1) Reviews are generally self-selecting (as you’ve pointed out)
2) Most music that gets to be reviewed is “kinda fine” and ranking it 7 seems to be shorthand for “I didn’t love this but I can’t put my finger on why it’s not amazing, so this score seems fine”. There’s also the “wisdom” of crowds. We’re now in a situation where scoring an album 5/10 (which should be the average score) is seen as a huge diss.
I’m interested in why this issue doesn’t seem to apply to film or literature though.
i think when we are talking about this in the group chat we kind of got somewhere with #2 -- film, and especially literature, requires a bit more knowledge, and a lot more time commitment. any idiot can just listen to a song really fast and decide what it's "worth." but a whole film? a whole BOOK? and if you're really going to do a proper job of criticizing that, you need to understand a whole lot about the medium, and (in both cases, actually) about literary theory/criticism as a whole. i'm not actually saying you don't need similar rigor for music criticism, but i do think it's been more democratized and less intellectualized.
Oh but it does apply to literature. I guess I can’t speak about the professional review scene, but for social media book reviews this is absolutely the case. If you rate a book fewer than 4 stars on Goodreads the author is liable to pop up and hound you about it. Keep in mind that Goodreads defines 3 stars as “I liked it”. Still you get people writing scathing reviews about absolutely terrible books … and then rating them “3 stars”.
Scores are so arbitrary as to be meaningless. If a score is really high or really low, it’ll pique my curiosity, but that’s about it.
As for reviews, I like doing ‘em, but really it’s more curation than anything; I’m sharing stuff I like with readers I hope’ll like it too. Life’s too short to listen to bad music, and the internets already flooded with hate reads anyway…
there was SO much to discuss here that I had to cut because it was already so long, but this was one of the points (I kind of made it very very briefly) -- we are self selecting, even the major pubs are. that's a problem for them, they should be reviewing across the board and they should NOT be influenced by advertising and dollars. different story for us little guys. if we do review albums (and I don't have any issue with actual reviews, I'm just personally bored with writing them these days), it should be because we like them! then it's a form of curation in itself. the default assumption is, here's a great album -- I'll explain in detail what's so great about it.
negativity sells, though. and there's something to be said for that. but I'll never punch down on the little guys. if some massive rich star releases a crap record, or if somebody morally despicable does, I might consider getting my frustration out. but otherwise, that discussion is better suited to private conversation. just my two cents though.
I agree with this take. It doesn't even occur to me to do a rating whenever I write reviews; I never feel like it'll add anything to the reader's takeaway. What I do focus on is accurately relaying how it made me feel, what it made me think of, what other songs/albums I'm connecting it to while listening. I really appreciate reviews that do the contextual math, especially for newer/younger readers who are usually seeing ridiculous qualifying statements like, "ALBUM OF THE YEAR??" every few weeks.
absolutely. and i say this as a reformed AOTY obsessive, a reformed list-maker, a reformed devotee of the aggregator gospel. i understand, of course, using those sources as a jumping off point. you have to start somewhere. but if you're in this game long enough you realize those lists all look exactly the same every where, no matter the publication. and it just can't be that only the same 200 or so albums deserve attention every year.
I think it was John Green who wrote in his book "The Anthropocene Reviewed" that rating systems are specifically designed so that algorithms can use them, not because people actually understand numbers that way. And that cements for me that we really shouldn't be taking these 'grades' seriously. The meat is in the written review, and there's something to be argued about Tennis' point of view here – if you're going to review an album, you should at least search for what the album is about. Although there's also beauty in interpreting lyrics in a way that's personal to you.
I like reviews, but as a writer, I also feel myself gravitating to a different approach to writing about music. In a way that's more creative, and more personal to me, and leaves more space for the context a song or album was created in. I'm not sure if that benefits musicians as much as it does myself, but it doesn't do any harm, either way.
in the original draft of this essay, i wrote quite a bit about roland barthes and the death of the author, and how that applies to music criticism (and interpretation of art generally). i think i'll still write about that eventually, because i don't have a solid stance one way or the other, but i think it's such an interesting point of discussion: is it necessary to understand the artist's intent? or is the listener's interpretation valid without it?
Yeah that's really interesting to think about! And a topic that I think is more and more relevant every day. People apply it a lot to J.K. Rowling nowadays, i.e. is Harry Potter still safe to consume considering who she is as a person? You could also apply this to Kanye West, etc.
But also without the 'cancelling' angle, it's still interesting to explore this. And I think the answer might be different depending on whether you're talking about music or, say, literature. I think people consume music in a much more casual manner than they do books, which probably creates more room for misinterpretation; and maybe the artist takes this into account during the creation process?
