For 5,918 reviews, this publication has graded:
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34% higher than the average critic
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4% same as the average critic
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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: | Magic | |
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Lowest review score: | Know Your Enemy |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 3,633 out of 5918
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Mixed: 2,245 out of 5918
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Negative: 40 out of 5918
5918
music
reviews
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- Rolling Stone
- Posted Oct 23, 2015
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Every song on Mad Season is a production mini-epic.... Under the haywire production are crafty songs.... But when the crescendos surge and the keyboards chime, he starts to sound as unctuous as 1970s cheeseballs from Lobo to Jim Croce to the Guess Who's Burton Cummings. Songs that probably seemed vulnerable as demos have turned greedily narcissistic.- Rolling Stone
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Let Love In burns with the same slightly cheesy Springsteenian passion as the Dolls' multiplatinum records. [4 May 2006, p.59]- Rolling Stone
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There are missed opportunities--the She & Him track is slight, and a rumored Frank Ocean team-up is sadly absent--and a few too many retreads (the "Sloop John B"-ish "Sail Away"), although the harmonies do sound grand with Al Jardine and other Beach Boys teammates on board.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Apr 7, 2015
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Producer Medasyn's beats are uneven, and so is Sov's hood-rat humor: weak on what should be a layup college-pub rant, inexplicable on a song about sex with food.- Rolling Stone
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A horny, disco-infused party starter for those who like their funk with a side of irony.- Rolling Stone
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Why settle for pseudosleaze like Peaches when Paris delivers the real thing? [21 Sep 2006, p.82]- Rolling Stone
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The 16 songs on Changes focus almost exclusively on the logistics of having sex when you are both hot, young, and working in fields that require a lot of time apart. The concept itself is kind of funny, but the execution is often unimaginative and cliché, especially given how earnestly Bieber delivers every line, no matter how ridiculous.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Feb 18, 2020
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- Rolling Stone
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Though the songs recall the Fountains' smart, well-crafted material, they lack that band's detailed lyrics (typical line: "All I really want to say/Is I need you every day"). But these likable tunes usually hit their modest marks.- Rolling Stone
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Every song here goes for immediate payoff – as Thomas broadcasts on "Radio," they have been built for lifetimes.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Sep 5, 2012
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- Rolling Stone
- Posted Nov 5, 2014
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For California Son, the Pope of Mope has picked 12 lilting tales of injustice and unrequited love by some of his favorite artists and re-orchestrated them for his voice, improving some and turning others into head scratchers.- Rolling Stone
- Posted May 24, 2019
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[YOKOKIMTHURSTON] distills the kind of audio radicalism these three have channeled into pop music for decades.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Sep 25, 2012
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His willingness to make fun of his psychosexual damage only makes it more poignant.- Rolling Stone
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The novelty runs dry on Die Antwoord's second album, a marathon of overwrought beats and clunky horn-dog-rebel boasts.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Feb 7, 2012
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Problem is, much of Indestructible, banks on the same old angst-mongering that has fueled a zillion rock-radio hits in the past 10 years.- Rolling Stone
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In an era where disco has found a second life all over the pop charts, Green's throwback barely makes a thud.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Dec 2, 2015
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His debut album, Cloud Nine, is naturally very same-y--deep house wasting away in Margaritaville--but unfailingly gorgeous.- Rolling Stone
- Posted May 12, 2016
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Dragged down by too much unremarkably brawny fare. [27 Jan 2005, p.60]- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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Awake has the occasional spiffy tune... but it's padded with pop-rock toss-offs and an unlistenable, ten-minute instrumental noise jam.- Rolling Stone
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Lupe's beats run from Nineties buoyancy to driving rap rock, but his most exciting tracks are operatic brawlers that give his athletic, whiplash flow and rich imagination room to move.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Mar 8, 2011
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The political commentary could be stronger--"No justice for us blacks/But they send just us to Iraq" is as sharp as it gets--and though Story has got radio-ready appeal, Banner could learn a lesson from his buddy Wayne: Interesting and crowd-pleasing aren't mutually exclusive.- Rolling Stone
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This EP by the costumed doom-metal Swedes (they are Ghost B.C. here for legal reasons) is a weird, appealing detour from their regular godless crunch.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Nov 21, 2013
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More often than not, Rock lets his flag of self-awareness fly right alongside his freak flag.- Rolling Stone
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With the exception of 'Hey You' and 'World Behind My Wall,' the album is melodically anemic and strangely low-key. Subtle is not a mode that suits Kaulitz.- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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There's not an "Ohio" in the bunch but Young's grizzled jeremiads can be endearing.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Dec 9, 2016
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On If Only You Were Lonely, Hawthorne Heights up the drama-punk ante, channeling tricky rhythms, shimmery soft parts and a metal-schooled three-ax attack into songs that are both action-packed and gratuitously stylized.- Rolling Stone
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How can Morrissette expect her introspection to be taken seriously when her songs sound like vintage Bryan Adams? [10 Jun 2004, p.91]- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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Some of the 31 tracks will resonate only with deep Nirvana scholars, and the album could be seen as stretching an incredible legacy a little too thin. But it’s surprising how much of it is compelling, even revelatory.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Nov 13, 2015
