For 2,072 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: | Live in Europe 1967: Best of the Bootleg, Vol. 1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest review score: | Shatner Claus: The Christmas Album |
Score distribution:
-
Positive: 1,594 out of 2072
-
Mixed: 443 out of 2072
-
Negative: 35 out of 2072
2072
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
-
- Critic Score
He has found a great way to rebound: by going solo and getting weird. [26 Mar 2007]- The New York Times
-
- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There are verbal nuggets throughout the album... but it’s not the antihero sentiments that make the songs memorable; it’s the methodical yet obsessive patterns that frame them.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It has a simplicity that gives it a rougher, rockier, more homespun sound than most of his recent albums.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
With “One of the Boys,” her third album, Ms. Wilson rediscovers her greatest asset: her extraordinary voice. [14 May 2007]- The New York Times
-
- Critic Score
The Bravery is a pop-rock band and glad of it. That means plenty of nonsense syllables to invite singalongs, and utter shamelessness about borrowing other bands’ sounds and tricks.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This album confirms established Bad Plus ideals: directness, cohesiveness and a headlong approach to everything, including delicate emotional candor. [7 May 2007]- The New York Times
-
- Critic Score
Even when Mr. Thompson uses his caustic wit for laughs, the songs on “Sweet Warrior” hold a tension and vehemence that make their bitterness linger.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This CD sounds as if it were scientifically engineered to deliver hits.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- The New York Times
-
- Critic Score
The album is surprisingly effective in musical terms: drone-laden and distortion-jacked, it sounds about as tough as anything this band has produced.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Last 2 Walk, its first album since the excellent “Most Known Unknown,” from 2005, sounds like vintage Three 6 Mafia: bruising production, gloriously foul-natured lyrics, single-minded focus on life’s pleasures- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
In setting aside its trademark sound, Korn hasn’t yet replaced it with something of its own, but at least the band is working on it.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While this album isn’t as riveting as earlier Okkervil River CDs, there’s plenty to enjoy, and plenty of reason for hope.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The results are sometimes infuriating but more often lovable. There’s something shrewd about the way she refuses to refuse to state the obvious.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Nearly every song on Graduation is memorable for both its hooks and its overall sound.- The New York Times
- Posted Feb 9, 2011
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The new songs can’t help but sound rather mild, and maybe even constricting.... Still, this is a likable and well-sung album.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Sometimes one suspects he’s saving his best tunes for the next full-band Dashboard Confessional album. But then comes 'Fever Dreams,' 150 addictive seconds of falsetto and drum machine. It’s reason enough to be hopeful about whatever’s coming next.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It's a straight-up Carrie Underwood album, and a very good one, with a handful of romps and laments that exist mainly to set the stage for the big-voiced, '80s-influenced, Southern-accented power ballads she sings so well.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This equivocation--a rapper inspired by a movie about a gangster, trying simultaneously to distance himself from rappers, actors and the gangster in question--sums up the album's greatest strength and greatest weakness. Jay-Z is too discerning to ignore the contradictions in his music, even when he's trying to play the role of a coldblooded killer.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
When he relaxes a bit, he discovers that his old approach--playful beats, flirty come-ons--works as well as it ever did.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Frank was hailed as a star-making debut when it was issued in Britain four years ago. Heard today, its glossy admixture of breezy funk, dub and jazz-inflected soul makes a somewhat less dazzling impression.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
A couple of inspirational songs--'This Is My Now,' her "American Idol" signature, and the heavy-handed 'God Loves Ugly'--are hidden at the end, perhaps to remind listeners of the middling CD this could have been but isn’t.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Mr. Jean’s sixth solo album, is yet another mishmash, this one a cosmopolitan hip-pop grab bag full of big-name guests, baffling miscalculations and bursts of inspired songwriting.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
His storytelling focuses it all, at least for the first half of each song; after that, momentum flags.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The album relies equally on gleaming pop craftsmanship and on Mr. Starr’s charm, which are not always enough to redeem the more saccharine moments.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The sheer cleverness of every track is endearing. But it’s also brittle; these songs could use just a little more heart.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
If anything, Discipline may be too subtle: a pretty, smartly produced collection that sometimes sounds like background music.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
More often, though, Mr. DeVaughn borrows judiciously from Prince, Marvin Gaye and others, relying on his voice to keep the songs on track. Even when he’s promising to “shut the club down,” his delivery promises something calmer and sweeter than a wild night out.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It stands to reason that there should be another album's worth of this material, which flickers back and forth between different kinds of sessions and ideas, some quite elegant, some deeply boring, none of it very well edited.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There’s a more tangible sense of calm on Quaristice (Warp), the ninth full-length release by Sean Booth and Rob Brown, electronic programmers who record together as Autechre. But it flickers and fluctuates, often dissolving out of frame.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
