The New York Times' Scores

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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: 100 Live in Europe 1967: Best of the Bootleg, Vol. 1
Lowest review score: 0 Shatner Claus: The Christmas Album
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,594 out of 2072
  2. Mixed: 443 out of 2072
  3. Negative: 35 out of 2072
2072 music reviews
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Special
    When it works, it works. And when it doesn’t, well … you get a song like overzealous-ally anthem “Everybody’s Gay,” which aims for Paradise Garage euphoria but lands closer to Target’s collection of Pride month apparel. The energy of the opening track, “The Sign,” somehow manages to be both relentless and listless.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wasteland
    Trippy, fitful and attitudinal; there are almost no classic soul arrangements, nor even the hard swing of 1990s hip-hop soul. “Wasteland” demonstrates the limitations of that approach as often as its strengths. ... Faiyaz sings with conviction, but he’s rarely grounded. Instead, he lives somewhere out in space — a man regarding his experiences from afar. Its production, which zigzags, wheezes and soothes, rarely feeling steady, sometimes tells the story more effectively than he does.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Her Loss
    “Her Loss” is frisky and centerless, a mood more than a mode. ... Often on this album — “More M’s,” “Privileged Rappers” — it feels as if they are ceding space to each other, side by side but not interwoven. Sometimes, like on “Spin Bout U,” they successfully melt into something greater than their parts.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gloria
    The quality varies across the 12-track album. ... “Gloria” has moments of boldness, but its occasional lapses into generics keep it from feeling like a major personal statement.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pink Friday 2
    An up-and-down collection that showcases spurts of impressive rapping, some baffling melodies and production that runs all the way from innovative to afterthought. But what’s most striking is that Minaj, more or less, is as she always has been: a star navigating hip-hop on sometimes untested terms.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT
    At times, the album is a return to form. Its first two songs are potent reminders of how viscerally Swift can summon the flushed delirium of a doomed romance. .... Great poets know how to condense, or at least how to edit. The sharpest moments of “The Tortured Poet’s Department” would be even more piercing in the absence of excess, but instead the clutter lingers, while Swift holds an unlit match.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    So-Called Chaos
    The music rings proudly, but the narcissism is suffocating.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    One Plus One Is One
    Typically hit or miss.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Happy People / U Saved Me
    There's something rather unambitious about this set.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Stone Love
    Stone Love... spreads it thick with bells, harps, string sections and expert evocations of grooviness. These affectations are starting to swallow up her talent.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    All City
    It can be rough going, especially when the three rappers fall back on stilted clichés. [30 Aug 2004]
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    I Com
    The embarrassingly specific lyrics about her personal life… give the album the feel of a nocturnal diary with the immediacy of a Web log.[16 May 2004]
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Red Light District
    Everyone's always complaining about how CD's have too much filler, but this one could use a little more: more big-name guests, more novelty songs and, most of all, more slow jams. It's that rare hip-hop album that might have been better if it had sounded more like a mixtape. [13 Dec 2004]
    • The New York Times
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    You Are The Quarry
    At this level of lyric artistry, these warmed-over arena rock backdrops are a waste.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Destiny Fulfilled
    A surprisingly perfunctory disc that never quite justifies its existence. [22 Nov 2004]
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Encore
    "Encore" is almost willfully uneven: it includes some of the most exhilarating songs Eminem has ever recorded, alongside some of the most inert. [15 Nov 2004]
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    In Between Dreams
    The songs on "In Between Dreams" (Universal) are so light and self-effacing they might scatter in a tropical breeze. [13 Mar 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lost And Found
    Somewhat entertaining.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Touch
    Unfortunately, nothing else here is as delicious as "1 Thing." [25 Apr 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Suit Yourself
    With a little folk-rock and a little Memphis soul, the cozy arrangements are supposed to play down her craftsmanship and bring a listener closer. But that only happens in the best songs. [12 Jun 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Broken Social Scene
    Broken Social Scene confuses integrity with indulgence, burying good songs under way too much studio tomfoolery. [10 Oct 2005]
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Time To Love
    There are moments on the album with too many bland and anonymous pop chord progressions...Yet here and there the idiosyncratic, headstrong musician emerges. [17 Oct 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back
    The riffs aren't as well built as the first album's, nor are the songs' conceits. Still, the album's not a disaster. [28 Nov 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Brave And The Bold
    This record is never obvious; it has no agenda. It advances no cultural or historical theory. It is not meant to accompany psychic healing or political protest, and it has no real connection to anyone's alternative-anything movement. There are so many things it isn't, that it barely is. [16 Jan 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    For Me It's You
    The music is often too banal to be good, let alone great. [6 Feb 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Little Willies
