Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 3,117 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
Highest review score: 100 Who Kill
Lowest review score: 0 Fireflies
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,687 out of 3117
  2. Mixed: 1,319 out of 3117
  3. Negative: 111 out of 3117
3117 music reviews
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    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Somebody's Miracle
    If she still manages to retain a major label recording contract after this bomb, that'll be the real miracle.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Animal
    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.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Play On
    She still lacks the grit and the distinctive, intuitive phrasing of the best country singers, but the better moments of Play On suggest that she's capable of developing into more than a technically proficient cipher.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Strange Folk
    Even if Kula Shaker never transcend their vintage influences, it's on the dreamier songs like the title track and 'Persephone' (billed as a bonus track, a move that's antiquated in its own right) that Strange Folk stands as an unexpectedly welcome comeback.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Michael
    Michael rarely serves up anything that will have its listeners making a b-line for the dance floor.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Snoop Dogg Presents Bible of Love
    A stultifying two discs of competent but generic Christian platitudes.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Mail On Sunday
    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.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    I Dreamed A Dream
    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.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Wilder Mind
    Wilder Mind may be something altogether worse than divisive: unremarkable.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Blacc Hollywood
    This sense of puzzled division remains the only really interesting thing about Blacc Hollywood, an album that's remarkable only as a ghostly portrait of a half-formed figure prowling the fringes of success.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Earth vs. the Pipettes
    "From Today" and "I Need a Little Time" may have decent enough hooks and propulsive dance beats, but there's simply nothing about Earth vs. the Pipettes that's distinctive or in any way better than what other '80s revivalists have already done.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Planta
    Throughout, CSS evinces a half-step remove from their transplanted environment.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Music From Another Dimension!
    The album's eight winning cuts would be more than enough for a really good hard-rock disc. Instead we get an album that pays for each of its gems with a nugget of fool's gold.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Christopher
    The song [vapory closing number "Heart Attack"] almost saves Christopher from venturing into annoying self-parody, but it's ultimately unsuccessful due to the uncertainty of its message.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Merry Christmas, Baby
    Verve chairman David Foster, who serves as arranger and producer, demonstrates laudable discernment in choosing the album's 13 songs, and the same goes for the requisite cameos: Cee Lo Green, Mary J. Blige, and Trombone Shorty provide little boosts of energy to Stewart along the way.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Baptized
    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.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Jesus Is King
    There are flashes of genius throughout, moments that insinuate where Kanye could go next with his music. In a sense, the album’s modest pleasures play to its (intended) message, which is supposed to be one of human fallibility and the prospect of improving oneself. But Kanye is eventually going to have to confront the serious limitations that his faith is putting on the range of his art’s expression.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Witness
    The album lacks both the big hooks that propelled Perry's past hits up the charts and the conceptual and sonic focus to give her pop real purpose.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Light
    While working his broad sonic palette with ingenuity and verve, he sacrifices the opportunity to develop a sound that is truly his own. Light ends up with exciting moments, but few memorable songs.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    All The Lost Souls
    James Blunt returns with All the Lost Souls, a more piano-driven period piece that's about as edgy as an episode of "Desperate Housewives."
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Japanese Motors
    Amid the sobering headlines explaining the collapse of high finance and a heated presidential election, Japanese Motors feels superfluous, not sunny.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Donda
    With Donda, he’s crafted his most unforgiving self-portrait yet, one that, like the best works that plumb a person’s inner depths, winds up reflecting our collective imperfections.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    For All The Dogs
    But for the most part, For All the Dogs lives up to its title. In short: woof.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The DeAndre Way
    Soulja Boy's songs remain bizarre models of economy and naivete, wielding repetitive hooks that pivot on mesmerizingly circular beats.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Animal Ambition: An Untamed Desire to Win
    While simple pleasures are about all Animal Ambition can offer, it at least presents them with listenable panache.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Double Dutchess
    Fergie struggles to balance the new with the old throughout the album. Where Stefani’s raw confessionals helped distinguish This Is What the Truth Feels Like, though, Double Dutchess is stuck in the past.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Universal Mind Control
    Although Universal Mind Control represents a serious step backward from the successes of his recent projects with Kanye, it would be remiss to say the album is the death knell for Common's career or that he has fallen off in any significant way.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Taking Chances
    The laborious 16-track record purportedly finds the queen of adult contemporary-turned-Vegas attraction taking chances by modernizing her treacly power ballad sound with lots of overdubbed guitars and of-the-moment collaborators.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Kris Allen
    The surprising and effective acoustic arrangement of West's song demonstrated that Allen has some genuine interpretive skill, but the studio version here layers on a heavy-handed drum machine that sounds like Phil Collins's "In the Air Tonight" and pulls focus from Allen's performance. It's just one of the miscalculations that makes Kris Allen yet another lackluster, characterless Idol debut.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Bat Out Of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose
    The results are disastrous.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Make Believe
    The truth is that any Weezer copycat band could have made this record.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Keys To The World
    For the most part, Keys To The World is a definite step forward and demonstrates that Ashcroft is finally hitting his stride as a solo artist.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Slipway Fires
    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.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Sounds from Nowheresville
    It all amounts to a great deal of bluster for bluster's sake and becomes tiresome almost instantly.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Incredible Machine
    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.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Brave
    If the album builds up a nice head of steam all the way up to the double-time wall of sound that is 'The Way It Is,' the problem is it's not necessarily Lopez's head of steam.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Matthew Morrison
    having a nice singing voice isn't enough to make the album memorable. For better or worse, the duets tend to draw more attention.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Music Is Better Than Words
    Sincerity marks a refreshing change of pace for MacFarlane, but it never transcends the gimmick of hearing the guy who created Family Guy sing like the Rat Pack.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    20 Y.O.
    The saddest thing about 20 Y.O. is that Janet's decision to hedge her bets on an album whose backbone is made up of terrible R&B instead of great dance music.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Declaration
    Past releases have displayed an ostensible desire to follow in the melodramatic steps of Mary J. Blige and much of Declaration continues in that quest.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    5.0
    5.0 is never overtly awful, but it definitely sinks into the zone of mediocrity occupied by so many mainstream rap albums, where they sit like dishes moldering beneath dirty water.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    In My Mind
    Stylish and confident to a fault, Pharrell's success as a solo artist is, unfortunately, pretty much where the album title says it is.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    City Beach
    Cunniff has never sounded more joyful as a singer or writer as she does here.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Black Swan
    It's an expertly crafted pop record, sure, but Black Swan ultimately reduces to its primary points of reference without any broader context or sense of purpose.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    F.A.M.E.
    Sadly but predictably, it really isn't until the bonus tracks on the deluxe edition, when he drops a Bomb with Wiz Khalifa, that you ponder how Mr. Black and Yellow has hooked up with Mr. Black and Blue, and then you remember what's been hiding in plain sight throughout the entire album.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Teenage Dream
    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.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The Pick Of Destiny OST
    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.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Block
    The Block falters when the New Kids try to have it both ways.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Everything I Thought It Was
    With an abundance of material, one could never fault Everything I Thought I Was for being too conservative, but it’s an all too clear case of quantity over quality, resulting in quickly diminishing returns.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Kellie Pickler
    Kellie Pickler is rote, overproduced Nashville pop-country, while Kellie Pickler is too forceful a personality to be reigned in by such convention
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Todd Smith
    Todd Smith's slow songs... kill the album's momentum early on.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Funstyle
    Phair has never taken herself even half as seriously as the straight, white, male rock press always has, which goes a long way in explaining why she's disappointed so many since she was branded a rock goddess in the early '90s. And Funstyle, though interesting, is unlikely to change that.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Grown & Sexy
    It all makes one yearn for the simpler days of mid-'90s R&B.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Listen
    Not only is none of this fresh, its fast-food vacuity is presented as proud branding.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Who You Are
    Unfortunately, the songs on Who You Are that allow Jessie J's ugly, born-that-way vocals to cut loose are in the distinct minority. In the quest to find herself, she seems to have gotten sidetracked.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Doll Domination
    Like the Dolls's debut, "PCD," the new album could use a little more of that cabaret style and a little less of the anonymous, by-the-numbers R&B and dance formulas that have become the modern girl-group convention
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Attention Deficit Domination
    The album never sounds like the work of a proper band, since there's no actual interplay between any of the instrumental performances.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Circles Super Bon Bon Sleepless How Many Cans? True Dreams of Wichita Monster Man Mr. Bitterness Maybe I’ll Come Down St. Louise Is Listening I Miss t
    Everything Soul Coughing once made darkly curious and subversive has become predictably benign, but despite its affability, Circles Super Bon Bon... can't quite shake the obvious negativity of its creator, who seems far more interested in tearing down the old rather than building something new, rendering the album a completely superfluous labor of hatred.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Little More Personal (Raw)
    RAW is considerably more consistent than its predecessor, and it's not a bad listen by any means, but for all the so-called weighty subject matter, there's not much meat on these bones.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Runaway
    The Runaway may just be a stumble on the band's road to maturity, but it could also signal something more troubling: the beginning of an endless, effortless loop.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Revival
    Eminem can still dazzle with his wordplay--“Adversity, if at first you don't succeed/Put your temper to more use/'Cause being broke's a poor excuse” is an early highlight on “Believe”--yet his delivery, listless torrents of language, makes him seem noncommittal to the songs he's performing. He's not quite on autopilot throughout, but he does sound distracted. Eminem is more engaged on Revival when his focus turns to his family.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Necessary Evil
    The pastiche of styles on Necessary Evil is quintessential Debbie Harry, but diamonds in the rough aside, it also makes for a wildly uneven, often jarring collection of songs.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Songs From Black Mountain
    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.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fiction Family
    Whether Fiction Family moves forward or remains just a one-off side project, most of the chances that Watkins and Foreman have taken for this record pay off, making for a project that is sure to appeal to their existing fanbases and which stands on its own merits.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Britney Jean
    Despite the absence of longtime producer Max Martin and his associates, the album is a surprisingly retrograde affair, with midtempo tracks marred by dated production and vocals that hark back to the days when Brit was selling 10 million.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Shock Value II
    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.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Theology
    Unlike many other Christian rock albums, Theology is for the oppressed, not the oppressors.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    #willpower
    Undoubtedly crafted to be an easy listen, the overstuffed, lumbering, and joyless #willpower is quite the opposite.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Mary Christmas
    A Mary Christmas is an undeniably listenable but sadly too-safe hodgepodge of department-store standards, kid-friendly showtunes given glockenspiel-enriched arrangements to seem more festive, and one or two white-elephant gifts from out of leftfield.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Paula
    Robin Thicke texts his estranged wife, Paula Patton, in the music video for the pointedly titled "Get Her Back," the lead single from said album, Paula. "I don't care," she replies. And it's likely no one else will either.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Monkey Business
    There's nary an original note on the entire album.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    If Not Now, When?
