New Musical Express (NME)'s Scores

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For 6,298 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 1.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Lowest review score: 0 Maroon
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4,465 out of 6298
  2. Mixed: 1,680 out of 6298
  3. Negative: 153 out of 6298
6298 music reviews
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    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Let's Get Ready
    Let's Get Ready', Mystikal's fourth LP and his first Billboard chart-topper, is one wholesale fighting muthaf**ker, a full theatre of opportunities to offer the world outside. Women? Mystikal will take you down for one. Or, preferably, two. Reputation? Come see about him. Neighbourhood? You don't wanna go there... Mystikal is the fightingest bastard and his grin's never wider than when he's putting the hurt on.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Sing When You're Winning
    Nearly everything Robbie Williams writes is some kind of confessional and here it doesn't quite come off. There just isn't the sufficient depth of him in it to make it work.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Hour of Bewilderbeast
    Yet in his desire to create a self-consciously classic album, BDB has erred on the side of generosity. At 63 minutes, 'The Hour Of Bewilderbeast' is true to its title: there's simply too much to sustain one's unswerving attention.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rule 3:36
    While the album is full of quality tunes that sound nice in isolation, as a complete package, it lacks the versatility to take it to another level.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Kid A
    For all its feats of brinkmanship, the patently magnificent construct called 'Kid A' betrays a band playing one-handed just to prove they can, scared to commit itself emotionally.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Warning
    The Day's trademark bubblegum punk rock guitars have all been turned down in favour of a less electric, more organic sound. Where once they rocked out, now they polka on the awful Levellers-like 'Fashion Victim' - a song about Gianni Versace. Please.... 'Warning' is the sound of a band losing its way.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Magnificent Tree
    They've already featured on a multitude of soundtracks including Stealing Beauty, Shades and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Not to mention cinema ads for champagne and episodes of La Femme Nikita and er, Baywatch. That's pretty much all bases covered, then.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Friends of Rachel Worth
    ...a spontaneity here that replaces the formality of tradition with something more vital. Like a snapshot's moment captured, the gap between composition and recording seems to have been reduced to nothing, and it's here that the group hit their mark.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Music
    Vocodered, stretched, distorted, warped, deliberately upstaged by beats so showy they belong in a strip joint - quite simply, she's almost managed to make herself disappear. That bluntly explicit title isn't just pointless irony. This record is about the music, not Madonna; about the sounds, not the image.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    SelmaSongs: Music from the Motion Picture Dancer in the Dark
    She may not have written the words, but Björk's emotional investment in songs like 'I've Seen It All' (really sad) and 'Scatterheart' (really really sad) is undeniable; making this album - 'in character' as poor, doomed Selma - totally seductive as A Björk Record.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Maroon
    OK, here's some track titles - 'Too Little Too Late', 'Never Do Anything', 'Pinch Me' - and, guess what, THEY ALL FUCKING SUCK! Not just Weller, Ashcroft or Belle & Sebastian sucky but Mike & The Mechanics, Tin Machine and, yes, Hootie And The Blowfish sucky.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    OST
    It tries to capture the essence of 1973 without having any big hairy old prog hits on it. Which is a bit like trying to capture the essence of the Star Wars films by cutting out all the bits in space.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Twisted Tenderness
    Electronic, if not exactly rejuvenated, are rewired, recharged and, really quite good again.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Everything, Everything
    And it makes the right choices, that much is indisputable; almost everything here is a monumental Underworld moment.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Relationship Of Command
    ATDI's latest album has its amps cranked to the hilt from start to finish. Far from being another in a long line of sanitised American punk rock albums, 'Relationship Of Command' sounds REAL.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Secret South
    The objective was to make a fucking brilliant album where the mood is king, the delivery is queen and studied modern coolness is a jester that's one misplaced quip away from being the lion's breakfast. And, of course, they've succeeded.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Excuses for Travelers
    The difference this time is small but significant, in the overall high quality threshold - from the silken slo-mo waltz of 'In Love With A View' to the listless Dylan-lite stumble of 'She Broke You So Softly', there's not a bum note here. Which is not necessarily a recommendation. Because if you stand too close to these tunes they can seem suspiciously perfect, like a newly painted Wild West movie set.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Early Days
    Basically, it's the curse of Jewel: Yank bird with acoustic guitar, homespun philosophy and twee poeticism, where the songs ramble on and on to deliver some platitudinal twaddle...
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Ecleftic 2 Sides II a Book
    A mammoth indulgence, an 80-minute justification of his own ill-defined status.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Menace
    Without the gritty substance of the first album, it has all the depth of a packet of peanuts.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    G.O.A.T. Featuring James T. Smith: The Greatest of All Time
    Proving he's no slouch when it comes to keeping up with musical trends, he's brought in producers like DJ Scratch and one-time junglist Adam F to make sure his beats match up to his evergreen vocal skills. And it works... Amazingly, this is his ninth album, yet he still sounds fresh.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Balls
    Sadly, as 'Balls' proves, age has inexplicably withered Sparks' bow-legged muse; where once was genre-bending acid eclecticism and inspired wit, Sparks now seem content to dole out tired, tinny electro-pop and unfunny puns.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Disappeared
    What 'Disappeared', in all its stealthy innovation and breathless compendium of sounds, amounts to, is a kind of avant-garde musique concrète - difficult noises shrouded in a cloak of accessibility.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Monaco
    A truly lovely thing to behold; a pretence-free, summery shimmy through pop's enchanted garden, with tear-tugging Bacharachy bits and choruses of angels and everything.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Golden D
    it paints crudely and schematically a portrait of the artist as messed-up, disillusioned, self-indulgent twerp with an unhealthy appreciation of the mid-'80s US guitar underground, whose demo-quality doodlings (Graham plays, sings, produces and paints everything. And all to a rather average standard) should probably have never seen the light of day.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Art Official Intelligence (Mosaic Thump)
    Each track is a treat - a sensible, lo-cholesterol treat, maybe, but still packed with oddly addictive rhymes and beats.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Greatest Hits: The Evidence
    If you really want a definitive collection of Ice-T's work, go and buy his albums 'Power' (1988) and 'OG - Original Gangster' (1991). This is not to criticise this greatest hits package, which, technically, does a decent job of presenting an overview of his illustrious career. However, when you have an artist like Ice, with such an impressive body of work, you have to come with more than 17 tracks.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Behind The Sun
    Anodyne dance music for people who don't go to clubs, comedown music for people who don't do drugs.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Fragments of Freedom
    With their third album, bijou trippy-hippy souljazzfunksters Morcheeba have let it all hang out - and so all those half-formulated ideas they hadn't the guts to record earlier are here. It's
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia
    After a while, the whirling atmospherics give way to the Dandys' dorkier tendencies: the jaunty chuggers, Taylor's dissolute mannerisms, the quirky little twists and tricks.
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