The Guardian's Scores

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For 5,509 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 49% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To
Lowest review score: 10 Unpredictable
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,968 out of 5509
  2. Mixed: 2,464 out of 5509
  3. Negative: 77 out of 5509
5509 music reviews
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    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Get Fucked
    The Chats are treading a fine line between stupid and clever, but there’s no meanness of spirit here.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Close to Home
    The result is an album that’s alternately charming and cliched, that involves boilerplate beats and sparky musical invention. That said, nothing about it is going to turn off the teens that constitute Aitch’s fanbase.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bleed Out
    For the power of revenge as a notion, it’s a limited emotional palette for a writer as gifted as Darnielle to work with. It feels more like a brilliantly conceived and executed exercise than something to return to.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cry Sugar
    Just succumb to its unique invention, curious shifts in tone and plethora of weird juxtapositions: something that’s easy enough to do.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cheat Codes
    An ebullient record brimming with sheer love of the craft.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Traumazine
    Traumazine is an album that leaves you reeling slightly, both impressed and strangely grateful – convinced of Megan Thee Stallion’s brilliance, and glad you’re not on the receiving end of it.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Alchemist's Euphoria
    The Alchemist’s Euphoria is rarely dull, and often hugely entertaining. But one still longs for Pizzorno to make the album that is as great as the breadth of his imagination suggests.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Funk Wav Bounces, Vol. 2
    The issue is that none of the songs that all this gorgeous production whirls around are actually any good.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Take It Like a Man
    It’s rousing stuff, and with indie-pop producer Lawrence Rothman on hand, her vivid, intentionally raw fiddle-playing is balanced well with expressions of her softer side, seemingly taking inspiration from peers who are blazing trails beyond country’s traditional bounds.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Florist
    The unpolished edges feel like the sound of a band falling in love with each other all over again. More than that, even, you get the sense of them staking out new ground together: their sound, usually soft and steady, becomes a thrilling lesson in catharsis.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Renaissance
    Touted as Act I of a confirmed trilogy, Renaissance falls short of being Beyoncé’s best full-length, but it still fulfils her liberationist aims. ... Her sense of freedom throughout is palpable, and an infectious spur to action.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    You Still Here, Ho?
    Her debut is a great, carefree soundtrack to dancing through the struggle.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Theory of Whatever
    Not everything he tries works – it’s a relief when the chaotic rock/rap crossover British Hell comes to an end – but despite its diversity, it hangs together as an album, the tracks bonded by a rough-edged grit.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    18
    18 is a peculiar and hugely uneven record.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Special
    An album that transformed Lizzo from an alternative hip-hop curio to a recognised star. But whatever the pains staked in its making, Special pulls its task off with style.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Beatopia
    Beatopia is an enjoyable sojourn down a well-travelled sonic avenue, but not the most memorable of trips.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hellfire
    It’s noisy, jolting and filled with gruesome imagery, but somehow arid and remote, music presented with a self-satisfied smirk (“idiots are infinite, thinking men numbered”, drawls Greep at one point) that prevents wholehearted commitment. Maybe it takes on a different, more direct power live.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Jazz Codes
    Her spoken words, songs and sighs give shape to this tempest of jazz, hip-hop and R&B, whirling together a who’s-who of Black classical.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Found Light
    The record teems with understated but headily intimate images: the minutiae of a bruised mind, artfully distilled.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Other Side of Make-Believe
    The Other Side of Make-Believe has its longueurs – the lumbering Mr Credit among them – but it also has its pleasures: it doesn’t sound phoned in, which is much to its credit. Long past the point where they’re in the business of attracting new fans, they nevertheless keep moving, albeit subtly.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Steve Reich: Reich/Richter
    If the music never quite achieves the power and majesty of Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, it has something of that great work’s certainty and inevitability, which is more than enough.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Seven Psalms
    It’s an extremely powerful album – Cave and Ellis are superb writers, at the top of their game – even if you wonder how often you’ll listen to it, or indeed, what one quite vocal section of his fanbase will make of it.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Closure/Continuation
    Progressive to the very soles of its nine-minute songs, and characterised by a level of instrumental proficiency that is, occasionally, emotionally detached.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sometimes, Forever
    Sometimes, Forever is at its most engaging when Lopatin’s sound designs appear to be working in sympathy with the grimmer aspects of the lyrics and at odds with Allison’s penchant for a toothsome pop melody.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    HONESTLY, NEVERMIND
    Honestly, Nevermind therefore offers a weird combination of the unexpected and business as usual. ... There is something really admirable about Drake’s desire to reach beyond the music his audience expects, and to do it well. You just wish he would apply the same restlessness to his persona.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Supernova
    An album that’s inventive, angry, witty, original and pretty irresistible. Supernova is a riot of its own.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Amaryllis
    These are new landmarks in Halvorson’s already inimitable discography.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Belladonna
    These are new landmarks in Halvorson’s already inimitable discography.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Magic Pony Ride
    Magic Pony Ride excels when it is carefree and cantering, losing its allure when it stops to let reality sink in.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Gold Rush Kid
    Gold Rush Kid gets better the further it moves away from the standard blueprint, into emotional territory that, if it isn’t exactly dark (happily for him, Ezra seems to inhabit a world where every problem comes with a resolution) is certainly more overcast.
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