Anyway, I have a lot of half-formed ideas about this – I'd definitely be down to read your essay about death of the author, if you choose to write it.
When I was a critic, if I liked a record I would write a story about the band (who were 99.9 percent of the time happy to cooperate) and in the context of that, I would explain why I liked the record and thus was writing about them. In my first go-round as a musician, I got so many reviews that were clueless and/or so short as to be meaningless that I never saw the point — and that of course goes double for scores. (A Lester Bangs-style essay about a band/record can be a great thing, although of course you’re really playing with fire, cf. Pitchfork.)
Today, people like you can make playlists and videos with snippets, so that’s worthwhile. But a read-only review? I’m not seeing it.
Also, I listened to “Swimmer” — I guess I can forgive not picking up what it’s about, but anyone who thinks it’s about scoffing at tourists needs to at the very least cut their reviewing workload in half and focus, or preferably re-examine why they listen to music and why they think people make it.
It's middle ground on everything isn't it? Which isn't sexy and doesn't get clicks or views, and I think that's the ultimate problem. I'm not even making any grand proclamations here despite saying I hate scores. Reviews are good. Tennis makes some good points. Various interpretations are valid. But none of that is particularly interesting.
In any case, I do think it's fine to interpret songs differently from how an artist intended, AND I think Pitchfork was lazy about how they interpreted Tennis.
It may have been necessary to know the intent of the artist at one point, but I don’t think it’s always even possible now, and I don’t think artists should assume that people will know their intent. But if you create with honesty and integrity, people will get something from it even if it’s not what you intended.
Last year I got a lovely compliment on my song about the aftermath of suicide, which is totally not about the aftermath of suicide. To this day I have no idea how they got that notion, but it doesn’t matter to me—I connected with someone.
But don’t waste your thoughts on me—let’s see the essay on Barthes and the death of the author!
I wish more reviews were informative about the artists, the music, the production, the cultural context, etc. and not someone's semi-autobiographical, navel-gazing, creative non-fiction piece they hope to leverage for clout.
Don't read anything on my Substack and hold me to this though lol
It might be interesting for us to get a list of what you listened to but didn’t recommend once in awhile. No review, no qualifications, but just a list of “don’t recommend?”
hmmm yeah I'll consider that. obviously much of the time if I don't recommend it it's because I haven't listened to it, but this is curation after all... you're only getting a fraction of what I listed to. i don't love the idea of giving you the stuff that goes in my discard pile because then there's an implication of "this is bad" but it's true that there are varying degrees.... "this is garbage" and "this is good but not for me" and "this is good but not for my target audience"... anyway, I'll think on it!
Day late here, so I don't expect anyone to read this, but my experience on this topic is interesting, at least to me...
Over the past 4 years, I've reviewed around 200 albums from the early '80's as part of a fun Facebook group (which is now sadly defunct, but I get it, people have lives). We used a rating system of 0-5, with extensive decimals. At a certain point, it became clear that everybody was assigning the numbers differently, and there was some discussion. In the end, we just kept doing it, and the numbers became, for many, kind of a joke. So you saw ratings like 3.99999 or 0.69 etc. I specifically recall reviewing a Jandek album and using a random number generator to give it a 3.7. Was it that good? Who the hell knows?
Anyway, when I see an album score now, I just assume whoever assigned it has their own bias and their own system, and I pretty much ignore it, unless it's wildly high or wildly low, in which case I usually look for reasons to disagree with the reviewer. :-)
When I do a new music listing, my words focus on how the song makes me feel and who the artist is by way of origin and genre or influences. That’s it. Relix, my fave music mag, assigns scores but they wallow in 3.5 to 5 thumbs up. Perhaps b/c they don’t want to insult a possible future advertiser.
i think that's another thing... many music publications are 1) self-selecting and 2) sticking to mediocre-at-worst scores because they are kind of just advertising stuff they're being fed by labels. it's not great.
As you know Gabbie, I love discussing this topic and I'm unlikely to say anything you haven't heard me say before. I have been reviewing albums for 26 years now and my thoughts on the value of a score/grade have oscillated over that time. I've written for publications who use 1* to 5* ratings (hate those), but I mainly use 0-10 with no decimals, because I find that kind of attempt at precision ridiculous. What's the difference between a 6.8 and a 6.9 really? However, my 0-10 ratings do make sense to me and I find the useful tools for tracking my reactions.
