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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    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Funstyle
    It's a jumble of snarky (and funny) music-business skits and raps, junky computerized samples, tuneful near-pop songs with awkwardly overstuffed production, thudding cliches and, in tantalizing fragments, glimmers of her unsettling insight into character flaws, including her own.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time
    It's easy to imagine Santana completely revamping some guitar-centered hits. But for most of the album, that was apparently too daring for Mr. Santana and his pop mentor and co-producer, Clive Davis. These oldies tend to stay close to the original arrangements and vocal phrasing, perhaps hoping that familiarity can sneak them onto the radio.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dark Night Of The Soul
    Here were two artists, anxious and passionate, who knew how to talk to each other. That connection is missing from much of the rest of this collection, an exercise in Rolodex-flexing and loose oversight.
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pilot Talk
    He raps in tight clusters of syllables that sound smooth but say little. Mainly he's interested in getting high and, occasionally, getting high with other people. Still, many of his friends, under the influence or not, perform better.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sex Dreams And Denim Jeans
    Applying Auto-Tune to her deadpan rapping, she anticipated the sound that helped make Kesha’s “Tik "Tok" an international hit in 2009. Now her debut album, Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans, has to play catch-up.
    • The New York Times
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Sellout
    Her scratchy charm gets her through some of the stompers, like "Kissed It" and "Still Hurts," and her old humor surfaces now and then. But the desperation rings all too true in "Help Me."
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Recovery
    What Eminem hasn't let go of is his taste for melancholic bombast in production.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Bionic
    Now, on her new album, Bionic, how has she decided to present herself? Mostly as a sexbot: a one-dimensional hot chick chanting come-ons to club beats.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Goon Affiliated
    The brightest moments come from his exceedingly thin attempts at concept.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Family Jewels
    ["Hermit the Frog" is] a rare moment of fun, though; mostly Ms. Diamandis doesn’t let herself get comfortable. She’s strongest on the songs that nod, obliquely or otherwise, to fame.
    • 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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    This Is Happening
    This music sounds fantastic, as usual--clean, tight and separated in the mix--but songwriting inspiration is in short supply.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Infinite Arms
    The band leans on plain, incredibly legible songs that have little to hide behind; successful in a gestural way, but little more. And the songwriting of the frontman Ben Bridwell, always a little obtuse, has begun to decompose, like sketches drawn from faded memories.
    • 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.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Suite #420
    Suite 420, beyond some sweet spots early in the disc, becomes wickedly boring.
    • 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.
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