The Guardian's Scores

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For 5,509 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 49% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To
Lowest review score: 10 Unpredictable
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,968 out of 5509
  2. Mixed: 2,464 out of 5509
  3. Negative: 77 out of 5509
5509 music reviews
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    • 52 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Latest Record Project, Vol. 1
    Tinfoil millinery is interspersed with a variety of more predictable and even more enervating rants.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    R.Y.C.
    This is one of the most profoundly, wondrously mediocre albums of our time, which is to say that it’s not even entertainingly bad.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    LP1
    LP1 is a terrible pop album, but very effective contraception.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    California Son
    He wheezes through Gary Puckett and the Union Gap’s Lady Willpower like an exhumed Tom Jones, and hearing him preening on Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow--given an arduously heavy makeover by his band--feels like a violation of Joni Mitchell’s mythically light original.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Happy Xmas
    Clapton sounds barely recognisable on these ghosts of Christmas songs past. His diminished voice heaves out Away in a Manger as if between sobs. On a collection profoundly lacking in seasonal trimmings, he occasionally buries some cursory sleigh bells deep in the mix.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Expectations
    It’s baffling trying to work out why her vocals are often lagged in Auto-Tune: she sounds like she’s drowning on Self Control and malfunctioning on the horrid Mine. The songwriting--about bad girls and good boys in miserable, moneyed relationships--is precisely as deep as you’d expect.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    MEMORIES DON'T DIE
    Astonishingly hackneyed, aggressively chameleonic LP.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Dumb Blood
    For every Lemonade you’re likely to get 10 sixth-form common-room jam bands wailing about “TONY B-LIAR”. Dumb Blood, the debut album from London outfit Vant, unquestionably falls into the latter camp.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Cloud Nine
    The lyrics are as earnest and emotionally inarticulate as a 19-year-old on Tinder. Well, this is pop, where cliche can be transcendent, but these joyless songs are chemically castrated of any passion or sexuality.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Kylie Christmas
    Even listened to while off your knockers on sherry, Kylie Christmas is a confusing package: the first three songs are orchestral, big-band numbers delivered with all the joie de vivre of a Sainsbury’s advert. Then it gives up entirely on that genre, and fires off random collaboration ideas that border on Monkey Tennis territory.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    First Kiss
    I don’t know if those [other Kid rock] records feature as many torturous lyrical cliches as this one (whisky, Jesus, Johnny Cash and beers with the old man all feature, and that’s just the track titles), or are sung with such constipated insincerity.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Forget the World
    The best efforts are Dynamite, featuring Snoop Dogg, with its low-slung Cali feel, and Three Strikes, which bangs--and features the vocals of Martine McCutcheon's husband, Jack McManus ("one, two, three, get the fuck up"). The worst is everything else.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Fly Rasta
    The only risk Marley takes is on You're My Yoko, where he attempts to woo a lucky lady by likening her to the avant-garde artist, while casting himself as John Lennon. Julian Lennon would have been nearer the mark.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Body Faucet
    It's not so much that the songs lack shape, it's that this suggests Reptar lack conviction – every song borrows from something else, something vaguely similar but different enough to make this an incoherent mess, albeit one with oddball pretensions.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Take Care
    Former child actor Aubrey Graham's much-vaunted sensitivity and introspection is more hollow than ever on his second album.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Sorry for Party Rocking
    Stretched out over an hour, their solitary idea wears unbearably thin: pretty quickly, your reaction is less LMFAO than WTF? and, ultimately, FFS.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Some Kind of Trouble
    Shallow, soulless and strangely cynical, Some Kind of Trouble is a thoroughly depressing listen.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    United Nations of Sound
    Too much of United Nations of Sound feels like a vanity project gone horribly awry.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin
    Gershwin and Wilson are among the 20th century's greatest writers of popular music; no one wishing to learn more about either should start here.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    If On A Winter's Night...
    Using top folk musicians means everything is expertly crafted, but Sting's Christmas pudding is over-egged.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The High End Of Low
    The Marilyn Manson blueprint holds fast, and all the familiar elements are here. The difference is that even Manson sounds unconvinced by his "antichrist superstar" persona; maybe because his target demographic have grown up and moved on.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Better Than Heavy
    Lazy attempts at grime and rapcore are consigned to the doghouse courtesy of some well-meant but terrible political raps.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Which Bitch?
    Some half-decent anthems and a sweet little love song are shifted further towards the bin by Kyle Falconer's singing, which sounds as though he has forgotten to put his teeth in. By the end of it, you may need a long bath.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Electric Arguments
    Their website trumpets the "pure musical possibilities" of Electric Arguments, but this is heavily laboured hackwork.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Dark Horse
    The hilarious, parodic single 'Rockstar' excepted, Nickelback's music reaffirms every sex-and-stupidity cliche hard rock can offer.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    That Lucky Old Sun
    Every single note feels forced, in hock to a sound and a set of attitudes that date from a time before many of us were born.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    This Is A Fix
    Elsewhere, the Welsh four-piece are merely witless. Utterly awful.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Earth To The Dandy Warhols
    To the rest of the western world, they are the arrogant stars of rock documentaries and Vodafone adverts, and their achingly dull eighth album does little to alter that assessment.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Emergency
    As Emergency proves, what they do is entirely generic, but it's hard to argue with its melodic efficacy.
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