Boston Globe's Scores

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For 2,093 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 66% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 31% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 72
Highest review score: 100 City of Refuge
Lowest review score: 10 Lulu
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,670 out of 2093
  2. Mixed: 412 out of 2093
  3. Negative: 11 out of 2093
2093 music reviews
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    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Elixer
    Polite and polished, the music amounts to little more than R&B lite with washes of bossa nova and strings.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    He And She
    The compositions are magnificent, and the performance sparkles....Marsalis has interspersed the songs with snippets of poetry, which he wrote and recites. I'm not qualified to critique poetry, but I can tell you this: You're not going to want to hear this stuff every time you play the disc.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Scream
    The resulting dynamic is two distinct flowers from the sound garden that produce an only occasionally sweet-smelling bouquet.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Spirit Of Apollo
    Girl Talk succeeded by deconstructing pop hits; we heard every prerecorded sample in a new way. N.A.S.A., on the other hand, just slaps everything up there, and expects it to stick. It doesn't.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ryan Leslie
    The tracks are tuneful and bounce in all the right fluffy ways. But the songs--most are three minutes--are unmemorable, and Leslie, who comfortably shifts from lower register to a sweet falsetto, isn't a commanding vocalist.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lonely Road
    Which isn't to say generic can't necessarily be enjoyable. It is here.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Working On A Dream
    It is a sonically adventurous album, with the E Street Band again accompanying him. But the songwriting far too often feels like an afterthought, canned and jarringly shallow.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    For(n)ever
    Formulaic though the album may be, the band musters enough craft and personality to keep it afloat. The band is at its best when mixing pop melancholy with strident guitar rock.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    iSouljaBoyTellem
    This follow-up to his commercially successful debut is a mind-numbing bore that has a few well-produced club tracks by Mr. Collipark and Polow Da Don that slightly mix up the successful formula (chant, be inane, repeat).
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Universal Mind Control
    Not many of the Neptunes' beats really challenge Common, and his rhymes seem uncharacteristically empty.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    808s & Heartbreak
    It is by far the strangest record he's ever made: a willfully sullen and uncompromising electro-pop album from one of hip-hop's biggest stars.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Thr33 Ringz
    Like Pain's guest spots, the album's all over the place, from forlorn strip-club love numbers to songs that sound like Jodeci slow jams converted to digital.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Damn Right Rebel Proud
    Cliché-ridden and full of awkward rhymes and stilted phrasings, his songs are too often fixated on his own bad self, on celebrating his excesses, romanticizing their dark side, and asserting his outlaw bona fides.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Little Honey
    For an artist whose reputation for painstaking perfectionism and poetic acumen is legendary, Little Honey is too much saccharine and not enough substance.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Everything Is Borrowed
    His delightful sense of narrative is virtually missing, and a lot of the verses meander and build to banal choruses.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Futuristically Speaking...Never Be Afraid
    A lot of these songs will have people bouncing off club walls with the rhythmic shifts and frenzied beats that merge electro with crunk and house. But this adds up to nothing more than party music with a bit of attitude and sex-obsessed defiance.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Red Letter Year
    Much of the album sounds like she's simply going through the motions, occasionally picking imagery seemingly just because it rhymes.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Alphabutt
    Alphabutt doesn't do Dawson many favors by putting her twee infantility into its proper context.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    L.A.X.
    LAX spins beautifully at first, but, like a '64 Chevy with chrome rims that hasn't paid a visit to the mechanic in 20 years, it doesn't take long before the wheels come off entirely.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Look What You Made Me
    As an MC, Berg is workmanlike with few crisp rhymes and bereft of ideas beyond lining his pocketbook.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lessons In Love
    Certainly it's a listenable set--well produced, well-sung and, well, dull.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Partie Traumatic
    While there's a certain bubblegum synth-pop allure and cheeky lyrical irony in songs like 'I've Underestimated My Charm (Again),' it's hard to find ourselves being carried away on youthful pluck and preciousness alone.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Greatest Story Ever Told
    It's angry and compelling, but it's also offset by his indulgence in the worst hip-hop clichés and the stereotypes he often derides.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    T.O.S. (Terminate On Sight)
    After sifting through the storyline, it's just hard to figure out why these guys are important anymore.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Digi Snacks
    RZA, the Wu Tang Clan's great producer and MC, brings his third chapter in the saga of Bobby Digital, and it's a fragmented, often compelling set.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    One Of The Boys
    Careering from tart-tongued vixen to rough-and-tumble tomboy to woeful lonelyheart may reflect her real life, but it makes for a thematically bumpy ride.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Nostradamus
    Some of the music is brilliant, some is numbingly indulgent.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    To Survive
    Its title notwithstanding, To Survive is JAPW's happy-in-love album, and the lack of tension--romantic, musical, or otherwise--causes it to drag.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Declaration
    After four years away, Ashanti declares that she's back, but this middling, familiar set of songs is unlikely to reclaim her spotlight.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Anywhere I Lay My Head
    The balance is tenuous, and the "Tinkerbell on cough syrup" effect that Sitek describes in the liner notes as his aesthetic brass ring sometimes comes off more like Scarlett out of her league.
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