    If Not Now, When? is frustrating in many ways, chiefly because it feels like a step in the wrong direction for a band that can still pen enthralling tunes.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Beginning
    The Beginning, the Black Eyed Peas's sixth and least original album yet, is the sound of the pigs' blood dumped on Carrie White's head congealing into a sticky, hardened scab of forced good times.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    One Of The Boys
    'Mannequin' features some cleverly written lyrics, but Perry doesn't possess the grit or vocal prowess to follow through, and the title track is like No Doubt's 'Just a Girl' sans personality and conviction.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    One Thing at a Time
    A wildly uneven follow-up to 2021’s already overburdened Dangerous: The Double Album. Listening to the album in one sitting is akin to binging a seven-course meal: While there are some memorable bits, it all blurs into a comatose-inducing fog.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love?
    The real problem, then, is that Love? isn't the all-out dance album it could-and should-have been.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Cattle Callin
    Hank 3 may be one of the most creative recording artists in music today, but Cattle Callin proves that not all of his ideas are good ones.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Authentic
    The beats here don't always pop, but Authentic offers plenty of lyrical pleasures across 12 rather dense tracks--less bloated than the garden-variety, 18-song hip-hop album, but with plenty of substance nonetheless.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Devil's Rain
    The Devil's Rain is the work of a band that aspires to give the genre little more than its answer to "The Monster Mash."
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Earth To The Dandy Warhols
    Their smug posturing makes the Dandy Warhols a difficult act to like, but the sheer quality of their songcraft on Earth goes a long way toward earning them a measure of goodwill.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A.K.A.
    The album features more guest rappers than even her 2002 remix album, and the standout "Acting Like That," featuring the always reliable Iggy Azalea, is handily the hardest beat she's ever bought. Unfortunately, A.K.A. also includes a slew of midtempo ballads whose soaring hooks and slick production are wasted on Lopez's reedy voice.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Como Ama Una Mujer
    The problem is that Lopez easily ages herself by a decade or two. In other words, Mama Lopez is probably going to love this album.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Skins
    Many of the album’s nine songs feel unfinished, with only half managing to crack the two-minute mark.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Imperial Blaze
    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.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Weirdness
    The Weirdness never sounds like anything more than a competent but ultimately unremarkable band that sounds a little like The Stooges.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Generation
    Audio Bullys don't waste energy giving any of their half-baked whims time to develop into songs.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    God Did
    God Did lacks an organized artistic vision, or at least a sense of purpose beyond engaging in purely attention-grabbing theatrics.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Rebirth Of Venus
    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.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Memories: Do Not Open
    Uunfortunately, the sound they've settled on is parked firmly in the middle of the road.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Am Me
    I Am Me isn't half bad--but it's only half good.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jagged Little Pill Acoustic
    For the most part, what was once electrifying is now stripped of almost all of its energy and novelty.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Graffiti
    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.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    United Nations of Sound
    In between the record's one marked high point and its half-a-dozen contemptible lows, the former Verve frontman takes the United Nations of Sound to places he's been countless times before.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    (One)
    (One) is a good rock album that likely could have been great if not for lack of a solid lead single and anything resembling overall coherence in its thematic overtones.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Slick Dogs And Ponies
    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.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Rebirth
    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.
    • 15 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Playing With Fire
    This disc is just as disposable and dumb as you'd expect.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Free
    The album may not have any standout hooks to give him another inescapable radio hit, but it does suggest that DeGraw has finally found a style that suits him well.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Indrupendence Day
    While InDRUpendence Day may play at toughness, adhering to today's fashions as completely as the group did to the simpler whims of the '90s, it never postures.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Just Charlie
    It's R&B in the missionary position, a politely seductive soundtrack for obligatory anniversary humping.
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