He backs up his insolence with dense, tricky productions that pile samples and scratching atop techno and electro beats and go increasingly haywire as he gets more worked up.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Song for song, the album falls short of “Back to Me.” It could use more of her old feistiness.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Here she mostly spools out her intricate patterns in drifting postrock soundscapes, which are pleasant enough ('Sad American,' 'Montreal'). But when she sings a good, selfish pop song, she’s on to something else entirely.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There probably isn’t a better phrase to sum up this sleek but noticeably insecure record, which finds Snoop Dogg obsessed with defining just who, or what, he is.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Dan Bejar, who records as Destroyer when he’s not with the New Pornographers or his other projects, might have been perfectly suited for a career in pretty soft rock, mid-1970s style. The beginning of Destroyer’s eighth album, Trouble in Dreams (Merge), sounds like that’s what he decided to do, just strumming an acoustic guitar while electric guitars trace delicate leads.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
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.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
In his relaxed baritone Mr. Green sings thoroughly incongruous lyrics: easy gross-outs, free associations and darker tidings.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The stylized, old-time country of 'Hard Livin’,' 'Ain’t Glad I’m Leavin’,' 'What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome' or 'Lonesome and You'--yes there’s a theme there--frees him to find glimmers of humor amid the plaints.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There are moments here worth savoring-- the wickedly resourceful arrangement of 'Graves,' for starters--but not a lot that sticks.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
She’s shameless enough to mimic Gwen Stefani, Avril Lavigne, Madonna and 1980s hits from Toni Basil, Tom Tom Club and Missing Persons. The shamelessness pays off in songs with crisp beats, teen-seeking choruses and cheerfully obvious lyrics.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The songs move between love and regret and between restlessness and loneliness.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The turbulent choruses, allusive wordplay and pounding piano interludes faithfully hew to the self-defined subgenre Brechtian-punk cabaret.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
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.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The Ting Tings are crafty, not naive, but they can fabricate elation.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While the moments she sings about are awkward, the settings are not.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The songs on the band’s second album, Directions to See a Ghost (Light in the Attic) linger over one chord, perhaps two, and an unswerving beat, which doesn’t mean there’s no variety.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Jewel wrote or helped write every song here save one, and the producer John Rich (of Big & Rich) has done little to hammer down her well-worn eccentricities: wordiness; imperfect rhymes; a sharp, assured voice that collapses for effect.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The two men’s reedy voices come across as more harried than heroic. And often the keyboard bits are linked into structures that are neat yet crowded; just when one riff grows familiar and hummable, an eager new one shows up to displace it. It’s invigorating during a song, but a little exhausting over the length of an album.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This follow-up to his striking debut album, “The Real Testament” (2007), lacks some of that album’s rawness, but is still strong, thanks to his shockingly literal and unforgiving rhymes.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It’s a record on the traditional side of pop-country, with plenty of nuanced conceits but no knockout punch.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Intermittently brilliant, occasionally belligerent, it presents a vision of American identity as sprawling and ultimately as confused as the country itself.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While this project marks a long-overdue move forward, it can’t help but feel like a step back. It’s not the content that’s timid, but the ambition.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
When he’s not thinking about the ruined marriage, he’s equally sullen about the state of country music. An open admirer of Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson, Mr. Johnson favors older styles. He sings more than one waltz and uses lean, subdued band arrangements that ooze pedal steel guitar into the empty spaces.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This is a streamlined, plain-spoken record full of breaking hearts and sticky choruses, and it’s also the band’s best.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This is a peppy album, rich with thumping horns, crisp percussion and light piano melodies. As homage, it’s impressive. But Solange can’t quite keep up.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Slipknot stops pummeling every now and then for a few lines of melodic chorus, a full-length dirge, even a power ballad that’s a sort of spurned love song.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Sometimes Calexico is a Southwestern Dire Straits, with Joey Burns whispering over loping, subdued guitar vamps as John Convertino plays his drums with brushes. Or it’s a band looking toward Mexico...Or it’s a spaghetti-western soundtrack orchestra with guitar reverb....At its best, in songs like 'Victor Jara’s Hands,' it’s all of them at once.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Playing many different instruments, sometimes switching off to one another, they forge a slippery continuity out of messy glory. Sometimes they also manage beauty.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While this 76-minute album flags near the end, there’s still more than enough smooth-tongued, quick-witted rhyming to justify his boasts.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Ms. Scherzinger’s small, flexible voice thrives in the programmed, computer-tuned R&B tracks.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
