Entertainment Weekly's Scores

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For 3,519 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 81% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 18% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 78
Highest review score: 100 The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do
Lowest review score: 0 Playing With Fire
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,085 out of 3519
  2. Mixed: 407 out of 3519
  3. Negative: 27 out of 3519
3519 music reviews
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    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    folklore
    Swift explodes the expectations of anyone preparing to call her music "diaristic," writing songs from different perspectives while putting her already-detailed work under a microscope. ... A content smile of an album on which one of the world's biggest pop stars, charts be damned, forges her own path and dares listeners to come along for the ride.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Roy Ayers JID002
    The album feels too short to be a definitive statement. [Jul 2020, p.75]
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Lianne La Havas
    Fans may be disappointed by La Havas' reserved lyricism here, but the femme gem "Sour Flower" and a take on Radiohead's "Weird Fishes" should be enough to compensate. [Jul 2020, p.75]
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Gaslighter
    By blending early-21st-century pop savvy with the storytelling that made country music so crucial to the American canon, Gaslighter is all fire and nerve, performed by three women whose musical bona fides are rivaled only by their rock-solid backbones.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon
    With stakes this high and a legacy to consider, the end result may or may not bear much of a resemblance to what Pop Smoke had in mind. Nonetheless, he sounds alive here, a motivated and vibrant hip-hop talent actively pushing towards that next level.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Rough and Rowdy Ways
    Rough and Rowdy Ways is a clear reflection of America’s jagged landscape — one of romance and mystery, creativity and fortune, protestations and politicking, conquests and colonialism. It makes for an exquisite, haunting listen.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Album
    The result is less experimental but feels more illuminating, erring on the side of verbosity in contrast to the concision of its predecessor. By stretching out various emotional modes, she suggests the multitude of ways to show up in the world as a woman — and as a wife and a mother.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Ungodly Hour
    It's undeniably pretty: stacked with the kind of clean harmonies and gently syncopated R&B that doesn't so much demand ear space as sidle up to it, unassumingly.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Chromatica
    An audacious, glitter-dusted promise of escape from the sad, the bad, and the ordinary, delivered at 120 BPMs.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Chapter 1: Snake Oil
    Diplo's second album might be a cheeky bid to stake out a spot in Nashville, but the end result is largely a bummer, a collection of dourly self-conscious "chill" accessorized with the kind of cheap cowboy hat that gets left behind on the way to the festival parking lot.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Notes on a Conditional Form
    A delightfully overstuffed collection that features some of their best and most immediately pleasing work to date.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    High Off Life
    While the commercial prospects for High Off Life remain high, Future seems, at least creatively, in a state of arrested development here. ... Still, when High Off Life succeeds, it does so extraordinarily.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    græ
    græ finds him trying to be, well, everything, and through a convergence of folk, jazz, classical, and art-rock, along with his probing lyricism, Sumney has managed to produce a sonic marvel.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Good Souls Better Angels
    Most fully realized work in more than 20 years. [May 2020, p.101]
    • 62 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Blame It on Baby
    For the most part, Blame it on Baby is classic DaBaby. Minimal bass stabs and toybox plinks and whirrs accent joyful sh–t talking. Songs generally clock in under three minutes. Songs generally clock in under three minutes. He sounds like he’s having a lot of fun, which is all the album needs to be. But as the industry dictates, doing one thing well enough to get popular is not enough to stay popular, so there are also songs on here that paint him as lovelorn and heartbroken. It’s not a great fit.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Fetch the Bolt Cutters
    Fetch, which blossoms more and more with each listen, feels giddy too; high on romance and rhythm and the surreal gift of being alive.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The New Abnormal
    Abnormal offers something even better, possibly, than reckless youth: rock stars finally old enough to truly miss those good old days — and wise enough now, too, to give us the soundtrack these strange new times deserve.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Southside
    Southside is, for most of its 12 songs, a showcase for Hunt's affable charm and playlist-era approach to making music.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Future Nostalgia
    Lipa quickly established herself as one of pop's most compelling presences during her quick rise, and Future Nostalgia shows that she's going to be sticking around its upper echelons for a while.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Gigaton
    It's a sturdy rock album from five guys who know what they're doing, took time till they had something to say, are interpolating new influences, and sound stoked to be back together in a room. Die-hard fans will be pleased, and more casual fans will be pleasantly surprised.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    After Hours
    Perhaps his biggest sonic leap yet as well as his strongest and most consistent work to date. There's a cohesion to these 14 tracks that was absent from Tesfaye's last several releases, a real sense that he's closer than ever to striking the perfect balance between the darkly shaded aesthetic he broke out with and the naked pop ambitions of his more recent material.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    A Written Testimony
    A Written Testimony is an accomplished album with decent rewind factor, but it feels somewhat hampered by the seismic impact of the rapper's work a decade ago. That it doesn’t have forceful songs like “Exhibit C,” “Dear Moleskine,” or “The Ghost of Christopher Wallace” could draw naysayers, even if it picks up where Jay Elec left off. It exists nonetheless, and that’s a righteous step forward.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Heavy Light
    A rush of indelible non sequiturs - vibraphone solos, ripsaws - gives it all an unexpectedly thrilling buzz. [Mar 2020, p.99]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Mar 2, 2020
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Man Alive!
    There's something enveloping about his dense, churning compositions, like falling into a sonic cement mixer. [Mar 2020, p.99]
    • Entertainment Weekly
      • Posted Feb 26, 2020
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Nightfall
    Nightfall finds Little Big Town in prime form, using harmonizing and honesty to get themselves through the high times and the low moments.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Father of All…
    A derivative party foul, a spirited genre game that plays like a copy of a copy. [Feb 2020, p.104]
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Music To Be Murdered By
    As a whole, Music to Be Murdered By is as hit-and-miss as anything Eminem has released this side of the millennium. But remove the skits, the relationship songs, the family songs, the morose gun control song, and the quirky Ed Sheeran club goof and you still have 36 solid minutes of the daffy, one-of-a-kind rap genius that keeps captivating true-school heads and longtime fans. Or, if you’d like, keep it all and you still have the most solid work he’s done in a few years.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Manic
    Over 16 tracks, Manic is a chaotic amalgamation of self-analysis, rage, depression, ecstasy, and growth that sees its creator managing the messiness of fame while trying to stay true to herself. We’re just along for the ride.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Rare
    A varsity-squad production team, including various Max Martin-affiliated Swedes and the ace songwriting duo of Justin Tranter and Julia Michaels, bring their considerable contributions — though their job, of course, is to make Gomez sound like nothing less than her own woman: a girl interrupted but now returned, in Rare form.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Everyday Life
    While Everyday Life is bursting with thoughts on modern life, it also has the big-tent pop moments that made Coldplay one of the 21st century’s most reliable arena acts. ... Catchy, curveball-filled record.
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