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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    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jeff Bridges
    In general there's the dusky, reverberant sound of the album, which turns Mr. Bridges into a cog in the T Bone Burnett Americana machine.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mission Bell
    Mission Bell, his fourth album on Blue Note, sharpens the payoff.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Our Bright Future
    The delicacy wisely offsets her more heavy-handed lyrics, and it draws listeners closer to what she does best: morose love songs.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    KEYS
    The “Unlocked” songs sound like public performances, neat and armored and solidly 4/4, more locked than unlocked. The “Originals” hint at freer, messier, closer, unresolved feelings, daringly unguarded — and thoroughly, openly human.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Evolution Of A Man
    Mr. McKnight, perhaps as smooth an operator as R&B has seen, knows what he’s pursuing here: a balance of smoldering sensuality and unguarded chivalry.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kiss Land
    Kiss Land is pulpy, mournful, pungent, unnerving.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Loved Me Back to Life
    On this album she’s singing with more rhythm, if not more clarity, than usual.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Here I Stand
    But tension, not bliss, creates the album’s best songs.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Native
    The craftsmanship is painstaking and impressive: layer upon layer of glossy keyboards, reverberant guitars and choirlike backing vocals (although Mr. Tedder applies too much obvious Auto-Tune to his leads). But these crystal-palace productions are proud showcases for unctuous, sometimes oddly morbid lyrics.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Anika
    Her voice is faltering and off-key, but dogged. The grooves are minimal, with the bass pushed way up front, and the sound is fresh and lumpy: the songs get your attention; they've got texture.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Fool
    Ms. Weaver’s lead vocals sound natural and personal, while Mr. Blanco and Mr. Angelakos build heroic crescendos for her.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Phase
    Phase is a virtuosic, thrill-packed album, ricocheting among extremes before concluding with “My House Is Your Home,” which uses just Mr. Garratt’s voice, his piano and apparently a creaky piano stool. Yet underlying each strenuous track is a clear-cut, old-fashioned pop structure: verses and choruses, tension and release, matters of the heart. But now they are buffeted, brilliantly, from all directions.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tooth Of Crime
    Mr. Burnett’s songs for the show are the basis for his new album, and a decade of marinating and reworking has only deepened their black-humor charm.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    When The World Comes Down
    It’s completely clear and even traditional pop music, but those over 16 will likely have no use for it.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Here I Am
    It's a chewy and moody R&B album on which Ms. Rowland sounds assured and vital. Or, at minimum, is made to sound that way.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Louder Now
    A few of the songs and stanzas are overpacked, but the bigger sound generally works. [24 Apr 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    That's Why God Made the Radio
    Vocal harmonies abound, burnished to modern studio precision.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Songs of Innocence
    The album is a blast of discoveries, hopes, losses, fears and newfound resolve in lyrics that are openly autobiographical. It’s also a blast of unapologetic arena rock and cathedral-scale production, equally gigantic and detailed, in the music that carries them.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Demi
    [An] often impressive fourth album.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fifth Harmony
    The new self-titled Fifth Harmony album is potent and overflowing with sugary pleasures, full of military-grade pop production and laser-targeted singing.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Here Lies Love
    Luckily, scholarship doesn't eclipse the limber, catchy music and the sheer nuttiness of the whole project.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Circus
    Most of her new songs are crisp, cunning dance-pop with a touch of schoolyard singsong. Just before they grow mechanical, they’re zapped with new effects or catchy melodic interludes.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love Goes
    The sound of “Love Goes” is sweeping and luxurious: intimacy blown up to cinematic scale. Each song feels elaborately hewed.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    MDNA
    It's a bipolar collection that pumps out effervescent electronic pop before making way for a contentious personal agenda.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    See You On The Other Side
    "See You on the Other Side" turns out to be Korn's version of a Nine Inch Nails album - a good one. [5 Dec 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    System
    For most of System, the indefatigable drum thumps and whizzing keyboard tones prevent Seal from getting too vaporous, while all his yearning comes through.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Paper Gods
    Largely, though, Duran Duran chooses its collaborators wisely here, opting for some from that golden age, like Mr. [Nile] Rodgers, or those who’ve internalized that era’s balance of sleaze and good cheer, like Mark Ronson.... So long as Mr. Le Bon is oozing atop brisk arrangements like this, the specifics of the words don’t much matter. Everyone here has the posture down cold.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ultraista
    The lyrics often hint at the push and pull of relationships, but they're contemplated serenely from afar and cushioned by those synthesizers, just one more element in the pattern.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lil B.I.G. Pac [Mixtape]
    It’s a vivid album about how the appeal of street life is just as powerful, if not more so, than the appeal of a shot at real fame.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Permalight
    It’s still not easy to figure out exactly what Mr. Rogue has in mind with choruses like “They’ll lay their boot heel down for a solitary gun.” But the tunes, and the delight of singing them, are anything but unclear.
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