop hit-chasers they've become, and not the down-and-dirty guitar band they once were, WALLS is a grating, overly slick disappointment.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Oct 12, 2016
- Read full review
-
- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
That lack of a distinctive style or voice also means that Daughtry isn't pulling focus from the simple and effective construction of their songs, which is pretty much the only thing they do well.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Nov 21, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The album is consistently uninspired, with each song showcasing an incredibly gifted performer grown wearyingly complacent.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
With Versions, Jesus achieves something her previous albums hadn't: She's created art so unobjectionable that it attains a kind of beige obscenity.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Aug 26, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Getting Somewhere is the first of her albums that not even her vocals can save.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The whole album seems content to be half-awake, so much so that even the comparably adventurous tracks sound like they can't be bothered to get off the couch.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Aug 29, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Two years ago, Duffy had us begging her for mercy, but after 10 tracks of Endlessly, I was just begging her to stop.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Dec 7, 2010
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The motion is uniform, the form is monotonous, the experience disquieting but benign. Destroyed is more distracted than coolly distanced, a satellite unmoored by Ground Control.- Slant Magazine
- Posted May 16, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
She makes a genuine effort here, but not even the legendary R&B singers to whom she has been compared could elevate this material.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Without a distinguishing voice or idea, Realist feels like the mold from which better rap albums are made, a blank form woefully void of substance or flavor.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
For an album about "fun under the summer sun," You're Always on My Mind is singularly joyless.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jul 3, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Even a guest verse from Busta Rhymes can't breathe any life into this copy-and-paste mess.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
"Get Out" and "Am I Reaching You Now" strive for massive arena-rock grandeur, and, while Train is slick and professional enough a band to pull that off, what prevents the album from working even as marginally as X&Y and certainly not as well as The Constantines' Tournament Of Hearts is the banality of the songs' lyrics.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Ultimately, OneRepublic takes what all of those bands already do and pushes it to an even lower common denominator of slick, disposable melodrama.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Curiosity and whatever remains of her pop fanbase will likely give Do You Know a strong start, but it's hard to imagine that it will sustain any momentum or help Simpson build a reputation as a credible artist in Nashville.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Justin Timberlake and Drake both offer admirable turns, but are forced to operate with unenviably tepid production. The overall laziness of that facet is even more inexcusable coming from one of the most renowned producers of the last decade.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It is their failure to do little beyond noodle energetically and evoke the work of others that dooms Parc Avenue to mediocrity.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Yet despite O'Brien's anemic production, much of the blame for Working On a Dream undoubtedly lies with Springsteen himself; drained of his angry energy, he dribbles out material that's for the most part goofy and painfully bloodless.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It's sad to see a once-promising band reduced to dribbling out a mewling, half-baked effort such as this, an album with no redeeming value beyond soundtracking your next visit to Supercuts.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Presumably the climax of the whole stumbling, stoned expedition arrives about halfway through the latter half, when some synthy Gregorian chant-style vocals trudge into the mix for a few seconds, but by the time the album reaches its dingy conclusion and fades back into feedback loops and distant alien static noises, Oneida seems to have inadvertently demonstrated only one thing: that, dude, having, like, rad conceptual ideas and high aspirations does not a good album make.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Though its style alone makes it a sure bet to be hailed as progressive by those who only like country music that doesn't sound a damn thing like country music, and just as sure to be reviled by country music purists, the real problems with the album are with its failures of execution and its inexplicable aesthetic choices.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
In the past, the trio has been able to elevate their unremarkable songwriting with spirited performances, but that isn't the case on Own the Night- Slant Magazine
- Posted Sep 11, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Just about the only thing Ke$ha makes convincing on Animal is that the current crop of party girls are every bit as soulless as they let on.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The songs that work on The JaneDear Girls are the ones that emphasize their melodies and hooks above the actual content of the songs or the girls' performances.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Feb 17, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
A little bit of charisma probably wouldn't have saved Planet Pit from disaster, but it might have helped.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jun 20, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Chris Daughtry has a real band that plays really serious songs, which are, almost without exception, really, really bad.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Though more adventurous than 2005's "The Best Little Secrets Are Kept," the band's sophomore LP, Slick Dogs and Ponies, still rings soulless at its core.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It all amounts to a great deal of bluster for bluster's sake and becomes tiresome almost instantly.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Mar 12, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Trippie Redd’s Mansion Musik is repetitive, shoddily produced, and lacks any real structure.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jan 31, 2023
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
He joylessly repeats all the tired tropes of Southern party rap (brand-name fetishizing, drug-trade mythologizing, stripper-bitch glorifying), and the album's best track has already been let out of the bag.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Of course, the only people I could imagine getting any pleasure whatsoever from Versus's wretched collection of failed club-sex jams are those with enough bad taste to buy Raymond v. Raymond three or four times over.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Whereas [debut album] Tenacious D was a brilliant parody of the blood-and-thunder metal genre, functioning as a cohesive, hilarious whole, The Pick Of Destiny is mere bong resin.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
When Rise Up settles into this pro-marijuana groove, the album does begin to serve its purpose, however stunted that purpose may seem. Beyond that, there's very little to savor here, with the two emcees struggling to tender a memorable verse between them during 14 tracks spanning just under an hour.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Unsaved by anything resembling an acceptable musical hook, Kelly's lyrics are uniformly dumb.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Strangeland sounds every bit as dated and overblown as the singles from Cher's "rock" phase.- Slant Magazine
- Posted May 7, 2012
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
They're especially fond of bad movie soundtracks from the '80s, and they show it on their sophomore effort, Dynamics, by making every song sound like the non-hits off those albums.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Sep 10, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
What All Jacked Up ultimately confirms... is that Wilson is a one-trick pony whose trick will only impress those with exceedingly low expectations.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Weezer seems to have driven their old shtick into the ground so perfectly, it almost seems like they've purposely become tired and boring.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The Vines ultimately come off as nothing more than a proficient Nirvana cover band, lacking a perspective of their own or a voice that really demands attention.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
A collection of infantile, forgettable stripper anthems and not even guest spots from Rahzel or Kid Koala can keep this shit from sounding like Linkin Park.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It boasts a harsher, edgier sound than that of her previous efforts; on every other front, it's a lazy, bloated, and occasionally offensive album that lacks any remnant of personality or creativity.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jul 22, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Sadly, this album takes sound and fury, signifying nothing, to new depths.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
At every turn, the album serves only to reinforce the fact that Chapman isn't only firmly, almost blindly stuck in the previous decade, but that his music's long-overdue expiration date is the least of its problems.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Jul 11, 2013
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It's what Freeway says that continues to disappoint, and it's not for lack of subject matter.- Slant Magazine
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It sounds like Daughtry's been listening to a lot of Train and EDM, or at least the band's manager has, because the tempos are a bit peppier than the normal plodding 80bpm post-grunge yawning we're used to, and all of it is slathered with super-slick, edge-sanding modern-pop production, including the surprisingly liberal use of Auto-Tune.- Slant Magazine
- Posted Nov 18, 2013
- Read full review