The New York Times' Scores

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For 2,073 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 41% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 Live in Europe 1967: Best of the Bootleg, Vol. 1
Lowest review score: 0 Shatner Claus: The Christmas Album
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,595 out of 2073
  2. Mixed: 443 out of 2073
  3. Negative: 35 out of 2073
2073 music reviews
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    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Magdalene
    Despite the album title, religion barely figures on “Magdalene.” FKA twigs seeks a person to believe in, not a creed. In these songs, that would be vocation enough, a chance to find transcendence by giving everything. It’s the faith of so many pop songs: the glory of love.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wildcard
    “Wildcard” isn’t as intimate as her 2016 double album about her divorce, “The Weight of These Wings,” or as musically adventurous as its predecessor, “Platinum.” What it does have is some sharp songwriting.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jesus Is King
    A more engaged and vivid album than “Ye,” from last year, though nowhere as robust as “The Life of Pablo” from 2016, it is bare-bones and curiously effective, emotionally forceful and structurally scant.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cheap Queen
    While King Princess writes about 21st-century romance — one new track is “Watching My Phone” — the music places her songs on a longer timeline, full of ghosts from previous pop eras.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Old LP
    The music is denser and more intricate, conjuring symphonic grandeur alongside overdriven noise. The jokes are gone; the stakes feel higher. But the band’s underlying moxie hasn’t changed.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ghosteen
    “Ghosteen” is an eerie, somber monolith, a set of 11 songs that stretches over an hour and is grouped on two CDs.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Blue World
    There’s something alluring about this odd little gift of a session, which for Coltrane must have landed somewhere between “just a gig” and “just a favor.”
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hollywood's Bleeding
    Even when he is stretching the boundaries of his sound, as he does in several places on “Hollywood’s Bleeding,” the results feel the opposite of experimental. When you’re an omnivore taking a mortar and pestle to six decades of pop music history and turning it into a smooth slurry, it’s nigh impossible to shock. ... Whatever someone might be hoping to find is in there somewhere. Post Malone is emotional tofu, a skill, not an accident. ... His ambiguity is of an elevated, refined sort.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I, I
    Each song on “i,i” is an intricate, labyrinthine, multilayered construction. But the marvel of Bon Iver is how fragile and conditional each song seems; not monumental but precarious and permeable, susceptible to chance or whim or fate. All the planning creates music that feels as impermanent, and illuminating, as a sunbeam.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lover
    “Lover,” her reassuringly strong seventh album, is a palate cleanse, a recalibration and a reaffirmation of old strengths. It’s a transitional album designed to close one particularly bruised chapter and suggest ways to move forward — or in some cases, to return to how things once were.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Search
    He’s an objectively strong rapper who makes work with a moral valence — just like Cordae, just like Chance, just like Lamar or Logic or J. Cole. Where NF falls short is that he mostly works in one gear.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Center Won't Hold
    Too many of the new songs sound diligent and derivative, as if Sleater-Kinney were working through a pop apprenticeship. It’s good to know that the group doesn’t want to repeat itself, that the band is also out to master 21st-century digital tools. But on “The Center Won’t Hold,” Sleater-Kinney hasn’t found its version 2.0.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Big Day
    It feels no more fleshed out than “Coloring Book,” from 2016 (which was nominated for a best rap album Grammy), and is less sonically consistent than “Acid Rap,” from 2013. And it’s less impressive than either of them. At 22 tracks, it’s overlong and scattered.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Lion King: The Gift
    Beyoncé joins their ranks [Paul Simon, David Byrne, Peter Gabriel, Carlos Santana] soulfully and attentively, seeking full-fledged fusions. She mixes (apparently) personal thoughts and archetypal ones; she savors musical hybrids and rhythmic challenges; and she digs in to every line she sings. ... Unlike the movie that occasioned it, “The Lion King: The Gift” is no remake or reiteration, no faraway fable. It tells a story of its own.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    No. 6 Collaborations Project
    No one is quite as adept amid a range of styles as Sheeran. ... But right near the top of this album, he stretches too thin. On “South of the Border,” which features Camila Cabello and Cardi B, Sheeran dips into a little Spanish, as has become de rigueur, and leans into the tired trope that going “south of the border” is where real freedom reigns. ... But even though this record presents countless opportunities for Sheeran to fumble, there is something to be said for his choice to release it at all.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Clarity
    The outstanding “Clarity” is her first full-length album, full of songs that are stitched so tightly and varnished so brightly that they cease to be mere pastiche and transcend into something utterly new.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stonechild
    Hoop has made her quietest, most contemplative studio album.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    ANIMA
    The songs teeter on a psychological divide between intellectually informed glumness and the physical pleasures of rhythm.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    7 [EP]
    It’s ... not good. A haze of half-gestures and amateur missteps. A deflated balloon. The songs end quickly, as if embarrassed. Apart from the nonsensical yet warm electro-trap song “Panini,” none of the new tracks display even a stray ember of creative curiosity.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Western Stars
    On Western Stars, a few songs — “Tucson Train,” “Sundown,” “Stones” — sound like the E Street Band could be swapped in for the orchestra. But Springsteen strives to meet his chosen idiom more than halfway. He wrote songs that thrive on the swells and undulations of orchestral drama, and he sings with long-breathed phrases that aren’t exactly crooning — he’s not built for that — but that set out to sustain more than they exhort.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    ARIZONA BABY
    Some songs here are made with the pop songwriter-producer Jack Antonoff, but while they’re pensive and expand Abstract’s range, they don’t always suit his natural density, making the album less centered than his excellent 2016 release “American Boyfriend: A Suburban Love Story.”
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    IGOR
    Though the mood of Igor is generally consistent, its songs are irregularly shaped, united by Tyler’s by-now signature keyboards, which are warm but a little sweet, and dance gingerly. As Tyler has gotten older--he’s 28 now--he’s become more willing to engage with emotions.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings [Box Set]
    Both the boxed set and the film sprawl proudly and unpredictably, just as the Revue itself did. And both projects traffic in revelation and put-on, sometimes simultaneously. ... Dylan completists will likely cherish newly unveiled rehearsal tapes . ... For those willing to dig in, the new box also makes clear how consistently impassioned Dylan’s Rolling Thunder performances were.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Omoiyari
    The music reveled in elaborately understated analog production, full of acoustic intricacies and subtle layerings of voices and instruments, hand played yet exquisitely polished.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fever
    Megan Thee Stallion’s sex raps (“Pimpin,” “Sex Talk” and many more) are raw, luridly detailed and completely unfazed. On Fever, there are only two guests, both men: Juicy J, a pioneer of hip-hop filth, and the up-and-comer DaBaby. Both provide verses that, had they appeared on their own albums, might have seemed unduly crass or cringey. But here, the ridiculous brags seem almost charming--they’re just trying to keep up.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    LEGACY! LEGACY!
    Legacy! Legacy! is a fully realized follow-up, sure-footed in its blend of what was, what is and what might be.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Father of the Bride
    The tracks are playfully, restlessly inventive.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Social Cues
    But even as the lyrics detail troubled thoughts, the music staves off self-pity with distorted tones, obstinate drumbeats and unhistrionic vocals.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Absolute Zero
    One more daring, rewarding turn in his catalog: 10 knotty, thoughtful yet rambunctious songs that juggle scientific concepts, history and human relationships.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Free Spirit
    On the new album, Khalid embraces a fuller sound that often harks back to the 1980s and 1990s, with pillowy synthesizers, tickling guitars and multiple layers of his own vocal harmonies.
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