The Independent (UK)'s Scores
- Music
For 2,194 reviews, this publication has graded:
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47% higher than the average critic
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4% same as the average critic
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49% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 70
Highest review score: | Hit Me Hard and Soft | |
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Lowest review score: | Donda |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 1,177 out of 2194
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Mixed: 988 out of 2194
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Negative: 29 out of 2194
2194
music
reviews
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- Critic Score
Throughout, the sound is brittle and strident, like space-rock-candy, with Deborah Harry's allure buried far too deeply in the crowded mix to be particularly effective.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jul 1, 2011
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- Critic Score
He doesn't care whether you want it or not, he's going to do it anyway. And How to Compose... confirms that he undoubtedly still loves music. The problem is, it's usually somebody else's music,- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Feb 17, 2011
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- Critic Score
While the U2-style arena-rock impressions that dogged Keep The Village Alive persist in places here, elsewhere Scream Above The Sounds finds Kelly Jones in more reflective mood, resulting in a more appealing balance of head and heart overall.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Nov 2, 2017
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- Critic Score
This is a 12-track cringefest on which Stewart celebrates carnal love in between songs about his late father.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Nov 11, 2021
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- Critic Score
The poorest served is hapless Ellie Goulding, struggling against the hurtling momentum of "I Need Your Love"; more successful is Florence Welch on "Sweet Nothing".- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Nov 15, 2012
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- Critic Score
Though his fare is bland, it is sincere and hygienically prepared. No thrills, but all affable, affordable, family-friendly fills.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jul 12, 2019
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On the gorgeous Jardine/Wilson weeper “Tell Me Why”, the doleful nostalgia is surprisingly clear-eyed.... Sadly, “that thing” goes missing on Kacey Musgraves’ kite-weight offering and electro throwaway “Runaway Dancer”, fronted by Capital Cities’ Sebu Simonian, with synths via McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime”.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Apr 6, 2015
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This isn’t so much an album that would rile you to the point of turning it off. Rather, it washes over you, with its mostly average beats (“Forever” is a rare exception) and seemingly random cluster of guest features.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Feb 13, 2020
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- Critic Score
The arrangements are suitably bombastic: there’s a theremin camping up the pub piano on his cover of Laura Nyro’s ”Wedding Bell Blues”. His version of Bruce Wayne Campbell’s (aka Jobriath) 1973 glam stomp “Morning Starship” really sells the wry/cosmic lyrics about a girl picking a rocket’s lock with her hairpin. ... Morrissey’s take on Joni Mitchell’s “Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow” is leaden jazz karaoke, stripping the original of all its haze and drift. The electro-stomp/harp, fading to reflective piano fade-out of his reworking of Melanie Safka’s ”Some Say I Got Devil”, makes a joke of his lifelong self-pity.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted May 24, 2019
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Coup De Grace is Kane’s best work to date: punchy, cohesive and lots of fun.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Aug 10, 2018
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The standard dips slightly in the later stages, but the grooves throughout are sleek and snappy, and CeeLo himself has rarely sounded better.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Nov 11, 2015
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- Critic Score
Dan Croll’s follow-up to Sweet Disarray suffers from a kind of creeping anonymity: immediately after hearing it, it’s virtually impossible to recollect the salient features of any track.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Aug 1, 2017
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- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Mar 7, 2011
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Over brutish electro-stomps and fizzy pop trifles every bit as sickly as that suggests, Marina's shrill Violet Elizabeth Bott inflections proclaim her emptiness.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Apr 27, 2012
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With Peace Trail, Neil Young slips into self-parody again, with a set of desultory peacenik songs too simplistic and patronising to be taken seriously.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Dec 7, 2016
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- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jan 26, 2018
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- Critic Score
Though neither particularly new nor classic, Iggy Azalea’s debut album proper (following two self-released mixtapes) reveals enough smarts and skills to sustain the Aussie rapper’s momentum.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Apr 18, 2014
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- Critic Score
Her Scots brogue addresses the issue of “who you’ll be one day” with husky urgency, yoked to jaunty jangle-rock and prancing piano-pop which doesn’t anchor her in too parochial a terrain, giving Peroxide a broad appeal potentially akin to Ellie Goulding.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Feb 14, 2014
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Saturday Night, Sunday Morning is a cohesive enough follow-up, but Bugg still seems conflicted about the sound that first propelled him into the spotlight. ... It rankles when this album was put together by a team best known for the music he claims to despise.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Aug 20, 2021
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Music of The Spheres isn't Coldplay at their Viva la Vida finest, even if their undeniably upbeat attitude remains hard to resist. The Pythagoreans believed that music purified the soul. This album offers a more superficial spiritual shower. A fleeting invigoration.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Oct 14, 2021
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The riffs throughout this album are catchy enough to keep the beanie heads nodding along. But producer Travis Barker (Blink 182) repeatedly fills out the sound to the extent that the exposing angularity required to express true anxiety is lost.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Mar 25, 2022
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With his fifth studio album, Timberlake isn’t re-inventing the wheel, but he solidly continues to experiment with R&B, funk, pop and soul, with Americana creating an interesting layer.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Feb 2, 2018
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Lavigne might not have found a musical identity that truly becomes her, but Head Above Water is an effective, and occasionally affecting, album.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Feb 14, 2019
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Ultimately, however, despite the fizzing electronic undercarriage applied to most tracks on Electronic Earth, Labrinth's real forte may turn out to be the more traditional, earthbound musical skills.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Apr 17, 2012
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- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Nov 16, 2015
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They may talk it up as a brave new step forward, but their first album in over eight years can't really be viewed as other than a retrograde move for Jane's Addiction.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Oct 14, 2011
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Walker drizzles bluesy, Hozier-like soul bombast and nebulous folk tunes with Bond strings and EDM sizzles; tracks so thin and flavourless they go down without chewing.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Mar 13, 2019
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The Editors here step backwards into the crepuscular netherworld of Eighties new wave from whence they took their original inspiration.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jun 28, 2013
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Barlow’s generally at his best in more mainstream territory; he’s essentially a classic pop singer-songwriter in the stalwart British style of McCartney and Elton John.- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Nov 25, 2013
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A fond indulgence, perhaps, but there’s nothing on Déjà Vu that will take your breath away like “I Feel Love.”- The Independent (UK)
- Posted Jun 15, 2015
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