The New York Times' Scores

Select another publication »
For 2,075 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 41% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 Live in Europe 1967: Best of the Bootleg, Vol. 1
Lowest review score: 0 Shatner Claus: The Christmas Album
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,597 out of 2075
  2. Mixed: 443 out of 2075
  3. Negative: 35 out of 2075
2075 music reviews
view
per page
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    This Land
    On This Land, his third major-label studio album, his songwriting has caught up with his playing. ... It has something to do with the power of contrariness: that is, Clark’s determination to deliver the raw, analog, spontaneous opposite of crisply quantized digital content. And it has a lot to do with America in 2019, where division, frustration and seething anger can use an outlet with the historical resonance and emotional depth of the blues.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    thank u, next
    Thank U, Next has some hiccups but is still her most musically flexible and au courant release to date. ... The [Max] Martin songs are crisp, as always ... [But] It’s in the other songs [not produced by Martin], however, that Grande takes her most intriguing leaps, largely because of the new fluidity she brings to her singing.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stuffed & Ready
    [Clementine Creevy] sounds less guarded and more direct than ever, owning up to confusion and insecurity even as her guitar riffs counterattack. ... Creevy’s voice is high and thin but determined, and bolstered by the studio; her melodies take unexpected, angular leaps, while her guitar parts underline her solitude or blast it away.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Assume Form
    Like the rest of Blake’s albums, Assume Form opens into haunted, rewarding depths. All that’s missing is one luminous, fully focused pop chorus, like “Retrograde” on Blake’s 2013 “Overgrown” or “My Willing Heart” on his 2016 “The Colour in Anything.”
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    X 100PRE
    The music is rich with low end, serving as ballast for ethereal, sometimes claustrophobic synths. There’s little breathing room on these songs--both Bad Bunny and his music seep into all the available space.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hey! Merry Christmas!
    The beginning of Hey! Merry Christmas!--the first holiday album by the country music interrogators the Mavericks--strolls along at a friendly pace, their original songs touching on Western swing, 1950s rock, traditional country and more. But midway through comes a bawdy new cabaret-esque number, “Santa Wants to Take You for a Ride,” that feels less like an apostate take on holiday good will and more like a lost Blowfly original.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Socks
    JD McPherson is a vivid reinterpreter of the strutting rock ’n’ roll of the 1950s. His holiday album, Socks, is a collection of original songs with startlingly original conceits.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Legendary Christmas
    Moments of surprise pepper John Legend’s austere first holiday album, A Legendary Christmas. There are the savvy song choices, including rarities like Marvin Gaye’s pulpy “Purple Snowflakes.”
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Christmas Everywhere
    Rodney Crowell’s Christmas Everywhere is good-natured and wry, an album about how adults struggle to process a holiday oriented toward children. ... Throughout most of this album, Crowell is having fun--singing with arched eyebrow and tongue firmly in cheek.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Happy Xmas
    This set of modestly scaled blues remakings of classics finds dignity in the downtrodden.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Pains of Growing
    Cara offers up her own candid gawkiness in tidily constructed pop, and even her near-misses are endearing.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    She Remembers Everything
    While the songs face sorrows, they don’t capitulate to them. They place sadness alongside love and perseverance, the experiences of a long adult life; they savor consolations.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Origami Harvest
    The result is a tangled portrait of anxieties, one that adheres to its own standards of beauty, taking no particular tradition for granted.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    YSIV
    YSIV--the conclusion of his Young Sinatra series of mixtapes--is his most confident and accomplished release to date, shaking off some of the awkwardness that has long peppered his music.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Piano & A Microphone 1983
    While the session is informal--he sniffles now and then, and at times something rattles in the piano--the performance is not sloppy for a moment. The one-take, real-time vocals are exquisite. .. He shifts musical styles and vocal personae at whim--melancholy, playful, devout, flirtatious--yet it’s all Prince. ... It’s a glimpse of a notoriously private artist doing his mysterious work.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Room 25