I want to write about anything that elicits a personal response and have no qualms about writing critical reviews. I won't be outright mean to tiny artists unless their music/lyrical content is especially abhorrent, but I think if readers know what I don't enjoy and why, they will have a better understanding of why I am praising something else. I want to share my whole perspective, basically. My idea is, by being a little more sparing in extremely positive reviews -- by using less words like genius, classic, essential, awesome, amazing, fantastic, trailblazing, visionary etc. -- those descriptors will pack more of a punch when I do utilise them.
I also really enjoy reading criticism that I violently disagree with when it is well articulated and argued. Especially a negative review of a record I love or am excited about. I'm not going to avoid listening (or stop listening), but perhaps I'll listen more closely and challenge my preconceptions a little.
I think a lot of music is good or very good and I frequently enjoy and listen extensively to records that I grade 6 or 7/10, which are good scores in my book. This year I've only scored 10 albums at 8 or above (and only one 9/10), but I count 36 x 7/10s and 12 x 6/10s. It's meaningless, but it works for me.
I will add that a lot of publications use scores terribly. There is one (I won't name them) where the scores are always 8/10 or 10/10. If magazines or website are going to use ratings, I want to see something resembling a symmetrical normal distribution curve essentially. A small negative skew is expected, but some skews are ridiculous, with mean ratings close to 8.
I'm pleased to see No Ripcord towards the bottom of the list, grading 3 points lower than the average publication. Although even our mean grading is 70/100.
I think we're on the same page about most music, at least most music that we end up getting our hands on, actually being good. That's kind of the whole point about scores being unhelpful if the point is to use them for curation, though, right?
I think I linked your negative reviews post here, too, and I can't disagree with your take there either, not entirely. I'm not going to be sharing my negative opinions but at least it's making scoring more useful!
(I know exactly the publication that only gives good ratings and we share the same opinion of them 😅)
"I also really enjoy reading criticism that I violently disagree with when it is well articulated and argued. Especially a negative review of a record I love or am excited about. I'm not going to avoid listening (or stop listening), but perhaps I'll listen more closely and challenge my preconceptions a little."
Oh my, a friend of mine, a talented musician, was aghast that I don't like The War on Drugs. He recommended some albums to me with explanations about why he thought those were particularly representative of their oeuvre. I listened to the entire The War On Drugs catalog chronologically. I sent my friend back scathing track-by-track, album-by-album reviews. Of course, my opinions are pretty much entirely subjective, especially since I'm not fully qualified to comment on the complexity of a guitar solo or something.
It was funny that many of the things that I absolutely despise about them are things that they are knowingly leaning into and are the exact sound they're going for. By that standard, they are very good. They succeeded in sounding how they set out to sound and in conveying a nostalgia for certain music, which I also happen to generally dislike. My friend thought my thorough lambasting of their beloved band was hilarious and appreciated how much work I put into it. I showed them some respect by investing that much time in the project. I would never publish those "reviews," as it was just banter with a friend and I don't have any hard feelings toward the band. Not that they would or should care at all because, like I said, they are actually good at making the music they want to make.
That sounds brilliant! I’ve always been interested in why I’m often drawn to the messy and imperfect, while the slick and technical leaves me cold. I have the same reaction to the War on Drugs. It’s not as simple as “they’re not doing anything new” as I don’t think that’s a requirement. I just find them kind of tedious. I something I’ve ever reviewed them so I haven’t fully explored why (yet).
I've never seen the point of scores - and I was a supervisor for 8 years, required to grade performance every year.
Most of the time, scores are meant to show you who stands out and deserves extra attention (positive or negative) but everyone is trying to get ahead or earn a promotion, so the average scores turn into the kiss of death for the ambitious.
As for "reviews"... I'm still trying to figure out how to make that meaningful. My current strategy is to share what it is about a record or piece of music that resonates with me. Usually, that turns into a testimonial. I don't know if that helps, but I enjoy doing it.
Which isn't much different from how my favorite artists are motivated.
reviews themselves can be, and often are in the hands of talented writers, works of art unto themselves. i don't take issues with reviews. perhaps i will write more one day... but they won't have scores attached ;) i simply got bored with the tired old expected formula. this wasn't really meant to be a criticism of criticism (a metacriticism!)... though i don't think you took it that way. more just an understanding that folks in this attention economy are scanning right to the score, and ignoring the words (artists as much as listeners, as evidenced by Tennis... because i just don't think Pitchfork was *that* incendiary, being honest)
This is all so true. I guess the assumption we’re collectively making is that albums with no reviews are the ones that would fill the 0-6.8 part of the scale, and that gives me massive fomo because the population of unreviewed albums surely contains thousands of great ones whose only sin is being from smaller bands or labels…
something else I wanted to mention but there's just never any space or time is the huge discrepancy (usually!) between critic and user scores. and listeners are more likely to be reviewing the unknown gems, the local faves, etc. interesting actually that tennis scored pretty much the same for both, here. i could have had a whole separate tangent on that!
