The Independent on Sunday (UK)'s Scores

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For 789 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 57% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 40% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 One Day I'm Going To Soar
Lowest review score: 20 Last Night on Earth
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 495 out of 789
  2. Mixed: 280 out of 789
  3. Negative: 14 out of 789
789 music reviews
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    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Don't Forget Who You Are
    Its chances are boosted by Ian Broudie's bright, bold production, but, apart from one obligatory Beatlesy ballad, it's full of route-one glam-rock stompers with not a single interesting or original twist and lazy stuff-that-rhymes lyrics.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Merry Christmas, Baby
    Humbugness aside, though, it's a serviceable collection of jazzy covers and duets.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Burning Boy
    Nothing much happens in it, but there is plenty to be seen
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Glassheart
    This long-delayed third album sets out to make the Hackney diva "current" again.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    About Farewell
    Pleasant, sad, classy and thoughtful. No more than that.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Graceless Age
    Fans of Springsteen's downer side might flow with the music's riverine vibe.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Night
    A genuinely odd collaboration.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tre!
    This is Green Day doing what Green Day have always done.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ghostory
    At its best on the quasi-techno anthem "Low Times", it's claustrophobically compelling, if too formulaic to be truly super-natural.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Everything Is Boring & Everyone Is a F--king Liar
    Well, these things are relative, and this record is still jam-packed with purest filth and unrepentant excess.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unorthodox Jukebox
    When he isn't sounding like a Police album track ("Locked Out of Heaven") or a Musical Youth album track ("Show Me"), he's mostly sounding like a Wham! album track (the disco-pop "Treasure" being a case in point).
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Revelation Road
    Revelation Road proves, though, that form may come and go, but class is permanent.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Swings Both Ways
    Those who endured Williams’s recent X Factor performance need not fear: this brassy sequel to 2001’s big-band LP Swing When You’re Winning, is actually rather listenable.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unpatterns
    Solid, polished, dancefloor-friendly, and other damningly faint adjectives.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Thankful N' Thoughtful
    The sound is gothically cavernous and frames her seized phrasing with tasteful restraint.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Too True
    Penny has garage-rock form, but Too True is a light-footed, echo-heavy pop makeover with a 1980s gloss, frothy but forthright.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Slipstream
    Slipstream is welcome, despite large portions of it sounding generic to the point of self-parody: funky, strolling, sunny California blues-rock with lashings of soul.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cerebral Ballzy
    Its main virtue: brevity. Most songs are sub-2 minutes, and the entire album is over in 20.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Shadow of Heaven
    Sadly, they simultaneously fail to disguise a whole bucketload of ponderous, self-indulgent navel-gazing from the same source.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wrecking Ball
    Wrecking Ball is as surgical as a ball of pig-iron on a swinging chain.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    ARTPOP
    Throwaways (“Jewels n’ Drugs”) and power-ballad (“DOPE”) digressions weigh heavy on the pacing, but the arch “Mary Jane Holland” and “Swine” occupy livelier turf.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Shakira
    After a four-year hiatus, Shakira’s 10th album is full of raggae-tinged, bouncy melodies and absurd, occasionally quite poetic lyrics.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Build Me This
    Although it is both loud and quiet, it neither rocks nor swings.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    La Petite Mort
    “Bitter Virtue” pursues a familiar James theme--condemnation of repressive moralities--but elsewhere, things are more ineffectual.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Electra Heart
    Electra Heart is too professional to be truly terrible, but it's never clever enough to be more than merely toytown.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I Love You Go Easy
    She's good when not covering Mary Margaret O'Hara. But you'll need to hear through the still-life mannerisms to get to the good stuff.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Moon
    Moon is bookended by the structurally perfect melodies of "I Heard the Owl Call My Name" and "Heart of the Woods"--but what’s in-between is often too airy-fairy to really grab.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love at the Bottom of the Sea
    High on saccharine and low on fidelity, LATBOTS has one foot in the recent 8-bit scene, the other in Merritt's own back catalogue.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Light the Dead See
    A barrel of laughs it ain't. Over sparse, semi-orchestral backing, Gahan tackles the big ones.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The King of In Between
    The songs? Melodically flat, feel-driven jive from the hip.
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