The Telegraph (UK)'s Scores

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For 1,341 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 62% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 34% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.9 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 77
Highest review score: 100 Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
Lowest review score: 20 Killer Sounds
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 957 out of 1341
  2. Mixed: 381 out of 1341
  3. Negative: 3 out of 1341
1341 music reviews
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    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    At the Crossroads
    What meets at this particular crossroads is good old-fashioned blues, soul-stirring gospel and a funky, Hammond-organ-soaked sound.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Radiate Like This
    The all-female indie-rock quartet, have returned after a six year hiatus with fourth album Radiate Like This, and it feels more intimate than ever.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Joy'All
    Above all, Joy’All seems like the work of an artist content with floating through life, just having fun – and she’s brought us along for the ride.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Dancing Queen
    It is a testament to just how utterly robust these songs are that the results are, inescapably, joyous. The recordings have been given a bit of digital oomph, with all the sounds polished and honed, and levels kicked up a notch, so the result is dense and shiny, with a relentlessly modern attack.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    E3 AF
    E3 AF marks his growth into an elder statesman of rap. Perhaps he sounds so assured because he’s embedding himself again in the sound that he helped to pioneer.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hollywood Park
    It can get a bit messy at times, but if you like the sound of The National channeling Bruce Springsteen at a rowdy barroom hoedown then this could be one for you.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    And I Have Been
    As so many are today, it’s a lockdown special, and this shows both in its more ambitious production and its slight air of self-indulgence.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    I Grow Tired But Dare Not Fall Asleep
    His latest offering is powered by some lovely, liquid bass playing that offers a silvery thread through the textured mélange of disjointed electronic noises, splintered guitars and ghostly traces of strings. It is certainly not for everyone. But Ejimiwe’s relentlessly downbeat delivery may have finally found its moment.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams
    The album is a beauty, none the less, the care put into it confirming Williams's exalted position in the tower of song.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Don't Weigh Down the Light
    All 11 original songs spiral out from a strong, controlled core of patience.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Loneliest Time
    As a record, Time isn’t just a sonic heart-swell for listeners, it’s the latest shift for a singer-songwriter who seems as if she’s constantly stretching toward the most whole version of herself.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lover
    Lover does not sound like the work of someone desperate to command the pop zeitgeist and yet is all the more likely to do so. Instead of trying to be all things to all audiences, it plays to the strengths of a witty songwriter in love, eager to tell anyone who will listen exactly how she feels.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Formentera
    Formentera is a gratifying record stuffed with perfectly crafted songs by a band completely at ease in their own skin.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ignorance Is Bliss
    The atmosphere is ultimately so paranoid and competitive, he makes being a rap star sound exhausting. Ignorance Is Bliss is at its most interesting when Skepta's volatile emotional state pushes to the surface of his combative persona.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Every Loser
    Every Loser is a great, energising opening blast for 2023, a loud and lairy rock album jam-packed with the lust for life that has characterised Iggy’s whole wayward career.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    We Still Love Our Country
    Neither lets down an album that features songs by some of country music's finest lyricists.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Brother Sinner & the Whale
    All 12 are of a consistently high standard and sung with feeling.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Caustic Love
    While Caustic Love is clearly the work of a maturing singer-songwriter (shedding jaunty charm for depth and ambition), it finds the 27-year-old still skittering around in search of an artistic identity.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Entering Heaven Alive
    Entering Heaven Alive may not be his most ground-breaking album and won’t entirely satisfy those who come for the great White guitar wail. But this master musician really sounds like he’s enjoying himself with results that are pretty heavenly.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Love Is Magic
    They are peppered with witty lines but, like an over-repeated punchline, the humour wears thin. For all its gorgeous highlights and overall brilliance, Love Is Magic is an album that is hard to love.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Take Care
    The result is both silkily seductive and moodily narcissistic.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wasting Light
    Using entirely analogue tape, Vig, together with top mixer Alan Moulder, brings a deliciously lump-free production consistency to the Foos, who have often erred between the indigestible extremes of thrash-metal and acoustic angst.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Né So
    The sound on this pivotal sixth album, however, is subdued, moody, even dark at times, the instrumentation stripped back to bare essentials.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Star Is Born [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    Nelson co-writes many of Gaga’s songs too, which essay a slightly awkward journey from rock balladry to slickly superficial pop. In one sense, there is a tangible jump in standards as Gaga comes to the fore on the second half of the album--she is a major musical talent. But there is also a weird disconnect as the soundtrack shifts gear to anodyne modern pop.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Haunted Man
    ADespite occasionally drawing blood, The Haunted Man doesn't live up to its stripped and dangerous cover, often retreating to gambol about in the backwaters of Khan's imagination.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Spirituals
    Spirituals is tonally consistent despite its range of distinctive influences and talents. Just when Santigold threatens to lean into the corny, as on the SBTRKT-produced Shake, she pulls back, adding a whimsical, purposefully on-the-nose rattle sound at the end of each wedding disco-like “shake, shake, shake it” hook. It’s a joy to hear her back in her creative swing.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Dreamer
    The Dreamer is occasionally powerful and moving as James ranges across memorable songs including Otis Redding's Champagne & Wine.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Singing Mailman Delivers
    Prine is extraordinary, one of the most eloquent artists of modern times and seeing where it all started, in this super CD, really is something very special.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In the Magic Hour
    O'Donovan knows how to sing perfectly with sparse and delicate arrangements and the album, which also features Tucker Martine (the Decemberists), shows she can create some magic of her own on this her second solo album.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tyron
    There are striking contributions from an eclectic range of guests, including veteran British rapper Skepta, sound wizard James Blake and singer-songwriter Deb Never, and it all sounds intriguingly modern, with a pleasingly discombobulating bent. Yet, when stripped of political context, it exposes the emptiness of Slowthai’s wordplay, all sound and fury, signifying nothing much at all.
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