The New York Times' Scores

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For 2,072 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 41% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 Live in Europe 1967: Best of the Bootleg, Vol. 1
Lowest review score: 0 Shatner Claus: The Christmas Album
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,594 out of 2072
  2. Mixed: 443 out of 2072
  3. Negative: 35 out of 2072
2072 music reviews
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    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT
    At times, the album is a return to form. Its first two songs are potent reminders of how viscerally Swift can summon the flushed delirium of a doomed romance. .... Great poets know how to condense, or at least how to edit. The sharpest moments of “The Tortured Poet’s Department” would be even more piercing in the absence of excess, but instead the clutter lingers, while Swift holds an unlit match.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    COWBOY CARTER
    It’s the odder, genre-fluid songs that give the album its depth. .... Beyoncé has been a stalwart of the full-length album, sequencing and juxtaposing songs in synergistic ways. But “Cowboy Carter” is a bumpier ride than “Renaissance,” “Lemonade” or “Beyoncé.” It suggests that Beyoncé wanted to pack all she could into one side trip before moving on elsewhere.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Everything I Thought It Was
    Abandoning the folksy aesthetic of “Man of the Woods,” “Everything” returns to Timberlake’s comfort zone: Gleaming, lightly profane disco jams that imagine dance-floor seduction as a kind of interstellar odyssey. The results are mixed.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Deeper Well
    “Deeper Well” is committed to understatement. It rarely flaunts its 21st-century sonic resources, and when it does, it stays humble about them. .... But the track’s [“Sway”] last 30 seconds flaunt technology with multiple a cappella Musgraves vocals: low, high, reverberating, sustained, wordless or intoning “I’ll sway.” It sounds reverent and meditative, computerized yet still human, revealing — only by contrast — how carefully restrained the album is.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Eternal Sunshine
    Unsurprisingly, this is one of Grande’s most meticulously crafted and texturally consistent releases — it sounds as expensive as the gleaming treasures she sang about on “7 Rings” — though it lacks the whispered asides, rough edges and irreverent humor that made those last two albums so fun. Still, “Eternal Sunshine” is awash in lavish atmosphere, adventurous melodies and an emotional weight that brings a new sophistication to Grande’s songcraft.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Vultures 1
    Ultimately, “Vultures 1” is a simulacrum of a strong Ye album — sometimes thinly constructed, but thickened with harsh sound and polished to a high shine. Some of West’s recent albums have been brittle inside and out, but this is music that, for better and worse, matches the moment, with songs that are pugnacious, brooding, lewd and a little exasperated.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Coming Home
    An album that sums up and expands what Usher does best. .... Throughout the album, Usher cruises through the musical and dramatic challenges that he has set for himself.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wall of Eyes
    With its new LP, the Smile makes itself increasingly elusive. It’s now a band intent on destabilizing structures and dissolving expectations. .... They’re not about hooks or choruses. Melodies recur while arrangements change radically around them; songs suddenly leap into entirely new territory. .... Throughout the album, the Smile’s music feels molten and improvisatory, though it’s clearly premeditated.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Saviors
    “Saviors,” Green Day’s new album, is a decisive, even overdetermined return to form.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Little Rope
    The new LP has more oomph and darkness than the band’s self-produced 2021 LP “Path of Wellness” and more emotional resonance than its mechanical 2019 effort “The Center Won’t Hold.” But even in its wildest moments, when compared to the band’s mightiest work, “Little Rope” sounds unfortunately diminished and curiously restrained.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Orquídeas
    It’s an album of breezy confidence and sly ingenuity, easily moving among futuristic electronics, 1990s nostalgia and Latin roots. .... Lavishly layered vocals nestle among glimmering electronic sounds and programmed beats, and on “Orquídeas,” her voice sounds completely untethered by gravity.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pink Friday 2
    An up-and-down collection that showcases spurts of impressive rapping, some baffling melodies and production that runs all the way from innovative to afterthought. But what’s most striking is that Minaj, more or less, is as she always has been: a star navigating hip-hop on sometimes untested terms.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Now and Then [Single]
