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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    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Extended Vacation
    It all suggests a peculiar update of early-1960s exotica, with a heart of darkness in place of a setting sun.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dreams Come True
    The disparate parts align into a moody, liminal funk, orchestrating songs that obsess over a relationship irrevocably slipping away.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Scorpion
    Scorpion is something safer and less ambitious, largely a reprocessing of old Drake ideas and moods. It is the first Drake album that’s not a definitive stylistic breakthrough, not a world-tour victory lap, not an embrace of new grievances. It is, largely, a reminder of Drakes past, and perhaps also an attempt at maintaining stability in the face of profound emotional disruption.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    American Classic
    Its sound is lustrous, its personnel impeccable. What’s missing is the sense of conviction that Mr. Nelson brings to his strongest work.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Aphrodite
    No one's asking for reality in this pop bubble--just a little bit more innovation.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Yours Truly, The Commuter
    It’s a fragile recollection of California rock from more auspicious times, with stately melodies and vocal chorales over jerry-built foundations: elegies for vanished certainties.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hypnotic Nights
    It's the simpler stuff that's special.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    119
    Lee Spielman, the charismatic and intense frontman, is far more legible a singer here than he's ever been. That lucidity is in service of some of his most pointed lyrics.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kintsugi
    It’s a smartly shaped response to two recent disentanglements, at least one of which seems to have left a residue of trauma.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Diamond Hoo Ha
    Diamond Hoo Ha can sometimes sound like an anthology. But there’s still a boisterous band under all the borrowings, and loosening up and stretching its identity have just made Supergrass snappier and rowdier.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hemingway's Whiskey
    Mr. Chesney is playing with a different sort of relaxation here - not sun-bleached and fatigued, but genuinely troubled, and maybe narcotized. This is a Chesney that's only rarely appeared before.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nothing to Do
    It's raggedy and satisfying, unconcerned with anything beyond its very elemental attitudes and poses.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Amelita
    Its sound runs decisively breezy-modern.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Educated Guess
    It's worth putting up with a few overbearing moments to hear someone so willing to take chances.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    You Break Our Hearts, We’ll Tear Yours Out
    The band cares as much, and probably more, about texture and noise. Each song materializes within its own soundscape. The ingredients are distortion and percussion, in layers that clatter and lurch with unpredictably shifting attacks.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Learn To Live
    Learn to Live, his second solo album (in 2002 he released “Back to Then,” a tame, awkward, largely unpleasant collection of neo-soul), is impressively eclectic and sharply written. It’s one of the year’s most vibrant country albums.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    American Goldwing
    The songs are stubbornly engaging, filled with characters who drink and regret it, and struggle to understand their own decisions. Tucked amid the pastiche are good laments like "Taking It Easy Too Long," a rueful self-evaluation, and "Love the Way You Walk Away," a brokenhearted shrug.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Massacre
    It is a collection of stark but sly threats and come-ons, nearly as addictive as its predecessor. [3 Mar 2005]
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Beautiful Struggle
    Between the hooks, he's as earnest as ever, but now he's dressed to party.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Guerolito
    Beck's original versions now sound restrained and single-minded, probably truer to the songs. The remixes are busier and dizzier, leaving Beck to his melancholy while they have some fun. [12 Dec 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    I Look To You
    She’s tentatively climbing back into the pop machinery, no longer invincible but showing a diva’s determination.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Anjulie
    All together it makes for an often sumptuous debut album of lithe, modern coffeehouse soul (in senses musical and literal: Hear Music is a joint venture between Starbucks and Concord Music Group) that smartly avoids the bohemian.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Southern Voice
    Distractions aside, Mr. McGraw returns again and again to the melancholy of passing time, and it sounds as if, rightly, he might wish to reframe his entire career around songs about crumbling beauty.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Oblivion Hunter [EP]
    This album is a throwback to the group's fundamental low-fi assault--less a premeditated statement of musical progress than a controlled release of pressure.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    As I Am
    As I Am radiates not just confidence but also experience. On the whole it’s her strongest effort yet.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Crayons
    Crayons, though consistently good-natured and glossily wise about life’s learning curves, isn’t it. It’s a Los Angeles pop record, seemingly made by committee; it has no center.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Triple F Life: Friends, Fans and Family
    [Triple F Life] isn't quite as striking as his debut but preserves much of its appealing mayhem.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Just Tell Me That You Want Me: A Tribute To Fleetwood Mac
    The last third of Just Tell Me That You Want Me is completely skippable, but at its best stretches, new obsessions complement those of the originals.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Junk
    There is some skill here: strong melodies, extra chords, synthesized string arrangements, a tremendously accomplished chromatic-harmonica solo. They are intense.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    1977
    These songs aren't much more than melodic rants, but that's enough for Mr. Nash, who's never been a forceful singer, but whose talent for cramming oddball twists into R&B remains unparalleled.
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