Rolling Stone's Scores

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For 5,915 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 34% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 62% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 6.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 Magic
Lowest review score: 0 Know Your Enemy
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,630 out of 5915
  2. Mixed: 2,245 out of 5915
  3. Negative: 40 out of 5915
5915 music reviews
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    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Everything Is Boring & Everyone Is a F--king Liar
    If there's a guiding spirit here, it's 1980s Prince: wildly funky pop music led by an impressive creative hard-on.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Vulnerable
    Vulnerable is Tricky's most accessible album since Maxinquaye, but it has neither that album's shock of the new nor its enduring appeal.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Vapor Transmissions
    Marilyn Manson-isms still haunt singer Jay Gordon, but this time he binds his secondhand poetics to a forward-looking glam too catchy to be denied.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Senior
    This is the rare bedroom record that'll play just as well in the morning. [1 May 2003, p.56]
    • Rolling Stone
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    One Plus One Is One
    It's slow, beautiful and ponderously sincere. [19 Aug 2004, p.118]
    • Rolling Stone
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Conspiracy of One
    The album finds the Orange County band playing to its strengths: furious, compressed bursts of wit and good-humored spleen.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Count Yer Lucky Stars
    Gringo's very modern garage-rock bedrock supports the experimentalism well.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What Makes You Country
    There are a few whiffs, like the foul "She's a Hot One" ("She might be a mess, but she's a hot one"), but Bryan truly excels when he's all nostalgic for the uncomplicated ease of a summer fling in "Sunrise, Sunburn, Sunset" or subtly acknowledging the beauty of all types of love in the gently uplifting "Most People Are Good."
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Always in Between
    Glynne has a husky, yet supple voice marked by a restless vibrato, and she powers it with the sort of panache that would make even the most in-touch feelings-haver blush. She’s most in her element on love songs that lean into classic R&B ideas.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Living Things
    While they've spiffed up their sound for the dance floor, the band found some of its greatest inspiration in pop-wise hip-hop - "Lies Greed Misery," a sweet-and-sour gem, is guaranteed to make you jump.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Glee: The Music, Volume 1
    Star Matthew Morrison couldn't rap his way out of a 98° rehearsal. But Amber "Mercedes" Riley crushes Jazmine Sullivan's 'Bust Your Windows,' and the Gleeks' 'Don't Stop Believin'' is a triumphal moment against which resistance is futile.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz
    Most of Dead Petz sounds pretty much like the Lips' latter-day output--she aims for Coyne-like high notes that don't suit her lowdown voice. But she scores wacko successes like "Milky Milky Milk," "Cyrus Skies" and "Slab of Butter (Scorpion)," along with cameos from Big Sean, Ariel Pink and producer Mike Will Made It.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Thank You
    The songs feel familiar, as if they’ve even assembled from parts of previous hits. ... All that said, there’s still an inordinate deal of pleasure to be taken in music that wants to sweep you up and revel in sonic bliss, whether you’ve emerged from a still-lingering pandemic or not.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Masquerade
    Wyclef's third solo album, while entertaining enough, is short on the sane, humane pleasures so plentiful on the first two.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Golden Age Of Grotesque
    What's surprising is that there's still so much life in what Manson is rehashing.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Folklore
    Folklore is a Whoa, Nelly! redux, without a single as good as "I'm Like a Bird."
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded
    If you believe that art and commerce and provocation and fun – and hip- hop and disco and teen pop – can all be one and the same, here's a record for you.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Corazón
    Carlos Santana's signature tone meshes handsomely with Romeo Santos' breathy tenor ("Margarita") and sells even generic jams ("La Flaca," with Colombian star Juanes).