    "The Little Willies" is several notches above a living-room jam. It is rehearsed, flowing, expertly produced. But it is still an album that has been hanging around the house all day in its sweatpants. [6 Mar 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Peeping Tom
    Given his abrasive experimentations with Mr. Bungle and Fantômas, his fascination with mildly skewed beatscapes is a surprise, fun but passé. [29 May 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Big Bang
    On this album, then, the bad news is the same as the good news: Busta Rhymes is still Busta Rhymes. Which means that this CD contains about a half-dozen songs so infectious that they obliterate all the rest.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Highway Companion
    For about half of “Highway Companion” Mr. Petty’s reticence opens the songs to a sense of mystery. For the rest, he just sounds reserved and cagey, singing about restlessness but sounding all too settled. [24 Jul 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Back To Basics
    Contains a roughly even number of great songs and lousy ones.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Revelations
    Despite Mr. Cornell’s budding outrage, and the band’s attempts to funk up its sound, “Revelations” has a tentative, unfinished air.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Outsider
    It’s hard to imagine anyone going for the whole album, because it doesn’t hold together. [18 Sep 2006]
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ta-Dah
    It’s neat but slight, and a good deal less freakish than its predecessor.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Open Door
    Many of these theatrical, midtempo songs run together.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    An Other Cup
    The old Cat Stevens, who pondered earthly loves and sorrows and spiritual yearning, has been replaced by a songwriter who finds all his answers in faith. [13 Nov 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kingdom Come
    “Kingdom Come,” then, captures the sound of a grown-up rapper trying to make a grown-up album -- whatever that means. It’s a fascinating experiment, and a halfway successful one.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Weirdness
    The spirit is there, even when, in some cases, the songwriting is not. [25 Feb 2007]
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    My Name Is Buddy
    The first half of “My Name Is Buddy” may not be for those who get their news from sources other than old social-realist novels, aren’t serious cat-fanciers or are older than 12. [5 Mar 2007]
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cassadaga
    He is clearly searching for a more mature style. But the musical and rhetorical convolutions of “Cassadaga” are no substitute, yet, for the way he used to blurt things out. [9 Apr 2007]
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Woke On A Whaleheart
    There are times when Mr. Callahan’s deliberate, word-centric approach seems merely perverse instead of brave, and somehow the album seems much shorter than its 40 minutes, as if it’s only a sketch for what’s next.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Best Damn Thing
    As an album “The Best Damn Thing” is too relentless to be heard end to end. Its songs are expected to bring occasional jolts to a playlist. [16 Apr 2007]
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Minutes To Midnight
    As you might imagine, the band’s emo makeover doesn’t always go smoothly.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Eat Me, Drink Me
    Despite some spooky background noises, the music leans toward a glam-gone-grim style, reverting to a sound that predates Marilyn Manson’s past industrial-rock stomps.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Some People Have Real Problems
    The results are mixed.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Weezer (Red Album)
    Over all, this new CD relies on familiar formulas: twitchy, singalong choruses, lyrical and musical in-jokes and affable vocal harmonies. But it also feels disjointed and indulgent, packed with stylistic U-turns.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    One Of The Boys
    Ms. Perry is curiously blank on her major-label debut album (in 2001 she released a moody, eclectic collection of Christian contemporary music).
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Greatest Story Ever Told
    But much of The Greatest Story Ever Told might as well be running down a familiar checklist--guns, rough sex, big cars, club brawls, anti-snitching--and Mr. Banner is running out of variations.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Breakout
    It’s a lackluster album, floated by two or three strong singles.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Look What You Made Me
    He’s likeable but dull, rapping with nursery-rhyme cadence and simplicity. When he attempts intricacy, his words fall all over one another, scrambling for dry ground.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    How To Walk Away
    Produced by Andy Chase of the indie-pop band Ivy, the record pairs Ms. Hatfield’s compact songs with an unabashedly commercial sound, a strategy that works about half the time.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Everything Is Borrowed
    The emotional density lurking in Mr. Skinner’s early work is mostly absent. Worse still, he’s tightened up his rapping, largely sticking to simple patterns that when paired with simple ideas, are numbing.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    We Global
    We Global is an orchestra of favor collecting, though slightly dimmer than the two albums that preceded it.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kellie Pickler
    "If those girls were being honest and have been where you’re at. I bet they tell you they wish they had their innocence back." But this is what passes for wisdom on Ms. Pickler’s tepid and forgettable new record.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Little Honey
    When she’s hurting, she can still sear. [But] too often here, though, Ms. Williams gets bogged down turning her magnifying glass back on music making.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Funhouse
    Even though Pink oozes disappointment in herself and others, her music mostly fails to keep up.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Love Hate And Then There's You
    The riffs are tight, but not so fresh.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Feel That Fire
    Mr. Bentley still never colors far outside the lines, and his already smooth voice has been polished to a sheen here.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    In A Perfect World...
