The New York Times' Scores

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For 2,073 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: 1,595 out of 2073
  2. Mixed: 443 out of 2073
  3. Negative: 35 out of 2073
2073 music reviews
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    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Another Round
    Accordingly, Jaheim is not at his best on ballads or on up-tempo numbers (a pair of which, “Another Round” and “Her,” weigh down the middle of this album), but he is on songs that combine the two.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    My World 2.0
    My World 2.0, his debut full-length album, is far sharper than it needs to be, an amiable collection of age-appropriate panting with intermittent bursts of misplaced precociousness.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Freight Train
    The magic in his stoicism is gone too: Freight Train is filled with songs that are mature but not wise.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh
    It’s filled with spacey, leisurely songs about desire, longing, betrayal and letting go. The album plays as one long tease on the way to its last song: the 10-minute, three-part “Out My Mind, Just in Time,” which is even more protracted.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love To Live
    The album is solid and respectable, just not a lot of fun.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Am What I Am
    Mr. Haggard sounds more fatigued than his old sidekick, his voice less willing to bend. There are some lovely moments of stern self-loathing ("Bad Actor," "How Did You Find Me Here"); Mr. Haggard is always sharper when pointing the finger at himself than when celebrating love, as he often does on this album.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Achin' And Shakin'
    "Giddy On Up" is on the shakin' side, which is the weaker half, chaotic and a little glib... The achin' set of songs forces Ms. Bundy to exhale, revealing a lovely voice with alluring nooks and crannies that need no adornment.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stone Temple Pilots
    In its heyday Stone Temple Pilots brought swagger and darkness to its second-tier grunge. Now the band has returned from its hiatus with less of a musical identity and blander tidings.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Recovery
    What Eminem hasn't let go of is his taste for melancholic bombast in production.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Korn III: Remember Who You Are
    On Korn III: Remember Who You Are, the band has jumped back to the sound and attitude that made it famous - if without particularly inspired tunes - and Mr. Davis, almost 40, seems to have regained some of his younger self as a lyricist.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Crazy for You
    Ms. Cosentino and her collaborator, Bobb Bruno, envelop the songs in guitar reverb and distortion--between the Raveonettes and the Jesus and Mary Chain--to place them in an ominous haze.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cowboy's Back in Town
    While Mr. Adkins shares a sense of gravity and an air of intractability with his new boss [Toby Keith], he lacks the winking cheekiness and self-deprecation that have always been Mr. Keith's aces in the hole.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    God Willin' & the Creek Don't Rise
    This one has missteps, but for Mr. LaMontagne it's those songs that feel the most honest, those where he says what he means, not what he hopes you'll think.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cloak and Cipher
    She's good at finding obscurity, but sometimes not to her benefit. Ms. Powell wrote a lot of the lyrics on Cloak and Cipher with scrambled input from books and various other texts, and she doesn't do much to smooth out the results, savoring the disjunctive and the cryptic.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Reason Why
    Redolent of Southern gospel and feather-light country-rock, it's a comfort zone for this group, employed consistently in the choruses, which can be arrestingly sharp, and often elsewhere. But piled on top of plangent guitars, the convergence can become grating, with all the emotion of archery, or some other sport that prizes accuracy above all.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Am Not a Human Being
    While diversity is Lil Wayne's strength, it's a lack of commitment of a different sort that hamstrings this album. Too often Lil Wayne lapses into predictable flow structures, quick ideas paired with built-in rejoinders.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bullets in the Gun
    Bullets in the Gun is his most scattershot album to date, a jumble of attitudes and tactics. Much of the time Mr. Keith, who has been one of the most underappreciated vocal stylists in country music, is singing without conviction on songs that are mere archetypes and lack any of his signature gestures.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    No Gravity
    The rest of her follow-up, No Gravity, a competent, sometimes exciting pop album, collects other attempts: in essence, a series of portraits drawn by people with radically different styles.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Incredible Machine
    This all amounts to an unwelcome unraveling of the Sugarland formula. As a country duo, the members of Sugarland are surefooted. As tweakers of Nashville orthodoxies, they're goofy and fun, but clumsy.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    $O$
    $O$ may be as much Die Antwoord as the world needs. Except for "In Your Face," the newer songs already sound forced. But Die Antwoord's initial blasts deserved all their mouse clicks.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Living Proof
    What's wrong with the record is plain. The lyrics' first-person mythmaking gets trite. The guest appearances sound fainthearted, tailored to the ears of Grammy voters. But the heart of the record is deeply, honorably misbehaved.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nothing
    Nothing is the fourth N.E.R.D. album and the first to feel altogether detached from its surroundings.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Soulsville
    But aside from transposing the keys--a measure most likely taken to suit a limited vocal range--these songs take few liberties.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Beginning
    It's a much lesser record than "The E.N.D.," and yet it isn't boring, even when the echoes of old songs are more than echoes.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Endlessly
    It's rigorously written, but Duffy sounds uncertain, spotlighting the particulars of her voice: the many crannies, the narrow backbone, the decay at the edges, the tentativeness she feels when it's unclear just how much room she has to maneuver.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Last Train to Paris
    None of these guests feel out of place here, but not because of the potency of Diddy's vision. Rather, it's because they have made records like these elsewhere, giving Last Train to Paris a secondhand feel.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    No Boys Allowed
    Ms. Hilson's own records aren't tipping toward bona fide dance music as much as Rihanna's, and don't yet have their audience-strafing sweep. But a few songs here are good enough to stop the overthinking comparisons
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ritual
    Every gesture feels like flagging down a passing ship from a barren island. Every emotion registers on the Richter scale. This can be wickedly effective, as many a successful British rock band will attest. And periodically on this album, the stars and planets do align.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lorraine
    Lorraine is evenly split between mercilessly detailed songs like these and frustratingly blank ones ("Sweet Disposition," "Rocket Science"), which feel like hollow templates designed to be inhabited by other, less imaginative singers. On those songs Ms. McKenna sounds complacent; discomfort suits her better.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Silver Pony
    Her uneven but warmly satisfying new album, Silver Pony, attempts the best of both worlds.
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