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The conceptual stuff is ill-advised.... But she's a competent angst-belter who knows how to imitate singers she likes, from Courtney Love to Kim Carnes--even if her Janis Joplin is too close to 30 Rock for comfort.- Rolling Stone
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Chief could learn something from fellow California nostalgics Best Coast: Atmosphere is great, but so are sprightliness and hooks.- Rolling Stone
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It gives credit to his cheerily assured worldview that Pain's roboto soul sounds like inspiration.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Dec 13, 2011
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The tunes--or at least whatever M. Shadows feels like bellowing--sound like the kind of lame, nu-metal angst-mongering that dominated the radio in the late Nineties.- Rolling Stone
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Khalifa mostly circles the drain of clichés and love letters to his favorite activity: smoking weed. It’s only when he lets himself get a little weird, and flexes underused strengths like his singing voice, that his music is as fun as he wants it to be.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Feb 11, 2016
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- Rolling Stone
- Posted Aug 26, 2014
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The problem isn't overheated rhetoric, it's half-baked songs.- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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The beats, by Pittsburgh homeboys ID Labs and others, whip up aural smoke billows, and Khalifa's are just off-kilter enough to give you a contact high.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Dec 4, 2012
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The boys continue to expand musically, making this their kickiest and catchiest CD yet, even better than last year's A Little Bit Longer.- Rolling Stone
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On Last 2 Walk, every track is compelling, with synthesized strings and the usual depth-sounder bass lines inflated with reverb into miniature symphonies.- Rolling Stone
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Most of Minutes is honed, metallic pop with a hip-hop stride and a wake-up kick.- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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She dresses [her songs] up in the kind of shamelessly poppy hooks that make Top 40 programmers giggle in delight and "real hip-hop" heads shake theirs sadly. If this is the future, it's one strange place.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Apr 17, 2014
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- Rolling Stone
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Sweet as she may be, there's nothing in Mandy Moore's bubblegum world that makes her stand out from the wallpaper of Disneyland background music.- Rolling Stone
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While that heal-the-world sentiment soon becomes repetitive and rarely approaches the poetic heights of past classics, that gorgeously granulated voice is never less than sublime.- Rolling Stone
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Kittie sound like they want to pursue harder extremes but can't decide whether to snicker or snarl, to play doomsayer or dominatrix.- Rolling Stone
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It's enough to make you think Deadsy are all a hilariously high-concept prank. Which it is, um, right?- Rolling Stone
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DeLonge is one terrific little guitar player, the comic chitchat interludes are a sweet bonus for fans, and Blink-182 steal enough moronic hooks to make The Enema Strikes Back a hoot.- Rolling Stone
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Sure, 70 million bong hits have rendered B-Real and Sen Dog confused political theorists (complaining about taxes during a recession? What up, Glenn Beck?). But when they write what they know, they strike a nice balance between visions of bong-water Armageddon and Nineties light-'em-up boom-bap.- Rolling Stone
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Jessie's at her best when she's having fun. She just doesn't have enough of it here.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Oct 21, 2014
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It's a self-titled affair but it lacks the calling cards that originally made them interesting.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Jun 29, 2016
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Bryan just can't match, say, Kenny Chesney's knack for lonely contemplation. Given the drinking songs he's best at, he'd be better off pretending spring break lasts all year long.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Aug 15, 2013
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Dirty Vegas' earnest lyrics can get in the way, but they make up for that by rejecting the desultory repetition of much electro.- Rolling Stone
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He delivers overheated poetry like "As history gets lost and as I took that final breath, I felt alive," and his bandmates rock like shiny Satans.- Rolling Stone
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Roth's tight, witty debut lives up to the Internet hype that has swirled around him for months.- Rolling Stone
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They're still pumping American-Coldplay ballads full of sky-groping choruses and symphonic rushes.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Feb 8, 2012
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"Pick Up the Phone" sounds like Imagine Dragons with rap verses. Instead, press play on the first eight or so tracks and hear a killer concept EP of hard beats and hard politics for hard times.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Feb 10, 2017
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This vitriol-tsunami of a record misses a chance to connect Aguilera's music with her warm, empathetic TV presence.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Nov 20, 2012
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Their songwriting sometimes comes up short, but these avatars of the Nineties jam-band movement know they can placate their fans with a little showboating.- Rolling Stone
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Ja Rule plays it painfully safe on his second album, doling out pop hooks over gimmicky production.- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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Do You Sleep at Night offers little in terms of actual ingenuity. Instead, it presents a smattering of existing tropes thrown at the wall with little in terms of depth.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Sep 12, 2023
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If Guetta's fifth album doesn't convince you that he's the Bono of the four-on-the-floor beat, it does show how good he is at making Eurohouse's thumping trounce and jet-engine synth whoosh feel like natural elements in the hip-hop, R&B and even rock continuum.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Aug 30, 2011
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- Rolling Stone
- Posted Nov 22, 2011
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Even when the Junkies rock out a little... they're pretty bland. [19 Apr 2007, p.63]- Rolling Stone
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most poppy album yet is full of reggae hybrids and his best stab at arena rock.- Rolling Stone
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Unbreakable makes small nods to adult pop, peppering the processed music with tasteful piano and light guitar riffs and keeping bright, danceable grooves to a minimum. But the material stinks worse than ever.- Rolling Stone
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The band's piano rock suggests a more earnest, less arty Coldplay. The Fray are going for introspection and dramatic sweep but don't rise above bland pleasantries.- Rolling Stone
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The first two-thirds of Bleed Like Me is easily the best sustained run of studio Garbage since the opening half of their 1995 debut.- Rolling Stone
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He's gotten the Chicago basement vibe down exactly right... What's missing are songs -- instead, we get sketches, riffs and doodles.- Rolling Stone
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- Rolling Stone
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The Strokes-ish quality is in the music's rigor: Assassins combines groove and melody with the same machinelike precision that sets Fraiture's other outfit apart.- Rolling Stone
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On their fourth LP, they ditch the guest stars to bluster, drop stale references (Yes, "winning"!) and obsess over chicks.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Jun 18, 2013
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Cities is less songful than its predecessor, but on propulsive winners such as the flamenco-flavored "Crash and Burn," Armstrong's snaggletoothed choruses make for a soulful counterpoint to his mates' soused swagger.- Rolling Stone
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At first glance, Staind may look like a Korn tribute band. But within the first few seconds of Break the Cycle, they let loose enough Mothra-heavy riffs to prove they can rock circles around peers such as Limp Bizkit and fellow Bostonians Godsmack.- Rolling Stone
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With its lack of gimmickry and a surplus of sweet Seventies soul, Stripped is almost an album for grown-ups.- Rolling Stone
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His first album, What Is Love?, is light acoustic pop on which he shows melodic skills. But Drew took some bad lessons from emo and his dad's folk record.- Rolling Stone
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By the end of the album, all the candy-coated excess might leave you feeling a little like Courtney Love after a heavy night.- Rolling Stone
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An endearingly scattershot take on spaced-out R&B, complete with drug fetishism and a load of moves apparently copped from the Neptunes.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Jan 31, 2012
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Lewis raps about tiny dogs and nasty, food-based sexual acts with a cadence that doesn't have the slightest prayer of rhyming ("Wannabe") and the entire thing implodes spectacularly.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Sep 28, 2011
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- Rolling Stone
- Posted Jun 26, 2018
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The most notable aspect of Testify, in fact, is how little P.O.D., or their guitars, have to say.- Rolling Stone
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It's hard to care about any shortcomings when the tunes are as masterfully crisp as they are on much of V.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Sep 2, 2014
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“Infinity Sign,” with its pastel-colored disco bounce, New Age keyboards, and distant sample of a chanting crowd that sounds like a Close Encounters visitation over a sold-out soccer stadium. That unique level of thematic specificity notwithstanding, the record itself doesn’t get weighed down by any sort of Rush-size storyline, nor is there some pain-in-the-ass heavy-handed sci-fi message to deal with (beyond the predictably intimated vibes of harmony, wonder, etc.).- Rolling Stone
- Posted Oct 15, 2021
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We're introduced to a charming talkrapper named Euro and not much else beyond some diverse but mundane urban contemporary music dominated by familiar players.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Mar 20, 2014
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For the most part, Kelly uses rock to express his pain and rap to escape from it, i.e., abusing substances with Lil Wayne on two fairly pointless tracks. He has a nice rapport with Iann Dior on the pleasant pop-rock exercise “Fake Love Don’t Last.” But whether Kelly deploys “rock,” “rap,” or “pop,” selling out and annoying people online are the least of his issues.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Mar 28, 2022
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Parts of Man of the Woods are his most exploratory music in years, whether it's the skippy, juddering avant-funk or making meaningful modern countrypolitan without sounding like a disco ball in a Solo cup. It's not perfect, but you can't raise a barn without getting your hands dirty.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Feb 2, 2018
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The Lavigne heard at the beginning of the record is almost an entirely different person by the end; the hard part is figuring out which part you like more.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Feb 15, 2019
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Examines small-town origins, fatherhood, and matter of the heart with extra earnestness but few surprises. [Aug 2020, p.73]- Rolling Stone
Posted Aug 7, 2020 -
- Rolling Stone
- Posted Sep 14, 2017
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- Rolling Stone
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With too many half-baked songs, he ultimately comes off like a generic amalgam of a bunch of Seventies singer-songwriters.- Rolling Stone
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Only One Flo embraces the electro pulse of international clubland, with hedonistic lyrics to match. But although Ludacris and Gucci Mane inject momentary charisma, Flo Rida mostly flows as anonymously as any dance diva.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Dec 7, 2010
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On his second major-label album, he has more artistic aspirations, though they're mostly flat Kanye retreads.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Feb 4, 2015
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The balance of respectful tributes and reimaginings recalls John Fogerty's similarly structured 2013 collection, Wrote a Song for Everyone.- Rolling Stone
- Posted Aug 19, 2014
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