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
    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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.”
    • 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.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    One Thing at a Time
    Its 36 songs — yes, 36 — show abundant craftsmanship and barely a hint of new ambition or risk. ... But over the lengthy course of the album, the songs tend to cycle through just a handful of approaches. Eventually, the nasal grain of Wallen’s singing starts to feel like Auto-Tune or another studio effect.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gloria
    The quality varies across the 12-track album. ... “Gloria” has moments of boldness, but its occasional lapses into generics keep it from feeling like a major personal statement.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Her Loss
    “Her Loss” is frisky and centerless, a mood more than a mode. ... Often on this album — “More M’s,” “Privileged Rappers” — it feels as if they are ceding space to each other, side by side but not interwoven. Sometimes, like on “Spin Bout U,” they successfully melt into something greater than their parts.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Midnights
    Overly familiar sounding and spotty. ... “Midnights” feels like a concession to an older, safer idea of Swift, full of songs that are capable and comfortable but often insufficient. ... Some of the lyrics can be lackluster and bluntly imagistic, with little of the detail that made Swift one of the signature pop songwriters of the 21st century. ... “Midnights” by and large feels like a fuzzy Xerox of old accomplishments.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Born Pink
    “Born Pink” is occasionally galvanic, and occasionally iterative. When the group does push into new territory — or more accurately, unshackles itself from familiar ground — it doesn’t leave much of an impact.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wasteland
    Trippy, fitful and attitudinal; there are almost no classic soul arrangements, nor even the hard swing of 1990s hip-hop soul. “Wasteland” demonstrates the limitations of that approach as often as its strengths. ... Faiyaz sings with conviction, but he’s rarely grounded. Instead, he lives somewhere out in space — a man regarding his experiences from afar. Its production, which zigzags, wheezes and soothes, rarely feeling steady, sometimes tells the story more effectively than he does.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Special
    When it works, it works. And when it doesn’t, well … you get a song like overzealous-ally anthem “Everybody’s Gay,” which aims for Paradise Garage euphoria but lands closer to Target’s collection of Pride month apparel. The energy of the opening track, “The Sign,” somehow manages to be both relentless and listless.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Harry's House
    “Harry’s House” is a light, fun, summery pop record, but there is a gaping void as its center; by its end, the listener is inclined to feel more intimately acquainted with the objects of his affections than the internal world of the titular character himself.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers
    It is an album that aims to repel, or if not quite that, then at least is at peace with alienating some of its audience. ... [The album] often feels insular, lyrically and musically. “Mr. Morale” is probably Lamar’s least tonally consistent work. ... Rangy and structurally erratic, full of mid-song beat switches, sorrowful piano and a few moments of dead air.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    WE
    Despite its occasional moments of brilliance, “We” too often finds Arcade Fire stuck in a digital maze of its own design, ignoring the fact that it’s always sounded more at home off the grid.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Equals
    Ultimately, “=” neither adds to nor subtracts from the trusty formula for success that he long ago worked out. It is the sleek sound of stasis.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    JOSE
    The album struggles to truly innovate: “Jose” is an itinerant, unfocused effort that offers an impressionistic inventory of the sounds that have established him as a force: pop-reggaeton, trap and EDM. ... “Jose” colors inside the lines, safeguarding Balvin’s reign by reveling in the familiar.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Certified Lover Boy
    It demonstrates how sonically rigorous even the most casual, tossed-off Drake songs are. But its storytelling doesn’t always hold up to strict scrutiny. ... “Certified Lover Boy” is his least musically imaginative album, the one where he pushes himself the least in terms of method and pattern.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Donda
    As a Kanye West album, it feels more like a stabilization than an innovation. ... [The album] is sonically cohesive but also overlong and full of heavily assembled songs — multiple producers and writers, a bounty of male guests. West has long been shifting into conductor mode, and on several songs here, he is the ballast but not the focus.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Sob Rock
    In places, like “Carry Me Away,” the triumph of the arrangement is potent enough to cloak the brittle lyrical bones it sits upon. But in general, Mayer’s songwriting is resistant to even the most thorough gussying up. And even at its most robust, “Sob Rock” is placid, never doing more than winking.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Daddy's Home
    Clark and her co-producer, Jack Antonoff, have clearly had fun with the creation of this finely tuned alternate universe, but at a point, its many detailed references start to feel like clutter, preventing the songs from moving too freely in their own ways.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Justice
    The disorganized, only sporadically strong “Justice,” though, feels like a slap on the wrist to “Changes,” or the version of Bieber it nurtured. Rather than settle for one groove, this album shuttles between several.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Wonder
    His lyrics meander and stop short of true sentiment, and his rhythmic deliveries feel less cohesive. He still has a way with swell, understanding how to inflate his voice from whimper to peal. But on this inconsistent album, rarely does his singing convey depth of feeling.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Smile
    “Smile” doesn’t have much of an agenda beyond a general feeling of uplift, and it has a lightness that makes it a better and more nimble record than its predecessor. All I’m asking of a Katy Perry song is for it to make me feel marginally happier than I did three and a half minutes prior. There are a handful of songs on “Smile” that do the trick. Though the singles have flopped, “Smile” provides an excuse to revisit them — most are better than they got credit for.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    folklore
    “Folklore” songs fall into roughly two camps — excellent Swift-penned songs that are sturdy enough to bear the production, and others that end up obscured by murk.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Chromatica
    It has some sparkling vocal moments. It reminds us how easily Lady Gaga, 34, can coax the world onto the dance floor. But it feels overwhelmingly safe. ... “Chromatica” is also a mixed bag.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Colores
    Affable but slightly numbing. ... But by and large, these are polite songs, and familiar, too. Balvin is a sweetly elegiac singer — see especially “Azul,” where he stretches out soft vowels like taffy — but his rapping is largely blank.
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