Entertainment Weekly's Scores

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For 3,519 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 81% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 18% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 78
Highest review score: 100 The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do
Lowest review score: 0 Playing With Fire
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,085 out of 3519
  2. Mixed: 407 out of 3519
  3. Negative: 27 out of 3519
3519 music reviews
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    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Blessings and Miracles
    That Santana can still impose his stamp on a solid handful of tracks is absolutely worth celebrating. That he's unable to grab the spotlight on the rest of Blessings and Miracles offers a hint of what he's sacrificed along the way.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Certified Lover Boy
    The new album is like watching the eighth season of a sitcom and growing hyper-aware of all the recycled jokes and actors' laugh lines.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    The Battle at Garden's Gate
    Where Anthem positioned Greta Van Fleet as an overqualified cover band in gestation, Battle gives brief glimpses of potential for a collective determined to graduate from Guitar Hero savants. What's hindered Greta Van Fleet's attempts at individualism is their penchant for thrash and bombast.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    MUSIC: Songs from and Inspired by the Motion Picture
    Sia's previous triumphs have set a high standard, one that Music doesn't meet. Her "awesome" intentions aside, the album's messages of affirmation and encouragement may be well-meaning, but ultimately fall short while underlining Music's broader, damaging issues.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    OK Human
    The problem with OK Human isn't that Cuomo makes a facepalm-inducing Kim Jong-un reference and rhymes sad with bad, it's that there's not enough genuine pathos to outweigh the places where he can't help himself. Instead, the fleeting moments of authenticity are hidden beneath a pile of hokey one-liners, spotty vocal performances, and awkward arrangements that rely on the accompanying orchestra to provide all of the emotional depth.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Limbo
    The record falls off during its latter half as the melodic R&B cuts begin to blend together. And in lieu of a clear-cut concept, the random spoken-word tidbits that appear throughout the tracklist feel frivolous compared to how Blood Orange and Frank Ocean used them on their last albums.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Born Here Live Here Die Here
    He's content to remain firmly within the bounds of where he's always been. The album title may as well be referring to Bryan's artistic development.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Chapter 1: Snake Oil
    Diplo's second album might be a cheeky bid to stake out a spot in Nashville, but the end result is largely a bummer, a collection of dourly self-conscious "chill" accessorized with the kind of cheap cowboy hat that gets left behind on the way to the festival parking lot.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Father of All…
    A derivative party foul, a spirited genre game that plays like a copy of a copy. [Feb 2020, p.104]
    • 57 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    7 [EP]
    With 7, there’s too little conviction to tell if a full project is something Lil Nas X wants to do. At best, there’s a set of half-considered songs. At worse, you’re left wondering why anyone fussed over Blink-182’s Enema of the State in the first place. ... It's not the work of a star, but a timid upstart. [5 Jul 2019, p.42]
    • 58 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Free Spirit
    It's frustrating, then, that Free Spirit's sanded-down sprawl more often than not threatens to suffocate any presence of a personality imbued in the music itself.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Thank You for Today
    For a band once accustomed to emotional turbulence, Death Cab seems to have gone numb. They do occasionally attempt to surpass that newfound rut.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Scorpion
    Although it picks up a little towards the end, Scorpion‘s second half is often a joyless slog, a prioritizing of vibe over structure that results in some of Drake’s most unfocused songwriting to date.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Ye
    We got a shockingly anodyne, non-political, briefly magnificent, half-finished piece of work.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Memories: Do Not Open
    [“Break Up Every Night” is] an actual dance cut. The other cuts are basically ballads with beats--modernized Moby without the soul-searching or gospel samples.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Yellowcard
    Although they’ve occasionally strayed from that style of pop-punk over the 13 years since that collection debuted in 2003, their tenth and final record features glimmers of their former selves--for better and for worse.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    If I'm Honest
    This makes for the most autobiographical album of Shelton’s career. So why does it end up seeming about as weighty and true as a reality show? For one thing, Shelton’s voice lacks the kind of emotional depth that’d bring a listener to tears.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Nine Track Mind
    Much of the album is G-Rated tales of love (songs about beautiful girls and boys who love them) drowning in an ocean of power-pop gloss.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    What A Time To Be Alive [Mixtape]
    There’s very little evidence here that makes the case for either as the game-changing superstar he actually is. Future comes off particularly blasé, falling repeatedly into the cliché version of himself that is all mealy-mouthed strip-club crooning.... Drake sounds only slightly more engaged.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Drones
    There are snatches of salvation, but every time Drones aims for dystopian profundity, it hits Styx-level goofiness. [12 Jun 2015, p.74]
    • 55 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Jekyll + Hyde
    The album certainly proves that ZBB have range. But at some point, experimentation swerves into self-indulgence, and Brown mnever gets around to solving Jekyll's identity crisis. [1 May 2015, p.59]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Apr 27, 2015
    • 68 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Rebel Heart
    The funny, creative, outrageous Madonna we’ve known is still in here somewhere. It just takes a lot of patience to find her. [Adam Markovitz's review]
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Pinkprint
    Pinkprint slogs through too many ponderous piano ballads, and it's a shame, because there are moments here that give flashes of that mad brilliance.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    V
    Despite its pop pedigree, V's hooks are alarmingly unsticky.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Out Among the Stars
    The suits might have been right the first time. It's mostly Sherrill's fault; the slide-heavy arrangements and hokey production flourishes would have sounded remarkably cornpone even 30 years ago.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Days of Gold
    At a certain point, all the blue skies, blue jeans, babes, bros, and brews just start to sound like... blah blah blah. [20 Dec 2013, p.60]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Dec 13, 2013
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    The Marshall Mathers LP 2
    While Bad Guy"--which recognizes that he's no better than the bullies who damaged him--might be the closest Em's come to a mea culpa, it still fails to justify his cranking the cycle back up again.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    This Is...
    What starts out as jubilant becomes four-on-the-floor purgatory. [4 Oct 2013, p.64]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Sep 27, 2013
    • 62 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    MGMT
    Their cavalcade of goopy dross and hippie-dippy navel-gazing takes a left at transcendence and eventually just lets this bloated trip sputter out altogether. [20/27 Sep 2013, p.152]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Sep 18, 2013
    • 59 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Blurred Lines
    The problem's not merely that Thicke has doused himself in too-strong cologne. It's how predictably it all fits with his frictionless boutique-lounge grooves.
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