The college radio station I worked at in the 1990s would put a colored sticker by each song on a release (blue dot for no play due to swearing content, green for fast tempo, yellow medium and red was slow tempo) and then the dots were scored with an x (best!), horizontal line (meh) or center dot (ugh) and I would like all music to be scored that way forever please thanks. I mean, when you’re in the record room and you can play anything next, don’t you always want the green dot with an x? But yeah, sometimes I’d feel disagreement with the dot system, 1/2 way through the song and be extra angry about it (can’t rip the needle off during broadcast but you can at home).
I wish it was easier to be that specific with "likes" in streaming services. They could color-code the song titles by BPM or something so you could tell a range at a glance. Some of the TV/Movie streamers have managed to distinguish a spectrum from hate, to dislike, to meh, to like, to love or equivalent without too many extra steps.
Your last sentence makes me laugh. So many times I've been gradually getting into a song only for there to be some significant change that feels like betrayal and makes me hate it and skip. This is often some guy joining in on a woman singing to warble or wail about something or other. I'm never going to forgive Kyle Fischer.
My point? In any era where there is so much to consume, how do we slow down enough, be in the moment enough, to give art its due?
I can go to an art museum (my town has a free one - lucky me!) and stroll through in 20 minutes, giving myself a surveyor’s view of what’s on display. I could also go stare at the Francis Bacon for an hour and let it wash over me.
For me, it’s about the mood that I’m in when I hear something. Do I allow myself to be curious enough to take in what’s being communicated?
I get a lot more out of some museums if I do the docent tour. Context makes a lot of difference in appreciating some art. I don't know how much it helps me appreciate music I would otherwise dislike or disregard if someone explains what intensions, meanings, techniques, etc. are behind it. That kind of information might help me to enjoy something I already like even more and possibly respect something I don't enjoy, but it won't make the actual listening any easier. John Cage springs to mind for me. Or maybe those new Andre 3000 piano works....
I agree, ratings are generally meaningless. Especially since almost every album gets the same rating, and ratings often say more about an artists buzz than the quality of art, but...
I'll admit i love a good ranked list. Not because I think a top 5 is more worthy than a #75, but because I think it's a fun/engaging format that makes space for a lot but also encourages discussion/discourse.
Plus, when I make a ranked list for myself, it's based on what I'm totally into most to least, approximately. The numbers themselves are somewhat arbitrary, but the general area matters. I love going back and seeing which of my top picks keep me coming back vs ones that were tacked on near the end.
If you take my top 100 of 2024 -
#4 - Francis Of Delerium - just listened the other day for the first time in 2025
#20 - The Cure - I haven't gone back to in months
#32 - worlds greatest dad - listened a bunch of times throughout
#41 - Oceanator - recently rediscovered
#46 THUS LOVE - continually relatively obsessed
#72 Rachel Chinouriri - listened to multiple times in the last 2 months
The numbers give me context, for myself, of where that album was sitting with me in the moment...but it's all fluid.
I think scores can be useful in certain limited circumstances. For example, if there's an artist with a large body of work that I'm looking to explore, I like that sites like AllMusic have ratings to give me a sense of which albums to check out first. Whereas Pitchfork (esp during the 90s/00s) used scores to act as gatekeepers of who has 'indie cred' and who doesn't—a distinction I think most music listeners lost interest in long ago.
This makes me think two things:
1) Reviews are generally self-selecting (as you’ve pointed out)
2) Most music that gets to be reviewed is “kinda fine” and ranking it 7 seems to be shorthand for “I didn’t love this but I can’t put my finger on why it’s not amazing, so this score seems fine”. There’s also the “wisdom” of crowds. We’re now in a situation where scoring an album 5/10 (which should be the average score) is seen as a huge diss.
I’m interested in why this issue doesn’t seem to apply to film or literature though.
i think when we are talking about this in the group chat we kind of got somewhere with #2 -- film, and especially literature, requires a bit more knowledge, and a lot more time commitment. any idiot can just listen to a song really fast and decide what it's "worth." but a whole film? a whole BOOK? and if you're really going to do a proper job of criticizing that, you need to understand a whole lot about the medium, and (in both cases, actually) about literary theory/criticism as a whole. i'm not actually saying you don't need similar rigor for music criticism, but i do think it's been more democratized and less intellectualized.
