The New York Times' Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Sweet Escape
    Much of “The Sweet Escape” sounds forced and secondhand; it’s one thing to emulate Madonna, another to be playing catchup with Fergie. [4 Dec 2006]
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    True Magic [First Version]
    Mos Def may not be flossy or raw at this stage in his celebrated career, which is fine. But what he offers instead is lukewarm nostalgia and obligatory indignation. [8 Jan 2007]
    • The New York Times
    • 69 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    West
    Ms. Williams’s strong suit is going simple and direct, but “West” loses its focus and goes wide and long. It develops a grandiosity problem. [12 Feb 2007]
    • 68 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Libertad
    Libertad sounds old, heavy, wrapped in a tough skin. At the same time, by virtue of sheer outdated flamboyance, it seems almost willfully naive.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Midnight Boom
    These aren’t very good songs, and the band’s agenda--sounding bored and chic, simultaneous distancing and beckoning, creating revulsion and desire--seems to tilt, in the end, more toward fashion than music.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Brooklyn's Don Diva
    The production is bargain bin, and lyrically, she sounds leaden.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Cocky And Confident
    Among the many declarations on “Cocky & Confident,” the ninth album by the New Orleans rapper Juvenile, one stands out as truly preposterous.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    31 Minutes To Takeoff
    He toggles between petulant cad ("Gone in September") and wounded child ("Save Your Goodbye"), convincing at neither. He has a grating voice, heavily nasal, with a seeming inability to wrap his lips around all of the necessary syllables, meaning that even when he's at his angriest, he sounds as if he's holding back.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Reincarnated
    It ranks at or near the top of vexing choices made by once-platinum artists, full of lazy, half-baked pablum that does more harm to Snoop Lion than good for others.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Life on a Rock
    The results are mostly dismal, making for the sort of album that reinforces faith in big, lumbering institutions that understand starmaking.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Midnight Memories
    With a couple of exceptions, this is a dimly written album.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Moonshine in the Trunk
    A shiny clunker of an album, it rings of brand rehabilitation and topical retrenchment.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Skins
    Skins barely leaves a mark. The ideas aren’t original. The record is short--clocking it in at just 20 minutes--but feels extremely threadbare. ... The songs on Skins are shards, sketches. Even calling them demos feels generous.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    7 [EP]
    It’s ... not good. A haze of half-gestures and amateur missteps. A deflated balloon. The songs end quickly, as if embarrassed. Apart from the nonsensical yet warm electro-trap song “Panini,” none of the new tracks display even a stray ember of creative curiosity.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Hotel
    More than ever, the focus here is on Moby as a singer and songwriter, which is strange, because he is not very good at either job.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    X&Y
    When he moans his verses, Mr. Martin can sound so sorry for himself that there's hardly room to sympathize for him, and when he's not mixing metaphors, he fearlessly slings clichés.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Monkey Business
    Perhaps it was inevitable that a group like this would eventually emerge, peddling an energetic but inoffensive variant of hip-hop. But did we have any way of knowing that the results would be so unpleasant? [6 Jun 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 45 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Good Morning Revival
    A mystifyingly inept CD that includes some of the worst lyrics you will — or, with any luck, won’t — hear all year. [26 Mar 2007]
    • 37 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Rebirth
    The songs might have been better as parodies than as imitations, although “Knockout” — a Coldplay homage backing a raunchy lyric — comes close to being both.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    All The Right Reasons
    For hard-rock ridiculousness, Nickelback is tough to beat. [3 Oct 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 49 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Shatner Claus: The Christmas Album
    Could we not? Signed, the Grinch.
next
Page: