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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    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    For Your Entertainment
    This is an overwrought, clunky, only sparingly entertaining record, constantly in argument with itself. Worse, 'For Your Entertainment' isn’t an ambitious flop, it’s a conservative one.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Shock Value II
    The productions flaunt Timbaland trademarks: vocal sounds imitating turntable scratching, quick keyboard arabesques, grunts as percussion. But now he fills in the spaces that made his old tracks so startling.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Unleashed
    On the whole, though, Hurricane Chris sounds bored. Even on an album this short--10 songs, 38 minutes--he manages to repeat lines and references.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Suite #420
    Suite 420, beyond some sweet spots early in the disc, becomes wickedly boring.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Funstyle
    It's a jumble of snarky (and funny) music-business skits and raps, junky computerized samples, tuneful near-pop songs with awkwardly overstuffed production, thudding cliches and, in tantalizing fragments, glimmers of her unsettling insight into character flaws, including her own.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time
    It's easy to imagine Santana completely revamping some guitar-centered hits. But for most of the album, that was apparently too daring for Mr. Santana and his pop mentor and co-producer, Clive Davis. These oldies tend to stay close to the original arrangements and vocal phrasing, perhaps hoping that familiarity can sneak them onto the radio.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Live It Up
    Only the album's last track, "A Song About Love," feels true. His voice is serrate, his mood is foul, and the song is sturdy enough to stand up to both. It's the sound of Mr. DeWyze's then and now finally colliding.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    F.A.M.E.
    Mr. Brown sings, with a modicum of angst [on "Up To You"]. But for much of this album--almost the whole second half, actually--Mr. Brown is chasing Usher with a ferocity out onto the dance floor, where no one will pay much mind to his words.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Femme Fatale
    More than any of her previous releases Femme Fatale is blank. Ms. Spears isn't much more than a celebrity spokeswoman for the work of the producers Max Martin, Dr. Luke and others, who need artists like Ms. Spears as calling cards.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    SuperHeavy
    An almost total lack of good songs constitutes the album's basic problem. Once that's understood, the record becomes sort of entertaining: gaudy, vacuous, densely mannered.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Ersatz G.B.
    The mess can be tense and charmed, or just dull. Ersatz G. B. is too often dull.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    rEvolver
    He mainly revisits old tropes without a wink.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    God Forgives, I Don't
    Even though Mr. Ross's rapping is prime, it isn't enough to carry this album. Just at the moment that he's finally not underrated, he has underdelivered.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Centipede Hz
    "Merriweather Post Pavilion," had comparatively more open space, medium tempos, and a lot more Panda Bear, who restricts himself emotionally as he tries to make his limited voice beautiful. This record is dominated, even saturated, by Avey Tare, who does not.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Cruel Summer
    Mr. West is often nowhere to be found, and more crucially, nowhere to be felt. Parts of this album - "Sin City," "The One," "Creepers" - feature what's easily the laziest music on any Kanye-related project, with no trace of his trademark meticulousness.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Lotus
    The anonymity of much of Lotus is its biggest crime, more than its musical unadventurousness or its emphasis on bland self-help lyrics or its reluctance to lean on Ms. Aguilera's voice.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Britney Jean
    Ms. Spears and Will.i.am have turned to European disc jockeys who have found dance music’s lowest, least funky common denominator: the steady thump of four-on-the-floor. And they’ve settled for too many tepid tracks.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    What The...
    It’s often only functional, crucially low on thrills; the riffs, over barely changing, stock-punk rhythm patterns, have no breathing space.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Life Love & Hope
    The songs come with soaring sentimental choruses, but brittle rhythmic foundations--you will miss Sib Hashian, Boston’s old drummer--as well as deeply grandiose or cornball keyboard parts.... Where Mr. Delp is absent, the singers Tommy DeCarlo or David Victor commit passable imitations, or Kimberley Dahme provides bland contrast.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    X
    X is one of his least ambitious releases.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Partners
    The choppy calls and responses between Ms. Streisand and her partners, however, lack conversational or narrative flow, and you have an uncomfortable sense that the parts were spliced together after the fact.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz
    Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz is long and slack, stretching many of its 23 songs out of meager ideas, and puts raw faith in the weird or the nonvarnished, as if she had just recently discovered those concepts.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Made in the A.M.
