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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    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Oh My God
    Oh My God is a spiritual album for a secular age, one that tries to distil a sense of the divine from the very act of making music.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Blackstar
    It feels as bold and weird as anything in Bowie’s back catalogue, sure to delight some and infuriate others.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Reset
    It’s surely fair to deduce that the intended ‘reset’ is all about returning pop to its early years’ sense of wonder, both sonically and emotionally. On that level, its nine tracks resoundingly succeed.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down
    The sound of the album is deliberately vibrant and varied.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Melodrama
    There is a palpable depth of feeling and meaning in her songs, operating on both personal and universal levels, delivered with subtle dynamism and dizzying imagination. She is a breath of fresh air with the power of a hurricane.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Build a Rocket Boys!
    Their last album, The Seldom Seen Kid, managed the rare feat of winning the Mercury prize and huge public affection. So how do Elbow follow it? With continued greatness and without fuss.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Magdalene
    Magdalene is a magnificently twisted sci-fi torch album, an enthralling account of love, loss, heartbreak and recovery. It is erotic and neurotic, confounding and revelatory, summoning the spirits of such iconoclastic talents as David Bowie, Kate Bush and Björk while affirming its own unique personality.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
    Her magnificent fourth album demonstrates that she is one of the best rappers in the world, period.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Biophilia
    It's surprisingly accessible, hypnotic and beautiful if you give it time and concentration.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Honest Life
    If this was a debut, we would be hailing Andrews as a precocious young genius. But perhaps, in this age of acceleration, amid a pop blizzard of viral memes and instant digital fame, the slow maturing of a truly substantial talent is something to really celebrate.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    To Pimp A Butterfly
    [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.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Lovely Creatures: The Best of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, 1984-2014 [Box Set]
    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.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    An American Trilogy: Looks Like Rain/'Frisco Mabel Joy/Heaven Help The Child
    This fabulous box-set finally unites the trilogy. Tragic, poignant, yet uplifting, Newbury's tough-guy singing will often inexorably reduce the listener to tears.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Toast
    There is nothing disappointing about the way he conjures art from emotional defeat. Toast deserves to be acclaimed amongst his finest works. Twenty-one years since the album was made, Young has reminded us once again why he stands tall amongst the greats of the rock era.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Synthetica
    What feels right (or at least absolutely right now) about Metric is the perfect balance, every element in its place and in service of a set of sinuous, hook-laden, elegantly crafted pop songs.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Crushing
    As a body of work, Crushing feels small, intimate and inward. But these are big songs, full of big ideas, from a big talent.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Blue Weekend
    Blue Weekend both refines that sound and takes it in dizzying new directions. Rowsell’s lyrics have never been more absorbing in their examination of friendship, heartache, anxiety, acceptance and self-confidence.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Love, Damini
    An album for the ages, as well as being an awards season shoo-in, it is sure to succeed in doing precisely what Burna told Billboard his music is all about – “bringing people who don’t even speak the same language together to dance.”
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    NO THANK YOU
    The brilliance of No Thank You is how Simz uses her brazenly unapologetic narrative to spin out larger points about institutional and generational racism, the danger of business practices indifferent to their human impact, and links all of that to contemporary mental health crises.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Dancing with the Devil... The Art of Starting Over
    For an album drawing on despair and recovery, Dancing with the Devil… The Art of Starting Over is a life-affirming pleasure from top to bottom.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Human
    It is a reminder that, beyond the thrill-seeking singles, the mainstream audience still favour meaningful, emotional songs, delivered with passion. Rag ’n’ Bone Man’s debut is full of them.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Afrikan Alien [Mixtape]
    With his new album, Afrikan Alien, Salieu cements all this raw potential by creating a galvanising record that roots itself in uplifting immigrants and unifying warring factions of an inner-city community.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Cut the World [Live]
    Hegarty has mastered the art of turning performance into a kind of ritual ceremony and the magic of these symphonic concert recordings blows their previously released versions out of the water.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Long Live the Angels
    Long Live the Angels is something special, the sound of a gifted, grown-up singer-songwriter using all the tools at her disposal to put her own heart back together.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Watch the Throne
    Perhaps the most extraordinary achievement of this funny, hard-hitting, thrilling album is that it actually sounds like a coherent and purposeful piece of work, a statement of what hip hop can mean, and where it can go.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Popular Problems
    Cohen’s triumphant return to the live arena is reflected in the growling assuredness of his vocals. An absolute treat.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Mahashmashana
    Mahashmashana is Tillman’s best album yet. It’s hearty. It’s massive. It’s (captain) fantastic.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    S.O.S.
    It’s an expansion of her wonderfully experimental R&B, with all the candour listeners expect from this masterful songwriter. ... SOS is well worth the wait.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Harrow and the Harvest
    There cannot be another musical duet around at the moment who are able to make two acoustic guitars and two voices produce a sound that is so subtle and yet powerful.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    1989 (Taylor's Version)
    Swift’s remake is astonishing in its exactitude, another reminder that she is a star of a different magnitude with a mastery of her own talents and a bold business acumen. .... All of the new songs are satisfyingly deft and clever, replete with sinuous melodies, burbling synths and agitated percussion that correspond with the updated eighties stylings of the original. .... The one new song that really punches its weight with Swift’s original 1989 singles is the razor sharp Is It Over Now?
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