Variety's Scores

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For 420 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 94% higher than the average critic
  • 0% same as the average critic
  • 6% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 12.3 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 85
Highest review score: 100 The Beatles [White Album] [50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition]
Lowest review score: 40 Jesus Is King
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 407 out of 420
  2. Mixed: 13 out of 420
  3. Negative: 0 out of 420
420 music reviews
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    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Anak Ko
    At nine tracks and 35 minutes, it doesn’t outstay its welcome, or stay in one place for very long. Duterte’s low-key delivery can obscure just how much is going on beneath the surface — “Anak Ko” is both a triumph of understatement and an understated triumph.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Lover
    It’s an album with a lot of froth to it, but weighted froth — her most mature collection as well as her most fun one.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    - Ugh, those feels again
    “Ugh” is a “real album,” with a unified yet ever-changing sound and vibe — and one that initially feels familiar but shifts shapes on closer inspection, and is harder to pin down than it first might seem.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The Center Won't Hold
    This album may be a bold departure for the group, but in this moment, who can afford to be meek? Sleater-Kinney never has, and nine albums in, that fact continues to hold.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    The Big Day
    On “The Big Day,” Chance’s mixture of reflection and fun is translated in his reliably impressive wordplay and flows, but its production palette can feel confusingly packaged and at times lacking intention. The result is a somewhat flat record that contains shades of Chance’s supreme talents, but lacks the dynamism of his previous works. It is undoubtedly Chance’s big day. But it’s hard not to feel a little let down.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    The Lion King: The Gift
    The album’s warm production washes and anthemic musicality may not have the same avant-garde sway or weird rhythmic kink of its immediate aforementioned predecessors, but what “The Lion King: The Gift” misses in messiness, it makes up for in flavor, heart and grandeur without treacle. Well, not too much treacle.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 65 Critic Score
    No. 6 Collaborations Project
    In its herculean embrace of teamwork, it suffers uniformly from the same flaw that infects nearly every other recent one-off that embraces the F-word in its credits: There’s no real trading off, and never for a moment do you imagine any of these people were in the same room. With such an impressive friends list, you hope for at least the illusion of chemistry somewhere along the way, but it’s the ultimate Dropbox duets album.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Oasis
    Balvin and Bunny have recorded a handful of subtly memorably melodic songs (no grand anthems, here) with casually zesty grooves, humid atmospheres, intricately complex arrangements and lyrics that do their best to unite all Latin markets and moods while entertaining their devotees. Neither man is trying to do outdo the other here, though each man does his swarthy finest (Bunny’s sensualist lounge hound on “La Cancion,” Balvin’s sensitive emotionalist on “Que Pretend”) to impress his new bestie.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Clarity
    Clarity might be the best-constructed collection of R&B-inflected pop music by a female European singer since Robyn’s “Robyn Is Here” in 1995. ... On a musical level, most of it works, but it’s missing the element of surprise.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    ANIMA
    Yorke has wrested control of his restlessness and made his messed-up dream state both richly provocative and proactive while maintaining its desolation.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Gold Past Life
    As good as the album sounds, though — and it sounds especially good on headphones. under the helm of producer Thom Monahan, who’s historically known how to put an atypical sonic spin on acoustic-leaners from Neko Case to Devendra Banhart — it’s as a lyricist where Johnson is really peaking here. There won’t be many albums in 2019 with as many quotable, cut-to-the-marrow lines as this one has.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bird Songs of a Killjoy
    While the album vaults Bedouine’s songwriting and singing into a whole new realm, credit is especially due to Seyfert, who’s done a beautiful job of creating an unobtrusively lush musical frame for her gentle, almost deadpan vocals and melodies (props are also due to string arranger Trey Pollard, and Thom Monahan for a pristine mix).
    • 75 Metascore
    • 93 Critic Score
    Late Night Feelings
    As is most of this album. With “Late Night Feelings,” Ronson has served up a perfect post-night-out soundtrack, romantic and intimate — and a real album, with nary a weak track to disrupt the late-night feels (sorry).
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Originals
    It’s a cohesive and extremely well-curated compilation, but several of the songs will be unfamiliar even to serious followers, and at the end of the day, it’s a collection of recordings that Prince never intended for the world to hear. Regardless, there’s plenty to get excited about.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Help Us Stranger
    Mostly, though, “Help Us” is a simple, effective return to form for fans of White who continue to hold out hope that a new White Stripes album may one day arrive. That prayer isn’t likely to pay dividends, but with the Raconteurs’ latest offering, listeners can at least take solace in the best consolation prize possible. More importantly, this album is timely proof that White may actually be at his best when he’s constrained by the framework of collaboration.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Turn Off the News, Build a Garden
    The disc’s deep well of strong tracks is testament to Nelson’s maturing abilities.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Madame X
    Madame X is best, though, not when it goes all CNN on us but when it plays primarily like a musical travelogue, taking us to magical mystical places so fascinating that we might not even notice the stormclouds overhead.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Western Stars
    Casual fans may even enjoy it more than his other so-called solo records, like “Devils & Dust” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” The writing here isn’t as consistently strong as on those projects, but the overall feel is less dour. ... His genius for filling in particulars returns the more he gets to characters who know they’re stuck.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Tuscaloosa [Live]
    The 11 songs that are here feel like a full journey through the potpourri of his classic styles. ... Great deep tracks, like their more famous singers, can’t be denied … so here’s to keeping the dump coming.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Happiness Begins
    The low points are so few-and-far-between that they’re nearly forgotten once you get to the zesty, one-two punch finale of “Rollercoaster” and “Comeback.”
    • 90 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings [Box Set]
    Listening to the concert material is an experience not unlike auditioning the exhaustive 36-disc 2016 set of Dylan’s shows on his tumultuous 1966 world tour. ... What’s there is pretty spectacular. Dylan’s Revue crew was the biggest group he ever performed with, and certainly it was the loudest and hottest, with as many as five guitars being flexed simultaneously.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    California Son
    Committing to kitschy ’60s bliss as much as that era’s real or imagined war zones allows Morrissey and California Son a chance to find a (literal) voice in a way he hasn’t in ages. It would just be an even greater feat if Morrissey could make more of its finer musical moments jibe with his personal vibes.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 79 Critic Score
    Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
    The album’s overall production by his longtime main man 6ix sparkles like never before, and lends itself to the loosely thread, sharply needled conceptual-ism handsomely.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Am Easy to Find
    By allowing their diligently designed blueprint to take a new, unexpected form, the National haven’t ceded the spotlight, only broadened it.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Rammstein
    While by no means a perfect album, Rammstein’s first since 2009’s “Liebe ist für alle da” is a scintillating and sensual (if not awkwardly sexual) reminder of the meat-and-steel-pounded power of industrial music at its catchiest, fleshiest and most inventive.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    Father Of Asahd
    While old friends and freeloaders litter “Father of Asadh” like empty pony bottles, new collaborators and fresh faces actually do lift the proceedings and save the day.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Dedicated
    Even with the occasional missteps, it’s remarkable how rarely one senses any sort of strain to push songs into radio-baiting templates.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Front Porch
    This may be the best, most natural and inevitable music she’s made.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    Father of the Bride
    An album that could soundtrack an afternoon picnic or be used as fodder for a doctorate thesis on songwriting. It’s a beautifully realized cipher in an age of unsatisfying answers.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Hurts 2B Human
    The amount of emotion she puts into even the less worthy numbers reminds you why she remains one of our worthiest superstars. But you may find yourself missing the more idiosyncratic Pink who runs off at the mouth as much as she runs off at the heart.
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