Quote:
Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier
Yes but that's not constructive criticism though, that's a just casual slag off of the album  What I meant was to actually stand back a bit from the album and examine why you don't like it and tackle it from that angle, I did it on my own journal with the Ozzy album and found it a lot more demanding than doing a positive review. |
I think you can do a bad review well, and a good review well. For examples of the former, look at my reviews of Britney and Pixie Lott's albums, and of course for the latter, well I've done plenty of good reviews but I'm particularly proud of "Script" and also "The war of the worlds", but there are loads. The point is, you can use humour in either a good or bad review but you don't have to laugh at a bad album to review it. I took apart 19ADD's "Dead river" a year or more ago; nothing whatever good to say about it but it was actually so bad that I created a new section ("The Plague Ship") in order to allow me to review it in context. Then there's the review of "Arbeit macht frei" above. Not liking an album shouldn't stop you from reviewing it: some of the albums I've hated/been disappointed in most hav turned into some of my best reviews. Hell, I even reviewed Justin Bieber! But you shouldn't just say "this is crap" of course: you should say why you believe that, and in so doing you can give others a fresh insight maybe into the album, you, or both.
There should, if you're a good enough writer, be no such thing as a bad review. There can be a good review of a bad album or a good review of a bad album. The important point is that you approach every review, even the bad ones, the same way, doing your best to take the pros (if any) and cons and weigh them against each other, taking care not to be influenced too much by bias against the artiste. A fair, balanced, well-researched and unbiased review, whether the result is positive or negative, will always be a good review, or should be, if you have the talent and the insight.