The Independent (UK)'s Scores

  • Music
For 2,192 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 47% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 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: 100 Radical Optimism
Lowest review score: 0 Donda
Score distribution:
2192 music reviews
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The fairly routine nature of the backing tracks means that The Fifth lacks some of the distinctive berserker spirit that characterised its predecessors.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    She harmonises piquantly with herself over the languid guitar groove, and B.o.B's rap is pleasingly modest enough, too. The same can't really be said of such tracks as "Casualty Of Love" and "Rainbow", however, both singularly unimpressive songs tricked out with the showy vocal bling favoured by R&B divas as a substitute for genuine soul.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It's a cartoon of emotion: even when whispering, there's a stage intimacy about her delivery; and at full blast, she has the emotive subtlety of a foghorn, though that may be to surmount the barrage of thundering tom-toms and pounding pianos with which she's been saddled.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    #willpower is stuffed with sounds that, while in no sense as cutting-edge as he likes to make out, crest the wave of the popular.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    One hardly looks to Mary J Blige for restraint, but here the combination with David Foster’s orchestrations adds an extra layer of icing to an already sickly cake
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Originally recorded on a home four-track machine, the songs were subsequently re-done with Trevor Horn at the helm, which has applied a little polish to what still sound like under-written sketches rather than compelling pop material.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It gets a bit noodly-doodly at times, but with some stand-out moments, notably the lovely, meditative grace of the bass and guitar alliance in "XII."
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It’s mildly funny and philosophically intriguing. Little else is in this team-up of exhausted pop forces.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Rothrock does a decent job of pumping life into Blunt's material, building a song such as "Bonfire Heart" from fingerstyle guitar opening to big, exultant conclusion by way of subtle accretions. Not that he has much to play with.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Many of these songs are hip hop-lite, incorporating bland trap beats as Levine delivers lyrics in the kind of stutter pioneered by early Soundcloud rappers.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Evolve involves mostly devolving back into the hoariest of tired rock cliches (including what sounds like roto-toms), and plodding grimly towards the summer’s festivals.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    18
    Three of the record’s 11 – eleven – incongruous covers, seemingly selected by lobbing darts at a Spotify genre cloud, involve Beck showcasing his sub-Dave Gilmour, cruise ship guitar work by playing the vocal lines on instrumental takes of Davy Spillane’s “Midnight Walker” and a couple of Beach Boys tunes. When Depp gets involved things often, somehow, get worse.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Behind the whippy synth flourishes and propulsive stompbeats that snag one's interest, the lazy charmlessness of the duo's rhyming quickly grows tiresome, a situation unalleviated by the occasional appearance of a Busta Rhymes or Calvin Harris. Fun in extremely small doses.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Kodaline offer a musical barometer of bankable current rock trends, but display scant originality on this debut album.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It's not hard to see why both parties agreed to the alliance--Metallica gain artistic cachet, Reed gains an audience--but it is not an alliance that welcomes listeners with open arms.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It might have been hoped that the album itself were more impressive.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Meat Loaf's latest, which covers much the same territory [as The Wall] but without any depth or desire to understand.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    SKINS is another fiery blast of catharsis, a largely metaphor-free space where depression isn't hinted at poetically but invited to throw down. ... There are no songs as refined or showing such potential as ?'s “infinity (888)” and “Moonlight”, and many of them feel like half ideas.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    LP1
    It’s all fine: shiny and efficient pop, smelling of body oil and new car upholstery. But Payne treats each track like a rental car. He gives each song a spin and hands the keys back like a good lad without leaving a trace.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    III
    Most songs here sound like capitulations to overworked clichés.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    When she sticks to the disco-pop staples of celebrating youth and dancing and fun, in tracks like "Young", "Live It Up" and "Live Your Life", once the energy dissipates, so do the songs, evaporating as if they never existed.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The narrow range of Nevins's voice limits its character somewhat, but is still compelling when combined with her mountain fiddle on a song such as "Wood and Stone", whose crisp swamp-funk country backbeat brings pep to its message of tradition and heritage.