The Guardian's Scores

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For 5,507 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 All Born Screaming
Lowest review score: 10 Unpredictable
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,966 out of 5507
  2. Mixed: 2,464 out of 5507
  3. Negative: 77 out of 5507
5507 music reviews
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    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Who Cares?
    At his best O’Connor seems to be part of a lineage of pop craftsmen for whom melody trumps everything – you don’t need edge, experimentation or lyrical fireworks if you can come up with a tune as strong as Open the Window or as cute as Making Time. But at his worst, it sounds limp and insubstantial, compounded by the thin production (a sonic link to the days when O’Connor was uploading his bedroom-recorded songs to Soundcloud) and his voice, which can tend to the nasal and whiny.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    PAINLESS
    Painless is audibly a second album, the product of an artist with eclectic tastes spending their time focusing and refining their talent – as if its author has developed the confidence to decide that less is sometimes more.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pray for Me I Don't Fit In
    For all their sonic ferocity, the songs on Pray for Me have strong melodies and hooks in abundance.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Spellbound
    Some of the arrangements are too middle of the road, but her piano runs are glorious, her voice still as pure as mountain air and – with a second collection apparently following – she is far from done.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    23 [Mixtape]
    23 also displays how good Central Cee is at the business of making records, not just writing. There are a lot of really strong musical ideas on display, some of which are the work of producer Young Chencs.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Donda 2
    It occasionally feels demo-like, half-finished: the corroded electronics on Louie Bags are intriguing, but the song features what sounds like a placeholder vocal. Great lines are few and far between.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ocean Child: Songs of Yoko Ono
    It’s impossible not to repeatedly turn Ocean Child off, and instead seek out the originality and uniqueness of the genuine article. Presumably, it’s what Gibbard would want.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Asha's Awakening
    Mainstream pop music should clear some room for her: it would make things infinitely more interesting.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Lucifer on the Sofa
    There aren’t really bad Spoon albums. There are really good Spoon albums and there are excellent Spoon albums. Lucifer on the Sofa is one of the latter. What a delight.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Free Fall
    This is music that uses 21st-century technology to conjure up images of liturgical chants and ancient temples.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Few Good Things
    Few Good Things sees Saba resurface, moving beyond the acceptance stage on an album that sounds and feels like one long exhale.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Time Skiffs
    As it is, it feels like an act of quiet consolidation rather than a breakthrough, aimed squarely at existing fans, unbothered by grabbing anyone else’s attention.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Pompeii
    Pompeii is noticeably more subdued than much of her earlier work. Where once there was a playfulness in the arrangements, the slow and austere songs here sound as if they’re carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Anaïs Mitchell
    It’s the work of an artist who has succeeded on a big stage now working in miniature, sweating the small stuff with utterly charming results.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Overload
    The Overload is a starting point for a number of routes, rather than a perfectly formed end in itself. Certainly, there are flashes of a smartness and depth to Smith’s writing that go beyond scabrous one-liners.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fix Yourself, Not the World
    Fix Yourself, Not the World isn’t going to change the face of music, but nor is it going to do anything to impede the Wombats’ latter-day progress.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sick!
    They offer the promise of something more perhaps in the future, with richer, bolder production: another tantalising glimpse of Earl’s unique and enduring charm.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Caprisongs [Mixtape]
    There’s a lot that’s laudable about Caprisongs. Not least its desire to keep moving and changing – enough that complaining about something as straightforward as a paucity of memorable tunes almost feels miserly. But equally, it’s something that ultimately impedes your enjoyment of the album. As a soundtrack for the start of a night, it doesn’t quite pan out as you might hope.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Quivering in Time
    Quivering in Time transcends the temporal as well as the planar, but crucially, it doesn’t leave us behind.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Covers
    Not so much fresh takes on old favourites, Covers is more like watered-down versions of semi-hidden gems.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Dawn FM
    2020s pop music so brilliantly crafted that it causes you to realise how much other 2020s pop music is makeweight.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Delta Estácio Blues
    Marçal’s voice is just as playful and experimental as the production, veering from the melodic softness of Ladra, in which it counters the heavily distorted instrumentation, to the impassioned spoken word of Crash, and her warped lower register of Oi, Cat. It’s her mutable voice that gives this wildly varied album its sense of coherence – as well as its message.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tokyo Glow
    The compilation highlights these artists’ attention to instrumental detail and their delicate fusion of popular international styles with new technologies to create the sound of a city. It is one that is both of its time and still repeatedly listenable today.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Megabear
    Novel presentation notwithstanding, it’s a remarkably immersive listen.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Renewal
    Bold, beautiful album.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lately I Feel Everything
    This is the sound of an innovating, idiosyncratic artist, whose talent is now far more interesting than her showbiz backstory.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Melodic Blue
    There are so many incredible hooks in different modes of catchiness: Drakeian crooning (Lost Souls, Scars), Young Thug or Future-style Atlantan fantasias (Cocoa), Mo Bamba-ish lairy taunting (South Africa), and even the monotone syllables of “du-rag ac-tivity” are a minimalist earworm. Baby Keem is marked for greatness.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Barn
    Barn highlights both the strengths and weaknesses of this set-up: They Might Be Lost barely feels like a song, just the same chords Young has been strumming all his adult life, yet it manages to be eternal and deeply moving. Equally – and this is a little like complaining fire is too hot – one can’t help but feel some of these songs sound as though they were being written as they were recorded.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    KEYS
    Unlocked is definitely a better album than Originals, but not an amazing album in its own right. Undeniable, sucker-punch songs are still notable by their absence.
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