Ratings of Bruce Springsteen & Radiohead albums

jamesbaldwin wrote: In his golden age (1972-1988) Springsteen never had a good producer. And he has always conceived his albums around a precise theme. This created a song selection that often had little to do with their music quality. Springsteen's approach, in short, is much more narrative, much more folk than rock, even when he wrote rock songs. Lyrics, in short, are essential to understanding his art. His studio albums have never approached the performance of his live shows (just compare Because the night studio version with live version). For a prog fan, I think his best albums are The Wild and Born To Run. PS Nice Polemic? Really?

Oh damn. Was typing on my phone while waiting for someone and my browser crashed. I was just on my last words when it happened. Maybe it was saying to me, enough is enough you fatuous smelly windbag. No wonder one must be brave to use the Brave browser. In the future I’ll not use this for posting and use Safari on my phone instead. Sketchy browser as someone said here not long ago but good for blocking ads on my iPhone. On android I love Ublock Origin but I recently got an iPhone.

Thanks for pointing that info out. I actually realized later that I likely had misinterpreted, my fault not the translation program, the message and that that limit of two per artist was just imposed on the contributor. It’s based on curated lists from a limited number of people. A very different process to RYM as those contributors who present lists will be more calculating, whereas the RYM program is the much more calculating one by just using an algorithm to calculate the ranking based on the ratings across the database of huge numbers of users. That’s much more impersonal.

I do prefer the way the Cannes film festival awards work compared to say the US academy awards for best pictures etc. Too many people who vote for things in the academy haven’t even seen the films. I like the shortlist, then Jury chooses between them based on a limited number of films that they all watch and discuss. I have huge issues with best if lists generally, but at least I know that they have all considered that shortlist and seen them. Of course has more prized like audience etc.

As to reviewing, various reviewers prefer to review lesser known, little reviewed albums, and that is what I would do — To bring attention to ones I think others will like and I really like. I don’t really care much about the ranking, you seem to try make more of a science of your ratings than I would, we have have very different ideas and approaches on that, and I’m more interested in albums at PA outside the top 100. I better finish this up before it crashes again.

Anyway, I find interest in the more thought curated lists from limited numbers who contribute and lists that are statistically calculated based on large numbers just rating things.

Lewian wrote: Radiohead - they're great. Lorenzo has made me appreciate Springsteen's live attitude, and I really like some of his live videos. Also he wrote Because The Night and some of the songs Manfred Mann's Earth Band has done versions of that I really love. Still Springsteen's studio material, as far as I took the time to listen to it, has never convinced me. Nice polemic by the way by Saperlipopette! I can identify with much of it.

^ Absolutely with Pink Floyd. It has sold huge numbers of albums, been popular in the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and is still very popular amongst different ages. It is of course popular with albums and individual songs and is a staple of classic rock radio -- I heard Pink Floyd far more on the radio than Springsteen for instance. It's an iconic band. And it's still culturally relevant and gets referenced in different media regularly. When I was staying at a hotel with Waters also there last decade, word got out where he was staying, and there were so many young people outside the entrance of the hotel in their Pink Floyd shirts (not Waters shirts).

Say to the average person who says they like Pink Floyd, "Oh, so you're into Prog!" and I would not be surprised if one got a weird look. Some of those kids with the Dark Side of the Moon shirts of course like the iconic design. I used to like to draw that cover in some classes instead of focusing on the subject, but then I loved the album, and The Wall and Wish You Were Here etc. when I was a teenager.

It's hardly just a Prog phenomenon. I have no idea how many of those who know Pink Floyd think of it as Prog. I didn't even when I become aware of Prog as a thing (I associated Prog with Yes and ELP). It transcends genre. It's popular with the kids who are into psych kinds of music (and psych and related is popular at RateYourMusic), older dudes, to those into art rock and classic rock, and just into music. And it shares a lot of fanbase with Radiohead. They are very similar in various ways, so that's all the more reason why I could see a site which has many Radiohead fans rating their albums also rating Pink Floyd albums.

Good point about the logic of it, I focused on the logic being the input/output process, that if the algorithm sufficiently represents the ratings for the ranking in a sensible and reliable way, then it's logical, but actually the logic goes a lot deeper than that. To understand the logic requires understanding how things work there and knowing something about what music is popular and has been since RYM started amongst the kinds of communities and individuals they have there. As a determinist especially (A causes B causes C etc.). Alien thinking to me. I wonder what Hari Seldon, who "develops psychohistory, an algorithmic science that allows him to predict the future in probabilistic terms" would think? It's important to be aware of one's own biases and particular cultural/ environmental conditioning.

