The Guardian's Scores

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For 5,502 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 49% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 All Born Screaming
Lowest review score: 10 Unpredictable
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,965 out of 5502
  2. Mixed: 2,460 out of 5502
  3. Negative: 77 out of 5502
5502 music reviews
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    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ys
    It may well be the most off-putting album released this year. After playing it, there seems every chance it is the also the most astonishing.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Streetcore
    His best work since the Clash's London Calling.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    UGLY
    Ugly is an album that carves out its own space: messy but vital, it deserves to be huge.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    50 Words for Snow
    50 Words for Snow is extraordinary business as usual for Bush, meaning it's packed with the kind of ideas you can't imagine anyone else in rock having.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Big Inner
    For all the 40-year-old reference points, Big Inner never feels like a pastiche; it's audibly more than the sum of its influences, in the same manner as Lambchop's Nixon.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    MTMTMK
    As with Graceland, it's not scared to be too pop... plus the lyrics are of a sounder political hue than anything Simon essayed.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Melodic Blue
    There are so many incredible hooks in different modes of catchiness: Drakeian crooning (Lost Souls, Scars), Young Thug or Future-style Atlantan fantasias (Cocoa), Mo Bamba-ish lairy taunting (South Africa), and even the monotone syllables of “du-rag ac-tivity” are a minimalist earworm. Baby Keem is marked for greatness.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Everything Changes
    Everything Changes and the agonised We Watch You Slip Away (written with Kate St John) are among the finest new songs I have heard his year.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Guidance
    Doom has never sounded so good.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Who Can I Be Now? (1974-1976) [Box Set]
    Young Americans and Station to Station are albums that make you wonder how Bowie did it, given the state he was in, by all accounts, when he made them. ... The Gouster feels like eavesdropping on a moment when he wasn’t so sure. It makes for fascinating listening.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Thanks for the Dance
    The result is this beautiful posthumous collection. His songwriter son Adam has assembled a stellar cast of musicians, such as Daniel Lanois, Jennifer Warnes and Spanish guitarist Javier Mas, to do justice to the unfinished home recordings.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Patience
    You listen to it and wonder how anyone arrived at the idea that this song should suddenly do that, struck by the delightfully confounding sound of pop music made by genuinely original minds.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Coma Ecliptic
    From the rock opera crescendos of the opening Node onwards, the album dares to be both a quintessentially prog-rock experience and a timely act of modern metal derring-do. Frontman Tommy Rogers’ effortless versatility has at last found songs worthy of his gifts.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Night Falls Over Kortedala
    Pop is rarely as genuinely affecting, joyful or good as this.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Savane
    This is an African classic.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Desertshore/The Final Report
    Desertshore/The Final Report ends up a perfect epitaph, not merely for Peter Christopherson, but for the band whose name isn't on the cover.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Dust
    This is a triumph of impressionism, where the digital and organic coexist in a radically beautiful whole.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Bon Iver
    Bon Iver remains rooted in the emotional sincerity that made Vernon's debut so mesmerising.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Need to Feel Your Love
    Sheer Mag give you everything--socially conscious, sexually confident rock’n’roll that nods to pub rock, punk, funk, blues and 80s indie--and make it even more than the sum of its parts.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Renewal
    Bold, beautiful album.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Channel Orange
    For now, the best tribute you can pay Channel Orange is that, while it plays, you forget about the chatter and just luxuriate in a wildly original talent.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Aerial
    It is filled with things only Kate Bush would do.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!
    It's hilarious, chilling and exhilarating: further evidence of the unique and enviable position Cave finds himself in at 50.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Origin: Orphan
    Origin: Orphan has a similar tour-de-force feel to the first Arcade Fire album: the sound of ­loneliness and heartbreak ­gift-wrapped in bundles of sonic joy.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Boo!
    Boo!, their first album for 16 years, is well up to the standard of classics such as "What Up Dog?" and "Are You Okay?"
    • 100 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    OK Computer: OKNOTOK 1997-2017
    What no one, including Radiohead, did was make another album that really sounds like OK Computer. Which is another reason why it doesn’t appear to have dated at all.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Smithsonian Folkways Collection [Box Set]
    It’s remarkable for its power, freshness and range.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A Grand Don't Come For Free
    A Grand Don't Come for Free raises the stakes to such an extent that it sounds literally unprecedented: there isn't really any other album like this.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Kalak
    Made in collaboration with electronic producer Photay, Kalak is a beguiling body of work, enveloping the listener in undulating synth melodies, layered horn fanfares and vocal features – all driven forward by Korwar’s ever-present percussion.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Atrocity Exhibition
    His voice, agitatedly squawking and yet dainty as a ballerina, is one of contemporary music’s greatest pleasures. He quotes Outkast’s BOB on Today, and is the true successor to their trailblazing spirit.
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