The Telegraph (UK)'s Scores
- Music
For 1,234 reviews, this publication has graded:
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63% higher than the average critic
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4% same as the average critic
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33% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4 points higher than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 77
Highest review score: | All Born Screaming | |
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Lowest review score: | Killer Sounds |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 880 out of 1234
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Mixed: 352 out of 1234
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Negative: 2 out of 1234
1234
music
reviews
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- Critic Score
The new version certainly sounds fuller, brighter and deeper, but unless you are a committed audiophile with studio standard hi-fi, most listeners could achieve a similar experience by turning up the volume, or perhaps investing in a pair of decent headphones. All interest therefore lies in extra tracks, which are not so much outtakes as works in progress – as the Beatles settled on arrangements, they would continually build on their chosen version. ... The truth is that the Beatles released everything they considered worthy whilst they were together, leaving nothing of outstanding quality in the vault.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Oct 28, 2022
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[Giles] Martin and co-engineer Sam Okell have done a loving job, getting away from some of the oddities of the familiar stereo mix done by Abbey Road engineers. ... It is like seeing a favourite movie again in high definition. It doesn't replace the original, it enhances it.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Jun 2, 2017
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Giles Martin (son of George) has created an immaculate remix but all it really does is separate and boost sounds so that they can punch their weight alongside modern recordings on digital streaming platforms. It sounds good, but then it always did. ... What this painstakingly assembled 50th anniversary release demonstrates is that you can’t improve on perfection.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Sep 27, 2019
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The Cutting Edge allows fans to bear witness to perhaps the most astonishing explosion of language and sound in rock history, a new approach to song being forged before our very ears.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Nov 11, 2015
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Apple’s lyric writing is of the highest standard, even as it moves into the abstractions of her depression incantation Heavy Balloon (“I spread like strawberries/ I climb like peas and beans/ I’ve been sucking it in so long/ That I’m busting at the seams”). Her melodiousness holds together these strangely structured songs, whilst the boldness of her unusual arrangements forces you to adjust your ears and delve deeper into what she is trying to convey. ... This is an album that conveys one woman’s rage, vulnerability, confusion and wisdom in ways that we haven’t quite heard before.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Apr 16, 2020
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The content is lovingly packaged in a box neatly dressed-up as one of those giant beat boxes hipsters used to lug around before the advent of the Sony Walkman and the digital revolution that followed.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Sep 10, 2013
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[A] bravura masterpiece. There is no sugar rush of digital synthetic beats and radio-friendly hooks. This is a dense, intricate mesh of free-flowing jazz, deep Seventies funk and cut-up hip hop with a verbose, hyper-articulate rapper switching up styles and tempos to address contemporary racial politics in a poetic narrative built around a long dark night of the soul.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Apr 6, 2015
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A long, sad, brooding mediation on grief, the 17th album from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds is simultaneously their loveliest and most terrible.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Oct 4, 2019
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Amaarae – real name Ama Serwah Genfi – has crafted and compiled 14 captivating and refreshing tunes, touching on topics from sensuality to spirituality.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Jun 12, 2023
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A brilliant tribute album, showcasing properly Lead Belly's cultural legacy.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Jun 16, 2015
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From DNA’s punchy electro mantra about identity to LOVE’s tender sing-song reggae pop meditation on fickle emotions, DAMN is an album of surface sheen and hidden depths, where words and music operate in beautiful synchronicity, a constantly unfolding dance that lends each new approach a sense of investigation and revelation. It is dazzling.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Apr 14, 2017
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At its heart, this is a serious work, with an underlying somberness. ... Almost 60 years since we first heard from him, the old protest singer is still composing extraordinary anthems for our changing times.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Jun 16, 2020
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If you were enchanted by Skeleton Tree’s other-worldly sadness, Lovely Creatures offers an extraordinary illustration of Cave’s restless creativity. It leaves you relishing the possibility that the best is still to come.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted May 11, 2017
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- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Sep 9, 2016
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- Critic Score
It's certainly good to have West's unique talent back in music, but this ambitious behemoth may be easier to admire than to listen to.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Jan 27, 2011
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The pure beauty and emotion of Rosalia’s vocals and the sensational grooviness of her rhythms all speak for themselves, offering a fantastically fresh take on Latin flavours and modern urban pop.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Mar 18, 2022
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She has drawn comparison with Kate Bush and Bjork, not because she sounds like them, but because she has a similar blend of extraordinary vocal ability, florid imagination, and genre-bending boldness. Desire is the album where it all comes together for this late blooming art-pop siren.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Feb 17, 2023
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This isn't mere cleverness, it's instinctive musicality, buoyed up by three other fine players.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Jun 8, 2011
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The five and a half hours of unreleased demos/live recordings do give a warmly inclusive insider's feel but there's nothing I'd listen to more than a couple of times.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Jul 27, 2012
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In lesser hands, an album that at times sounds like R2D2 breakdancing in an industrial spin-dryer might make for trying company. Yet, for all their Day-Glo stridency, Nova Twins not only know how to write songs, but how to arrange them too.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Jun 24, 2022
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- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Apr 29, 2016
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- Critic Score
The Gouster [is] raised from the archives as the centre piece of a handsome new 12-CD box set, Who Can I Be Now? (1974-76). ... Finally given its moment in the light, The Gouster is unlikely to become a belated part of the canon, but it is nevertheless a welcome testament to the real heart beating at the centre of Bowie’s pop genius.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Sep 26, 2016
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The sound of the album is deliberately vibrant and varied.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Sep 6, 2011
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There’s a directness, freshness and intimacy to these performances that puts the late, great Beatle George right in your ear, untarnished by time. Not all things must pass, it seems.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Aug 9, 2021
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Leonard Cohen’s 14th studio album is a bleak masterpiece for hard times from pop’s longest-serving poet.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Oct 18, 2016
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Channel Orange is as dazzling as it is baffling, rarely staying still long enough to get a grip on.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Jul 18, 2012
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The movement back and forth between the chiselled simplicity of the core Suite itself and the freedom of the improvisations that spin out from them creates a sense of epic scale. It’s a more than worthy addition to the Coltrane recorded legacy.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Oct 20, 2021
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On this album he is in especially playful and inventive form, perhaps because at a high school gig with no critics around he could afford to take risks. The numbers are nearly all those Monk standards familiar from numerous well-known recordings and endlessly replayed by later pianists, but they are reimagined in ways that make them seem utterly fresh.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Oct 1, 2020
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Divine Symmetry shows that this metamorphosis didn’t happen without a good deal of huffing and puffing. Therein lies its intrigue, as the groundwork is revealed. ... It’s a fascinating journey.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Nov 28, 2022
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Carnage is infused with profound and almost inescapable grief. But as this particularly audacious singer-songwriter grapples with isolation, loneliness, loss and the hard emotional graft of endurance, all set against a backdrop of apocalyptic threat, the personal becomes universal. Carnage may just be the greatest lockdown album yet.- The Telegraph (UK)
- Posted Feb 25, 2021
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