Variety's Scores

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For 418 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: 405 out of 418
  2. Mixed: 13 out of 418
  3. Negative: 0 out of 418
418 music reviews
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    • 86 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Happier than Ever
    It’s an album that feels more intimate than the first one, and the first one was pretty intimate. ... It’s a fabulous headphones record.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Faith
    “Faith” makes it clear Pop Smoke had a real future, with its show of soul and progress.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 93 Critic Score
    Sling
    Musical advancement makes “Sling” the breakthrough that it is. ... “Sling” finds this young artist taking an unexpected but welcome turn into a new style, one that leaves the possibilities of her next chapter wide open.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sob Rock
    His performance style is just affectless enough that he’s always tended to be more of a heart-tugger than tearjerker. And yet there’s a real pathos at the bottom of these era-specific arrangements that lends itself to the idea that a lonely boy might seek solace from the troubles of today in the musical comfort food of the yacht-rock era. All of which is to say: The damn thing kind of works.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 94 Critic Score
    Nine
    Delivering powerful, confrontational lyrics and messaging in the context of angular, innovative R&B.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 92 Critic Score
    Home Video
    Powerful. ... Each song is filled with vividly observed memories and vignettes.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 96 Critic Score
    Déjà Vu [50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]
    “Déjà Vu: 50th Anniversary Edition” is again like those aforementioned Beatles boxed sets in that we can see how close some of those songs came to not being classics, quite, without the final bit of vocal arrangement or an extra melodic element that sent them over the top.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 93 Critic Score
    Jubilee
    It takes all the things that have always served Japanese Breakfast well — Zauner’s awareness of her voice and how best to deploy it, her knack for narrative and story as well as great hooks — and offers them fresh soil in which to grow.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    Outside Child
    With 2021 not yet at the halfway point, it’s hard to imagine many other albums coming along that could match the combination of emotional potency, melodic fluency, social significance and heartrending beauty in Russell’s retelling of a lifetime’s worth of debasement and self-reclamation.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    The Width of a Circle
    Bowie would create far more legendary music on “Hunky Dory” just a few months after the last track here was recorded (he would also record much more fully realized versions of “The Prettiest Star” and “Holy Holy” in the next couple of years). But for fans, “The Width of a Circle” presents a fascinating listen, and look, at how he got there.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Exodus 1:7
    “Exodus” may not have been intended as a swan song, but it’s a moving final chapter that is equally street, spiritual and sophisticated.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sour
    The good news is, a lot of the until-now-unheard tracks from “Sour” are even better than the three tracks that have already been out there. ... You’ve got to admire her commitment to keeping with the title emotion and not having even a single romantically un-spurned song, for variety or anything else. It’s some grand lemonade. ... Ridiculously good.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Off-Season
    On “The Off-Season,” he is burnishing a reputation as a lingering titan. If “The Off-Season” is Cole’s first record of The Fall Off Era, he appears far from ready to bow out, nor should he be.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 92 Critic Score
    Daddy's Home
    Maybe more on this album than others, because she’s turned down the volume — as much as you might miss something as thrilling as the “Pills”-popping of the previous album — it’s easier to hear the heart that’s long been there at the center of the slightly chilly guises.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Be Right Back [EP]
    As Smith says, “Be Right Back” is a stopgap — but if “Addicted” and “Weekend” are any indication of what’s coming next, we’ll be here waiting.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Marfa Tapes
    It is certainly her purest and least sonically complicated, which is great when considering her warmly warbling voice. And like her bigger, broader sounding albums, she gives as good as she gets, quietly, while sounding as grand as if she had a studio band’s excess at work. This time, however, it only took a couple of fellow Texans and an empty room down in Marfa to bring the best out of Lambert.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    KHALED KHALED
    “Khaled Khaled” may be the name-above-the-title DJ’s best and most holistic record. All you need do is ignore your host, and enjoy.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 94 Critic Score
    Superwolves
    Almost indisputably their best, a collection of deeply resonant songs based in Oldham’s folk-leaning melodies and often-bizarre lyrics embellished with gorgeous guitar arrangements that range from rock to country, and even some of dashes of Malian music. ... One of the year’s best so far.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Who Sell Out [Super Deluxe Edition] [Box Set]
    It’s hard to imagine most people needing to hear some of the titles here more than once. But this sprawling deluxe edition of “The Who Sell Out” is like a living museum of a group beginning to realize its greatness, and the thrill of their discovery — in 1967, no less — remains vivid 53 years later.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    The Battle at Garden's Gate
    “The Battle at Garden’s Gate” achieves the rare feat of being absolutely hilarious and also one of the best straight-up rock albums to come down the pike in many moons — and anyone who thinks it can’t be both just isn’t in on the joke.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINE
    From the Four Seasons through to One Direction, never has the pop construct of a “boyband” had as much to say, and as many offbeat ways of saying it, as does Brockhampton on “Roadrunner.”
