Chart of the day (#1092): By VanillaBean - Music

HoldenM

To Pedantically Split Infinitives

Gender: Male

Age: 31

Skinny wrote:

I just think that "albums I like = good chart; albums I dislike = bad chart" is a really black and white way of looking at things.

I could be missing some information, but that seems like a false dichotomy. Has Alex Zangari said that he rates charts unfavorably if he doesn't like the albums on it? If so, then yeah. It is sort of silly to rate things with such an absolutist attitude. Otherwise, if they rate charts highly because they agree with the entries displayed on that chart, that's not a bad philosophy. It is, after all, nice to find people who have common interests and preferences. So, if that means giving a good rating to a chart, then so what? Like it always comes back to here, it's all subjective. As boring and as much of a copout as that is, that's just the way things are. Some people value variety. Some value uniqueness. Some value familiarity. More often than not, it's a mix of all of that. There's no real wrong way to rate a chart, just like there's no real wrong way of making a chart.
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Skinny

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HoldenM wrote:

Some people value variety. Some value uniqueness. Some value familiarity. More often than not, it's a mix of all of that. There's no real wrong way to rate a chart, just like there's no real wrong way of making a chart.

Agreed. I guess my issue stems from the fact that I didn't think manurock's criticism was unfair, whilst I did think that digging it up, posting it here, and then labelling it "obnoxious" was. But you're right, everyone has their own criteria for what makes a good chart, and mine and Alex's clearly just don't align.
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sp4cetiger

Commenting on charts is a damn put-on, I don't know how to do it. If I comment on whether I like the albums, it's pointless. I mean, who cares, really? I can tell the user that the chart is useful (or useless) to me for recs, but that's shit encouragement because it wouldn't make sense to make a chart for other people... I mean, the best charts are individual expressions.

The best I could think to do with this person is encourage them to dig deeper. As manurock said, it looks like a concatenation of year-end lists from major publications. I enjoy a lot of these albums, but it seems unlikely to me that a really well-listened person would converge on the median tastes of the critical establishment.

AlexZangari

Gender: Male

Age: 32

Location: gone

All I'm saying is that if these are this guy's favourite albums (and I assume they are), and they're a good selection (I personally think they are), then to me it is a good chart. I'm genuinely confused as to why that's supposedly a bad way of treating it.

sp4cetiger wrote:

The best I could think to do with this person is encourage them to dig deeper. As manurock said, it looks like a concatenation of year-end lists from major publications. I enjoy a lot of these albums, but it seems unlikely to me that a really well-listened person would converge on the median tastes of the critical establishment.

Assuming you're right about all this, I still don't understand how it makes for a bad chart. So what if he hasn't dug deep and isn't really well-listened? Maybe it's just me, but I don't like that way of thinking. It's basically implying you need to listen to X number of albums before your chart can be good.
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sp4cetiger

AlexZangari wrote:

Assuming you're right about all this, I still don't understand how it makes for a bad chart. So what if he hasn't dug deep and isn't really well-listened? Maybe it's just me, but I don't like that way of thinking. It's basically implying you need to listen to X number of albums before your chart can be good.

I never said it was a bad chart.

Skinny

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AlexZangari wrote:

All I'm saying is that if these are this guy's favourite albums (and I assume they are), and they're a good selection (I personally think they are), then to me it is a good chart. I'm genuinely confused as to why that's supposedly a bad way of treating it.

This has been done to death, but clearly what you look for in a chart and what I look for in a chart differ greatly. I prefer charts with some unusual choices from which I can grab recommendations, given that the primary reason that I use a music site such as this is to get recommendations (and share them in return). If a chart has no albums on it which I've never heard, it's automatically a less interesting chart to me, regardless of how good I might think the albums on it are. That doesn't make it a bad chart by any means, but neither is it a great one (to me). It doesn't offer me anything I can take away and listen to.

AlexZangari wrote:

Maybe it's just me, but I don't like that way of thinking. It's basically implying you need to listen to X number of albums before your chart can be good.

I think you're stretching massively here. Nobody was "basically implying" that at all.
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AlexZangari

Gender: Male

Age: 32

Location: gone

Alright, it has become painfully obvious to me that both sides of this conversation are deeply confused about what the other side is arguing for.

