The Observer (UK)'s Scores
- Movies
- Music
For 2,620 reviews, this publication has graded:
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37% higher than the average critic
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4% same as the average critic
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59% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.9 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 68
Highest review score: | Gold-Diggers Sound | |
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Lowest review score: | Collections |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 1,233 out of 2620
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Mixed: 1,369 out of 2620
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Negative: 18 out of 2620
2620
music
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Critic Score
As woozy and restless as these multipart productions are, she packs in plenty of sticky stuff: melodies, hooks, insistent figures.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Sep 7, 2022
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Sep 6, 2022
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- Critic Score
This adds welcome colour to the xx cinematic universe, but it’s no blockbuster.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Sep 6, 2022
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- Critic Score
It’s slightly overlong and unnecessarily repetitive, but clearly made with great care and affection.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 29, 2022
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- Critic Score
It’s all consistently inventive rather than dull, but also endearingly daft rather than chilling. Still, that makes for Muse’s most enjoyable album since the 00s.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 29, 2022
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- Critic Score
Written on keyboards rather than guitar, Pre Pleasure was recorded in Montreal with Marcus Paquin of the Weather Station; you can hear the uptick in arrangement and production in the painterly thrum of the instruments.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 29, 2022
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These are easy wins – a sonic sugar rush that crashes once each three-minute track is over. Yet when Armstrong gives us a glimpse of life away from the party-rapping – exploring his anxieties on Belgrave Road and his relationship with his sister on My G – he showcases a newfound vulnerability.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 22, 2022
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Holy Fvck has its flaws – Lovato’s powerful voice is unnecessarily finessed and Auto-Tuned, and 16 tracks is too long. But its gutsy ambition is a thing of substance in and of itself.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 22, 2022
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 22, 2022
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- Critic Score
They continue to live and die by the watercolour synth wash. It’s a good job they’re masters of the form – as Broken, this album’s crystalline ballad, proves.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 15, 2022
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You could dismiss Cheat Codes as dad rap, but this record is absolute joy from end to end.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 15, 2022
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- Critic Score
The eerie indelibility of Days are Forgotten, or Fire’s lumpen power, are missing, leaving the strings of lyrical cliches that Pizzorno ladles up horribly exposed. Alygatyr, Rocket Fuel and Chemicals are all right, but this feels like a coda, not a new movement.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 15, 2022
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While All 4 Nothing marks a partial progression for Leff, he still has some way to go to make his records memorable – whether they stand at 21 tracks or a baker’s dozen.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 8, 2022
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- Critic Score
There’s an easy-going beauty to this music that is more redolent of succour than anger. Some might find this record a little too pretty.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 8, 2022
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There’s something irresistibly joyous about the low-stakes funky feel Harris summons at will, no matter who’s at the mic.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 8, 2022
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- Critic Score
It brims with the sense of release and joy that comes from the tiniest escape from confinement.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 8, 2022
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These sour notes aside [Energy and Heated], Renaissance is the feelgood manifesto that puts all the other post-pandemic party albums in the shade, a song cycle crammed full of homages to the historic continuum of Black dancefloor therapy.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 8, 2022
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Much of it is pretty dispensable, with new songs Smiley and Acid Horse generic and lacklustre, offering little of the gift for transcendent melody twined around tough beats that made Orbital so iconic. Fortunately, the tour-ready updates of Chime, Impact (The Earth Is Burning) and Halcyon + On + On are much more engaging, and a trippy, strung-out Belfast rivals the original for quality.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 4, 2022
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Where Expectations saw Kiyoko taking space to explore her own voice, Panorama feels like a leap backwards, trading personality for affectless tracks that fade into the background.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 2, 2022
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- Critic Score
Occasionally this can leave you longing for something less overblown, but this is Rogers 2.0: dancing sweatily in NYC karaoke bars and singing lines such as “sucking nicotine down my throat/ thinking of you giving head” (on new track Horses) and rocking out. Letting rip suits her.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Aug 1, 2022
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Thankfully, The Theory of Whatever takes a gentler, more mature tack; no longer the mouthy street poet of the people, Treays is simply singing his heart out about his muted memories of love, nostalgia and hangovers. It’s a joy to perch alongside and listen to him reminisce.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 25, 2022
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Musically, Special’s a bit of a retread. Lead single About Damn Time, with its Saturday-night, last-song-before-we-leave-the-house vibe, bounces on a similar podium to 2019’s Juice, and the title track boasts imperious orchestration, just as it did on Cuz I Love You. But it works.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 25, 2022
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It’s an unsettlingly raw album, the sparse instrumentation – Nastasia’s soft voice and acoustic guitar, recorded, as ever, by Steve Albini – making her lyrics all the more stark and powerful. ... An astonishingly moving record.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 25, 2022
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- Critic Score
Overall, About Last Night… manages to keep the party going – it’s just more convincing when tears mix with the prosecco.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 18, 2022
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 18, 2022
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Best listened to as a whole, Hellfire is as challenging and unsettling as it is exhilarating. About as sui generis as it’s possible to get in 2022.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 18, 2022
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- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 13, 2022
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Pearson wears her talents lightly on an album that allows space for them to breathe. Sound of the Morning is a remarkably mature record; hopefully, future releases will be just as absorbing.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 11, 2022
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- Critic Score
Though Burna has always subtly weaved elements of pop into his music, it feels too omnipresent in the second half of the album.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 11, 2022
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- Critic Score
You could, just about, call these psalms remixes, in that the thematic stems hold true. But there is respite, too, in the gentler notes and oscillations of Splendour, Glorious Splendour.- The Observer (UK)
- Posted Jul 5, 2022
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