Oh but it does apply to literature. I guess I can’t speak about the professional review scene, but for social media book reviews this is absolutely the case. If you rate a book fewer than 4 stars on Goodreads the author is liable to pop up and hound you about it. Keep in mind that Goodreads defines 3 stars as “I liked it”. Still you get people writing scathing reviews about absolutely terrible books … and then rating them “3 stars”.
oh I feel like we need a separate rant about critic reviews vs "general populace" reviews
Scores are so arbitrary as to be meaningless. If a score is really high or really low, it’ll pique my curiosity, but that’s about it.
As for reviews, I like doing ‘em, but really it’s more curation than anything; I’m sharing stuff I like with readers I hope’ll like it too. Life’s too short to listen to bad music, and the internets already flooded with hate reads anyway…
there was SO much to discuss here that I had to cut because it was already so long, but this was one of the points (I kind of made it very very briefly) -- we are self selecting, even the major pubs are. that's a problem for them, they should be reviewing across the board and they should NOT be influenced by advertising and dollars. different story for us little guys. if we do review albums (and I don't have any issue with actual reviews, I'm just personally bored with writing them these days), it should be because we like them! then it's a form of curation in itself. the default assumption is, here's a great album -- I'll explain in detail what's so great about it.
negativity sells, though. and there's something to be said for that. but I'll never punch down on the little guys. if some massive rich star releases a crap record, or if somebody morally despicable does, I might consider getting my frustration out. but otherwise, that discussion is better suited to private conversation. just my two cents though.
Exactly! I think I might've mentioned it here before, but putting art out into the world takes moxie. It won't be me shitting on it.
I think the problem with Pitchfork is scores aren't subjective enough, they are more like an assembly line quality check.
If they gave something a 2, I'd definitely give it a listen. A 7? Meh. I hate to think what they'd score 10.
I agree with this take. It doesn't even occur to me to do a rating whenever I write reviews; I never feel like it'll add anything to the reader's takeaway. What I do focus on is accurately relaying how it made me feel, what it made me think of, what other songs/albums I'm connecting it to while listening. I really appreciate reviews that do the contextual math, especially for newer/younger readers who are usually seeing ridiculous qualifying statements like, "ALBUM OF THE YEAR??" every few weeks.
absolutely. and i say this as a reformed AOTY obsessive, a reformed list-maker, a reformed devotee of the aggregator gospel. i understand, of course, using those sources as a jumping off point. you have to start somewhere. but if you're in this game long enough you realize those lists all look exactly the same every where, no matter the publication. and it just can't be that only the same 200 or so albums deserve attention every year.
I think it was John Green who wrote in his book "The Anthropocene Reviewed" that rating systems are specifically designed so that algorithms can use them, not because people actually understand numbers that way. And that cements for me that we really shouldn't be taking these 'grades' seriously. The meat is in the written review, and there's something to be argued about Tennis' point of view here – if you're going to review an album, you should at least search for what the album is about. Although there's also beauty in interpreting lyrics in a way that's personal to you.
I like reviews, but as a writer, I also feel myself gravitating to a different approach to writing about music. In a way that's more creative, and more personal to me, and leaves more space for the context a song or album was created in. I'm not sure if that benefits musicians as much as it does myself, but it doesn't do any harm, either way.
in the original draft of this essay, i wrote quite a bit about roland barthes and the death of the author, and how that applies to music criticism (and interpretation of art generally). i think i'll still write about that eventually, because i don't have a solid stance one way or the other, but i think it's such an interesting point of discussion: is it necessary to understand the artist's intent? or is the listener's interpretation valid without it?
I want to read that! I think about it a lot.
Yeah that's really interesting to think about! And a topic that I think is more and more relevant every day. People apply it a lot to J.K. Rowling nowadays, i.e. is Harry Potter still safe to consume considering who she is as a person? You could also apply this to Kanye West, etc.
But also without the 'cancelling' angle, it's still interesting to explore this. And I think the answer might be different depending on whether you're talking about music or, say, literature. I think people consume music in a much more casual manner than they do books, which probably creates more room for misinterpretation; and maybe the artist takes this into account during the creation process?
