This Is Happening

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Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
AnyDecentMusic?	7.7/10[9]
Metacritic	84/100[10]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[11]
The A.V. Club	A[12]
Entertainment Weekly	A[13]
The Guardian	[14]
Los Angeles Times	[15]
MSN Music (Consumer Guide)	A−[16]
NME	8/10[17]
Pitchfork	9.2/10[18]
Rolling Stone	[19]
Spin	8/10[20]

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At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, This Is Happening received an average score of 84, based on 38 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".^[10] It also achieved an ADM Rating of 7.7/10 on another review aggregator, AnyDecentMusic?.^[9]

Guardian reviewer Alexis Petridis observed that the album did not contain Sound of Silver's "startling sense of mapping out new territories", instead sticking to a template that worked "incredibly well."^[14] Pitchfork's Ryan Dombal awarded it a Best New Music accolade, describing the album as "pretty perfect".^[18] In his review for AllMusic, Tim Sendra said that while This Is Happening "doesn't quite reach the monumental heights" of the band's previous album, it still provided proof that LCD Soundsystem was "one of the most exciting and interesting bands around in the 2000s." Sendra commended Murphy's expansion as a lyricist and songwriter, and said that his production on the album "reveal[s] him at the top of his game".^[11]

Jody Rosen of Rolling Stone said that the album contains some of Murphy's "most earnest, lovelorn songs", writing: "[Murphy] approaches dance music more like a folkie singer-songwriter than a DJ, as a vehicle for storytelling and confession. In Murphy’s world, dancing isn’t really about transcendence, or letting loose – try as you might to 'dance yrself clean', your crises, midlife and otherwise, follow you onto the floor."^[19] "Dance Yrself Clean", the album's first track, "opens with a naive vocal melody accompanied by 8-bit curlicues, before bursting into a gigantic breakbeat-driven block-rocker", wrote Chris Power for the BBC. "It’s as wry and emotionally resonant as it is physically bone-shaking, and nothing else here comes close to matching it."^[21] Referencing and softening parts from "Dance Yrself Clean",^[22] the album's final track, "Home", was described by Ryan Leas in Stereogum as "one of the most bare and wistful songs in [Murphy's] often arch and cerebral career, its fluttering and chirping synths offering comfort against his aloof and angular predilection".^[23]

All personnel and credits for This Is Happening adapted from the album's liner notes.^[50]

The album debuted at number ten on the Billboard 200 in its first week on sale, selling approximately 31,000 copies.^[51] It also topped Billboard's Dance/Electronic Albums chart the same week of its debut, which dethroned Lady Gaga's The Fame from its five-month reign on the chart for one week.^[52] As of January 2016, the album has sold about 211,000 copies in United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. About 86,800 of those are physical copies, and about 124,500 of those are digital copies.^[53]