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dopamine
    Third Eye Blind frontman Stephan Jenkins still rocks the same springy sing-rap, and he's still got a knack for spinning sunshine out of moody tunes.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Six Cups of Rebel
    More color than meaning, but seductive enough to lure you in and keep you there.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Long Road Out Of Eden
    The Eagles' original studio albums were all models of clenched-gleam detail, and Long Road suffers from sprawl.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Innocents
    It's still a Moby album--patient tempos, frosted with strings and comfortably melancholy melodies. But working with his first outside producer, Mark "Spike" Stent (Gaga, Beyoncé, Massive Attack), has made him knuckle down; the writing is sharper than on 2009's sketchy Wait for Me or 2011's overblown Destroyed.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The E.N.D.
    As often as not the results are dumb. And that's an awfully good thing.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Soul Sessions, Vol. 2
    Her musical instincts are off, and she steamrolls nearly every song with her bombastic blues growl.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bangarang [EP]
    Music that makes a disco sugar high feel downright pornographic.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dusk And Summer
    Dusk and Summer can be as ponderous and precious as a Hallmark card, but it succeeds because Carrabba has found music as intense and bittersweet as his deep, deep feelings. [29 Jun 2006, p.68]
    • Rolling Stone
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Thecontrollersphere
    Few would argue that Of Montreal leader Kevin Barnes lost his freakiness in the feverish pursuit of soul-rock nirvana, but this five-track EP of outtakes from last year's False Priest nevertheless hedges his bets.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    What Happens Next
    In place of once-sharp radical jabs, we get empty alarmism.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Non-Fiction
    The music, sadly, can be just as tough to follow.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Calling the World
    It's even more hook-slathered and fetchingly tuneful than the first.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Black Letter Days
    Black Letter Days evokes an early-Seventies Stones bootleg -- a little bit country, a little bit rock & roll - minus the danger.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    2000 BC
    The big difference this time out is that the beats are as aggressive as Canibus' lyrics...
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Golden Lies
    On Golden Lies, weighty midtempo rock hobbles the Pups' trademark blend of cow-punk, blues and hallucinatory instrumental rants.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Some Nights
    Rollickingly catchy songs.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Strip Me
    Strip Me is a deceptively saucy name for the lighter-waver that launches the U.K. diva's third disc – like her smash Unwritten, it's a bouncy female-empowerment anthem.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Gavin DeGraw
    It's perfect mood music for teen girls and the sensitive guys who want to hold their purses.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Almost Healed
    Ideally, Durk would have cut five or so songs and tightened Almost Healed into a clearer portrait of his struggle to leave his pistol-scarred past behind. Instead, he offers his fans a buffet of listening options, some better than others.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    When Your Heart Stops Beating
    [Many] of the songs sound like Blink castoffs.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Y Not
    His 16th studio album, Y Not--recorded with a cast of all-stars including Paul McCartney and Joss Stone--is full of straightforward, sweetly melodic tunes, most of them about Starr's abiding optimism.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Storytone
    Sure, these mirrored LPs--10 songs given lavish orchestral arrangements and also offered as solo performances on a bonus disc--might be stronger as one cherry-picked set of unrepeated songs. But it wouldn't be half as interesting.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    X
    X may be their niftiest since Adrenalize.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Symphonica
    A swank live set of classic makeout ballads.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Labrinth, Sia & Diplo Present LSD
    While the songs aren’t top-shelf Sia, for a session that comes across more like an arcade game than a coherent album, that’s fine.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Decent Work For Decent Pay
    You can quibble with the track list: Some arty blip-and-glitch drags things down a bit, and there's not much favela funk. But Work emphasizes Diplo's huge ears and fondness for warm, open-armed parties.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sheezus
    The brilliantly titled Sheezus has loads of great punch lines. But Allen also rocks a sisterly warmth.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jackman
