Variety's Scores

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For 424 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: 411 out of 424
  2. Mixed: 13 out of 424
  3. Negative: 0 out of 424
424 music reviews
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    • 90 Metascore
    • 96 Critic Score
    Punisher
    One of the year’s best.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    1989 (Taylor's Version)
    If not nearly as cocky and confident as the seasoned soul who wrote an album as lyrically clever as “Midnights.” You still get a good dose of her seminal earnestness in these tracks, but there’s a lot more of the woman who knew somebody was trouble when he walked in, and went for it anyway.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 93 Critic Score
    Socks
    McPherson’s album is so far ahead of the rest of the 2018 pack, everyone else is having to eat his Christmas dust. All tracks are originals, every one of them a keeper.
    • 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.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    More Blood, More Tracks: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 14
    Even absent a lone alternate of “Idiot Wind” that somehow fell between the cracks, it’s a profound look into the difficult birthing of an acknowledged masterwork in Dylan’s canon.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album
    As strong and revealing as the bare-bones collection is, it’s hard to imagine a Coltrane freak who won’t want to plunk for the deluxe version. It affords one of the deepest looks available at the way Trane addressed creative choices in the studio. No less than three more versions of “Impressions” are heard on the second disc, and they are the best advertisement for the two-disc package. ... Is its belated arrival a godsend? Absolutely.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    the record
    It’s like summer arrived three months early. And like one of the best albums of 2023 arrived right on time.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    græ
    “Græ” is a magnificent, multi-genre mess in a dress of many colors — the greyness of its monochrome title notwithstanding — and not just possibly 2020’s literally biggest album, across its double-album sprawl, but also one of the year’s boldest and best.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 96 Critic Score
    Dead Man's Pop [Box Set]
    The complete “Inconcerated” alone is worth the price of admission. Five of the 29 tracks appeared on a promo CD of that name at the time, and it was worth staying alive for an additional 30 years just to find out that the rest of the show was as grandly played and recorded. ... Chances are that the “Wallace mix” will be the version you put on in the future — although, truth be told, there are some elements of the Lord-Alge mix that work and might even be preferable, maligned as it is.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    RTJ4
    Above all, “RTJ4” is a triumph of all sorts of unexpected syntheses, seamlessly uniting disparate moods, styles and eras. ... If Killer Mike and El-P haven’t yet fully ascended to that most rarefied plane of telepathically attuned hip-hop partnerships — Q-Tip and Phife, Prodigy and Havoc, Erick and Parrish — they’ve come extraordinarily close.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    La vita nouva [EP]
    Throughout, the EP is marked by Letissier’s vocal and songwriting cool — even when the tempos are faster and the energy level is high, there’s a certain effortless ease to her singing and the music.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 93 Critic Score
    All Mirrors
    The end result is this towering, tempestuous album, where nearly every song has calms and storms matching Olsen’s soaring voice and intricate melodies.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    All Born Screaming
    “All Born Screaming” is focused and of a piece and all over the place at the same time. It’s a tribute to St. Vincent’s vision and skill that an album bursting with so many ideas is such a coherent whole.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 93 Critic Score
    Hit Me Hard and Soft
    Eilish is also exercising her knack for turning a song around on a dime, mid-stream, as previously heard in the whisper-to-a-scream title track of “Happier Than Ever.” So it’s a 10-track record that happens to contain 13 excellent songs.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Golden Hour
    On first listen, Golden Hour might be disappointing for a Musgraves fan who assumed that certain wry or retro traits were immutable. ... But on second or third review, it feels like she’s making exactly the right move by painting herself out of a corner, as lovable as that corner was. ... Maybe she’ll get back someday to her vintage Loretta Lynn fetish, but damn if she isn’t just as appealing as a folky Sade.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Tigers Blood
    Minor deviations aside, “Tigers Blood” functions as a seamless extension and advancement of the aesthetic Crutchfield perfected on “Saint Cloud,” her Americana masterpiece that stands as one of the few artifacts worth revisiting from March 2020.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 93 Critic Score
    When I Get Home
    “When I Get Home” is a challenging and satisfying follow-up to “A Seat at the Table,” one that will probably baffle some fans but intrigue and engage even more.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 96 Critic Score
    Live at the Fillmore, 1997
    Obviously, this isn’t a standard Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers concert — see above for plenty of those — but for people who love the sound of a band stretching, showing off, challenging each other and having fun, it’s hard to think of many better albums. ... The album captures what is arguably the best lineup of the band since its original one, with stellar backing vocals from bassist Howie Epstein and auxiliary Heartbreaker Scott Thurston.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    folklore
    A fully rounded collection of songs that sounds like it was years in the interactive making, not the product of a quarter-year’s worth of file-sharing from splendid isolation.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 92 Critic Score
    Future Nostalgia
    It’s an impeccably crafted, gleefully executed half-hour-plus of pop perfection that does meet the moment, maybe, in just reminding you how good it feels to be human. And to be in love. And to be in Studio 54.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 93 Critic Score
    30
    An album that meets the breach with enough wrenching, life-and-death drama to leave you completely spent by the time its hour is up, then ready to immediately reinvest. Because, besides being that exhausting, it’s also that good.
    • 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.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    What Now
    For listeners up for an adventure — for an album that reveals itself gradually, continues to surprise after several listens and takes you places you didn’t necessarily know you wanted to go — there are many rewards in store.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 93 Critic Score
    Only God Was Above Us
    No apology necessary: “Only God Was Above Us” is an essential chapter in the band’s still-evolving sound and career.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Letter to You
    You can say he’s written more consistently great albums this century, but the crispness of the recording as well as the performances ensures that “Letter to You” is the best-sounding album he’s made since the 1980s.
    • 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.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 94 Critic Score
    Nine
    Delivering powerful, confrontational lyrics and messaging in the context of angular, innovative R&B.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 95 Critic Score
    Dawn FM
    “After Hours” has resonated for nearly two years after its release, and in the face of another phase of a daunting pandemic, it seems that “Dawn FM” — possibly the Weeknd’s best and most fully realized album to date — will help carry fans through this one as well.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You
    Throughout this adventurous new double-album, Big Thief dives into both the natural and otherworldly, paving new sounds and textures while uncovering new mysteries.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Hardest Part
    Noah doesn’t belt, and shows a sensitivity and vulnerability on these songs that belies her age. With 10 songs over just 33 minutes, it’s a wide-ranging, emotional ride that leaves the listener wanting more.
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