Mirror Man
by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
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Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band bestography
Mirror Man is ranked 8th best out of 31 albums by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band on BestEverAlbums.com.
The best album by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band is Trout Mask Replica which is ranked number 276 in the list of all-time albums with a total rank score of 5,928.
(N.B. Bestographies include all albums by an artist (and their variations), but do not include albums ranked outside the top 100,000).
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Mirror Man track list
The tracks on this album have an average rating of 75 out of 100 (all tracks have been rated).
Mirror Man rankings
Calculated from aggregate positions across 60,000 charts (2 million album rankings). Click to see how the rankings are calculated (Last updated: 3 hours ago)
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Mirror Man ratings
Average Rating = (n ÷ (n + m)) × av + (m ÷ (n + m)) × AVwhere:
av = trimmed mean average rating an item has currently received.
n = number of ratings an item has currently received.
m = minimum number of ratings required for an item to appear in a 'top-rated' chart (currently 10).
AV = the site mean average rating.
Showing latest 5 ratings for this album. | Show all 90 ratings for this album.
| Rating | Date updated | Member | Album ratings | Avg. album rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ! | 01/04/2026 09:05 | Exist-en-ciel | 15,384 | 70/100 |
| ! | 12/19/2025 05:52 | Leschoses | 108 | 85/100 |
| ! | 11/23/2025 07:25 | NYAndreas | 1,433 | 44/100 |
| ! | 05/19/2025 04:03 | brent13 | 2,143 | 67/100 |
| ! | 02/25/2025 00:23 |  EyeKanFly | 8,848 | 65/100 |
Rating metrics:
Outliers can be removed when calculating a mean average to dampen the effects of ratings outside the normal distribution. This figure is provided as the trimmed mean. A high standard deviation can be legitimate, but can sometimes indicate 'gaming' is occurring. Consider a simplified example* of an item receiving ratings of 100, 50, & 0. The mean average rating would be 50. However, ratings of 55, 50 & 45 could also result in the same average. The second average might be more trusted because there is more consensus around a particular rating (a lower deviation).
(*In practice, some albums can have several thousand ratings)
This album is rated in the top 22% of all albums on BestEverAlbums.com. This album has a Bayesian average rating of 73.6/100, a mean average of 72.3/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 73.8/100. The standard deviation for this album is 17.3.
Mirror Man favourites
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Mirror Man comments
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An overcompensation for a release Beefheart didn't like. I know a lot of people like mirror man, but I still prefer strictly personal
teague 07/15/2020 20:24 | #255636 | TOP COMMENT
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Mirror Man is an esoteric collection of blues(?) songs that feel like they're about to fall apart at any given second. I've never heard anyone make music like Beefheart does.
That oboe is so funky and weird. It sounds like a wounded animal at times, much like the vocals do.
This album is truly brilliant. A magical work of art that is quickly becoming a personal favorite. A truly inventive creative work that inaugurated me and makes me laugh. Beef heart is a true marvel.
VitorHugoP 05/31/2015 21:07 | #142757 | TOP COMMENT
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Great Progessive Album,realy ahead of his time.
'Mirror Man' is the sound of The Magic Band at it's most deliberately shambolic and free. Long 'live' rambling jams extend the notion of the Blues standard to its limits. Structurally, the Captain game-plays in the Delta tradition but adds theatrically satirical and infantile elements over a creative carpet of complex rhythms and free Blues arrangements. The result is an extraordinary work of pyrotechnical brilliance. With its combination of a bedlam of guitars and percussion, allied to Beefheart's atonality, 'Mirror Man' was the first album of it's kind to shape an aesthetic of 'anti-music' that was truelly revolutionary. The Captain's artistic vision transcends the superficiality of the acid trip by servicing it to the musical theatre of the absurd. As Scaruffi puts it, "This music is the most faithful expression of the Freak culture, of its marginalization more than its rebellion, of its inexhaustible creativity, of its academic disgust, of its infantile ferocity of its desecrating vision of the world".
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