Anyway, I have a lot of half-formed ideas about this – I'd definitely be down to read your essay about death of the author, if you choose to write it.
yeah I wasn't thinking about it from the canceling angle but I think that's probably unavoidable (and interesting of course)
When I was a critic, if I liked a record I would write a story about the band (who were 99.9 percent of the time happy to cooperate) and in the context of that, I would explain why I liked the record and thus was writing about them. In my first go-round as a musician, I got so many reviews that were clueless and/or so short as to be meaningless that I never saw the point — and that of course goes double for scores. (A Lester Bangs-style essay about a band/record can be a great thing, although of course you’re really playing with fire, cf. Pitchfork.)
Today, people like you can make playlists and videos with snippets, so that’s worthwhile. But a read-only review? I’m not seeing it.
Also, I listened to “Swimmer” — I guess I can forgive not picking up what it’s about, but anyone who thinks it’s about scoffing at tourists needs to at the very least cut their reviewing workload in half and focus, or preferably re-examine why they listen to music and why they think people make it.
It's middle ground on everything isn't it? Which isn't sexy and doesn't get clicks or views, and I think that's the ultimate problem. I'm not even making any grand proclamations here despite saying I hate scores. Reviews are good. Tennis makes some good points. Various interpretations are valid. But none of that is particularly interesting.
In any case, I do think it's fine to interpret songs differently from how an artist intended, AND I think Pitchfork was lazy about how they interpreted Tennis.
It may have been necessary to know the intent of the artist at one point, but I don’t think it’s always even possible now, and I don’t think artists should assume that people will know their intent. But if you create with honesty and integrity, people will get something from it even if it’s not what you intended.
Last year I got a lovely compliment on my song about the aftermath of suicide, which is totally not about the aftermath of suicide. To this day I have no idea how they got that notion, but it doesn’t matter to me—I connected with someone.
But don’t waste your thoughts on me—let’s see the essay on Barthes and the death of the author!
Ha ha ha okay I'm on it Chief
(Adjusts green visor)(Grumbles unintelligibly)(Points with unlit cigar)
I wish more reviews were informative about the artists, the music, the production, the cultural context, etc. and not someone's semi-autobiographical, navel-gazing, creative non-fiction piece they hope to leverage for clout.
Don't read anything on my Substack and hold me to this though lol
It might be interesting for us to get a list of what you listened to but didn’t recommend once in awhile. No review, no qualifications, but just a list of “don’t recommend?”
hmmm yeah I'll consider that. obviously much of the time if I don't recommend it it's because I haven't listened to it, but this is curation after all... you're only getting a fraction of what I listed to. i don't love the idea of giving you the stuff that goes in my discard pile because then there's an implication of "this is bad" but it's true that there are varying degrees.... "this is garbage" and "this is good but not for me" and "this is good but not for my target audience"... anyway, I'll think on it!
very good points
! thanks for responding!
Day late here, so I don't expect anyone to read this, but my experience on this topic is interesting, at least to me...
Over the past 4 years, I've reviewed around 200 albums from the early '80's as part of a fun Facebook group (which is now sadly defunct, but I get it, people have lives). We used a rating system of 0-5, with extensive decimals. At a certain point, it became clear that everybody was assigning the numbers differently, and there was some discussion. In the end, we just kept doing it, and the numbers became, for many, kind of a joke. So you saw ratings like 3.99999 or 0.69 etc. I specifically recall reviewing a Jandek album and using a random number generator to give it a 3.7. Was it that good? Who the hell knows?
Anyway, when I see an album score now, I just assume whoever assigned it has their own bias and their own system, and I pretty much ignore it, unless it's wildly high or wildly low, in which case I usually look for reasons to disagree with the reviewer. :-)
this is really funny though, I approve
When I do a new music listing, my words focus on how the song makes me feel and who the artist is by way of origin and genre or influences. That’s it. Relix, my fave music mag, assigns scores but they wallow in 3.5 to 5 thumbs up. Perhaps b/c they don’t want to insult a possible future advertiser.
i think that's another thing... many music publications are 1) self-selecting and 2) sticking to mediocre-at-worst scores because they are kind of just advertising stuff they're being fed by labels. it's not great.
Scores from a review don't really mean that much. One person's meat is another person's poison.
I would rather just read an honest down to earth opinion on the music being reviewed.
Did they enjoy it and why? Would they listen to it again? and Would they be interested in future releases from the same band?
precisely
As you know Gabbie, I love discussing this topic and I'm unlikely to say anything you haven't heard me say before. I have been reviewing albums for 26 years now and my thoughts on the value of a score/grade have oscillated over that time. I've written for publications who use 1* to 5* ratings (hate those), but I mainly use 0-10 with no decimals, because I find that kind of attempt at precision ridiculous. What's the difference between a 6.8 and a 6.9 really? However, my 0-10 ratings do make sense to me and I find the useful tools for tracking my reactions.
