Ratings of Bruce Springsteen & Radiohead albums

I've only heard one entire Springsteen album (Born to Run), but I like it better than the 4 albums by Radiohead I know (The Bends, Ok Computer, Kid A, In Rainbows).

Lewian wrote: Radiohead - they're great. Lorenzo has made me appreciate Springsteen's live attitude, and I really like some of his live videos. Also he wrote Because The Night and some of the songs Manfred Mann's Earth Band has done versions of that I really love. Still Springsteen's studio material, as far as I took the time to listen to it, has never convinced me.

The ranking reflects on the users who rate at RYM. If the rankings are incorrect at RYM then the algorithm is incorrect.

As I've said, I don't think it's a best list or a most important list, it's the result of a program calculating the number of ratings and rating values of those who rated albums at the site. If contemplating the seriousness or competency of the results, then that requires seeing if the algorithm and system works or is flawed according to what it attempts to do -- not what, say, you want it to do or the results that you would want. If those results (the output) are not what one would expect from the data (the input of ratings) then there likely was some incompetence in the implementation of the algorithm.

If it's a good, competent and serious list depends on if it is a true representation of the ratings of the users, because that's what it's supposed to represent.

To me it's just not important that those big classic names are not in the top 100 all-time, all-categories list of RYM. I use RYM mostly to discover and look into the discographies of acts and clicking on the albums to read the reviews for more modern artists. It has its utility to me for searching using various fields such as multiple genres, years, attributes etc. If those are not as popular as others there, fine by me. Not sure why it should bother one. Most of what you have listed I don't care much for so I would not rate those even if they are of importance to the history of music. I am a lover of kinds of music; not a music historian.

I like the idea of rating music depending on how much we like it rather than our perceptions of its global, or perceived I should say, significance. Many rate and rank (often pros or wanna-be pros) depending on how they think it should be rated based on what they have heard about it, rather than based on how much they just plain enjoy it.

If more people like and therefore rate Radiohead and Bowie there than Springsteen and The Rolling Stones, I don't see a problem with that. I am with them.. I respect the Stones significance more than I like the music (well, I do like some of the Stones music very much, but that's not important), and I just haven't liked Springsteen period (that said, you did introduce me to music of his that I did enjoy). My dad loathed the Stones and would have said they don't hold a candle to Bach and Brahms, but apples and oranges.

I expect that Rolling Stone magazine list is fine for what is is, which is not what RYM's is. It may well be a regurgitation of the kinds of albums, or the actual albums, and names that they have highlighted in the past past rather than fresh interpretations or fresh perspectives (even if it is a blacker list). It tends to be a pretty conservative publication despite any potential progressive pandering (black artist/musicians are very significant, and I'm not diminishing that). It looks like the kind of list I would expect from them, no real surprises. Pretty safe and calculated. I'd be more interested to see most people's lists in our community. It' doesn't excite or surprise me. There are only two albums I have really liked on that list, which are Joni Mitchell's Blue and Kid A (not heard the Lamar except in part).

As for that ondarock one, that actually has a significant number of my 2022 favourites on the page it took me to, or would have. Your link was missing a colon so not working, but here it is in workable form https://www.ondarock.it/classifiche/# 5 to 8, Beach House, Weyes Blood, The Smile (which is pretty much Radiohead, god bless 'em), and Black Midi (took a while for me) are particular favourites of mine. I also like Black Country, New Road. Funnily enough, I got into some of these because they were well rated (and ranked) for the year at RYM, and there's an influence from people at PA whose tastes I dig. And in the next list from the year, there is that Anna von Hausswolff live album, which was the top ranked live album of the year at RYM and that's how I discovered it.

I can appreciate different lists that come about in different ways. I like that at RYM so many raters there seem to like the same kinds of music I do and I was surprised to see how much there is there that is highly ranked that aligns so well with my tastes. I would not expect rate your music top of the charts to be a representation of the greatest (problematic term that that can be) all-time albums. It's about rating album in your collection/ albums you know, choosing so-called greatest would involve buying into a narrative of what's canonically been held as great to a large extent. And those canons often do change over time. A lot of music once held by the arbiters of what's good has fallen out of favour and fashion, but this is rather a digression.

Since lots of people there rate the kinds of music I like there, it is a particularly good resource for me. If I liked Heartland USA rock, then... well, I shudder to think, but I could see an interesting horror movie that involves people turning overnight into Heartland loving musicos, a sort of Stepford Wives meets invasion of Body Snatchers scenario only more boring. And I could be dealing with those heartland rock loving zombies Ash from Evil Dead style to spice things up else the audience all falls asleep aside from that weird kid from Deliverance.

