The A.V. Club's Scores

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For 4,544 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 64% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 34% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 74
Highest review score: 100 The Life Of Pablo
Lowest review score: 0 Graffiti
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,663 out of 4544
  2. Mixed: 771 out of 4544
  3. Negative: 110 out of 4544
4544 music reviews
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    • 63 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Songs of Experience
    Songs Of Experience, U2’s 14th studio album, revs up the ambition, to embarrassing results. It finds the group desperately searching for a radio hit while pontificating on American exceptionalism, shoehorning the Syrian refugee crisis into not one but two love songs--and on consecutive tracks, no less.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 16 Critic Score
    The Colossus
    Frustratingly, there are whiffs of worthwhile beats buried among the blandness.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Survivor
    Even lineup changes and inter-group squabbling couldn't stop the trio's commercial winning streak, but a massive shot of independence just might. Brilliantly crafted songs from some of pop music's top songwriting ringers have played a key role in Destiny's Child's success, but Survivor finds frontwoman Beyoncé Knowles taking over the reins, co-writing and co-producing nearly every track.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Revolutions
    All too often finds X-Ecutioners playing second fiddle to an outsized roster of uninspired guests.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Evanescence
    Maniacally narcissistic, Evanescence is corny in the way only music so grim and humorless--and yet irredeemably stupid--can be
    • 63 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Evolve
    The singer spends most of Evolve dithering on elastic, airy, funk-jazz excursions that convey few opinions or emotions, not to mention hooks.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Fear Yourself
    Johnston's voice rarely melds with Linkous' production, and it loses its gritty charm amid such dignified surroundings.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Times Infinity, Vol. 2
    Throughout, the album is marred by dated, slathered-on digital effects or chintzy, ’70s romantic drama synth-strings, or laden with clunky refrains.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    MGMT
    This is a bag of potato chips that’s 80 percent air, unconvincingly trying to pass itself off as a full meal.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Mr. Blue Sky: The Very Best
    Mr. Blue Sky is the musical equivalent of George Lucas changing a few of the special effects in the Star Wars films and then re-issuing them (again).
    • 62 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Born to Die
    Shallow and overwrought, with periodic echoes of Ke$ha's Valley Girl aloofness, the album lives down to the harshest preconceptions against pop music.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Auf Der Maur
    She never finds a way to distinguish one track from the next, or from the output of just about any '90s alt-rock also-ran.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    In Your Dreams
    For all the juvenilia of the songwriting, the production on In Your Dreams is an oldster's abomination, lacquering dated MOR bombast over intermittently inspired melodies that wilt on impact.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Slicker Than Your Average
    An album that features all of his worst tendencies and almost none of his good ones.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Search for Everything
    He’s delivered a batch of songs that feel relentlessly focus-tested in an attempt to win back his female fan base, but that have, in the process, sanded away the edges that gave him personality in the first place.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    World Wide Rebel Songs
    As a folksinger, he undeniably blows: There's simply nothing appealing or compelling about his forced, tuneless, featureless vocals, and without a strong frontman like Zack De La Rocha or Chris Cornell, flaccid attempts at rocking out like "It Begins Tonight" render Rebel Songs even weaker than if he'd stuck strictly to folk.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Invincible Summer
    Instantly forgettable... consistently tepid, devoid of personality, and characteristic of a considerable talent on auto-pilot.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    One Plus One Is One
    At times, the album sounds like a lost collaboration between Nick Drake and Jethro Tull, and one that might have best stayed lost.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Conspiracy of One
    Setting aside the abhorrent "Original Prankster," which plumbs new depths of Yankovic appropriation--and throws in a stupid Rob Schneider sample to boot--the bulk of the album indulges The Offspring's preferable loud-fast-shrill side... Conspiracy Of One's crowd-pleasing novelty idiocy doesn't run much deeper than its single, and while that may disappoint those who enjoyed Americana, it makes it The Offspring's most tolerable record in years.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Black Letter Days
    The tossed-off quality of his recent work may be liberating to Black, but it's not likely to be so satisfying to his audience.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Splinter
    The problem is that most of it is deadly dull.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Storytone
    If A Letter Home worked to privilege and highlight songwriting tools like melody and lyricism, Storytone does the opposite, overwhelming any inherent heart or soul in Young’s original compositions.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    A Better Tomorrow
    A Better Tomorrow has very little to do with the music of 20 years ago, but it has even less to do with the music of today; it’s completely out of joint, an island of irrelevance forced into being by the labor- and drama-intensive nature of the group.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    10
    Cool J has backed off from proclaiming himself the greatest rapper of all time at every possible opportunity, which is fortunate: His claim on that title has never been shakier.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    American Life
    Even modest expectations can't salvage the clunky, ponderous American Life, which fares only slightly better than "Hanky Panky" and Swept Away on her list of offenses.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    America's Sweetheart
    Love has nothing new to say and no better way to say it.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Britney
    An unmitigated drag.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    The Path of Totality
    To Korn's credit, The Path Of Totality is its most radical reinvention to date. It's also the worst slab of sludge it ever shat.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Songs From an American Movie Vol. One: Learning How to Smile
    It vacillates between insignificant fluff and confessional songs that have nothing new to confess.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Ghetto Postage
    Ghetto Postage illustrates P's unwillingness to learn from past mistakes. The names may change, with No Limit newcomers like Krazy, Afficial, and Slay Sean filling in for the AWOL Mystikal and the inexplicably absent Mia X, but P's formula of endlessly repeated choruses, feeble thug-life lyrics, and generic, low-end-heavy beats remains as tiresome and unrewarding as ever.
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