Paste Magazine's Scores

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For 4,064 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 67% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 30% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 76
Highest review score: 100 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band [50th Anniversary Edition Deluxe Version]
Lowest review score: 10 Songs From Black Mountain
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,629 out of 4064
  2. Mixed: 400 out of 4064
  3. Negative: 35 out of 4064
4064 music reviews
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    • 57 Metascore
    • 39 Critic Score
    Raditude
    Raditude is an album of surface appeal--there’s no heart beating inside these plasticized tunes.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 39 Critic Score
    Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night
    Jack Antonoff so desperately wants to be Bruce Springsteen. But on Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night, he’s barely even John Mellencamp.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 39 Critic Score
    High Hopes
    While Springsteen is notorious for painstakingly sequencing his albums, High Hopes was a losing battle--a puzzle with pieces that, more often than not, just don’t interlock.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 37 Critic Score
    Dig Out Your Soul
    An overall sound that’s been compressed and flatlined into one continuous buzz, this sounds like a tired band that had already gone through the motions before it even started.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 37 Critic Score
    YOKOKIMTHURSTON
    It plays into all the worst assumptions of these artists without offering much reward for the endurance test.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 36 Critic Score
    Shine
    The production is predictably overblown, the lone bright spot being the tender, acoustic 'I’m Trying.'
    • 63 Metascore
    • 36 Critic Score
    The Age Of Miracles
    Carpenter’s weepy soul-searching makes The Age of Miracles feel like a cheap copy of the genuine introspection that made her previous records so intriguing.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 35 Critic Score
    The Archives Vol. 1 1963-1972
    Billed as something of a multimedia breakthrough, the 10 discs here present good--and often great--music paired with sub-standard video content. Unreleased tracks? They’re here, although in disappointing quantity and quality.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 35 Critic Score
    I Am...Sasha Fierce
    On the first disc (I Am), Knowles comes off helpless and as emotionally closed as ever....The Sasha Fierce side is more like it. Here, Knowles works her confident, fun alter-ego. Still, she overdoes it on 'Diva.'
    • 62 Metascore
    • 35 Critic Score
    Indie Cindy
    What makes Indie Cindy so egregious, so much worse than a simply bad album, is how much better it could have been.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 34 Critic Score
    Delta Machine
    Depeche Mode has been an easy target for complaints of stagnancy, and, indeed, the band seemed to stop progressing in the mid-’90s like a child with a pot-a-day habit. And, Delta Machine is another example of this.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 33 Critic Score
    Forget the World
    It quickly becomes evident that Forget the World is less an album than a haphazard collection of B-sides and leftovers that were for whatever reason deemed unmarketable as singles.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 31 Critic Score
    A Woman, A Man, Walked By
    This new one is both harder to love and harder to fathom.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Unpredictable
    It's better to be the imitation Ray Charles than the poor man's R. Kelly. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.94]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    SuperHeavy
    Rather than synthesizing these various styles, they sound like they're working at cross-purposes, with every component so errantly fitted with the rest that SuperHeavy sounds schizophrenic.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Back Home
    Back Home embodies the featureless, sickeningly pleasant sounds piped unmercifully into department-store elevators. [Oct/Nov 2005, p.121]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 78 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Springtime Can Kill You
    Everything moves in slow motion, as if that lent profundity to the proceedings, and even then the vocals rarely keep time. Perhaps Holland believes that singing off the beat creates tension, but it merely diffuses what little energy these songs possess.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Everything Is
    Its walls of distorted, alt-rock power chords reek of the 1990s. [Apr/May 2006, p.102]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Black Swan
    When alone, the sweeping choruses that swarm Athlete’s fourth record, Black Swan, shoot for the rafters without any substantial emotional anchor—the songs get lost in the clouds.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    "Pussy Cats" Starring The Walkmen
    While Hamilton Leithauser's hoarse yowl perfectly suits the plastered proceedings, the late Nilsson woudl likely have settled for a less sincere form of flattery. [Nov 2006, p.81]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Light
    The biggest problem with his reggae is simpler: He's unequivocally terrible at it. Not only do we get fake patois, but also raging electric guitars and cluttered hip-hop production.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Evolver
    On his third full-length, the charisma that launched Legend’s career fails to grease the gears of a scattered and lethargic song cycle, one where he shuffles through various shades of adult contemporary and is repeatedly upstaged by high-profile guest appearances.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Congratulations
    MGMT is like some nightmarish amalgam of those bands' [The Flaming Lips and Of Montreal] bottom-barrel ideas set to wanky synths, sometimes for up to 12 minutes (!!!) at a time.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    A Hundred Million Suns
    A Hundred Million Suns? Ugh. More like a hundred million yawns.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Ripe
    Granted, much of the blandness might well be attributed to producer John Alagia, who perfected the approach with the likes of Dave Matthews and John Mayer, but production aside, the songs here are just dull.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 29 Critic Score
    Covers
    Covers is his first album devoted to nothing but other people’s music and, unsurprisingly, it’s marked by his same strengths and weaknesses, not to mention some intrusive backing vocals and superlatively bland production.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 29 Critic Score
    Jordi
    A flaccid smattering of pop trends that have long since passed and melodies so transparently halfhearted, it barely sounds like a person even made them.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 27 Critic Score
    Jesus Is King
    There’s little to defend from a musical or lyrical perspective here: This is easily Kanye’s worst album to date, an impressive feat following last year’s ye.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Funplex
    Funplex never swings, shimmies or threatens a disco whistle. Instead it feels like a studio-centric attempt to approximate current dance music, which is strange, because nothing here feels particularly current.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    This Kind Of Love
    This record’s way blander than the sassy hits she played.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Something To Be
    Thomas hasn't yet figured out that as long as he mistakes ponderous poetics and platitudes for depth, the surface trappings of his self-serious songs won't matter all that much. [#16, p.125]
    • Paste Magazine
    • 70 Metascore
    • 13 Critic Score
    Tonight: Franz Ferdinand
    Truly, the four dapper Scotsmen that constitute this group should be ashamed of their tuneless, thoughtless, meaningless new offering, which distorts the proud legacy of a band that once mattered.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 11 Critic Score
    Talking To You, Talking To Me
    Their spectacularly boring new album has so little dynamic variance that it literally pains the ear.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Songs From Black Mountain
    Earnestly pompous. [Apr/May 2006, p.105]
    • Paste Magazine