The Telegraph (UK)'s Scores

  • Music
For 1,217 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 63% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 33% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.9 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 77
Highest review score: 100 Deeper Well
Lowest review score: 20 Killer Sounds
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 2 out of 1217
1217 music reviews
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ultimately, this is a brilliant record about clearing out the emotional crap and stripping things back to their essence – the perfect soundtrack to lull us out of our collective wintering and into some mental spring cleaning.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Everything I Thought I Was is certainly not the career defining masterwork Timberlake seems to think it is, but nevertheless it’s enough to get him over that mid-life bump.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Eternal Sunshine is pop at its sexiest – 13 songs designed to lodge themselves in your head for eternity, whether you like it or not.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    You don’t have to be greater than the sum of your parts when the parts are already as great as this.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    11 songs of such staggering clarity that I found myself breathing a sigh of relief halfway through that bands like this still exist in Britain.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lopez’s voice is technically fine but has a thinness that doesn’t really suit the exposure of digitally clinical modern production settings. She jettisons all Latin flavouring, which might have been her superpower.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Coming Home is a hugely impressive reminder of Usher's pop skills, and another testament to the enduring appeal of high class RnB.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It’s a remarkably polished debut.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wall of Eyes comprises just eight tracks but it’s far from slight. String arrangements by the London Contemporary Orchestra add a lush cinematic quality to the album.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Little Rope is undoubtedly Sleater-Kinney’s most commercial album yet. Crusader, in particular, brings to mind the palatable grunginess of No Doubt, and lead single Say It Like You Mean It – with a video starring Succession’s J Smith-Cameron – echoes WH Auden’s Funeral Blues.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Even at its most ambitious, everything is swept up in a blizzard of overcharged guitars and stylised snarling that would have sounded old-fashioned in 1981, let alone 2024.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    If you simply want to revel in the elemental pleasures of sleek, clever, catchy songs played with rough vigour by a band who love to rock, then the Vaccines deliver their usual payload. .... They lack the boldness of the bands that most influenced their sound (The Ramones, Jesus and the Mary Chain) or the flair and ambition of others still flying the pop-rock flag (The Killers, Arctic Monkeys, The Libertines). On this evidence, The Vaccines are approaching their expiry date.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The mix of trap grooves and synth balladry is perfectly of the moment, lacking the boldness of a truly original talent. Yet there is something appealing in the sweet melodies and sour attitude of a singer who sounds like she might actually be starting to enjoy herself.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    i/o
    This ranks with the very best of Gabriel’s work, which means it is very great indeed. Peter Gabriel is a genius. i/o is a masterpiece. That is all ye need know.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nine originals interspersed with the overfamiliar classics indicate a songwriter’s fascination with rock form, but only I Want You Back (sung with Steven Tyler) justifies its position nestled between so many inarguable classics.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    PinkPantheress’s pop gift is to make something airily attractive out of elements that could be brain melting, as if singing with the internal voice of a generation numbed by the everything goes-ness of the internet.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Everybody sounds like they’re having fun, and listeners of a certain vintage probably will too. But it adds little of interest to Morrison’s incredible canon, which from Blowin’ Your Mind in 1967 to Irish Heartbeat in 1988 ranks with the greatest popular music ever made.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    There are lovely instrumental passages, lustrous strings, and it has all been crafted with love and care, but it doesn’t hit the heights we expect from a great Beatles ballad, ending up sounding like a poor imitation of genius, the kind of soft rock whimsy you’d find on thousands of second-rate Beatle influenced albums in the Seventies.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Swift’s remake is astonishing in its exactitude, another reminder that she is a star of a different magnitude with a mastery of her own talents and a bold business acumen. .... All of the new songs are satisfyingly deft and clever, replete with sinuous melodies, burbling synths and agitated percussion that correspond with the updated eighties stylings of the original. .... The one new song that really punches its weight with Swift’s original 1989 singles is the razor sharp Is It Over Now?
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    She hits the mark with stripped-back Room Service, but the more mainstream, hook-laden numbers Antichrist and Into Your Room don’t measure up to her earlier anthems Scarlett and The Wall is Way Too Thin.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The new Rolling Stones album is the best thing they have made since their Seventies glory days. Which, it might reasonably be argued, de facto makes it the best rock’n’ roll album of the past four decades at least.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This is an album that underlines the greatness of Dark Side, rather than challenges it.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sheeran sounds like a supercharged David Gray. Grown-up. Energised. Forget Autumn, this feels like an album of bright new dawns.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tension is Minogue’s 16th album, and certainly ranks among her best.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Relentless might just be one of the most thrilling things you’ll hear all year. It’s a slow-burning triumph, its 12 tracks oscillating between squalling and shimmering rockers and richly-realised ballads thanks in large part to Hynde’s masterly co-writer and guitarist James Walbourne.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This album won’t be for everyone, but it’s quite the trip.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    There are plenty of artists who make music occupying the same space as Mitski – reflective, weepy, introspective – but she stands alone in her lyricism and heart; on this album, she also seems less frightened by the potential fruits of her own talent.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    There are a few tracks that could be spicier (Envy the Leaves, At Your Worst), but overall, Silence Between Songs seems like the album Beer has been wanting – and waiting – to make for a long, long time.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The album is peppered with playful uses of samples. It’s deeply sophisticated music – an astute melting pot of genres bound together by the latest production techniques.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unfortunately, most of Guts sounds like a simple continuation of Sour – there is little musical growth or thematic change, with Making the Bed and Pretty Isn’t Pretty seeming like mere overhangs from her debut