    • 82 Metascore
    • 92 Critic Score
    Fearless (Taylor's Version)
    The new album just sounds like a terrific remastering of the old — the same notes, and you’d swear the same performances, but sounding brighter and punchier just on a surface level. But on a more philosophical one, it’s not just a case of Swift playing with her back catalog like Andy Warhol played with his soup can. It’s really a triumph of self-knowledge and self-awareness.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 73 Critic Score
    Dancing with the Devil... The Art of Starting Over
    Amid the overtly autobiographical numbers, there are pretty good and not-so-hot numbers; the same unevenness goes of the more escapist turns the album makes. This might not be such a problem if “Art of Starting Over” had one undeniable smash on it to help steamroll over the unevenness. But there’s no doubt that she’s alive, well, singing more than just well, and stepping around smallish problems like how to make an album that feels coherent instead of dancing with Mr. D.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 81 Critic Score
    Justice
    Throw in a long but smartly assembled selection of A-list producer/co-writers that includes Andrew Watt, Skrillex, the Monsterz & Strangers, Louis Bell, Benny Blanco, Finneas and too many more to mention, and it adds up to a Bieber who is actually making smart choices pretty much all around, all of a sudden, sounding like the antithesis of what he admits he once was: “Unstable.” This is a honeymoon that could last.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Chemtrails Over the Country Club
    The album’s strongest songs follow — the title track and “Wild at Heart” may have the best melodies, “Tulsa Jesus Freak” serves up her familiar white-trash-fabulous theme — but at around the midway mark it starts getting even more languid, like the wine or the meds are kicking in and… mmm… can’t we just sit here on the couch for a while longer? (To be fair, it may be the pandemic kicking in.) However, the slow tempos don’t detract from her always-vivid lyrics.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Spaceman
    His voice has never sounded more on-point, and the surrounding opulent sonics have never allowed it such freedom. The album’s true possibilities, meanwhile, are lost in space.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    When You See Yourself
    The band’s ongoing shift away from its scruffy roots into something less easily identifiable is the most notable development here (additional kudos for making the album available as a first-of-its kind NFT). Who knows where it fits in this modern age, but some of it sounds pretty great.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Scary Hours 2 [EP]
    He’s still in peak form. Each song on “Scary Hours 2″ is different and reflective of Drake’s rap-kaleidoscope nature. If this EP is any indication of what “Certified Lover Boy” might sound like, then we might be in for one of the rapper’s most introspectively jarring and anthem-heavy projects in a long time.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Medicine at Midnight
    Grohl promised a record you can groove to, and he delivered, while still maintaining a quintessential crunch that’s fitting for a Foo.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 85 Critic Score
    OK Human
    Luckily, the added instrumentation is rarely overpowering and the Rob Mathes-penned arrangements are consistently interesting. ... Indeed, if there’s one thing we’ve learned since “The Blue Album” dropped back in ’94, it will take more than ruthless dictators — or even an orchestra — to extinguish Weezer’s way with a hook.
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