Rate the Record Ratings

Pitchfork rates my HTML a 0.2. That last part again:

* 4 Stars, the longtime standard for movies and stuff.

* 5 Stars, with or without half stars, like amg.com or AMG books, respectively. * 10 points, like nme.com. Also the universal system for rating chicks.

* 10 points with tenth point increments, like Pitchfork. Also used by wonks who take chick ratings really seriously?

* A, A-, B+, B, B-, etc., like school.

* Thums Up or Thumbs Down, aka Classic or Dud or the binary system. Also widely used for decisions like whether or not to buy a record, see a movie, do a chick, vote for Ralph Nader, commit suicide..

* No ratings, cause music is subjective, man, and reducing it to numbers is trivializing..

i like random adjectives w. no scale.

No ratings are best. Ratings fix a permanence and hierarchy on records that simply don't exist. They force people to make embarassingly-wrong predictions about which records are five-star solid-gold last-the-ages material. They consequently often lead to every record getting a cowardly *** or 7/10 (dance magazines are the worst culprit here).

And the Pitchfork system is absolutely idiotic -- you can't tell me that there's a non-arbitrary difference between a 7.3 and 7.4.

I also think the ratings push people into a critical mode of scientific "objectivity" and distance, which I find extremely boring and unhelpful. I want to read subjective opinions with personality.

So: RATINGS SUCK.

That said, when it comes time to listmake rather than review, I love ranked lists and countdowns and I think unranked lists are boring.

Go figure.

Pitchfork gave Homogenic a 9.9. I figured if it was just "spectacular" rather than "indispensable, classic" then I didn't need to hear it. Thanks, 'fork!

Likewise, I won't sleep w/ girls who rank lower than a 7.3

Stars, marks out of ten, etc, are useful if you're short of time.

In any case, I occasionally just skim the last paragraph of a review, just to get the gist of what the writer thinks, especially if it's an artist I'm not that interested in, but am curious to get an overview of what the papers think.

I don't like the binary Search/Destroy, Classic/Dud system which is all over ILM. If you're going to do that there has to be room for the 'tween category. You listen to a record. It grows on you or it begins to suck, or does something worth telling someone about in more than three syllables. Maybe it's a life long friend, or a bad recommendation, possibly from a life long friend, but is it an A or a Z, or a Q ? A 10, a 2 ? None of these schemes factor in any critical bearing, any opined experience. Line 'em up and shoot 'em down w/out asking or telling first. This never got anyone anywhere. Stars only work within the context of an overview of musician, genre, body of work. So everybody has collections or has heard this, maybe that. A quip opinion on any of these is the very least that could be offered. More qualified 'tweens please.

Binary class. systems are great. Sharpen up the thinking. Throwing something to the mercy of a Manichean system, you have to think long and hard, every little thing that could factor into the thumbs- up/thumbs-down system counts. Not only that, but the cred of the 'reviewer' is also at stake! Cuts the superfluity. I hate that Q magazine *** ("Recommended if you're into this genre...will please the fans at least...dependable and consistent as usual...you are James"...). More sky-high praise and withering condemnation pls!

Exactly, dq! Also,when reading thru reviews which use the 'star' system I find myself wanting to hear something which gets one star MUCH more than something which gets a 'safe' three or three and a half stars.

i like reviews where you can't even tell whether the reviewer liked the record or not.

They should rate them by colour e.g Never mind the bollocks=snot green, Sgt Pepper=sky blue etc.
As to whether they're any good or not, do you really care?

They should rate them by colour e.g Never mind the bollocks=snot green, Sgt Pepper=sky blue etc

Didn't Spin do that in the mid-'90s? I recall them rating Fugazi's In on the Kill Taker green.

Yeah, but it had nothing to do with the album's personality, it was just a regular rating system: green/yellow/red = good/mixed/bad.

Just an addendum to my last post: