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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    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Issa Album
    Issa Album contains some of 21 Savage’s best and most fully realized songs to date--especially “Bank Account” and “Bad Business.”
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Padded Room
    While Joe Budden is enamored of his rhymes, which are taut, intricate and structurally varied, he raps in a scraped-up monotone, a technician first and stylist second.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bitter Rivals
    This third album is faithful to the band’s idea, but toned down.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates
    Mr. Chesney’s new album, which is being released today and has one of the worst titles he has ever come up with, along with some of the best music.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Slurrup
    These songs were written on the guitar, not the piano, and at their best--“Outhouse,” “Fight Magic With Magic”--their inspirations might come from Big Star, or the Who, or the Byrds. At their weakest, they suggest ’60s garage rock as only a set of anonymous mannerisms.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mister Mellow
    Only one song quietly stands out from the album’s flow: “Hard to Say Goodbye.” ... Mister Mellow is by no means the aural tranquilizer that its lyrics and packaging pretend to call for. The songs, for all their pretty, prismatic intricacies, are remote and forlorn.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fast Times At Barrington High
    This is a streamlined, plain-spoken record full of breaking hearts and sticky choruses, and it’s also the band’s best.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    All I Ever Wanted
    The most immediate parts of All I Ever Wanted read a bit like Kelly Clarkson karaoke: back are the Swedish writers and producers and their laser-guided arrangements, with dynamics that are particularly well suited to her voice, broad, nimble and gale-force strong.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mechanical Bull
    The best parts of Mechanical Bull, its sixth album, come when that exhaustion seeps into the songwriting and playing.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dedicated: A Salute to the 5 Royales
    The songs rise or fall with their singers--thumbs up for Bettye LaVette, Dan Penn, B. B. King and Shemekia Copeland--and the performances are stalwart enough. But they can't come close to the rip-snorting gusto of the "5" Royales nearly half a century ago.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Clear Heart Full Eyes
    Instead of howling about misspent youth against huge, churning guitar riffs, he ruminates on the wages of adulthood, musically enveloped in a cosmic, plaintive version of Americana.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    In My Own Words
    Ne-Yo is a deft and appealing player in the game of modern-day R&B. [27 Feb 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Death of a Bachelor
    Panic! at the Disco has always favored a style both steroidal and slick, and Mr. Urie isn’t out to reinvent it here.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Exclusive
    When he relaxes a bit, he discovers that his old approach--playful beats, flirty come-ons--works as well as it ever did.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Music For Men
    For most of the album the band reveals new levels of craftsmanship and detail, mastering one unexpected style after another, mostly from the 1970s and ’80s: house, disco, funk, T. Rex glam, synth-pop. After the surprise wears off, the hooks of the songs linger.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    3121
    A friendly, happy, concise album. [20 Mar 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    First Impressions Of Earth
    "First Impressions of Earth" is their most openly impassioned album. As they lower their emotional guard, they redouble their musical ingenuity, then crank up their attack. [2 Jan 2006]
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Intimacy
    At times the music, like the lyrics, does illuminate the problem of a band taking itself too seriously. But Bloc Party has always favored drama, and there’s plenty of precedent for overblown sentiment when it comes to pop and broken hearts.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Making Mirrors
    The album merges catchy gizmo-loving pop constructions with a stalwartly depressive mindset.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Junky Star
    The collaboration works, not least because emphasis is placed on the grounded heave of Mr. Bingham's fine working band, the Dead Horses: Corby Schaub on guitar and mandolin, Elijah Ford on bass and Matt Smith on drums.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Memento Mori
    Memento Mori, Flyleaf’s second album, is precise, muscular and alluring, full of crypto-Christian imagery and husky riffs.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All That Echoes
    The singing is warm and temperate, emotionally expressive without any sign of strain. But there’s an intriguing tension in some of the other material.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Past, The Present, The Future
    If you can forgive the album’s concessions to the musical innovations of the last decade or so, like the Timbaland-assisted production on “Incredible,” it’s a logical, if slightly aged, continuation of the group’s music from its prime.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Catching a Tiger
    Catching a Tiger (Fat Possum), her full-length debut, comes most alive with a handful of songs about reaching for someone who isn't there (e.g., "In Sleep," which evokes Fleetwood Mac) or evading someone who is (e.g., "Loosen the Knot," more of a power-pop surge).
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    VIEWS
    Overall, Views contains Drake’s most straightforward lyrics, and his emotional excavations aren’t as striking as they were a few years ago, when they had the sting of the new to them.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Street of the Love of Days
    At times the group is just too determinedly subdued, but never when Ms. Nunez-Fernandez is upfront; in English or Spanish her breathy voice is an enticement.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This Is...
    It plays like a sweet-toothed sparring session, one punch after the next of joyful high-pitched barking.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Day After
    Twista's fast but heavy rhyme style doesn't often leave room for charm or narrative or wit.... But his intricate verbal rhythms are more important than the words, anyway. [3 Oct 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Memory Almost Full
    It has a simplicity that gives it a rougher, rockier, more homespun sound than most of his recent albums.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Throw Down Your Arms
    An imposing act of pop interpretation. [3 Oct 2005]
    • The New York Times
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