    Made in the A.M. is much the same, rootless and vague even when it lands on a clear style, like the Coldplay-esque “Infinity,” or “Never Enough,” a wacky number with intense a cappella gimmickry and exuberant mid-1980s drums and horns that recall, of all things, Huey Lewis and the News.... The music is too banal to support exceptional singing.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Joanne
    While Joanne is elemental, nothing about it is bare. Instead, it’s confused, full of songs that feel like concepts in search of a home, small theater pieces extruded from other imaginary productions and collected in one miscellany bin.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Memories: Do Not Open
    Mr. Taggart is a capable but unexciting singer. And he has shockingly few lyrical ideas, less of a concern for performers more adept with melody. ... Two back-to-back songs, the impressive “Honest” and “Wake Up Alone,” parse the weight that fame exacts on emotional relationships--they’re among the most credible on the album.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Sob Rock
    In places, like “Carry Me Away,” the triumph of the arrangement is potent enough to cloak the brittle lyrical bones it sits upon. But in general, Mayer’s songwriting is resistant to even the most thorough gussying up. And even at its most robust, “Sob Rock” is placid, never doing more than winking.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Baptism
    There are some sturdy tunes and hooks, but not much more: the songwriting is often bland, the singing generally charmless.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Chronicles Of Life And Death
    The disc is full of ham-fisted experiments. [11 Oct 2004]
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Bravery
    [A] rather dreary pastiche.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Make Believe
    Infuriatingly plain. [16 May 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Naked Truth
    A surprisingly dull album. [26 Sep 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    I Am Me
    "I Am Me" has an awful lot of brooding teen-rock songs, none of which flatter Ms. Simpson's rather breathy, mannered voice. [24 Oct 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Amarantine
    The overall effect of "Amarantine" is like drowning in whipped cream. [28 Nov 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Timeless
    The shiny new beats in "Timeless" weaken the groove that existed in songs like "Mas Que Nada," "Berimbau" and "Surfboard" even before Mr. Mendes got to them 40 years ago. [13 Feb 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    If Only You Were Lonely
    Too many of the songs feel flat, despite the stormy guitars and stormier lyrics. [27 Feb 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Daniel Powter
    The album's consistency is its downfall; Mr. Powter's chosen sound may stand out on a radio playlist, but over 10 songs it yields diminishing returns. [10 Apr 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Blood Money
    Most of this album is startlingly uninspired; no-frills rhymes were once this duo's main weapon; now they are its main liability. [1 May 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    In My Mind
    He seems to be a better thinker than a writer and a better writer than a rapper. [24 Jul 2006]
    • 64 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Sam's Town
    Of course it is good to be ambitious. Of course the Killers needed to update their sound, given that the 80’s revival is fading away. But their new bombast is a classic case of a young band overreaching to assert its Significance.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Press Play
    This is a garish, puzzling album, and it isn’t the sort of CD people pick up when they want to explain what’s great about hip-hop. [12 Oct 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Sweet Escape
    Much of “The Sweet Escape” sounds forced and secondhand; it’s one thing to emulate Madonna, another to be playing catchup with Fergie. [4 Dec 2006]
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    True Magic [First Version]
    Mos Def may not be flossy or raw at this stage in his celebrated career, which is fine. But what he offers instead is lukewarm nostalgia and obligatory indignation. [8 Jan 2007]
    • The New York Times
    • 69 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    West
    Ms. Williams’s strong suit is going simple and direct, but “West” loses its focus and goes wide and long. It develops a grandiosity problem. [12 Feb 2007]
    • 68 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Libertad
    Libertad sounds old, heavy, wrapped in a tough skin. At the same time, by virtue of sheer outdated flamboyance, it seems almost willfully naive.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Midnight Boom
    These aren’t very good songs, and the band’s agenda--sounding bored and chic, simultaneous distancing and beckoning, creating revulsion and desire--seems to tilt, in the end, more toward fashion than music.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Brooklyn's Don Diva
    The production is bargain bin, and lyrically, she sounds leaden.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Cocky And Confident
    Among the many declarations on “Cocky & Confident,” the ninth album by the New Orleans rapper Juvenile, one stands out as truly preposterous.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    31 Minutes To Takeoff
    He toggles between petulant cad ("Gone in September") and wounded child ("Save Your Goodbye"), convincing at neither. He has a grating voice, heavily nasal, with a seeming inability to wrap his lips around all of the necessary syllables, meaning that even when he's at his angriest, he sounds as if he's holding back.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Reincarnated
    It ranks at or near the top of vexing choices made by once-platinum artists, full of lazy, half-baked pablum that does more harm to Snoop Lion than good for others.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Life on a Rock
    The results are mostly dismal, making for the sort of album that reinforces faith in big, lumbering institutions that understand starmaking.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Midnight Memories
    With a couple of exceptions, this is a dimly written album.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Moonshine in the Trunk
    A shiny clunker of an album, it rings of brand rehabilitation and topical retrenchment.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Skins
    Skins barely leaves a mark. The ideas aren’t original. The record is short--clocking it in at just 20 minutes--but feels extremely threadbare. ... The songs on Skins are shards, sketches. Even calling them demos feels generous.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    7 [EP]
    It’s ... not good. A haze of half-gestures and amateur missteps. A deflated balloon. The songs end quickly, as if embarrassed. Apart from the nonsensical yet warm electro-trap song “Panini,” none of the new tracks display even a stray ember of creative curiosity.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Hotel
    More than ever, the focus here is on Moby as a singer and songwriter, which is strange, because he is not very good at either job.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    X&Y
    When he moans his verses, Mr. Martin can sound so sorry for himself that there's hardly room to sympathize for him, and when he's not mixing metaphors, he fearlessly slings clichés.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Monkey Business
    Perhaps it was inevitable that a group like this would eventually emerge, peddling an energetic but inoffensive variant of hip-hop. But did we have any way of knowing that the results would be so unpleasant? [6 Jun 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 45 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Good Morning Revival
    A mystifyingly inept CD that includes some of the worst lyrics you will — or, with any luck, won’t — hear all year. [26 Mar 2007]
    • 37 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Rebirth
    The songs might have been better as parodies than as imitations, although “Knockout” — a Coldplay homage backing a raunchy lyric — comes close to being both.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    All The Right Reasons
    For hard-rock ridiculousness, Nickelback is tough to beat. [3 Oct 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 49 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Shatner Claus: The Christmas Album
    Could we not? Signed, the Grinch.
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