    The maturity and depth on display on Jackman may not be enough to silence haters or mollify critics but, like Mac Miller’s Watching Movies with the Sound Off, it’s a step up in lyricism that shows that Harlow has much, much more to offer.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    30 Seconds to Mars
    The album is undone by Leto's baffling, pretentious poetry and the sanitized quality of the heavy guitars.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Underneath The Owl
    Some of the tunes slip into vague kvetching. But the tenderhearted rave–up 'Victory Lap' combines the best of Against Me! and the Replacements.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Invaders Must Die
    It's all pummeling, vacuous rave noise--useful mainly for thrash dancing and scaring neighbors.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    In a World Like This
    The resulting LP is roughly 100 times less fun than the Boys' cameo in This Is the End.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Smoke + Mirrors
    The combination of self-pity, grandiosity and leaden spirituality can get trying. And all those attempts at musical worldliness can feel like stylistic tourism.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    True Colors
    Though he cycles through a major-label budget's worth of sounds and vocalists (including Selena Gomez and earnest rapper Logic), Zedd's colors are often hard to tell apart.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Third Hand
    Some sleepy stuff hurts his cause, but his best songs... combine vivid, polished tracks with solid tunes that pack a sneaky emotional weight.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Year Of The Dog... Again
    Thrives on a classic formula. [10 Aug 2006, p.98]
    • Rolling Stone
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Casino Twilight Dogs
    They wield massive choruses, stadium-ready production and the keening vocals of Toby Martin. [22 Feb 2007, p.80]
    • Rolling Stone
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Complex
    Chic Euro-techno atmospheres that won't wear off even after you've seen the live show. [1 May 2003, p.56]
    • Rolling Stone
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Reanimation
    The music isn't exactly groundbreaking, and none of the remixes improve on the Hybrid Theory originals, but the boyish energy of Reanimation has its own appeal, and it's not too far emotionally from the tried-so-hard spirit of "In the End."
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Devil's Workshop
    Punky but sloppy, as if the band were denied rehearsal time before the tape started rolling.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Science & Faith
    The Script have enjoyed Euro-chart success with a mix of lite rock, rap rock and Guinness-informed crooning they call Celtic soul - at once soaring, melancholic and treacly.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Satellite Flight: The Journey to Mother Moon
    Cudi's Satellite signal needs some descrambling, but his core cadets likely read him loud and clear.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Release Therapy
    Luda's heart doesn't seem to be in the party songs.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Own the Night
    Pumping up country's boy-girl duet tradition in a trio format, but largely minus grit or wit, Lady Antebellum's follow-up to their Grammy-gobbling Need You Now is a set of heart-squishing power ballads and airbrushed twang rockers ready to woo Walmart shoppers.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Heavenly Bender
    They keep up that trend on their sophomore effort, a slightly more freewheeling affair that overcomes its lack of innovation through sheer youthful exuberance.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Trendsetter
    Leray gives a vivid performance throughout Trendsetter’s ups and downs, even if a distinct portrait of her “pain” lies just out of focus.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Strangeland
    At times it's catchy, but its maudlin ballads and monochrome synth-pop production are also kind of dull.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Merry Christmas II You
    It's hard to figure out what's "extra festive" (as the full song title promises) about her "All I Want for Christmas Is You" update, and far easier to determine what's wrong with "Auld Lang Syne" (an awkward dance beat), but the LP's warm heart is in the right place.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Better Tomorrow
    This is the sound of a team of great fighters competing in an uncomfortable new arena.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Fantasy Ride
    Ciara sounds a bit incidental on her third disc's dance jams. She fares even worse whenever the tempo drops, thanks to meek vocals and a stale sensibility.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Now What
    None of it sounds better than capable.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Adventures Of Ghosthorse And Stillborn
    It's often cute, rarely precious. But it also has some sort of "concept." And hard as it may try, it isn't Bjork. It isn't even Deerhoof.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mink Car
    They Might Be Giants are just a stitch more serious about being silly, and that extra earnestness makes all the difference.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Beyond Good & Evil
    Beyond Good and Evil shakes with vitality.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Razorlight
    The tight arrangements are impressive in their guitar-bass-drums spareness, but the overall feel still falls somewhere between sterile and silly. [7 Sep 2006, p.107]
    • Rolling Stone
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    TP.3 Reloaded
    Easy on the ears, a little ridiculous and enthralling all at once. [28 Jul 2005, p.80]
    • Rolling Stone
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Dedication 4 [Mixtape]
    When roused by witty company (Nicki Minaj on "Mercy," J. Cole on "Green Ranger"), he sounds like the greatest rapper ever to dream of competing in the X Games.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Funk Wav Bounces, Vol. 2
    It’s a fine wind-down album, one that can be put on shuffle at the end of a long-summer-night bacchanal, when revelers reach that point where they’re too tired to do anything but bask in the glow of the blowout they just threw.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Trilla
    The beats are terrific--the problem here is the MC.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    thefearofmissingout
    The future-shocked verses and digital wheedling often miss their marks, but as a vehicle for Harrison's soulful voice, the band is a work-in-progress worth watching.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Ritual
    What evades White Lies is the candid charm of his Brit-gloom forebears. The sleek synth tunes are more anthemic this time out, but the lyrics are no less overwrought.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Magna Carta Holy Grail
    Jay often sounds like he's trying to convince himself that he should still be excited about making music. What's disappointing is, he doesn't always seem to be winning that argument.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    V
    Kowalczyk may have filtered some of the bluster from his lyrics, but he has wisely left the jagged edges in his music.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Full Moon
    Frantic, faceless, fake-sexy R&B.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    10
    These songs emphasize edgy grooves while only occasionally pandering to R&B obviousness. [14 Nov 2002, p.86]
    • Rolling Stone
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Be OK
    While the title track is a bright, finger-snapping highlight, most of Michaelson's ditties are fit for kindergarten teachers.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tha Carter IV
    Wayne knows it's not 2007 anymore. But the high points here prove he's already looking ahead to the future.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    It's Me Again
    Shuffles between romantic ecstasy and agony with tempos crawling and Tweet stretching out lush melodies till they're barely recognizable.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Songs About Girls
    Songs About Girls isn't a hip-hop record, but a pop&B album of mellow head-nodders that veer between chilled-out soul and lite-electro funk.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Buffet
    Kelly earns his title in the second half, which is where he stretches out stylistically.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Timeless
    When Timeless succeeds, it's beautiful, boundary-breaking music.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Revelations
    Most of these twelve tracks are impressive structures with periodic highs... that never resolve into songs. [7 Sep 2006, p.105]
    • Rolling Stone
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Song Yet To Be Sung
    Farrell's new explorations into electronica rock are satisfying as neither electronica nor rock.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Dirty Dancing
    Unfortunately, the vocalists riding on top of the grooves, from the limpid Clair Dietrich to the ridiculously affected Jeremy, are uniformly l-a-m-e.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    City
    City is so drab that the cameos from the Libertines' frontmen get lost in the darkness.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    American Life
    Making records, it seems, may not be her strong suit anymore.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lessons In Love
    Throughout Lessons in Love, Lloyd sounds like he's actually having fun dishing out come-ons, adding an emphatic exuberance to each one.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Head Full of Dreams
    [Chris Martin's] hinted that this could be Coldplay's last album; if so, they're going out on a sustained note of grace.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    V Is For Vagina
    The lyrics--delivered in a borderline sexy-creepy style that sometimes veers into Gregorian-chant territory--range from esoteric and dark to crude and dumb.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love Hate And Then There's You
    These Detroit rockers emerge with an album that's pop-friendly but raucous enough to park in a Motor City garage.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fearless Love
    Fearless Love, Melissa Etheridge's feistiest disc since her 1988 debut, blurs the difference between hard-earned personal experience and social commentary.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stars Dance
    Though she nods at Rihanna-style slither and Britney-esque grind, this is the sound of Gomez gliding gracefully into adulthood.
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