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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    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Only By The Night
    This isn’t natural territory for Kings of Leon, and it often shows. At times the band seems content to channel the monumental sweep of U2.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Recovery
    What Eminem hasn't let go of is his taste for melancholic bombast in production.
    • 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."
    • 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.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    X
    X is one of his least ambitious releases.
    • 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.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Piece by Piece
    Every song aims for the monumental, a strategy that’s competitive for radio play but wearying over the course of a whole album.
    • 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.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Re-Mit
    The songs on Re-Mit, his 30th studio album with his band the Fall, resemble a row of unevenly smashed windows, or patches of broken concrete in a street--unsightly ruptures within a familiar context, potentially more shapely and interesting the closer you look, but perhaps not.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Whispers
    While Mr. Rosenberg can be affecting, the narrowness of his vision can be suffocating. Most of the time his lyrics are like teenager’s scribbled poems.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ghost [EP]
    All together, it's just another round of throwing ideas at the wall. Everything sticks, more or less. But for how long?
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Get Hurt
    The music on Get Hurt is broader and more muscular. It feels like music made from the outside in, not the other way.
    • 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]
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nothing
    Nothing is the fourth N.E.R.D. album and the first to feel altogether detached from its surroundings.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Justice
    The disorganized, only sporadically strong “Justice,” though, feels like a slap on the wrist to “Changes,” or the version of Bieber it nurtured. Rather than settle for one groove, this album shuttles between several.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Emotional Traffic
    Mr. McGraw has never sounded this casual. It doesn't suit him.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    R.O.O.T.S
    Not once does Flo Rida overpower his reference points, making him a rarity: an entertainer wholly without ego, a phantom presence on his own songs.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Someday World
    It’s an uneven album, with stretches that were probably more fun in the studio than on replay.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Turning the Mind
    The uptempo songs on Turning the Mind suggest disco that’s been hollowed out and confined to a solitary outpost, where Mr. Chapman has only his isolation to sustain him.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Open Door
    Many of these theatrical, midtempo songs run together.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Audio Day Dream
    A little something for everyone, in other words, though it probably won’t hold anyone’s focus all the way through.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Anything Goes
    Florida Georgia Line is a literal breeze, with songs that land like feathers. Anything Goes doesn’t pack quite the raw shock of that duo’s 2012 debut album, “Here’s to the Good Times.”
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    PlectrumElectrum
    What constrains PlectrumElectrum is its rigorous, deliberately retro back-to-basics mandate. Prince at his best doesn’t just collect and recreate genres; he smashes them together.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Black Panties
    Songs like "Cookie," "Crazy Sex" and "Legs Shakin'" start off as promises of highly skilled sexual attentions, but end up as to-do lists.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Mix-Up
    Low-fi, hazy and lightweight.
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