Edited by Logan - May 31 2023 at 23:04

I think (maybe excluding some very latest Bruce albums) I've got pretty much the whole discographies from both on my shelves. Both have some really great albums (OK, Kid, Rainbows / pretty much everything from Born to Run to Born in the USA) and some that I barely ever listen to (Pablo, Bends, Moon / pretty much everything from the 90s onwards). 

Logan wrote: Interesting that Springsteen has more votes. I knew that Radiohead does have many detractors (as one person memorably had put it, music to slit your wrists too). Pekka wrote: ...OK Computer is my favorite album from the entire bunch but there's a lot more good stuff to listen to from Bruce. So it's all very even! But if I have to choose I'll go with Springsteen because of the longevity and live work.... Yours is a particularly interesting post to me especially in the context of how this poll came to be based on a conversation in another topic. For those that didn't notice the genesis of this, it was over concerns that Radiohead albums ranked higher at RateYourMusic than various classic artists, and in fact until not that long ago OK Computer was the number one ranked album in the Rate Your Music charts (now number two) with a 4.26 rating, 89,734 ratings and 1,671 reviews. As that is your favourite album of the bunch, were you to rate say on   the right scale then that would get the highest rating for you. I actually had thought about phrasing this poll as which of these artists has the higher ranked album, or some such thing but the issue raised was not just that OK Computer is ranked over these classic artists at a site for rating albums you know and like, but that Radiohead and others have, I think this is a fair summation, too many in the top 100 or so to take the list seriously, or something.... And the classics which may have 15,000 to going on 25, 000 ratings or so for certain albums (I did the stats earlier) are being ignored by not ranking higher (the ranking being based on the number of ratings as well as the average of the ratings) than they do I have a very different take and angle on this, which is why this has been discussed with a few of us participating over many thousands of words in this thread and others. Bruce Springsteen's top rated album there, Born to Run has a 3.95 rating, 15,715 ratings by the way. His next most popular, Nebraska, has 11,538 ratings, Born in the USA has 10,045 ratings. Those all would be very high numbers at PA, but RYM of course is much bigger. By comparison, Close to the Edge at PA has 4, 944 ratings. Springsteen has six albums at RYM with considerably higher numbers of ratings than Close to The Edge here, and another that has almost as many ratings. So not ignored, just a smaller number of fan raters than various others at RYM.

A really easy one for me.... Bruce all the way... Asbury Park, Born To Run, Darkness, the starkness of Nebraska, the more commercial rockiness of USA... generally excellent stuff, although like Steve Earle and Jackson Browne, he doesn't get a listen these days....

Jared wrote: Logan wrote: Interesting that Springsteen has more votes. I knew that Radiohead does have many detractors (as one person memorably had put it, music to slit your wrists to). Yep, I think that was me...

Could well be, it was years ago but it stuck with me. I was no Radiohead fan for many years, but little things started to turn me around. I really liked 2016's A Moon Shaped Pool, and this sequence from Westworld got to me.



Edited by Logan - June 01 2023 at 14:42

Let's take the era of progressive, the Seventies:

Edited by jamesbaldwin - June 01 2023 at 18:03

Just out of non-interest probably, I did a series of 23 polls last year covering albums in RYM charts that are also in PA while focusing on one album per artist. On album per artist not throughout the whole series of polls, but at least only one album by an artist in each poll, and these first two polls only had one per artist. This list from the first two polls only includes the ones included in Prog categories at Prog Archives. The numbers on the right indicate what were the rankings at RYM in the general music all-time chart at the time. I had neglected Spiderland before even though I know the album well. I might not have thought that it was in PA at the time. I made a mistake on it being out of PA recently, which was pointed out.

This series was a time-consuming exercise, but I had considerable time on my hands and a lot of insomnia. I had hoped that this might complement David's list as mine was compiled differently which was based on RYM's progressive rock chart instead of the general list -- I know so much in PA from my years here that that was fairly easy even if I missed more than one, or two.... If in doubt I did check PA to see if it was in. Miles Davis' In a Silent Way actually is not the top ranked Miles Davis album there, it is Kind of Blue, but I could not bring myself to include it in the list. The much more appropriate In a Silent Way was the second highest-rated Davis album.

