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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    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Solar Power
    It sounds utterly gorgeous, and perhaps this laid-back, stripped-down folksy bent is part of a generational pop shift, echoing the intimate minimalism of Billie Eilish – but I have my doubts. ... Lorde’s lyrics are still acute, her singing superb, her songs beguiling, but her perspective has shifted from every-girl outsider to over-privileged solipsist. Solar Power is underpowered and unlikely to set the world on fire.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cause and Effect
    This is an album of mature, accessible pop-rock. The singing is beautiful, the playing immaculate, the sound warm and rounded, with nothing to scare the horses.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Come Ahead
    Opener Ready to Go Home is toweringly gorgeous, the Fela Kuti-like frenzy of Circle of Life is thrilling and the one chord riffing Love Ain’t Enough is a blast. Ballads offer more of a challenge, where Gillespie’s wheezy vocals have nowhere to hide.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    We Are Undone
    It is a little daunting at first approach, but stylistic breadth and dynamic shifts make up for the stark brutality of their sound.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Harry Styles
    Styles’s curveball is more eccentric but more appealing, with an endearing quality of relish in its musical adventures. It is so old-fashioned it may actually come across as something new to its target audience.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Blue Songs
    Given that it's for dancing, Butler's production tends toward the cool--even plodding--but his polishing up of 20-year-old stylistic tics still entertains.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    End of World
    It hasn’t exactly all been easy listening, but still definitely Lydon’s most approachable album ever. It sounds as though it was hard-earnt light relief for him, fun for its chief protagonist to make, and with repeat plays it only proves increasingly infectious.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Magnetic Man
    The first half's vocal tracks woefully resemble standard-issue chart fodder. There's some better instrumental stuff later on, but, overall, it's ordinary.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Then Came the Morning
    The harmonising on Call to War is excellent and I particularly like the short and sweet To the Woods. An enjoyable album.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Twelve Carat Toothache
    Despite what the polished sonics might suggest, Twelve Carat Toothache is an ambitious record with real range, proving that Post has found his groove as America’s kaleidoscopic king of new-era pop.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sonic Highways
    The lyrics cleverly incorporate words and ideas from each programme. But a soundtrack featuring all the oddball artists from the series would have been more interesting.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Demonstration
    The result is as swaggeringly confident, brash and modern as any mainstream hip hop being produced anywhere in the world right now.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Communion
    Even if Years & Years aren’t taking any risks with the sound of the moment, they use it to good effect.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Opposites
    If you're already a Biffy Clyro fan, Opposites might be your idea of a masterpiece. If you're new to Biffy, it'll just give you a headache.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    You & I
    While You & I doesn’t break any new ground, it’s a spirited and smartly produced – if brief – album.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Let's Face the Music and Dance
    The country singer turns 80 at the end of the month and although much of the album saunters along, Nelson can still fill a song with emotion, as he shows on his own composition The Better Part of Me.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Restriction
    Archive seem strangely restricted, dulling their more inventive edges with a black-and-white quality of mood, texture, rhythm and melody, that leaves you craving emotional colour.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Bridge
    The Bridge is out of time yet timeless, pure pop class.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Pint of Blood
    Her fifth record is dark, even by her standards, full of bitterness and pessimism.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Rebel Heart
    The tone switches dramatically between dynamic contemporary electro groove adventures, singalong pop and lush synthetic ballads, while veering emotionally between introspective vulnerability and strident defiance. Yet every track adheres to robust, classic songwriting principles, a kind of melodious elegance of structure gleaming through no matter how inventively deconstructed the arrangement.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Chasing Yesterday
    More solid, stadium stompers bulk out this second album.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Five Easy Hot Dogs
    Whilst it is purposefully lacking in intention, the experimental album has its moments of whimsy but feels noticeably devoid of humour, surprising for a musician known for his zaniness. Still a cohesive affair, it’s an apt depiction of transience and Mac DeMarco is taking us all along for the ride.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    New Wild Everywhere
    The fifth album by Great Lake Swimmers, called New Wild Everywhere, is melodic and graceful.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Father of All…
    I mean it as a compliment when I say I didn’t immediately recognise Green Day the first time I heard their new album. There is something positively gleeful about the American multimillion-selling stadium punk trio’s reavowal of the fundamentals. They exhibit the swagger of a hot young band discovering rock’n’roll for the first time, allied to the abilities of old pros who know exactly how to do it right.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Gloria
    Smith sings rings around themselves and the material, elevating both the banal and the sublime with smokey curlicues of tremulous falsetto.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Starboy
    What is surprising is how seamless and integrated the sound is--a really luxurious, supple groove of sparkling electronica and sinuous, melodic vocals.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Our Version of Events
    This is a hugely impressive introduction to a dynamic, arresting talent.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    High Life
    There are things going on here that will, in all likelihood, percolate through to stadium pop in due course but Hyde lacks the vocal presence or structural songcraft to shape the material into something greater than its parts.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Close to Home
    There are duds, mostly when Aitch is chasing LA acclaim and aping US trap rappers on tracks like Cheque or Fuego. But when he leans into the silky, bumpy ’90s-era smooth-licking RnB that he raised himself on – see Sunshine or R Kid – he’s hard to beat.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    X
    Throughout it all, Sheeran stays true to the essential artistic notions of the classic singer-songwriter genre by treating his music as a vehicle for emotional veracity, personal revelation and universal inclusion.
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