    The finished track simplifies Lennon’s emotional give-and-take; it edits out his misgivings about himself. .... As in many Beatles songs, “Now and Then” has an unexpected closing flourish: a decisive, syncopated string phrase. And low in the mix, after a final shake of a tambourine, a voice says, “Good one!” Like the other posthumous Beatles tracks, “Now and Then” leans into nostalgia. Its existence matters more than its quality.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana
    In the new songs, he works his way through familiar topics: wealth, parties, sex, fame, autonomy. And even in well-trodden sonic territory, he can create arresting songs. .... But as the album ticks and hums along, the songs that linger are the ones that break away from standard Latin trap.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    For All The Dogs
    “For All the Dogs” includes some of his least ambitious rapping, and whereas on prior albums, he sometimes balances out his complexity with melody, that’s rarely the case here. .... And as is Drake’s wont, there are also a handful of deeply modern, innovative and unexpected production choices.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Falling or Flying
    With a voice that often sounds like it’s on the verge of tears, she brings flickers of vibrato, jazzy curlicues, grainy inflections and subtle pauses and accelerations to her phrasing. It’s not modesty at all — it’s precision, and it has been ever more sharply honed.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Scarlet
    Cheeky, idiosyncratic and sometimes great.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Black Rainbows
    “Black Rainbows” is one songwriter’s leap into artistic freedom, unconcerned with genre expectations or radio formats. It’s also one more sign that songwriters are strongest when they heed instincts rather than expectations.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Guts
    Poignantly fraught, spiritually and sonically agitated. .... Her self-doubt is a powerful animating force. Throughout this album, she kiln-fires her anxieties into lyrics that cut deep. .... Here [on "Teenage Dream"], and in the most potent moments on “Guts,” Rodrigo’s music pulses with the verve of someone who’s been buttoned tight beginning to come loose. Unraveling is messy business, but it is also freedom.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die (world war)
    It is just as electrifying as the group’s first two LPs, but with a wider sonic horizon and more parts in motion. And there’s a triumphant streak running through it that only heightens the pain of Branch’s demise.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Messy
    It reaffirms what she’s been doing right; it also claims new possibilities.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Chemistry
    The album is often a showcase for the elemental power of Clarkson’s voice and occasionally for her clever turns of phrase as a lyricist, but the arrangements too often rely on modern pop clichés rather than push for innovation or reach back to the soulful traditionalism of her 2017 LP, “Meaning of Life.”
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    But Here We Are
    “But Here We Are” has a back-to-basics immediacy and intensity that was missing from the last few Foo Fighters albums.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Walk Around the Moon
    The band’s founding rhythm section — Carter Beauford on drums and Stefan Lessard on bass — still keeps the songs nimble, no matter how burdened Matthews’s thoughts can become.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Seven Psalms
    “Seven Psalms” stays true to Simon’s own instincts: observant, elliptical, perpetually questioning and quietly encompassing. ... It has places of lingering contemplation and it has sudden, startling changes; its informality is exactingly planned.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    - (Subtract)
    They’re sturdy songs, even as Sheeran sings about fragile emotions. ... Obviously, Sheeran doesn’t worry about verbal clichés — though in these songs, the sorrowful tone makes them sound more unguarded than banal.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Multitudes
    “Multitudes” is Feist’s sixth studio album, and it embraces both delicacy and impact. It’s at once her most intimate-sounding and her most ambitious set of songs.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    the record
    The years between boygenius recordings have made all three songwriters more confident and more levelheaded.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.
    Del Rey, at her best, has a finger not just on the pulse, but somewhere beneath the flesh. And she is occasionally at her best here. “Ocean Blvd” is Del Rey’s strongest and most daring album since “Rockwell,” though it’s also marked by uneven pacing and occasional overindulgence.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Songs of Surrender
    “Songs of Surrender” is the weightier project. Like all of U2’s albums, it’s anything but casual; the songs have been minutely reconsidered. ... But for most of “Songs of Surrender,” less is simply less. What comes across throughout the 40 songs is not intimacy, but distance: the inescapable fact that these songs are being rethought and revived years later, not created anew. Wild original impulses have been replaced by latter-day self-consciousness.
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