New Musical Express (NME)'s Scores

  • Music
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:
6298 music reviews
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cathartic in its honesty, There Will Be No Intermission is not dressed up in the same theatrics as her past work, but loaded with the drama of real life. Her fans have allowed us this record, and she’s given the world all of herself in return.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Juice WRLD is far less indulgent than XXX, not getting lost in the idea that he’s a messianic creative. This will be the moment that solidifies his status as one of rap’s most exciting new stars.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    In exploring himself on Psychodrama, Dave has produced a masterpiece. This 20-year-old has lost in some ways and won in others, and asks us to listen as he tries to find some answers. The lessons you learn with Dave are sure to live long in the memory.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    At times the album that little bit too airy. As skilful as Ashworth is in crafting delicately spun melody--the jangling harmonies of ‘Morning Comes’, or the gentle lull of ‘At Hollywood’--her full force and potential truly reveals itself when the shadows burst out and take over, dragging her shoegazey soundscapes to the edge of the void.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Throughout the record, she bravely calls out incredibly important issues such as toxic masculinity and rape culture, but her music never loses its playfulness. This is an enthralling and deeply relevant debut.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sure, in terms of quality, Rap Or Go To The League isn’t the classic album that 2 Chainz craves, but--on this evidence--he’s not far from delivering one.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This is a nine-song collection of modest ambition, but ‘Buoys’ undoubtedly succeeds on its own terms, that consistently understated sonic template interspersed with surprising moments – the bassy thud of electronic drums that interrupts ‘Crescendo’, the hip-hop style piano riff that marches through ‘Master’ – that makes it a rewarding repeat listen.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The intricacies and experimentalism of those math-rock early days, the spacey ambience of ‘Total Life Forever’, and the bolshy production brilliance of those last two records: it’s all here.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ulfilas’ Alphabet is a great reinvention after the band’s 2017 debut ‘Youth Is Only Ever Fun In Retrospect’. This is a clear gateway into a sphere of daring artistry that Sundara Karma previously only flirted with.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    With soothing production, enveloped with numbing vocals, she leaves you in a state of utopia. This surprise album of 2019 was something we didn’t know we needed.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    These songs may well do that all on its own, and its certainly a marvellous cap on a two-year campaign that did just about everything right--but it’s also more than that. Sucker Punch is the story of a young adult whose tales of friendship, love and more aren’t just relatable because they’re supposed to be--they simply are.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ridiculously ambitious--and often plain ridiculous--Tasmania dances its way to impending doom.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The highs occur when Weezer play it straight-ish.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    People may have been wondering who Bain was when she first released music, but on her debut album she’s made damn sure you won’t forget her.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It’s definitely in need of a more brutal edit: the 18-song tracklist is a little bloated and some songs such as ‘Don’t Go Hungry’ (which features Labrinth doing his best Weeknd impression) are pretty forgettable. However, there are enough bangers on here to keep you hitting the replay button, with Giggs’ unique vocal delivery never anything but interesting. He sounds ready to reign for a long time yet.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Tongue-in-cheek humour is Pump’s biggest selling point, but many of the album’s 16 songs (most of which have a running time of just over two minutes) feel like little more than regurgitated punchlines or uninspired variations on themes already set up and adequately executed on the rapper’s early tracks.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Having stripped away the narrative cloak that shrouded the highlights of ‘Stillness In Wonderland’, she’s crafted a knockout record--and finally come true on her early promise. This is the best rap record of the year so far.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Father of 4 is a fine body of work that builds a convincing case that Offset is currently best-placed to be Migos’ break-out solo star: once again, the final act of a trilogy proves to be the finest.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Houghton’s control is masterful, not just in translating her thoughts and confusion so pristinely into cracking tunes, but this record is testament to just how undersung she is as a musician.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Strange Creatures is an audacious and gratifying return that makes you want to envelope yourself in its gloom.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Other People’s Lives has achieved a wonderful thing. It is both calm and collected, but wildly unhinged at its core, which bubbles away with insecurities and mysteries. Stats’ record belongs to Ed Seed and his band, but in reality, he’s telling all our stories just as much as his own.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    While the talented singer’s debut album ‘Don’t Let the Kids Win’ was a sort of musical bildungsroman--the sometimes unsure steps of a new artist finding her path--the more assured follow-up is Crushing by name and brilliantly crushing by nature.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sometimes a joke starts wearing thin, but goes on so long that it comes back around. And Eton Alive is a pretty great punchline. Not everything has to be escapist or explicitly political--sometimes you just want to hear people make gags about a world that you recognise. It’s cathartic, it’s entertaining. It says: you exist. Eton Alive makes Sleaford Mods funny again.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pursuit of Momentary Happiness is excessive at times. From most other bands a swooning old-time ballad like ‘Encore’ and the slightly indulgent power-ballad ‘Words Fail Me’ would raise a big alarm. Somehow though, in Yak’s case they just about get away with it. Excess, after all, is how this record was created in the first place.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lavigne has never been pop’s most sophisticated lyricist, but her plain-speaking style makes for compelling listening here. ... The album’s second half is generally happier and blander.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ultimately, the record doesn’t feel wholly complete. By the final rotation of this imperfect kaleidoscope, there are inconsistencies that only highlight the fractures that underlie Ephyra. But Woman’s Hour have a knack for communicating this feeling so gracefully.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    ‘Trip The Mains’, perhaps Webb’s finest composition yet, appears to share its electrifying opening riff with Donna Summer’s disco classic ‘Hot Stuff’, before diving headfirst into a seismic chorus that’d shatter Blondie’s ‘Heart Of Glass’. Elsewhere, the haunting ‘Scream Whole’ begins as a soothing lullaby, before unravelling itself into a doomy slice of noir-pop. This momentum is intermittent though, disappointingly.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It could easily be a self-pitying album, one ready to dwell in the wreckage of incidents, but instead keeps picking up and moving on; providing a guide to how to keep on keeping on even when it feels like whatever you do is going to end in devastation.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    AJ Tracey’s debut is perhaps the best of the current crop; twisted, vibrant and ever-shifting, but linked with that confident voice.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A remarkably intelligent and engrossing record for then, now, and the future.