The A.V. Club's Scores

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:
4544 music reviews
    • 47 Metascore
    • 16 Critic Score
    While undeniably catchy, the hyper-produced songs have a familiar radio-ready quality that becomes infuriatingly mind-numbing over time, and Perry's vocals sound like a less-soulful Kelly Clarkson at best, a drunken, spurned sorority girl at worst.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    This time around, it's all saccharine pop and desperate ballads.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    An album that finds Moby half-remembering ideas for songs that are hard not to forget.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Weird Revolution sounds dated and quaint, both in its "Pepper" rehashes ("Dracula From Houston," "The Shame Of Life") and in its halfhearted attempts at caustic shock ("Shit Like That") and misfit mission statements ("The Weird Revolution").
    • 45 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    An utter wreck that curiously, miraculously, might have been great.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The once-fascinating, now-tedious gangsta-rap superstar's creative losing streak continues with G-Unit's dreary new posse album Terminate On Sight.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The problem with shock, of course, is that it quickly loses its novelty, and anyone who doesn't find the topics of pedophilia, drug abuse, or incest innately hilarious will find Hannicap Circus rough going.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Even at 40 minutes, this album is interminable.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The musical equivalent of Willie Mays stumbling around in the outfield years after his skills were gone, Crown Royal fails in the most arbitrary, impersonal way possible, piling on so many ringers that Run DMC often seems like a guest at its own party.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 16 Critic Score
    The Rebirth Of Venus, his seventh full-length, offers a more direct kind of terrible.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    There's only so much blood to be squeezed from that stone, so instead, Somethin 'Bout Kreay contents itself with using that stone to bash listeners over the head.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    A mercifully brief running time (less than 50 minutes) and a few scattered moments of autobiographical storytelling help make Gameface marginally less disposable than its most recent predecessors.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Worst of all, the album closes with three decent songs, reminders of Phair's talent that are muted by what's come before.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Musically, Graffiti is a fairly ingratiating affair: The production is clean and often lively, and Brown sings well enough. The problem is what he’s singing.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Ashcroft himself is disappointingly meager. For a man with a true gift for epic pomposity, he's mostly dull here.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Not all of Fortune is so unctuous, but none of it is inspired.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Contrary to its emphatic title, I'm Back! Family And Friends isn't so much a full-fledged comeback album as a mildly inspiring three-song EP surrounded by truly horrible re-recordings and remixes of Stone's biggest hits of the late '60s and early '70s.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Rebirth sounds like a strange dispatch from a lost ’80s in which Wayne trafficked in cheesy power chords, cornball hard-rock atmospherics, lame guitar solos for beginners, rock clichés, and Reagan-era synthesizers.