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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    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Woman to Woman
    Why is her big-voiced delivery so similar and balanced in nearly every song? Why are there no sharp intakes of breath, stutters, meaningful cracks or strange textures, like the battling squeaks that made "Love," one of her early singles, so good?
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The River In Reverse
    Mr. Toussaint's florid yet precise New Orleans piano, the way he can make a horn section laugh or sigh, and the stubborn idealism and canny humor of his songs temper Mr. Costello's convoluted earnestness.
    • 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]
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Little Rope
    The new LP has more oomph and darkness than the band’s self-produced 2021 LP “Path of Wellness” and more emotional resonance than its mechanical 2019 effort “The Center Won’t Hold.” But even in its wildest moments, when compared to the band’s mightiest work, “Little Rope” sounds unfortunately diminished and curiously restrained.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Colour In Anything
    "The Colour in Anything" grows self-pitying, almost maudlin, in ways Mr. Blake has managed to avoid in the past simply by using more elusive lyrical metaphors. It is also unreasonably long: a little over an hour and a quarter.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Momofuku
    It’s effortfully tossed off; it’s a middling record battling against his built-in high standards.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    More Fish
    He’s worth your $13.98 even when he’s only offering a grab bag like this one. [11 Dec 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ceremony
    The record is awkward and seriously pretentious at times, but you can’t miss the heat of its ambition.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Cherry Thing
    What's intended to be raw can sound smug. In "Dirt" the Thing pushes past the tenderness that lives in that song to get to aggressive, stylized and finally anonymous squalling. Its loud catharsis rolls over her quieter one, and it's not the only time that happens on this record.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    E-MO-TION
    Emotion is full of pure cotton candy--delicious, distractingly sweet and filling, with a mildly suspicious aftertaste.... [The album is] full of excellent songs that seem to give up about two-thirds of the way through.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Reason Why
    Redolent of Southern gospel and feather-light country-rock, it's a comfort zone for this group, employed consistently in the choruses, which can be arrestingly sharp, and often elsewhere. But piled on top of plangent guitars, the convergence can become grating, with all the emotion of archery, or some other sport that prizes accuracy above all.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Crazy for You
    Ms. Cosentino and her collaborator, Bobb Bruno, envelop the songs in guitar reverb and distortion--between the Raveonettes and the Jesus and Mary Chain--to place them in an ominous haze.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Glad Rag Doll
    "Wide River to Cross," by Buddy and Julie Miller is a contemporary outlier on an album crowded with relics, and its beautiful realization invites the question of what other sort of album Ms. Krall and Mr. Burnett might have made without any point to prove.
    • 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
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Skeleton
    Figurines don't have lyrics as rewarding as those of their obvious polestars, but "Skeleton" puts an intriguingly genteel spin on indie grit. [27 Mar 2006]
    • The New York Times
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Another Round
    Accordingly, Jaheim is not at his best on ballads or on up-tempo numbers (a pair of which, “Another Round” and “Her,” weigh down the middle of this album), but he is on songs that combine the two.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Never
    This is an art-school record; Ms. Levi's work resists easy pleasure and traditional beauty.... [yet] her songs hook you.
    • 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]
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    La Radiolina
    The disappointment of La Radiolina is that Manu Chao’s music isn’t as arrestingly odd as it used to be. Too often his band’s ska-punk gets uncomfortably close to dull rock, and the repetition doesn’t communicate we are all singing the same song
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Good, The Bad & The Queen
    Mood music doesn’t get any moodier than the Good, the Bad & the Queen. [29 Jan 2007]
    • The New York Times
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    USA (United State Of Atlanta)
    A rowdy, unpredictable CD that careens wildly from filthy shout-alongs to mournful hip-hop gospel. [27 Jun 2005]
    • The New York Times
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ghost on Ghost
    The arrangements are bold but often misplaced, cluttering and distracting from the songs instead of illuminating them; the characters get lost in their costumes.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Who Is the Sender?
    It means well and conjures fellow feeling and makes you think the long thoughts. But it is a trudge, and strangely ponderous in its smallness.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bullets in the Gun
    Bullets in the Gun is his most scattershot album to date, a jumble of attitudes and tactics. Much of the time Mr. Keith, who has been one of the most underappreciated vocal stylists in country music, is singing without conviction on songs that are mere archetypes and lack any of his signature gestures.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Odd Couple
    Strangely, given the unified palette and temperament, the album feels disjointed: one track doesn’t pull you to the next.
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