Radiohead - OK Computer (1)
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here (3)
King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King (4)
Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven! (21)
Slint - Spiderland (28)
Miles Davis - In a Silent Way* (33)
Kate Bush - Hounds of Love (38)
Björk - Vespertine (40)
Yes - Close to the Edge (52)
Swans - Soundtracks for the Blind (66)
Talk Talk - Laughing Stock (72)
Can - Future Days (77)
Sigur Rós - Ágætis byrjun (92)
Death - Symbolic (102)
Frank Zappa - Hot Rats (103)
Eno - Another Green World (131)
Genesis - Selling England by the Pound (166)
Comus - First Utterance (178)
Jethro Tull - Thick as a Brick (187)
Tool - Lateralus (206)
Kraftwerk - Die Mensch-Maschine (218)
Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters (228)
Opeth - Blackwater Park (249)
This Heat - Deceit (268)
black midi - Hellfire (285)
Camel - Mirage (302)
Invisible - El jardín de los presentes (329)
Rush - Moving Pictures (333)
Coil - The Ape of Naples (344)
The Mahavishnu Orchestra with John McLaughlin - The Inner Mounting Flame (386)
Gorguts - Obscura (392)
Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile (403)
Van der Graaf Generator - Pawn Hearts (408)
Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom (427)
Magma - Rétrospective Vol. 1 & 2 (428)
Neurosis - Through Silver in Blood (431)*
Electric Masada - At the Mountains of Madness (433)
Agalloch - Ashes Against the Grain (437)
Tim Buckley - Dream Letter: Live in London 1968 (441)
Mastodon - Crack the Skye (458)
Soft Machine - Third (464)
Santana - Abraxas (466)
Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band (480)
Mr. Bungle - California (487)
Ulver - Bergtatt: Et eeventyr i 5 capitler (499)
Isis - Panopticon (511)
Caravan - In the Land of Grey and Pink (513)
Boredoms - Vision Creation Newsun (519)
NEU! - NEU! '75 (524)
Weakling - Dead as Dreams (534)
Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel 3 (aka "Arrgh, My Face Is Melting!", at least that's how I like to call it) (546)

*whenever I see Coil - The Ape of Naples, I misread it as The Age of Nipples. I wonder what Freud would say about that (I have a feeling I know).

After the first two polls, I made it that I could repeat bands/artists for the series as long as it was no more than one album per act per poll. And I started to include Prog Related and Proto-Prog (I had one nor two polls dedicated to that).

For any Italian comrades who may be reading this... While there is a Prog Related Italian album in the fifth poll, the top ranked Italian album from one of our Prog categories, Museo Rosenbach - Zarathustra (1514) did not come until the 12th poll. Then in Poll 13 we had Premiata Forneria Marconi - Storia di un minuto (1601) and Banco del Mutuo Soccorso - Darwin! (1675). Radiohead also features in that poll with Hail to the Thief (1739). Then in Poll 14 of the series we get PFM again, this time with Per un amico (1602), and we get Franco Battiato with La voce del padrone (1812), additionally we get BdMS again in Poll 14 with the self-titled debut (1813). In poll 23 we had Biglietto per l'Inferno - Biglietto per l'Inferno (3284) and Il Balletto di Bronzo - Ys (3350). I remember wanting to get to Area at RYM, and I did, but I gave up on putting up the polls in PA before then as I then got busy with work and really bored with the exercise. Unfortunately. I did not save the lists behind what I posted here, so gave up on the rather fatuous, perhaps, project even though I might have returned to it otherwise (I should have posted all of it in David's topic for posterity or in my last poll). One not surprising thing was that when a band with multiple lauded albums amongst the Prognoscenti started appearing in the list like with PFM and BdMS, it was common for another album or albums by the same band to appear in the ranking soon. This happened with Gentle Giant and some others.

This happens often because when fans of a band rate one album by a band high, they commonly also rate other "respected" albums by that band highly. So you do get these kinds of clusters and one who rates PFM albums, and rates them highly, is more likely than most to also rate BdSM album highly (shared audiences) and so those often will cluster into the rankings not too far apart.

PFM had an album ranking at 1601 and at 1602 of all album in RYM. BdSM had a fair distance between the rankings of its albums with 1675 and 1814, when dealing with so many albums, and only including the ones included in Prog Archives, that number does not seem very much. It probably seems a much bigger difference in ranking for those types who only focus on the top 100 or so of the general music lists, but I went through significantly more than 5000 albums even though my polls stopped before then.

EDIT: I was looking through my polls again and I did miss it there as it was in poll 16: Area - Arbeit macht frei (2183) I had remembered it doing quite well at RYM. 2183 may seem low a ranking to some, but that's a very good score when looking at the overall numbers and what it is higher than -- when you're talking the kind of numbers of RYM and how little it can take in terms of average rating to significantly change the chart position. I love Area (one of my very favourites), so I had been anticipating that when I went down the charts.   I know, Lorenzo, that is a band you too hold in high regard (of course you being my number one Italian comrade).

Edited by Logan - June 03 2023 at 00:57