I want to write about anything that elicits a personal response and have no qualms about writing critical reviews. I won't be outright mean to tiny artists unless their music/lyrical content is especially abhorrent, but I think if readers know what I don't enjoy and why, they will have a better understanding of why I am praising something else. I want to share my whole perspective, basically. My idea is, by being a little more sparing in extremely positive reviews -- by using less words like genius, classic, essential, awesome, amazing, fantastic, trailblazing, visionary etc. -- those descriptors will pack more of a punch when I do utilise them.
I also really enjoy reading criticism that I violently disagree with when it is well articulated and argued. Especially a negative review of a record I love or am excited about. I'm not going to avoid listening (or stop listening), but perhaps I'll listen more closely and challenge my preconceptions a little.
I think a lot of music is good or very good and I frequently enjoy and listen extensively to records that I grade 6 or 7/10, which are good scores in my book. This year I've only scored 10 albums at 8 or above (and only one 9/10), but I count 36 x 7/10s and 12 x 6/10s. It's meaningless, but it works for me.
I will add that a lot of publications use scores terribly. There is one (I won't name them) where the scores are always 8/10 or 10/10. If magazines or website are going to use ratings, I want to see something resembling a symmetrical normal distribution curve essentially. A small negative skew is expected, but some skews are ridiculous, with mean ratings close to 8.
Metacritic has a guide here:
https://www.metacritic.com/browse/albums/publication/reviewed
I'm pleased to see No Ripcord towards the bottom of the list, grading 3 points lower than the average publication. Although even our mean grading is 70/100.
I'll never tire of discussing this with you!
I think we're on the same page about most music, at least most music that we end up getting our hands on, actually being good. That's kind of the whole point about scores being unhelpful if the point is to use them for curation, though, right?
I think I linked your negative reviews post here, too, and I can't disagree with your take there either, not entirely. I'm not going to be sharing my negative opinions but at least it's making scoring more useful!
(I know exactly the publication that only gives good ratings and we share the same opinion of them 😅)
"I also really enjoy reading criticism that I violently disagree with when it is well articulated and argued. Especially a negative review of a record I love or am excited about. I'm not going to avoid listening (or stop listening), but perhaps I'll listen more closely and challenge my preconceptions a little."
Oh my, a friend of mine, a talented musician, was aghast that I don't like The War on Drugs. He recommended some albums to me with explanations about why he thought those were particularly representative of their oeuvre. I listened to the entire The War On Drugs catalog chronologically. I sent my friend back scathing track-by-track, album-by-album reviews. Of course, my opinions are pretty much entirely subjective, especially since I'm not fully qualified to comment on the complexity of a guitar solo or something.
It was funny that many of the things that I absolutely despise about them are things that they are knowingly leaning into and are the exact sound they're going for. By that standard, they are very good. They succeeded in sounding how they set out to sound and in conveying a nostalgia for certain music, which I also happen to generally dislike. My friend thought my thorough lambasting of their beloved band was hilarious and appreciated how much work I put into it. I showed them some respect by investing that much time in the project. I would never publish those "reviews," as it was just banter with a friend and I don't have any hard feelings toward the band. Not that they would or should care at all because, like I said, they are actually good at making the music they want to make.
That sounds brilliant! I’ve always been interested in why I’m often drawn to the messy and imperfect, while the slick and technical leaves me cold. I have the same reaction to the War on Drugs. It’s not as simple as “they’re not doing anything new” as I don’t think that’s a requirement. I just find them kind of tedious. I something I’ve ever reviewed them so I haven’t fully explored why (yet).
I've never seen the point of scores - and I was a supervisor for 8 years, required to grade performance every year.
Most of the time, scores are meant to show you who stands out and deserves extra attention (positive or negative) but everyone is trying to get ahead or earn a promotion, so the average scores turn into the kiss of death for the ambitious.
As for "reviews"... I'm still trying to figure out how to make that meaningful. My current strategy is to share what it is about a record or piece of music that resonates with me. Usually, that turns into a testimonial. I don't know if that helps, but I enjoy doing it.
