5 star ratings

 

Same thing with Meghan Trainor's "Its All About that Bass".  I wonder if she knows what bass is because there is hardly any bass in that song. Its all about the treble. 

 

 

The distinction between "personal taste" and "objective/an album's true merit" is problematic and a very fine line.

On one hand, as I wrote earlier, I can make a distinction between appreciating something for very personal reasons that I wouldn't necessarily expect to generalise, and for reasons that can be explained and communicated and where there is a certain amount of agreement about key criteria for rating music. However, even these are very much up for interpretation and change over time, and they are ultimately the result of social exchange and communication, often dominated by a few people's personal tastes. Ultimately I think that objectivity doesn't exist, at least not in the sense of being truly independent of individual tastes. The music experience is created by the listener, and there is no music experience without the listener's personality, experience, and taste. What there is, as mentioned earlier, is an honest attempt to make sense and understand every music on its own terms (where "understanding" doesn't mean "finding its objective value" but rather "finding individual access"), to go beyond the purely intuitive personal reaction to music, to "work" on the own perception and to discover, and communication that tries to relate to criteria and experiences that are meaningful and informative for those who read the review. It's about good deep listening and communication, not about objectivity and "true quality".

One of the benefits of having just a 5 tiered rating system is that it forces you to choose between clearly demarcated criteria. We may not agree with the criteria but advocating increasing the resolution to say, awarding half stars only serves to confirm that said criteria are considered insufficient for our purposes. All of which begs the question: what is the purpose of a review? is it to provide your own personal appraisal and insight to the music or simply to provide a comparative 'score' to help with a potential purchasing decision?

I like to think that PA are above the likes of TripAdvisor (Krautrock cosmiche references aside)