se71

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November 27, 2008

Rating Albums

How much do you like a particular album in your collection?

Surprisingly, it might be less than you think.

First of all, you have to rate all the songs individually. I've decided to use the most basic system included in Apple's iTunes, which allows you to give the track a number of stars, between one and five. Five is the best.

I've made up some simple rules to make it easy and quick to assign the star rating:

three stars

This is where I start. The vast majority of songs in my collection, ones which I neither like nor dislike, get three stars.

one star

There are surprisingly few of these in my collection, but there are some. These are songs that if you were relaxing in a warm bath, and they came on the radio, you would get out, and walk across a cold bathroom floor just to turn off.

five star

These are songs that when you hear them, you get a 'stop the clocks' moment, where you can't work, or concentrate on anything else. You just have to stop everything and listen.

two and four star.

One and five star songs are very easy to classify. Twos and fours are more tricky, but still fairly easy. A two will be slightly annoying and you might skip it on the iPod, but wouldn't walk across a room to switch it off. A four has moments of beauty, maybe a tiny hook you love in the chorus, but the whole thing doesn't hold together enough to make it a five.

Now, fire up your favourite music player, load an album. I'd advise only to try this with albums where you can identify each and every song by listening to only a few seconds of the intro. If you don't know the album that well, how can you fairly rate it. Now quickly flick through giving each song a star rating according to the criteria above. Just how much do you like it?

I was very surprised to find that whole albums that I own and have listened to over decades sometimes do not have any songs that get more than a three star rating. Hardly any albums get more than a single five star. Some albums get several 2 stars and nothing over a three, and I thought I liked them.

The point to all this?

My ever increasing collection of music, and my ever decreasing time, means I have to pare out the deadwood, and, as I think I've mentioned before, stop listening to crap. There are more subtleties to this [*], but broadly speaking, if an album doesn't have a few four or five star songs, should it even be in my song rotation at all.

[*] a whole album of three star songs may work well as background music while you're working, or jogging, or driving in your car. A five star song may need to be rationed so that you do not become bored with it, or it may make you feel really emotional due to associations, and so you also only play it at special times. In fact, and album of three and four star songs is probably the best compromise.

Posted by se71 at November 27, 2008 09:59 AM

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