    Ms. Hilson is clobbered on all sides by ornate production.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jigsaw
    The album--which, like its predecessor, was produced by Medasyn, another Londoner--merely strikes a few new poses.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sounds Of The Universe
    Even at its most imaginative, this is seamless Depeche Mode filler, music that could be made by any number of acolytes.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Guilt
    Often Mims refers to how hated he’s become for his success, but truly it’s hard to loathe someone so underwhelming.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Stupid Love
    This is a scattered, sometimes awkward effort from a singer who has been, until now, tonally consistent and confident.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel
    That nuance is mostly gone on Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, Ms. Carey’s 12th studio album, which manages simplicity and clutter all at once.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Out Of Ashes
    Mr. Bennington strives to sound sympathetic, but after a song or two it’s clear that his only sympathy is for himself; there’s no humility, much less humor or proportion. As real as his prolonged adolescent angst is supposed to be, it quickly curdles into narcissism.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Soulbook
    His new versions are respectful and careful, with his voice recorded in close-up. Compared to the originals, they are just about joyless.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Before I Self Destruct
    Taken as a whole this album has a pleasingly morbid tone, in keeping with the best moments from 50 Cent’s first two albums. But context is this album’s undoing.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Graffiti
    A curiously faceless album that largely thumbs its nose at close reading.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Malice N Wonderland
    But too often on this album Snoop is a fuddy-duddy, domesticated and palatable.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Need You Now
    Its attempts at gravitas--"Hello World," on which Mr. Kelley sets a promising scene ("Traffic crawls, cellphone calls, talk radio screams at me") that doesn’t resolve-- land awkwardly, and its optimistic songs, like "Our Kind of Love," teem with empty metaphor.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ollusion
    Clunky lyrics are everywhere, undoing some of the progress Omarion has made.
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Plastic Beach
    This is a dull album, revealing how over the space of three records, Mr. Albarn and Mr. Hewlett have moved from wacky conceptualists to self-satisfied dilettantes.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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."
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Goon Affiliated
    The brightest moments come from his exceedingly thin attempts at concept.
    • 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.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Acoustic Sessions
    It's not awful. But while Acoustic Sessions carries the hush of a whispered secret, it divulges little beyond the fact of its stylish presence.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    H.F.M. 2 (The Hunger for More 2)
    Mostly, though, he comes up short, delivering rhymes that on paper are clever and punchy, but on record are congested and monotone.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Calling All Hearts
    Keyshia Cole tries for a slow burn but rarely ignites on her fourth album, Calling All Hearts.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Asleep on the Floodplain
    For me it doesn't work; it stomps on the fragility he's been building up for 40 minutes. But because it comes together so slowly, it's of a piece with this record's careful mood.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Who You Are
    These ambitiously sung songs make for tremendous chaos: the lyrics about uplift are often trite, the furiously modern arrangements are often cliched.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ceremonials
    In making the songs so monumental, Florence and the Machine have also made them impersonal.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Four the Record
    Normally, she's emphatic in the right places, but this album also includes some of Ms. Lambert's least committed singing.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Someone To Watch over Me
    Cut by cut, Someone to Watch Over Me is not as strong as its forerunners.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Under the Mistletoe
    Mr. Bieber hasn't ever sounded this good. But even Mr. Harrell can't place Mr. Bieber on equal footing with some of his more accomplished guests
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Immortal
    The new versions can be garish (pseudo-tribal drums and jungle noises in "Ben"?) or touching.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Love After War
    Throughout his cheerful jumble of a fifth album, Love After War, he pushes both of those buttons [tight execution and a suspension of disbelief], asking you to admire his tasteful slickness without delving much deeper than the surface.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Come Through for You
    The album stays kindly, polished and simpering all the way through, with only one surprise.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Love Is a Four Letter Word
    Filled with platitudes and, eventually, psychobabble, dippy even by Mr. Mraz's standards.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    California 37
    California 37 resides gladly in "Hey, Soul Sister's" shadow, full of equally goofy songs, some more so.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Boys Don't Cry
    Rumer can't conjure the right twinge of dissolution for Neil Young's "A Man Needs a Maid," and her lack of urgency on "Soulsville," by Isaac Hayes, is damning. But elsewhere she slides into the premise as into a tub full of suds, communing with Townes van Zandt's "Flyin' Shoes" and Jimmy Webb's "P. F. Sloan."
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Punching Bag
    His records over the last nine years, including the new Punching Bag, slide too easily into benign corniness.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hope on the Rocks
    Whatever left turn Mr. Keith took [with "Red Solo Cup"] has been ruthlessly course-corrected on this album, which is dutiful and workmanlike and totally bereft of passion, so rote it could possibly have been written and recorded over a long weekend.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Global Warming
    The sources wouldn't matter if Pitbull added much to them. But he's not budging from the formula of his million-selling 2011 album, "Planet Pit."
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Girl on Fire
    It's a measure of how powerful parenthood really is that it generates so many clichés. The new songs that push that subtext out front quickly grow trite, in words and music.... It's the tracks in which Ms. Keys seems to pay attention to a quieter story rather than building new pedestals for herself--that echo and smudge and smear sounds, that lead toward paradox--that suggest something new for her.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jesus Piece
    When the Game isn't rapping about other rappers--which is rare--he is sometimes rapping like other rappers.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Goldenheart
    The results have been slow and messy and atmospheric, full of contemporary R&B's customary ingredients (virtual strings, AutoTune, gold-plated emotion) but stretched out, heavy on atmosphere, light on hooks.
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