Raters who suck

Not to mention it would discriminate against people without a strong grasp of English.  I'm with you dig.

Well, I've never given an album 1 star. Ever. And I don't think I ever will. If I don't like it, I normally put it down to being "not my genre" rather than bad music.

digdug wrote: there needs to be a middle ground  where you can write three quick sentences that explain your rating without having to write a novel about the album so it can be called a review

You don't have to write a novel, just a 100 words, which is about 6 or 7 sentences. That's really ok.

^Yep

Edited by Snow Dog - September 20 2012 at 16:49

people should be able to rate 1 star without a review

Yeah, for sure.

One way I get around that sort of problem, in terms of really, truly disliking something that I think is still historically significant in some way, is to either 1) not review the album or 2) admit in the review that I couldn't enjoy it for reasons X, Y, & Z but suggest that due to its other values, it's got something for fans of the genre/the curious etc

I like honesty in reviews too, though stylistically I won't preface each review with a disclaimer like "this is only my opinion etc etc" but think it's implied if my reviews are successful.

I suppose what it boils down to for me, is the review itself. Our ratings we give are of course, snapshots, the why is in the text itself and more important I reckon (well, it's in the good reviews anyway )

I'd say that if a pre-release is so good that I felt it was Essential, I'd say so based on my knowledge of the genre and its history. 

In fact, I could say the same even if I didn't like it as much as 5 stars, I'd still argue that it had value in its role of "reinventing the genre" perhaps or "doing the genre proud and matching the classics" or some such

^ I already answered that question twice, so I'll let Roberts take a crack at it.

dtguitarfan wrote: thellama73 wrote: dtguitarfan wrote: I'm saying that in my opinion all reviewers can really do is measure their own enjoyment and guess what other people's enjoyment will be. So you don't think the word "essential" has any meaning distinct from "enjoyable?" I don't think I, or anyone else for that matter, can truly decide if an album is essential.  I can only guess at it, and the only way I think that I can make that call is to measure my own enjoyment and guess at what other people's enjoyment will be.

'Essential' and 'enjoyable' are different indeed, I like drawing a distinction there.


To help understand the development of a genre, and contextualise an album in the history of that genre/of music, then a reviewer will give an opinion on whether an album is 'Essential.'

However, I can still certainly 'enjoy' listening to non-essential albums in a genre, in addition, to echo what's already been said, I can also fail to love an album that I consider 'Essential' to a given genre - that doesn't stop me still recognising that it has value re: it's place in genre, and suggesting that a listener who's interested in music or whatever genre ought to know the album.

A quick example would be that a Black Sabbath album would be essential to understanding metal, and thus a few of their albums are probably essential, even if I wouldn't enjoy each album 5 stars worth etc

HolyMoly wrote: I think everyone has their own variation on a generally accepted ratings system (i.e. 1 = bad, 5 = great), and I think both of you are good, reasonable guys whose ratings I would trust.  I think the problem lies with much more extreme examples of people who gratuitously and repeatedly dole out extreme scores without any apparent reason.  The "apparent" part is what's subjective here.