Variety's Scores

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For 422 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 12.4 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: 409 out of 422
  2. Mixed: 13 out of 422
  3. Negative: 0 out of 422
422 music reviews
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Good Luck with Whatever
    Wonderful. ... If the new album is short on the breakup songs that once were Dawes’ rueful bread-and-butter, this album’s two quietest songs are among the best Goldsmith’s written.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Deeper Well
    Nearly every one of the 16 tracks begins with delicate finger-picking, and then stays there, flying proudly in the face of “there needs to be a banger” convention and staying committed to the acoustic bit. It’s uncompromising in that way, and all the lovelier for its confidence that you’ll turn up the volume, so she doesn’t have to.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 86 Critic Score
    Swimming
    It’s in Miller’s melodious baritone, stark mantra flow that Swimming is most effective--a simple, stately, poetic autobiography.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Hackney Diamonds
    If there’s a better way to end the Rolling Stones’ 60-plus-year recording career, it’s hard to imagine what it could be.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 93 Critic Score
    TANGK
    If there’s a more innovative and exciting rock album coming in 2024, we can’t wait to hear it.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Star-Crossed
    It’s an album where she can be not so much “happy and sad at the same time” as heartsick, defiant, nostalgic, self-doubting, sassy, rueful and flatlining in the same divorce-court feedback loop. ... And one of the best things about “Star-Crossed” is its boldly weird but highly satisfying finale.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    No Pressure
    Building upon labyrinthine beds of sound and plump rhythms with lyrics that are both funny and frank, Logic is in his best, kid-like Q-Tip mode.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Christmas Everywhere
    Crowell lets his country roots show, but Americana fans and the twang-avoidant alike will appreciate the deeply breathy, bluesy sax solo in “When the Fat Guy Tries the Chimney on for Size” and the album’s healthy dose of reasonably rocking tunes. He’s made the rare album that has something for everybody this time of year.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Special
    It’s hard to imagine this isn’t immediately locked in as one of the leading album of the year candidates. On another day, maybe we’ll think that the lack of ballad showcases keeps this from being the career peak-to-date it feels like in the moment. Whether in years to follow the record will hold up as Ms. Right may be anyone’s guess, but it is definitely Ms. Right Now.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Flower of Devotion
    “Flower of Devotion” is one of the most lively and inspired rock albums to come down the pike in recent memory — and hopefully will inspire a pack of like-minded young musicians, who’ve never heard of the bands mentioned above, to follow in its wake.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ordinary Man
    With a really good — even at times great — album, Ozzy Osbourne shows off, at the very least, that he’ll never be ordinary.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 87 Critic Score
    Holy Fvck
    “Holy Fvck” is a good surprise and an even better record — maybe the best we’ve heard from Lovato to date.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Camila
    “Never Be the Same” proves that Cabello doesn’t need a mammoth voice. The love-is-a-drug lyric she’s singing is dumb, but she sells it so joyfully that you don’t even notice, and its wonderfully breathy, high-register hook ensures “Havana” won’t be her last solo hit.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Alicia
    The spaciousness allows Keys to let her nuanced, versatile voice do the talking like never before. All this makes Keys’ seventh studio album her best, and finds her easing up on the obvious hooks and pushing the limits of her voice and imagination.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    There's a Riot Going On
    There’s a Riot Going On probably won’t jump-start any riots and reveals its beauty gradually, but it’s a welcome addition to the group’s vast oeuvre that finds them evolving into yet another new shape.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    A Legendary Christmas
    Over the course of 14 upbeat and brassy odes to home and hearth, the relentlessly eager-to-please Legendary Christmas starts to feel almost oppressively cheerful. Major props, anyway, for the most unusual pick here: Marvin Gaye’s rarely covered “Purple Snowflakes.”
    • 77 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    Love the Holidays
    It starts off with a healthy nine originals, then tags six holiday standards onto the end as bonus tracks, more or less. They have a way with a hook, so even if the lyrics of the new songs occasionally fall back a bit more on yuletide bromides than the edgier songwriting you’d expect, you assuredly won’t find a better collection of rock sing-alongs this year.
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    A La Sala
    There’s no shortage of the unmistakable sound that brought the group so many fans in the first place. All three are excellent musicians, but Spear is a marvel, playing with a fluid style that incorporates multiple influences, from rock to African to blues to funk to Duane Eddy twang, with an innate sense of melody that carries the entire band. Yet he never overplays.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    You're the One
    The common thread is that she sounds like she’s having fun, skipping through these eras and genres. It’s all still fit for a pledge drive, but Giddens is pledging her fealty to the spirit that made all these forms of music a kick in the pants in their heyday.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Hyperspace
    A joyfully introspective, minimalistic but sophisticated, contagiously melodic, straight-ahead, analog synth-pop record with a fleeting few of old school Beck’s signature touches — a few raps here, some dobro and harmonica there. ... Gorgeous.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Suga [EP]
    On “Suga,” Megan Thee Stallion is mixing the cold hard steel of hip-hop power, with the teasing romanticism of mod R&B — and it looks great on her.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    New Blue Sun
    “New Blue Sun” is ecstatic and dreamy, even when, at the times, its sounds are ferocious and fearful. If André 3000 wasn’t going to release a chattering, rap-filled hip-hop album this time out, “New Blue Sun” may count as that theoretical project’s intriguing instrumental equal.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Imploding the Mirage
    The songs themselves are vintage Killers, often beginning quietly but driving inexorably to those yearning, multi-layered choruses that Flowers does so well, perfect for singing emotively with an impassioned fist over the chest. The album’s 10 songs breeze by at a steady and efficient clip, never outstaying their welcome.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 93 Critic Score
    Rare
    It’s hard to think of a more dramatic example of how far Gomez has come musically in nearly five years: “Rare” is one of the best pop albums to be released in recent memory, and — as it does for artists ranging from Robyn and Charli XCX to Max Martin’s more adventurous productions — it feels like that term does a discredit to this sophisticated, precisely written and expertly produced music.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Up on High
    There’s a fresh, dewey feel to the songs without retreating to the innocent austerity or freak-folk severity of Vetiver’s mid-‘00s emergence.
    • 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.”
    • 76 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    Downhill from Everywhere
    Some of Browne’s lyrical whole-earth concerns seem to be ladled on thickly and by rote, just as some of his instrumental rock-outs can on occasion feel faceless (weird, considering that Bill Frisell, co-guitarist Greg Leisz and CSNY bassist Bob Glaub are part of the album’s core band). Beyond the quick bland asides, Browne sounds invigorated as he hasn’t since the ’80s.
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