As a singer Aaron With’s brave and extremely musical but sometimes hard to take--histrionic and affected, with a grating falsetto.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Doomsday warnings are all over this sweet, antivirtuosic record, and Mr. Seeger is clear about his solution.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
All the parts are in place on Offend Maggie, Deerhoof’s beguiling, characteristically uproarious new album.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Punk-rockers, like bluesmen, often devote themselves to perpetuating their style rather than transforming it. For Rise Against, that relentless earnestness is both a defining factor and a limitation.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This is a familiar brew for the Secret Machines, but that doesn’t make it stale.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Through the album, Mr. Chesney steers the songs toward half-smiles or at least a certain resigned acceptance, but he still sounds less complacent than ever.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
With reverberations and a choral backdrop straight out of Seal, it’s his only overreach. Mr. Legend is more charming one-on-one.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
This is gentleman country, and what’s surprising is how natural it sounds. While these vocals lack his characteristic robustness, his gift for melody is intact.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
When she’s supported by little more than her own acoustic guitar Ms. Brun sounds disarmingly secure, if not quite serene.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Melodies and vocals claim the foreground unchallenged, in major-key melodies that can sometimes chime like U2; the noise is still there, but it has moved to the fringes, as a stimulant and irritant rather than a barrier.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
DJ/Rupture knowledgeably traverses a world of ominous meditations, complete with anxiety about his entitlement as a curator.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Some of this works wickedly--'Believe,' the D’Angelo track, is a keeper, as is 'Gettin’ Up,' a charismatic come-on--but there are just as many small missteps.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The album accurately captures a stagebound aesthetic that’s messy by design and constitutionally wary of settling into a single groove for too long.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The music, made by many producers and songwriters, averages out different forms of radio-format blandness, with tinges of Coldplay and Shania Twain, and a few dollops of good writing. But the persona remains intact, ready for more.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The delicacy wisely offsets her more heavy-handed lyrics, and it draws listeners closer to what she does best: morose love songs.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
For the first time Nickelback is produced by Mutt Lange (AC/DC, Shania Twain), who has nudged from the band a tougher sound more suited to its inner louse....But he couldn’t fully jolt the band out of its comfort zone.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
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.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Whatever the reason, Freedom forgoes almost any signifiers that might pigeonhole him.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The mood once again leans toward languorous bliss, and the singing is casually devastating. And none of the covers ever falls victim to flat contrivance (except maybe John Fogerty’s 'Fortunate Son,' slowed to a dirge).- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
It’s completely clear and even traditional pop music, but those over 16 will likely have no use for it.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
He’s a contender in the secular realm of R&B who sings hooks for hip-hop songs between his own albums, and he’s determined to reach current radio audiences without jettisoning his roots.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Taken as a whole, this album feels less managed than its predecessor, and more hollow. Also, the lyrics tend toward the ecstatic, largely skipping the teasing questions about gender and identity that lent his previous work additional piquancy.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
While Ms. Doolittle does well with these hand-me-downs, the process feels oddly like a sequel to the “Idol” experience.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
There’s a limit to how many self-help platitudes a song can bear, and it’s certainly exceeded in 'A Beautiful Day,' with lines like, “There’s only one you/Just take a moment to give thanks for who you are.” But with a brisk, pulsating track and boundless anticipation in her voice, India.Arie comes close to making the truisms ring true.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Years of Refusal feels vibrant as an art of words and images; it’s somehow weaker as music.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
Those elements ring so true for K’naan that it feels like a distraction when he turns to high-profile guests like the Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett (on 'If Rap Gets Jealous') and the Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine (on 'Bang Bang').- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The second, more hit-or-miss disc turns upbeat for three-chord (but verbally convoluted) songs about romance, then drifts back to indie introspection. Self-consciousness pervades all, but where would indie be without it?- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
All told, the success ratio is high, and even the odd misfire has its heart demonstrably in the right place.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
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.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The only place this collection falls flat is in its inclusion of some pre-"SNL" Lonely Island material. It’s funny, but no-fi and awkward.- The New York Times
- Read full review
-
- Critic Score
The debut album by Obits, is full of such music, garage-punk bursts that sound like the songs are disrobing, showing off their bones.- The New York Times
- Read full review