    What she wants to say on Room 25 is complex: thoughts on community, sensuality, mortality and self-determination. ... Noname is a full-fledged maverick, but not an abrasive one. Phoelix’s production situates her in leisurely, atmospheric R&B, and there’s almost always the hint of a smile in her voice. But no one should mistake her soft, playful tone for submissiveness.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Love, Loss and Auto-Tune
    On this album, the naturalism of Swamp Dogg’s lifelong soul and funk all but disappears. But in its way, Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune is completely true to everyday 21st-century experience: ubiquitous and intrusive technology, splintered attention spans, mediated presences and onslaughts of random information. And yet, somewhere within all the digital commotion, there’s still a human being in search of love.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Big Red Machine
    Each track is in constant flux: unstable within, permeable from all directions, buffeted and trying to cope. As are we all. Somehow, there’s comfort in that discomfort.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sweetener
    Ms. Grande backs up her statements with song-and-dance mastery. ... She’s her own choir, support group and posse. While a few guest vocalists (Mr. Williams, Nicki Minaj, Missy Elliott) provide a little grit for contrast, Ms. Grande sails above any fray, past or present. Her aplomb is her triumph.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Be the Cowboy
    Mitski’s songs about love are a tangle of mixed messages in precise, idiosyncratic packages. ... On this album, even more than she has before, Mitski makes the music her partner.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Don’t Want: The Gold Fire Sessions
    For Santigold’s music, I Don’t Want: the Gold Fire Sessions is more a consolidation--or a breather--than a leap forward. But that’s only because her previous albums have already encompassed so many idioms and ideas.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stay Dangerous
    It revels in lushness, owning its smooth funk legacy and extending it to the present day.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Harlan & Alondra
    Like YG’s songs, Buddy’s music is full of small homages to the Los Angeles sounds of yesteryear. But while YG is polishing one idea until it shines blindingly, Buddy is crossing generations, building new paths.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hive Mind
    Hive Mind falls ever so slightly short of “Ego Death,” though it’s still superb. The songs are a little more generalized, less specific; the music feels just a little more deliberate, though it’s still full of surprises.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lamp Lit Prose
    Lamp Lit Prose is his shiniest, airiest, even catchiest set of songs. The new record exchanges the jarring, glitchy electronic intrusions and arid trap percussion he used on “Dirty Projectors” for the springy guitar lines of older Dirty Projectors albums, bringing out their warmest tones.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Kin Sonic
    For all the seriousness of the songs, Jupiter & Okwess make sure to keep the party going.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Scorpion
    Scorpion is something safer and less ambitious, largely a reprocessing of old Drake ideas and moods. It is the first Drake album that’s not a definitive stylistic breakthrough, not a world-tour victory lap, not an embrace of new grievances. It is, largely, a reminder of Drakes past, and perhaps also an attempt at maintaining stability in the face of profound emotional disruption.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Now Now
    For this album, Mr. Albarn stays decisively in the foreground. His main collaborator here is the producer James Ford, from Simian Mobile Disco, and together they surround Mr. Albarn’s voice with subliminally nostalgic synthesizers: puffy, rounded, unaggressive tones that provide a cozy backdrop for Mr. Albarn’s morose reveries. ... In the mysterious chemistry of songwriting, the partnership with Mr. Hewlett’s visuals has been a reliable catalyst. Behind the cartoon mask, there’s freedom.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Heaven & Earth
    On Heaven and Earth there’s a balance between big-stroke conceptualism--the first CD, “Earth,” is meant to represent worldly preoccupations; the second, “Heaven,” explores utopian thought--and the workmanlike reality of collaboration. The two collections don’t vary significantly in terms of sound; instead, they’re a testament to the sturdy rapport of Mr. Washington’s ensemble.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everything is Love
    With their new album as the Carters, Jay-Z (born Shawn Carter) and Beyoncé are once again a united force, celebrating their success on every front: artistic, financial, marital, erotic, historic. ... This is more familiar, less vulnerable and less exploratory territory than the zones where Beyoncé and Jay-Z ventured on “Lemonade” and “4:44.”
Page: