Rating Albums

[Elston]

As of lately I've been breaking things up into decades and finding this to be helpful with rating. For instance I'm watching only movies from the 00s and music from the 90s and I would say my ratings are not based on the individual work so much as how it reflects off the others from the decade. Also, I use Scaruffi's system where the highest score you can get is a 9.5 (although he would pretend otherwise). Not sure why I use that one, I just like the idea of nothing ever being perfect.

[Mr. Shankly]

Personally, I avoid making inane comments like "best track:..." and then listing some really obvious hit from the album, rather than my personal favorite song, but that's just me, I guess.

[telefunker]

i've given about 10 perfect ratings on this site.. although i don't believe any of them are perfect..

pet sounds is the closest thing to perfection in my estimation.. but it tshould have included 'good vibrations' as the loved up centre peice.. probably just before "let's go away for a while"

thriller is pretty much perfect except that it doesn't contain my favourite mj songs

nevermind doesn't contain 12 "smells like teen spirits" ..i mean, it's awesome.. but "lounge act" and "stay away" are, for me, not up to scratch with the rest of the record

..and now hopefully you'll see how my seemingly harsh criticism of other albums is actually relative
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no fat chicks

[maxxy]

Velvet Underground and Nico and Wish You Were Here are perfect albums, IMO. London Calling Comes close, but its a little too long
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"I'm so ugly but that's OK cause so are you"

[maxperenchio]

I guess I have some unexplainable mental distinction between "perfect" albums and "five star" albums. I give out the title of "five star" fairly frequently, not all of which are "perfect" - and I think there might even be an example of a perfect album that I wouldn't even call "five star"

Not to get philosophical, but it reminds me of the classical aesthetic distinction between the beautiful and the sublime. The beautiful is something that is more or less perfect, symmetrical, sensible, and consistently whole. (Pet Sounds?) The sublime is a majestic force that may seem fragmented or even seemingly imperfect , but has a spiritual quality that exceeds human comprehension. (The White Album??)

I think an album like Arcade Fire's Funeral is more or less a perfect album in terms of cinematic sequencing, tastefulness, length, but is nowhere near as good as Exile on Mainstreet which has a few songs that could have been left off. So I'd probably give Funeral 4.5 stars, but still call it perfect? I am literally insane though keep in mind.

Either way I tend to overrate more so than underrate (like allmusic!) and even occasionally take into mind historical importance over strictly the music on an album (like allmusic!). At the end of the day though I don't like to be rigidly taxonomic with my tastes, probably because I can never totally agree on a consistent system to judge.

Which brings me to my last point, anyone ever read George Starostin's music page Only Solitare? I don't agree with 100% of it, but he has quite the sturdy numeric system - and its hella comprehensive to boot. Probably only superseded by Stephen Thomas Erlewine on Allmusic.com. Check it out, let me know what you think.

[Elston]

I don't get why Sarostin awards points to an album simply because of who made it. So that even if Bob Dylan makes a horrible record, it still gets a decent rating because i mean come on, it's Bob Dylan.

As the for the beautiful and the sublime, which is a cool concept btw, I guess the miracles of art are the one's that accomplish both. Art that is very beautiful in an aesthetic sense doesn't necessarily stimulate deep thoughts or emotions in the viewer. Beauty vs. sublime is like a distinction between technique vs. expansion of form. In other words, how gifted is the artist and do they have something interesting to express? I'd say something like Hieronymus Bosch does a fine job of straddling that line.

[joannajewsom]

All interesting stuff here from everyone. I like the distinction you make, max, between the beautiful and the sublime. I judge an album as a whole rather than by individual tracks, because I think an album should be a cohesive unit with some kind of slope or progression. There are a lot of songs that work perfectly only in the context of the album, but wouldn't really stand up on their own-- how do you rate something like "On the Run" from Dark Side of the Moon, for example? I reserve my 5 star ratings for those albums that I think are perfect and sublime. On my RYM, I have about 90 albums with 5 star ratings out of 700+ ratings. I don't think that's too generous.

Haha. I don't think you're insane for giving a 4.5 to a perfect album. I gave Madonna's debut 4 stars because I think it's a perfect dance-pop album, but it's just dance-pop, severely lacking in emotional resonance and depth, and far from sublime. But it's perfect, I think, for what it's supposed to be.

I have seen a few cases where allmusic underrates some really great stuff, but I think they are far more guilty of overrating things (Paris Hilton got 4.5). They give out five stars like nobody's business to a lot of older stuff-- haven't seen any 2000s albums get 5 stars.

I've read George Starostin's website and it gave me a headache. His whole "class" system is a little too out there for me.

[Norman Bates]

I'm not sure this is going to help in any way, it's pretty straightforward. I don't rate all the songs from each album I listen to - too long really. I compare the number of great songs in an album to the total number of songs. Any album featuring only great songs will get a 5 I guess (say Portishead's "Dummy" for example), which doesn't happen so often. And from there, it's downhill starwise as the proportion of songs I don't particularly enjoy goes up. Which means I try not to pay attention to who wrote the record (some weaker Dylan lps might very well be worth a 1 or 2 on my account, say "Under the red sky" for instance), but it might unconsciously influence my judgment (although I'm not quite sure in which way. Do I underrate an average Lou Reed on the grounds that it's really weak for Lou Reed, or do I overestimate it because it's still Lou Reed?.. complicated).

[theharrisonfords]

[maxxy]