When is a review TOO Subjective ??

I reckon statements like that, as long as they are part of a considered review, are what differentiates our site from others.

the worst reviews seem to be of two types - the one that gives 5 stars and says "this is the best album i have ever heard" meaning the reviewer hasn't heard many albums at all, or the one that runs down a highly rated album, or any album for that matter, in a few lines saying "this s**t sucks!!". i'm guilty of that sort of thing myself and wish it could be removed!  but it was a knee-jerk reaction which should have been avoided. initial euphoria over anything including a new album (one way or the other)  should be avoided till the "honeymoon" period is over. there were far too many 5 star ratings for the new Tool album far too soon, a classic case of "the king's new clothes" if i ever heard one, the thing was still warm from the presses. perhaps PA should give a six month "cooling off" period for new albums, or at least let their authorised expert reviewers do them first?

Edited by mystic fred - May 15 2006 at 02:01

I am kind of agreeing with Sleeper's comments. It is such a personal thing.
I don't mind people not liking the same music as me. (liking prog you get used to it! )
The reviews that bother me, are the ones written by some guy who joins PA purely to post ONE review on an album that he has an extreme opinion of, and then leaves.....never to post again! That winds me up!
And rhetorical questions in reviews also.if you have a question about an album stick it in the forum where it might at least get answered! Some of these questions are really showing the reviewer in a bad light tho, and not the album they are trying to put down!
    

Edited by prog-chick - May 15 2006 at 07:37

I tend to review albums that I like over albums that I don't because, obviously, I'm much more familiar with the songs and I'm sure that applies to 99% of the reviews.  For example, I don't like Drama by Yes.  I've tried to listen to it over the years from time to time but I never like what I hear.  So it's hard to write an intelligent, objective review of songs I've never gotten familiar with.  Much easier to write one for "Fragile" and give it 5 stars because I know every tune by heart.  Voila!  The only way I can write a 1 star review is to suffer through a listening of the album in question (Like Genesis' "Mama" album) and then proceed to tear it apart.  Not a fun way to spend my time.

Easy Livin wrote: I reckon statements like that, as long as they are part of a considered review, are what differentiates our site from others.   It is the personal aspect of our reviews which characterises them, and makes it different from the emotionless professional recitals which can be read anywhere else.

Bingo!!!

But yes, there are some reviews which are...so subjective that they are stupid. I remeber on guy used to give every album where Bruford played 5 stars, even the ones he had never heard...

^Maybe i'm over critical here but i have listened to a lot of albums that got a lot of 5 star ratings where i had the impression that they were good albums but no masterpieces.Of course this is my personal feeling about those albums, i just believe that some of the reviewers and raters get a bit carried away by their enthousiasm sometimes, running into trouble when an even better album comes along(you can't give more than 5 stars).

I know I'm not alone here, but I prefer to remove my personal tastes as far as possible, and review in terms of whether or not an album really is a masterpiece of Prog.

Of course this is subjective, and can only be qualified with reasoning based on more subjectivity - although it's possible to keep it in a rational framework.

But I prefer to read reviews that have a personal style and avoid gushing statements like "This is the best ever!!!". I also like reviews that focus on historical details, little unearthed nuggets about the band and most importantly, what about those Mellotrons, eh?

I have frequently docked stars from albums I really like - I could hardly bring myself to award "Stationary Traveller" 3 stars, for example - but it's not a Masterpiece of Prog - it's hardly even Progressive. I think it's bloody brilliant, but that is only my taste.

Likewise, I think that all 3 Muse albums are Masterpieces - but not of Prog Rock.

I also cannot stand ELP, and it was quite painful for me to award one of their albums 4 stars (I forget which, as they're all forgettable to me) - but facing reality, it is the duty of every progger to own at least one or two ELP albums, which makes it essential.

I like the scoring system here, and I use it when I look at reviews - you can always see who has been trying to "play the game" (and it is a kind of intellectual game), and who thinks they're on RateYourMusic.com.

Pity we can't keep the latter out of the charts!

I lately use a new system to create a rating for an album when reviewing one.

I first copy the tracklist and take a look at each and every single song and give each song a Xstar rating according to the normal guidelines. Than I take a look at the average score and that's what I award the album.

That way I sometimes give one of my favourite albums a mere 3 star rating, simply because I look at its progrelated issues with the guidelines and not at my personal feelings about it. These feelings I still can express in the review itself

It is difficult tho, there are some albums that I REALLY don't like, and I think it's for valid reasons, but that can be hard to express, especially when that album has lots of 4 or 5 star reviews.
I can try to be fair, and i would never just slg off an album, but if your opinion, based on valid reasons is different to most other peoples then what DO you write???
If I said that I thought the links and themes were weak, I thought that the production values were poor etc etc, and the other reviewers said "Wow best album EVER" .............it makes me look a fool, or bitter about the success of that album.
There are some truly apalling reviews here......... but with such a MASSIVE data base of material it's inevitable to get these poorly written hate/love reviews sneaking in.

P-C

MikeEnRegalia wrote: Certif1ed wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: Can you really separate them - or does a 5 star rating automatically make you suspect "fanboyism"? There are certain giveaways; "The guitar is really good, and the drums are fantastic. The singer has a great voice and the keyboards are cool. I really like track 2, and track 6 is the best ever!!! Track 8 has an awesome drum solo, dude, and, like is just awesome - you gotta buy this album!!!" Can you spot the subtle hints that would make me suspect that a review like that is pure fanboyism?      Does it tell you about the music or the reviewer? surely comments like these show that the reviewer really likes the album. But do they - together with a 5 star rating - prove that the album is not worth 5 stars? The whole discussion is futile anyway because - as you also said - the averages in the progarchvies database are a mix of various different rating strategies. When I look at the reviews I feel like most people give 5 stars more freely than suggested by the guidelines, and ignoring that and sparing the 5 stars for the top 10 albums of all time is IMO unnecessarily punishing the other albums.But then again the ratings are not that important anyway - everybody knows that they can be "tweaked".

Indeed - but you asked if they could really be separated, and that was the question I answered - in keeping with the topic "When is a review TOO subjective".

The question is not whether the review proves that the album is NOT worth five stars, but whether the review goes any way to proving that it IS.

A review like that only proves that the reviewer likes it - and is not very interesting, because it says nothing about the music, and does not even try to justify why the album is a masterpiece.

A waste of space, in other words, as most people wouldn't buy an album based on something like that, I would suggest.

And, having heard some of these "masterpieces", it has become a case of once bitten, twice shy - even though I have returned in some cases, to see if I had missed something.

The only thing I missed was following the logic I presented above - to avoid "fanboy" reviewed albums. I'm just too curious