About the ratings

The ratings (from one to five stars) are pretty self-explanatory, but I figured that I'd write a little bit on what the ratings mean to me. This is a general guide; obviously I'll make my feelings clearer in the actual reviews. One thing to keep in mind is that I give more credit to an abundance of good moments rather than an absence of bad ones - an album that's mindblowing at points but misses the mark with others will rank higher than one that is generally well-written and performed but doesn't produce any real reaction. On the other hand, if an album does something that's bad to the point of unlistenability, that's definitely a major strike against it.

Before I get to breaking down the different points on the scale (the boring part), I'd like to say a few things about how albums get rated here. First of all, there are many different ways that albums can be good, and there's really no specific thing I can think of that I look for - like everyone else, I can't quite describe what 'hooks' me. I think my biggest barometer is simply "how often do I want to listen to this?" I guess that explains why I rate great pop songs so highly, and why I tend to appriciate albums that don't sound like anything else. For example - I rate XTC's White Music just as highly as English Settlement, although most everyone would say that "Settlement" has fuller songwriting and better performances, and is therefore the better album. I hear that, I really do, but my iTunes play counts suggest that I like both albums about the same. Sometimes attitude and energy go a long way, and if I feel that when I'm listening to the music, that's a good thing. A good criteria to use is "if this was their only album, how would it rate?" I think the only reason why White Music gets slagged off so much is because the critical consensus is so much clearer on the later stuff. Another good example is Kraftwerk's Techno Pop (formerly Electric Cafe) which is often downgraded because it's much more disposable and dated than their 'classic' albums. I did that myself until I realized that for an album I graded 3 or 4 notches below their classic stuff, I still listen to it a decent amount and can enjoy it on a different level than the other releases. I guess you could say that because I'm a big Kraftwerk fan I listen to all their music a lot, but then again I have yet to have the urge to ever listen to Total Devo again and that's from one of my favorite bands. So basically, I'm trying to rate these albums based on how good I think they are rather than how much they sound like the group's best albums.

All I'm saying here is to read the reviews themselves rather than just go off my ratings - if there's a major style change I'll note it. I really do believe in rating based not on "how does this compare to their other albums?" but rather "how well do they hit the things they're aiming for?" The reason why I'm trying to be aware of this is because I try to make my ratings transferable - meaning that I like a 4 star album on one page about as much as I do a 4 star album on a different one. So you could compare Techno Pop to something similar like Looking For the Perfect Beat in addition to seeing how it stacks up to Trans-Europe Express. You could also compare it to, say, King Crimson's Lizard if you really wanted, though you have to account for how much you like a particular genre. This is why I don't use Prindle or Wilson and Alroy's system of downgrading or upgrading albums based on who released it - I know W&A say that several Prince albums rate low simply because he's done better things - it makes sense to grade that way, and can be useful from the reader's standpoint, but I don't like the idea of having to say "this 3-star album is better than this one".

I know George Starostin and John McFerrin tried to reconsile this by giving each band a rating, then adding that to the album score - basically a way to grade an artists albums based on their other albums, but also to add in the skill of the band. Which is saying something like this - both the Beatles and ABBA have their own 'best albums', but in the grand scheme of the universe of pop music, the Beatles get the higher marks because they're a better band. I don't like this idea because I think it double counts the good points and penalizes bad artists twice. I think a band is only as good as the albums they make - Starostin looks for specific qualities in bands, but there have been (in my opinion) great bands that were lacking in each category - listenability (Boredoms), resonance (Bowie), originality (XTC), adequacy (ELP), and diversity (Ramones). I don't buy the idea that none of those groups could make an album to match the best of the Beatles, the Stones, Floyd, and Hendrix just because they "weren't as good" in those categories.

There are other rating systems that I feel are interesting - I would probably never use anything like what Christgau does, but I must admit it's very handy - his reasoning is, that if an album sucks, there's really no point in grading it, although he does mention if there are standout tracks. I buy into that - I think the ratings of 3.5 or greater on this site are probably more 'precise' than the 1- and 2-star albums, simply because I listen to the better albums a lot more and have a better feeling for them. At the same time, if you were a huge Devo fan, it would be useful to know that Shout isn't completely awful, but Total Devo is. Scaruffi's rating system is another interesting one, and one that a lot of people on Listology use. Basically, the idea is that 10 is the perfect rating, the ideal to which all albums should aspire to, and it grades albums based on how they compare to that. If you've been reading me up to this point, you'd know why I really dislike this idea. Personally, I think the whole thing is kind of a logical fallacy - it's similar to the famous problem of the prisoner who finds out he will be executed sometime next week on a day that will come as a "complete surprise". We know music is subjective, which means nothing can reach the '10' rating - Scaruffi and all the Scaruffists here have yet to give one out, because that means perfection, which you just can't have in music. Therefore, the 'best' rating would be 9.5, and on a scale of 1 to 9.5, a 9.5 is now perfect, and so on. That's why you can't have a purely 'scientific' approach to this - music is an emotional thing, and so should be the ratings.

Here's a quick guide to the ratings - ***1/2 is sort of the baseline rating for albums that I recommend. Yes, *** is an average rating, and those albums are fine and enjoyable, but you don't really want to listen to albums that are just average, that's why you have freedom of choice and that's probably why you visited this site. As for higher ratings - I recommend the ***** albums to everyone who visits this page, because I'm operating under the assumption that everyone who goes to this site is pretty open-minded about music, and wants to find the great albums regardless of genre. ****1/2 is an essential to anyone who has an interest in the genre, and **** an essential to anyone who has an interest in the artist, even if you're not a fan (that is, you like their sound, or you like one of their hits).

In general, I am pretty selective about my ratings, and don't just pull ***1/2+ ratings out of my ass...each one of those albums mean something to me. The reason why there are a lot of ***1/2-**** albums on this site is because I don't just pull these pages from a hat...I generally only review artists that I like, and it's hard for me to connect to anything on the level I need to write one of these pages if I don't. You may also notice that there are not too many albums rated below **1/2...they certainly do exist, but most of these groups do have some kind of quality control, and furthermore if an album is truly awful, you would think the record company would step in at some point. Alas, it still happens quite a bit, especially among artists that are already established and are proven sellers. I would say ** is my baseline for listenability - these are the albums that are not really painful, but don't feature much good songwriting (if any) and are not exactly memorable once the album ends. Occasionally they are memorable, but not in a way that makes you ever want to hear them again. Below that is when you get to albums that are hard to listen all the way through and very strongly make you want to hear something else.

Anyways, now that I've cleared that up (and maybe even made some people upset), let's look at what the star ratings mean individually:

*****
This is the best rating I give. Unlike many review sites I won't say these albums are 'perfect' or that ones that come close but don't get it are 'flawed' - there's no such thing as musical perfection, but these albums are so good that I usually can't imagine any significant and realistic way they could be improved. So I don't have to be absolutely in love with every song, but I should be with a great portion of it, and it should be very listenable all the way through and engaging each time. If an album hasn't lost any appeal to me after 10 or so listens that's great - if it's something I still want to pull out and can really enjoy no matter what kind of music I've been getting into, that's even better. In short, these are the desert island discs, and I recommend them to anyone who's looking for great albums they haven't heard before. I say this because these are the albums that I would say transcend the genre; that is, they're so good that even if you don't really like the genre, they're a marvel of songwriting and sound that anyone with a good interest in music should be able to appreciate.

****
This is the grade I usually give to albums that are generally solid and contain a good amount of great material and should appeal to anyone who is interested in the genre. I'd say a great artist is one who can consistently put out albums at this level, and anyone with a streak of 3+ of these is someone I'd consider particularly inspired. These albums usually stick out after a week of listening and usually songs from these albums will make my mix playlists. They are definitely albums I will be listening to years after I first discover them.

***
Usually this grade is given to albums that are pleasant and mostly solid but lack enough substantial material to really be fully satisfying. These are the types of albums that usually contain a few songs I like, and they don't make me want to shut them off in the middle of the album, but they are the ones where I usually just choose the tracks I like after I've given it a few listens. In other words, as the rating implies, they are middle of the road - not good enough to really recommend to anyone who doesn't like the artist already, but not bad enough that I can say it's not worth your while. Either way they are always worth a shot and I would always consider these to at least be fairly 'good' albums.

**
These are recommended only to the completionists like me who want to hear all of an artist's work, good or bad, simply because even 'bad' albums can have a track or two worthy of repeat listens. These albums are usually a chore to sit through and usually have a couple of fundamental problems (way too long, songwriting too bland, production sucks, etc.) Generally they are albums which I don't have much of an emotional response to but may spin the better tracks regardless.

*
Only for collectors or the morbidly curious; they are quite simply the albums that I will say I never want to hear again. They usually have a lot of fundamental problems, or at least one really big one (i.e. "the songwriting is absolutely terrible!"). Occasionally they will have one or two songs I can tolerate but if listening to an album is boring and bad to the point where it's offensive, chances are you're looking at a one-star turkey.

P.S. obviously there are going to be exceptions to everything I just mentioned above, so make sure you read the reviews. Just saying...

Wow, this page is long. Is anyone still here?