Hmmm, he said. A bit overcomplicated if you ask me. I used to use a four or five-stage rating system too, but I would score each indivdual track out of a total of 100, then divide the albums up into things like Content, Writing Skill, Musical Expertise, Enjoyment and so forth, and score them all out of 20, add the two scores thus giving me an overall album score (you can see some of this at work on my website at
Lestat's Asia Website), but even that was a little over-analysing things, I felt.
These days I don't give scores, just talk about the album and let people score it if they want to. After all, like yer man says, you could rate an album really highly whereas someone else would not do so. I do have one question about his system though: the "band rating" he talks about. Surely that means you need to have heard all or most of a band's output in order to rate them? There are many artistes of whose work I've only heard one or two albums, and some I would not wish to hear more. Does that system he uses then not mean you have to be either a) very very old to have heard all these bands' full catalogue, b) very very rich, to be able to buy all their albums (or find somewhere you can download them!) and c) have a hell of a lot of time to compare and make judgements?
I personally don't like his system --- where does he get off, saying the Eagles' best album was their first? --- but I will be interested to see how your own reviews go.
Welcome to the Music Journals anyway!
TH
