The Telegraph (UK)'s Scores

  • Music
For 1,234 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 63% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 33% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 77
Highest review score: 100 All Born Screaming
Lowest review score: 20 Killer Sounds
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 2 out of 1234
1234 music reviews
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    i/o
    This ranks with the very best of Gabriel’s work, which means it is very great indeed. Peter Gabriel is a genius. i/o is a masterpiece. That is all ye need know.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nine originals interspersed with the overfamiliar classics indicate a songwriter’s fascination with rock form, but only I Want You Back (sung with Steven Tyler) justifies its position nestled between so many inarguable classics.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    PinkPantheress’s pop gift is to make something airily attractive out of elements that could be brain melting, as if singing with the internal voice of a generation numbed by the everything goes-ness of the internet.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Everybody sounds like they’re having fun, and listeners of a certain vintage probably will too. But it adds little of interest to Morrison’s incredible canon, which from Blowin’ Your Mind in 1967 to Irish Heartbeat in 1988 ranks with the greatest popular music ever made.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    There are lovely instrumental passages, lustrous strings, and it has all been crafted with love and care, but it doesn’t hit the heights we expect from a great Beatles ballad, ending up sounding like a poor imitation of genius, the kind of soft rock whimsy you’d find on thousands of second-rate Beatle influenced albums in the Seventies.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Swift’s remake is astonishing in its exactitude, another reminder that she is a star of a different magnitude with a mastery of her own talents and a bold business acumen. .... All of the new songs are satisfyingly deft and clever, replete with sinuous melodies, burbling synths and agitated percussion that correspond with the updated eighties stylings of the original. .... The one new song that really punches its weight with Swift’s original 1989 singles is the razor sharp Is It Over Now?
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    She hits the mark with stripped-back Room Service, but the more mainstream, hook-laden numbers Antichrist and Into Your Room don’t measure up to her earlier anthems Scarlett and The Wall is Way Too Thin.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The new Rolling Stones album is the best thing they have made since their Seventies glory days. Which, it might reasonably be argued, de facto makes it the best rock’n’ roll album of the past four decades at least.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This is an album that underlines the greatness of Dark Side, rather than challenges it.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sheeran sounds like a supercharged David Gray. Grown-up. Energised. Forget Autumn, this feels like an album of bright new dawns.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tension is Minogue’s 16th album, and certainly ranks among her best.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Relentless might just be one of the most thrilling things you’ll hear all year. It’s a slow-burning triumph, its 12 tracks oscillating between squalling and shimmering rockers and richly-realised ballads thanks in large part to Hynde’s masterly co-writer and guitarist James Walbourne.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This album won’t be for everyone, but it’s quite the trip.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    There are plenty of artists who make music occupying the same space as Mitski – reflective, weepy, introspective – but she stands alone in her lyricism and heart; on this album, she also seems less frightened by the potential fruits of her own talent.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    There are a few tracks that could be spicier (Envy the Leaves, At Your Worst), but overall, Silence Between Songs seems like the album Beer has been wanting – and waiting – to make for a long, long time.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The album is peppered with playful uses of samples. It’s deeply sophisticated music – an astute melting pot of genres bound together by the latest production techniques.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unfortunately, most of Guts sounds like a simple continuation of Sour – there is little musical growth or thematic change, with Making the Bed and Pretty Isn’t Pretty seeming like mere overhangs from her debut
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ten years ago, Icona Pop were electropop trailblazers: for the most part, this second album is a promising next step in their recording career.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The kids might not understand, but rock fans should be delighted that Kerr and Thatcher are still in the ring, giving it everything they’ve got.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This confident and assured album surely ranks among his best.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hardcore fans should be satisfied, but Road recycles outdated myths of rock machismo from a pantomime villain determined to go out in a blaze of clichés.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    If sensuous, whip smart R’n’B rocks your boat, Victoria Monét’s debut album, Jaguar II, is a luxurious treat.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Endless Coloured Ways could have been just another exhibit on the exquisitely curated but ever growing pile of Drake nostalgia. Instead, it’s an essential manual on the art of songwriting.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Soft strings and Rapp’s silky vocals prevent it from being too jarringly TikTok-ready (though one imagines her record label will be hoping for just that). Overall, Snow Angel is a confident, accomplished debut.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Hozier sounds like what you might get if the late, lamented Jeff Buckley had thrown his lot in with Radiohead to conjure up folk music from the dark side of the moon.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It hasn’t exactly all been easy listening, but still definitely Lydon’s most approachable album ever. It sounds as though it was hard-earnt light relief for him, fun for its chief protagonist to make, and with repeat plays it only proves increasingly infectious.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    There is no real attempt to deliver definitive readings, with the vocal interplay between Mitchell, Carlile and Mumford on A Case of You shifting from the original’s romantic intensity to loose and cheerful celebration. Nonetheless, there are moments that cut to the core, particularly when guest vocalists back off to allow Mitchell space to possess the song in a voice that may be lower and grittier than of yore, but remains supple, powerful and resonant.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Here, in the company of his oldest colleagues, he [Damon Albarn] takes stock of his past in the most finely crafted songs of his later career. It is the sound of Britpop all grown up.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    While You & I doesn’t break any new ground, it’s a spirited and smartly produced – if brief – album.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    As a generation of UK rappers comes of age, Hus still leads the pack with his pitless charisma, linguistic inventiveness, and musical curiosity.