Which isn't much different from how my favorite artists are motivated.
reviews themselves can be, and often are in the hands of talented writers, works of art unto themselves. i don't take issues with reviews. perhaps i will write more one day... but they won't have scores attached ;) i simply got bored with the tired old expected formula. this wasn't really meant to be a criticism of criticism (a metacriticism!)... though i don't think you took it that way. more just an understanding that folks in this attention economy are scanning right to the score, and ignoring the words (artists as much as listeners, as evidenced by Tennis... because i just don't think Pitchfork was *that* incendiary, being honest)
This is all so true. I guess the assumption we’re collectively making is that albums with no reviews are the ones that would fill the 0-6.8 part of the scale, and that gives me massive fomo because the population of unreviewed albums surely contains thousands of great ones whose only sin is being from smaller bands or labels…
something else I wanted to mention but there's just never any space or time is the huge discrepancy (usually!) between critic and user scores. and listeners are more likely to be reviewing the unknown gems, the local faves, etc. interesting actually that tennis scored pretty much the same for both, here. i could have had a whole separate tangent on that!
The college radio station I worked at in the 1990s would put a colored sticker by each song on a release (blue dot for no play due to swearing content, green for fast tempo, yellow medium and red was slow tempo) and then the dots were scored with an x (best!), horizontal line (meh) or center dot (ugh) and I would like all music to be scored that way forever please thanks. I mean, when you’re in the record room and you can play anything next, don’t you always want the green dot with an x? But yeah, sometimes I’d feel disagreement with the dot system, 1/2 way through the song and be extra angry about it (can’t rip the needle off during broadcast but you can at home).
I wish it was easier to be that specific with "likes" in streaming services. They could color-code the song titles by BPM or something so you could tell a range at a glance. Some of the TV/Movie streamers have managed to distinguish a spectrum from hate, to dislike, to meh, to like, to love or equivalent without too many extra steps.
Your last sentence makes me laugh. So many times I've been gradually getting into a song only for there to be some significant change that feels like betrayal and makes me hate it and skip. This is often some guy joining in on a woman singing to warble or wail about something or other. I'm never going to forgive Kyle Fischer.
Obviously it was the very early 90s.
I give this essay a 7/10 and my comment a 1/10.
My point? In any era where there is so much to consume, how do we slow down enough, be in the moment enough, to give art its due?
I can go to an art museum (my town has a free one - lucky me!) and stroll through in 20 minutes, giving myself a surveyor’s view of what’s on display. I could also go stare at the Francis Bacon for an hour and let it wash over me.
For me, it’s about the mood that I’m in when I hear something. Do I allow myself to be curious enough to take in what’s being communicated?
But what do I know?
I’m going to go play some Tennis…
I get a lot more out of some museums if I do the docent tour. Context makes a lot of difference in appreciating some art. I don't know how much it helps me appreciate music I would otherwise dislike or disregard if someone explains what intensions, meanings, techniques, etc. are behind it. That kind of information might help me to enjoy something I already like even more and possibly respect something I don't enjoy, but it won't make the actual listening any easier. John Cage springs to mind for me. Or maybe those new Andre 3000 piano works....
i do love staring at one piece in a museum for an absurdly long time...
I agree, ratings are generally meaningless. Especially since almost every album gets the same rating, and ratings often say more about an artists buzz than the quality of art, but...
I'll admit i love a good ranked list. Not because I think a top 5 is more worthy than a #75, but because I think it's a fun/engaging format that makes space for a lot but also encourages discussion/discourse.
Plus, when I make a ranked list for myself, it's based on what I'm totally into most to least, approximately. The numbers themselves are somewhat arbitrary, but the general area matters. I love going back and seeing which of my top picks keep me coming back vs ones that were tacked on near the end.
If you take my top 100 of 2024 -
#4 - Francis Of Delerium - just listened the other day for the first time in 2025
#20 - The Cure - I haven't gone back to in months
#32 - worlds greatest dad - listened a bunch of times throughout
#41 - Oceanator - recently rediscovered
#46 THUS LOVE - continually relatively obsessed
#72 Rachel Chinouriri - listened to multiple times in the last 2 months
The numbers give me context, for myself, of where that album was sitting with me in the moment...but it's all fluid.
Basically, I'm just a dork who loves a good list.
even i love a ranked list! but it stress me out to make them...
Things like The Cure can be a mood. Maybe you should be congratulated on not going back to in months haha.
I think scores can be useful in certain limited circumstances. For example, if there's an artist with a large body of work that I'm looking to explore, I like that sites like AllMusic have ratings to give me a sense of which albums to check out first. Whereas Pitchfork (esp during the 90s/00s) used scores to act as gatekeepers of who has 'indie cred' and who doesn't—a distinction I think most music listeners lost interest in long ago.
well we hope they lost interest in that anyway