For clarity, I'm going to ask one question:

Skinny wrote:

If a chart has no albums on it which I've never heard, it's automatically a less interesting chart to me, regardless of how good I might think the albums on it are.

Does that make it a bad chart though?

EDIT: Follow-up question - do you think it's possible for there to be a genuinely good chart that's composed of popular picks?
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Skinny

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AlexZangari wrote:

Does that make it a bad chart though?

EDIT: Follow-up question - do you think it's possible for there to be a genuinely good chart that's composed of popular picks?

I don't really see charts in terms of "good" or "bad" in that sense (although charts with six U2 albums, for example, edge dangerously close to the latter), but rather in terms of "interesting" or "boring". An interesting chart is a good chart; a boring chart is a bad one. Though, to be honest, I think those terms (good and bad, that is) are pretty crude when describing somebody's taste in music. So, in my opinion, a chart full of popular albums, even ones that I largely like, isn't a bad chart so much as it's a boring one. And I really don't have anything to say about boring charts.

As for the second question, of course it's possible to have a chart full of popular albums that's interesting (/good), but it would need to have some sort of unique slant on it, for me. Be that a chart that's massively varied (or, sometimes, a chart that's almost impossibly narrow in scope - if somebody had a top 100 made up almost entirely of a particular sub-genre, I'd find that interesting too), a chart that's ordered in an unpredictable way, or even just a chart with some personal, well-written, funny, insightful, or otherwise interesting notes. But a chart that just acts as a list of very popular albums is in no way interesting to me. It's OK though, I don't comment on those charts. They don't really offer me anything, and so there's no point just insulting somebody because I don't like their taste in music (/find it uninteresting). It's somebody's taste, after all, even if I find the way they choose to present it boring.

So, going back to this:

AlexZangari wrote:

My point was that "these are mostly great albums but they're very popular" is a horrible reason to give a chart such low marks.

I just don't agree with that opinion on any level, really (although I refrain from giving a numerical score to charts anyway, because it just seems like a strange thing to do, ranking somebody's music taste out of 100 - where I can, with charts I find interesting, I leave a comment).

Hope that helps.

(n.b. nothing I've written in this thread - aside from that which specifically refers to it - is about VanillaBean's (or anybody else's) chart.)
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AlexZangari

Gender: Male

Age: 32

Location: gone

Alright so to clarify my own opinions here:

1. It seems the main cause of confusion is that you're mainly discussing "interesting" vs. "boring" whereas my gripe was in considering charts "good" vs. "bad." This is where we have very different mindsets, i.e. while you do note a distinction between the two terms your general rule of thumb seems to be that boring doesn't make for a very good chart, whereas to me I find plenty of boring charts to be quite good so long as I dig the content.

2.

Skinny wrote:

They don't really offer me anything, and so there's no point just insulting somebody because I don't like their taste in music (/find it uninteresting). It's somebody's taste, after all, even if I find the way they choose to present it boring.

I feel strongly about this, which is why I got on manurock for the initial comment. To rate charts for me is extremely rare but when I do I can say I've only ever given positive scores save for a few "top 5 of all time" that are exclusively Radiohead. The other part as I said had to do with honesty, and to me looking at a chart full of albums you think are great and then saying it's a bad chart is dishonest, and I get that there's an argument against that but it's probably not worth discussing as perhaps neither side is right.

3. I feel like my comments have been misconstrued a lot where I'm made to look like I'm arguing against something that I would never argue against.

Quote:

I prefer charts with some unusual choices from which I can grab recommendations, given that the primary reason that I use a music site such as this is to get recommendations (and share them in return).

I've not said at all that I do not value these types of charts. As I've tried to explain, I like charts like this as they are useful/interesting, but not always because I'd define them as a good chart. Ultimately whether I like a chart in the end is decided by whether I like the albums on it. If I don't know the majority of the albums, I have no opinion on whether it's a good or bad chart until I've listened to it.

tl,dr: When I call a chart good or bad it's subjective and personal. For a good chart, I'm just saying that in my opinion I think it has great albums. Whether it's interesting or boring is besides the point, they're something else entirely to me.
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