The New York Times' Scores

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For 2,075 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: 1,597 out of 2075
  2. Mixed: 443 out of 2075
  3. Negative: 35 out of 2075
2075 music reviews
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    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Girl Who Got Away
    The electronics are there, however, and they lift the album’s better songs out of the sad-sack zone.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Re-Mit
    The songs on Re-Mit, his 30th studio album with his band the Fall, resemble a row of unevenly smashed windows, or patches of broken concrete in a street--unsightly ruptures within a familiar context, potentially more shapely and interesting the closer you look, but perhaps not.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Omens
    This is a clangorous album in every way, full of brick-dense synths and abusive drums, and it often succeeds by blind force. But elsewhere the duo--Nathaniel Motte and Sean Foreman--are much slier and much more successful.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ceremony
    The record is awkward and seriously pretentious at times, but you can’t miss the heat of its ambition.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Magna Carta Holy Grail
    Though Timbaland’s productions always hold some sly surprises, “Magna Carta ... Holy Grail” comes across largely as a transitional album, as if Jay-Z has tired of pop but hasn’t found a reliable alternative.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ciara
    Her fifth, is one of the most convincing R&B albums of the year, even if it does a very thin job of being convincing about Ciara herself.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Trials & Tribulations
    The end-zone dance that is “Bugatti” is far more in keeping with hip-hop’s prevailing mood, and half of this album tries to match it but falls short. But most of the rest of Trials & Tribulations is far darker and more reflective.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Crash My Party
    A few times on the competent but wearisome Crash My Party he sounds dutifully twangy, but those moments are exceptions.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hall of Fame
    All together, that makes Hall of Fame beautiful more often than it’s interesting, because Big Sean’s ear is working smarter than his mouth.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Colored Sands
    The album has stability, consistency. But too much of it.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nobody Knows
    It’s possible to like this record in theory while imagining one that’s 50 percent more enjoyable.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    High Hopes
    The best of them--mostly the resigned or farseeing songs, the songs that have no hero and no story--rise above the odds. But a large portion of the record feels, let’s say, official.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lift Your Spirit
    Throughout the album, Mr. Blacc sings with the kind of earthy vitality that many studied neo-soul singers don’t have the voice to match. But too often, the production--most of it by DJ Khalil--is so thoroughly retro that Mr. Blacc only reminds a listener of whom he’s emulating.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The New Classic
    Student’s complete commitment to character and form compensate slightly for the unrelenting weirdness of this project.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Corazón
    In some tracks Corazón feels like a committee crossover project.... But Corazón also finds vibrant international connections.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Xscape
    Xscape does polish up these old songs, even if it wipes away some of Jackson’s ideas, like the big-band tango Jackson invoked on the demo of “Blue Gangsta.” And Jackson’s voice--deliberately pushed up front in the mixes--is more vivid, and less processed-sounding, than it was on his later albums.... Yet it’s clear why Jackson shelved the songs on Xscape. They’re near misses, either not quite as striking as what he released or lesser examples of ideas he exploited better elsewhere.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Early Riser
    These songs don’t have a great dynamic range, or produce very surprising events. They float past you, often made of three or four chords and a trickling, curious beat.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Get Hurt
    The music on Get Hurt is broader and more muscular. It feels like music made from the outside in, not the other way.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Manipulator
    There are 17 songs here, and after a while, they feel short on basic songwriting surprises: Built on narrow foundations, high on crude intuition, they keep running into walls.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Art Official Age
    While the production details of each track are full of lessons in musicianly ingenuity, only “Breakdown” has a melody that lingers. The others are overshadowed by Prince’s back catalog.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    PlectrumElectrum
    What constrains PlectrumElectrum is its rigorous, deliberately retro back-to-basics mandate. Prince at his best doesn’t just collect and recreate genres; he smashes them together.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Anything Goes
    Florida Georgia Line is a literal breeze, with songs that land like feathers. Anything Goes doesn’t pack quite the raw shock of that duo’s 2012 debut album, “Here’s to the Good Times.”
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Pinkprint
    The Pinkprint is her third studio album, and like the first two it’s full of compromises and half-successes.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Piece by Piece
    Every song aims for the monumental, a strategy that’s competitive for radio play but wearying over the course of a whole album.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Madness
    Sometimes the lyrics don’t match the energy of the music here, especially Jack Fowler’s guitar. They tend toward the blandly inspirational, with a handful of notable exceptions.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Don't Like Shit: I Don't Go Outside
    At 10 songs that span barely 30 minutes, this album is so terse it makes Nas’s “Illmatic” seem like “Infinite Jest.” And often it can feel as if Earl Sweatshirt is rapping his dense syllabic tumbles with his back facing the microphone, which is perplexing, since few rappers love the sound of sticky syllables as much as he does.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    No Pier Pressure
    On No Pier Pressure, they [Wilson and co-producer Joe Thomas] juggle past and present in strangely proportioned ways.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dark Red
    Dark Red, his sometimes emphatic, sometimes meandering second full-length album, has moments that underscore just how much Shlohmo--real name Henry Laufer--has evolved.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Jekyll + Hyde
    For every song that issues a challenge, there are two that play nice.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Who Is the Sender?
    It means well and conjures fellow feeling and makes you think the long thoughts. But it is a trudge, and strangely ponderous in its smallness.
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