The Guardian's Scores

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For 5,511 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 Lives Outgrown
Lowest review score: 10 Unpredictable
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,970 out of 5511
  2. Mixed: 2,464 out of 5511
  3. Negative: 77 out of 5511
5511 music reviews
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    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Struggler
    What Comes Will Come, a skronking synth-pop-rap song, finds Owusu-Ansah sinking himself into production that strikes an interesting midpoint between goth-rock and shimmering synth-funk, one of the rare moments on the album that feels musically akin to the disorienting genre mashup of Smiling With No Teeth. These passages offer welcome electricity on an album that too often plays it safe and plays it vague – capitalising on an algorithm-breaking debut with more of the same.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons
    As character assassinations go, The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons is a riotously good time. It’s no major reinvention of the Hives’ electrified vocals, staccato guitar, and relentless pace, but it finds the band heavier, louder and faster than ever.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sundial
    You sense some listeners will find Sundial too ethically complex and contrary. Hopefully many more will flock to Noname, who brings piercing intellect and joie de vivre to tough questions. A librarian, yes, but also a moon stalker.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Prestige
    The sonic influences are worn a little too plainly for Prestige to feel like a landmark release, but by borrowing from musical history with such care and respect, Girl Ray have made an album that is very difficult not to raise a smile – or a frosty Midori sour cocktail – to.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Utopia
    He's a canny grounding force, and has a sharp ear for bringing together seemingly disparate ingredients. Utopia could have used more of that sure hand.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Idol, Vol. 1 [Music From the HBO Original Series]
    The good news is you don’t need to subject yourself to The Idol to appreciate its soundtrack. Although most numbers riff on the show’s content, their musings on the ugly underbelly of celebrity and disturbingly dysfunctional relationships are ambiguous enough to be enjoyed on their own terms.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Joni Mitchell at Newport [Live]
    Her voice is slightly deeper than it was, with a rich timbre indefatigability earned through lived experience. George Gershwin’s Summertime offers a rueful backwards glance. The years melt away for The Circle Game. Both Sides Now has the poignancy of a 79-year-old singing words she wrote aged 23
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Feminine Divine
    Diehard Dexys fans doubtless would not expect anything less, but even if you don’t count yourself among their number, The Feminine Divine might leave you glad he chose to continue doing what he alone does: after all, genuinely unique figures are thin on the ground in pop these days.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Love Hallucination
    Love Hallucination isn’t cosplay but an affirmation of Lanza’s unique ear. Her tactile heavy bass, cirrus-wisp synths and spun-sugar falsetto have deepened: the low end is diamond-hard, her playful freestyle-inspired melodies and moods glimmer like the light refracted through the gem.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Barbie: The Album
    I’m not so daft as to believe that a Barbie soundtrack album should have made for groundbreaking or era-defining art – but on a level of pure enjoyment, listening to a concept album about Barbie does wear thin very quickly.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Ballad of Darren
    The tunes are uniformly gorgeous. No one expects career-best stuff from a reformation album, but the sighing melody of The Ballad is among the loveliest in Blur’s catalogue.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beautiful & Brutal Yard
    Drake’s presence might have broken Who Told You in territories hitherto resistant to J Hus’s charms, but the album has the ability to follow through.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Speak Now (Taylor's Version)
    Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) dilutes some of the original’s acid. One issue with Swift revisiting her older work is that her voice has changed with age. Now 33, she’s a much richer and more skilled singer than she was then, but their piercing, youthful twang was what made these songs kick harder in all their dressing-downs and rabid desires, emphasising the sense of a girl wading into adult waters.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Greater Wings
    Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell is perhaps the closest comparison in terms of musical and emotional tenor, but Byrne’s album is ultimately as singular as the woman singing it, and as unforgettable as a departed friend.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross
    My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross feels like a particularly powerful entry in her discography: surrounded by music that’s beautiful but relatively straightforward, that voice seems more extraordinary still.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Messy
    Among the hackneyed British soul tropes, the 24-year-old clearly has a distinct vision of off-kilter pop.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Inside the Old Year Dying
    Like the Dorset woods they describe, I Inside the Old Year Dying is eerily forbidding, but intoxicating, and easy to lose yourself in.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Beggar
    The Velvet Underground-worthy Los Angeles: City of Death is the closest this Swans incarnation comes to rock and unusually for a band of this vintage, they’re still springing surprises, such as the way Michael Is Done suddenly erupts into beatific rapture reminiscent of early Brian Eno.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Feed the Beast
    If only the music on her major label debut album was as interesting and innovative as its author is, or even as diverting as Unholy.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Work of Art
    Like all second albums that offer only minor adjustments to a debut, Work of Art leaves you wondering a little about what the future holds. But such thoughts are easy to dispel during the half-hour it plays for: you’re too busy enjoying yourself to worry.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    LaVette!
    LaVette is the true focus, leading the fiery JB’s-esque funk of Mess About, and declaring “champagne and a joint would do me just fine” on Plan B. She’s glorious company, and when she croons sadly “I keep on rolling, but the thrill is gone” on See Through Me, the electric charge of her voice makes a liar of her.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Jarak Qaribak
    Sitting somewhere between remixes and reimaginings, the songs on Jarak Qaribak illustrate the elasticity of this songbook, highlighting how its longing melodies can be reapplied into new voices, transmitting similar emotions through unusual settings.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Paranoïa, Angels, True Love
    Hypnotically melodic, clever, stylish, serious, fun, addictively unexpected and euphorically danceable, it’s the kind of pop they don’t make any more.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?
    Dixon’s fourth album tightens its lens: skipping by in 30 minutes, its songs possess a renewed urgency and velocity. But his writing is more literary and exploratory still. Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!? (named after three of Toni Morrison’s most celebrated works) provides an embarrassment of imagistic riches.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Age of Pleasure
    It’s an album about hedonistic abandon that occasionally makes hedonistic abandon sound like something challenging a therapist has tasked you to do before next week’s session. Then again, the album’s brevity means those moments pass quickly, to be supplanted by moments when Monáe sounds as light and warm as the music behind her.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Expired Candy
    This is a strong second showing from a group that’s relaxing into itself while not compromising its razor-sharp worldview.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Council Skies
    Despite a handful of the elder Gallagher’s irresistible everyman anthems, much of Council Skies is unambitious and generic to the point of tedium.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    But Here We Are
    The tunes are noticeably more polished, the dynamic shifts punchier: it’s as if the desire to express something about Hawkins, or to make an album that stands as a worthy memorial has given them a fresh sense of purpose and momentum.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everyone's Crushed
    It has taken Water From Your Eyes six years to reach a point where their music feels genuinely original, a journey that feels worth it. There’s a lesson in there.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Brandy Clark
    There are gorgeous songs here about Clark’s Pacific north-west home and her family – but it often feels as if she has mistaken seriousness for honesty. Aside from a few lovely ballads, such as the sparse Buried and plaintive maybe-breakup song Come Back to Me, most of these songs feel anonymous.
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