As one may have noticed by simply looking at any of the daily reviews I've posted here since the start of last October, I use a system where I use a number between 1 and 10, alongside a decimal, to showcase my personal opinion on an album. This may, however, cause some understandable confusion to some of you readers, due to the subjective nature of rating works of art this way, and the fact that I don't always make it exactly clear why an album is rated the way it is. There have been instances of me rating two albums a similar score but giving them completely different summaries and assessments, praising one and verbally dismissing another - and so I thought it may be helpful to quickly explain in one post what each number represents in my personal system.
For the record, the decimal is mainly there to indicate how much an album skews towards the nearest number it's not in, i.e. whether it skews towards being better or worse than the number I settled on for it, and by how far.
Without further ado, let's start from the lowest possible rating and work our way up.
0 - So far, no album has received a score starting with 0, and that is for a good reason. A 0 for me constitutes an album that is so thorough in its awfulness, one can say that it can practically no longer be considered music. This is such a harsh rating, however, that a score this low is personally limited exclusively to records I could not complete a full listen of due to it being in that level of unlistenability. If I despised every second of a record but still managed to sit through a record once, that's already considered high enough of a bar cleared to not land here.
1 - Scores starting with this number essentially mean that I found practically nothing worthy to offer in an album, or that the listening experience was so tainted by a collection of particularly bad tracks, elements etc. that it wouldn't have been fair putting it any higher up. As said, if I managed to sit through a record to its fullest, the lowest it can get as a score is a 1.0.
2 - Similar to the 1 range, though my opinions on these records are less extreme. These albums often contain at least a nugget or two of enjoyable content, that however sits alongside a mountain of either entirely dull and idle or outright bad music, or occasionally a mixture of both. At most, they may have one song in them that could even be classified as "good" in my eyes, but an album obviously cannot be scored based on just its best track, so it finds a way down here regardless for one reason or another.
3 - These albums are your typical "bad" ones - most of the tracks in these either tuned out entirely in my mind, had something in them that made them entirely unenjoyable, or I just couldn't click with at all. There is a bit more leniency with the records that find themselves in this range, however, as they may include a couple of tracks that stand out in their quality amongst the rest, or a singular track that actually blows me away, right before slumping back to their usual output.
4 - The 4 range is where albums stop being straight-up "bad" and start being more "meh". These are ones that are usually perfectly listenable, but lack anything to go anywhere above just background noise one may put on and ignore any sort of meaning of. As with the other lower ratings, a record in the 4 range tends to also have a least one or two tracks that I actually end up liking proper, amongst a much wider range of less appealing ones that I am happy to never experience again.
5 - The middle point, and the passing grade for albums in my book. A score starting with a 5 means you've done your assignment and made a very much listenable set of songs - nothing more, nothing less. I'm far less likely to wave off these albums as ultimately not worthy of my time compared to the 4's, but also in one way or another, the albums are still being significantly held back from finding themselves anywhere near my listening sessions either. This is basically album limbo - I don't dislike these in any way, but I will probably never outright return to them unless I absolutely have to.
6 - This is where things start getting properly enjoyable. A record in the 6 range is one I consider "decent", meaning it has an overall nice sound to it, leads to an overall enjoyable listening experience, and may even have some tracks that really stick with me. They may, however, still not quite reach that level where they've extracted everything they can out of the ideas and sounds they introduce and try to work with, and so may still see at most very rare replays as a result.
7 - The standard "good" category in my book, and luckily the rating the most amount of albums so far have landed in during my ventures. An album in the 7s has an enjoyable sound to it, has qualitative songs, and overall is one I had a fun time with. I generally respect and like these records, and may even listen to them again if I am very much in the mood, or at least revisit their best tracks. They don't amaze me in any way, but I would nevertheless recommend these ones, depending on what genres are your jam to your breakfast toast.
8 - Now we're talking. A score starting with the number 8 is an indication of something truly great and special - whether it be an expertly made piece of art that leads one to think deeply in some way, or an infectiously fun time packaged into an aural medium, these are records that truly hit the right spots in my brain and are more than effective at achieving exactly what they aim to do: be thoroughly enjoyed, invoke an emotion, or both at once. These are the records I will return to for a guaranteed good time all around.
9 - If you find an album of yours with a score of 9.0 or higher, consider yourself extremely fortunate. These are albums I hold near and dear to my heart - they instantly hook me in and allow an experience of being entirely engrossed and delighted by an album that I very rarely get to live out. They are simply immaculate, working exactly as they should on every front and showcasing the full potential of what music can be all about. I actually keep these albums in my digital library long after I'm done with reviewing them, just so revisiting and going back to the pleasure of listening to them at any time is easier for me in the future.
10 - I'll tell you this right now, there will likely never be an album that reaches a perfect score of 10.0/10, and if there is ever one, that'd likely mark the end of this whole project. Even my all-time favourite albums, in my eyes, sit at a score in the very high 9's - still unbelievably impressive, but the truth of the matter is, almost nothing in this life can achieve pure perfection, and that includes art forms like music. But who knows - maybe the future will make a fool out of me in that regard.
And that's it! Those are some explanations on what every number you will see in the "Rating" section of the blog posts roughly means. Hopefully this was helpful in clarifying things.
(And yes, another daily review will be coming your way later today.)