Here is the Season 3 trailer of Westworld:



I hear that music and still gives me a thrills after all these years. By the way, since you mentioned Lou Reed, for the season four Westworld trailer, they used Lou Reed's Just a Perfect Day which is so perfect (preferred that trailer and season to season three). And for one of the most iconic scenes in Westworld's season one they used Paint it Black by the Stones. They used Radiohead multiple times. I'm a Westworld fanboy even if I preferred some seasons to others.

Edited by Logan - June 02 2023 at 09:50

Just out of non-interest probably, I did a series of 23 polls last year covering albums in RYM charts that are also in PA while focusing on one album per artist. On album per artist not throughout the whole series of polls, but at least only one album by an artist in each poll, and these first two polls only had one per artist. This list from the first two polls only includes the ones included in Prog categories at Prog Archives. The numbers on the right indicate what were the rankings at RYM in the general music all-time chart at the time. I had neglected Spiderland before even though I know the album well. I might not have thought that it was in PA at the time. I made a mistake on it being out of PA recently, which was pointed out.

This series was a time-consuming exercise, but I had considerable time on my hands and a lot of insomnia. I had hoped that this might complement David's list as mine was compiled differently which was based on RYM's progressive rock chart instead of the general list -- I know so much in PA from my years here that that was fairly easy even if I missed more than one, or two.... If in doubt I did check PA to see if it was in. Miles Davis' In a Silent Way actually is not the top ranked Miles Davis album there, it is Kind of Blue, but I could not bring myself to include it in the list. The much more appropriate In a Silent Way was the second highest-rated Davis album.

Radiohead - OK Computer (1)
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here (3)
King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King (4)
Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven! (21)
Slint - Spiderland (28)
Miles Davis - In a Silent Way* (33)
Kate Bush - Hounds of Love (38)
Björk - Vespertine (40)
Yes - Close to the Edge (52)
Swans - Soundtracks for the Blind (66)
Talk Talk - Laughing Stock (72)
Can - Future Days (77)
Sigur Rós - Ágætis byrjun (92)
Death - Symbolic (102)
Frank Zappa - Hot Rats (103)
Eno - Another Green World (131)
Genesis - Selling England by the Pound (166)
Comus - First Utterance (178)
Jethro Tull - Thick as a Brick (187)
Tool - Lateralus (206)
Kraftwerk - Die Mensch-Maschine (218)
Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters (228)
Opeth - Blackwater Park (249)
This Heat - Deceit (268)
black midi - Hellfire (285)
Camel - Mirage (302)
Invisible - El jardín de los presentes (329)
Rush - Moving Pictures (333)
Coil - The Ape of Naples (344)
The Mahavishnu Orchestra with John McLaughlin - The Inner Mounting Flame (386)
Gorguts - Obscura (392)
Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile (403)
Van der Graaf Generator - Pawn Hearts (408)
Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom (427)
Magma - Rétrospective Vol. 1 & 2 (428)
Neurosis - Through Silver in Blood (431)*
Electric Masada - At the Mountains of Madness (433)
Agalloch - Ashes Against the Grain (437)
Tim Buckley - Dream Letter: Live in London 1968 (441)
Mastodon - Crack the Skye (458)
Soft Machine - Third (464)
Santana - Abraxas (466)
Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band (480)
Mr. Bungle - California (487)
Ulver - Bergtatt: Et eeventyr i 5 capitler (499)
Isis - Panopticon (511)
Caravan - In the Land of Grey and Pink (513)
Boredoms - Vision Creation Newsun (519)
NEU! - NEU! '75 (524)
Weakling - Dead as Dreams (534)
Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel 3 (aka "Arrgh, My Face Is Melting!", at least that's how I like to call it) (546)

*whenever I see Coil - The Ape of Naples, I misread it as The Age of Nipples. I wonder what Freud would say about that (I have a feeling I know).

After the first two polls, I made it that I could repeat bands/artists for the series as long as it was no more than one album per act per poll. And I started to include Prog Related and Proto-Prog (I had one nor two polls dedicated to that).

For any Italian comrades who may be reading this... While there is a Prog Related Italian album in the fifth poll, the top ranked Italian album from one of our Prog categories, Museo Rosenbach - Zarathustra (1514) did not come until the 12th poll. Then in Poll 13 we had Premiata Forneria Marconi - Storia di un minuto (1601) and Banco del Mutuo Soccorso - Darwin! (1675). Radiohead also features in that poll with Hail to the Thief (1739). Then in Poll 14 of the series we get PFM again, this time with Per un amico (1602), and we get Franco Battiato with La voce del padrone (1812), additionally we get BdMS again in Poll 14 with the self-titled debut (1813). In poll 23 we had Biglietto per l'Inferno - Biglietto per l'Inferno (3284) and Il Balletto di Bronzo - Ys (3350). I remember wanting to get to Area at RYM, and I did, but I gave up on putting up the polls in PA before then as I then got busy with work and really bored with the exercise. Unfortunately. I did not save the lists behind what I posted here, so gave up on the rather fatuous, perhaps, project even though I might have returned to it otherwise (I should have posted all of it in David's topic for posterity or in my last poll). One not surprising thing was that when a band with multiple lauded albums amongst the Prognoscenti started appearing in the list like with PFM and BdMS, it was common for another album or albums by the same band to appear in the ranking soon. This happened with Gentle Giant and some others.

This happens often because when fans of a band rate one album by a band high, they commonly also rate other "respected" albums by that band highly. So you do get these kinds of clusters and one who rates PFM albums, and rates them highly, is more likely than most to also rate BdSM album highly (shared audiences) and so those often will cluster into the rankings not too far apart.

PFM had an album ranking at 1601 and at 1602 of all album in RYM. BdSM had a fair distance between the rankings of its albums with 1675 and 1814, when dealing with so many albums, and only including the ones included in Prog Archives, that number does not seem very much. It probably seems a much bigger difference in ranking for those types who only focus on the top 100 or so of the general music lists, but I went through significantly more than 5000 albums even though my polls stopped before then.

EDIT: I was looking through my polls again and I did miss it there as it was in poll 16: Area - Arbeit macht frei (2183) I had remembered it doing quite well at RYM. 2183 may seem low a ranking to some, but that's a very good score when looking at the overall numbers and what it is higher than -- when you're talking the kind of numbers of RYM and how little it can take in terms of average rating to significantly change the chart position. I love Area (one of my very favourites), so I had been anticipating that when I went down the charts.   I know, Lorenzo, that is a band you too hold in high regard (of course you being my number one Italian comrade).

Edited by Logan - June 03 2023 at 00:57

Let's take the era of progressive, the Seventies:

Edited by jamesbaldwin - June 01 2023 at 18:03

Jared wrote: Logan wrote: Interesting that Springsteen has more votes. I knew that Radiohead does have many detractors (as one person memorably had put it, music to slit your wrists to). Yep, I think that was me...

Could well be, it was years ago but it stuck with me. I was no Radiohead fan for many years, but little things started to turn me around. I really liked 2016's A Moon Shaped Pool, and this sequence from Westworld got to me.



Edited by Logan - June 01 2023 at 14:42

A really easy one for me.... Bruce all the way... Asbury Park, Born To Run, Darkness, the starkness of Nebraska, the more commercial rockiness of USA... generally excellent stuff, although like Steve Earle and Jackson Browne, he doesn't get a listen these days....

Logan wrote: Interesting that Springsteen has more votes. I knew that Radiohead does have many detractors (as one person memorably had put it, music to slit your wrists too). Pekka wrote: ...OK Computer is my favorite album from the entire bunch but there's a lot more good stuff to listen to from Bruce. So it's all very even! But if I have to choose I'll go with Springsteen because of the longevity and live work.... Yours is a particularly interesting post to me especially in the context of how this poll came to be based on a conversation in another topic. For those that didn't notice the genesis of this, it was over concerns that Radiohead albums ranked higher at RateYourMusic than various classic artists, and in fact until not that long ago OK Computer was the number one ranked album in the Rate Your Music charts (now number two) with a 4.26 rating, 89,734 ratings and 1,671 reviews. As that is your favourite album of the bunch, were you to rate say on   the right scale then that would get the highest rating for you. I actually had thought about phrasing this poll as which of these artists has the higher ranked album, or some such thing but the issue raised was not just that OK Computer is ranked over these classic artists at a site for rating albums you know and like, but that Radiohead and others have, I think this is a fair summation, too many in the top 100 or so to take the list seriously, or something.... And the classics which may have 15,000 to going on 25, 000 ratings or so for certain albums (I did the stats earlier) are being ignored by not ranking higher (the ranking being based on the number of ratings as well as the average of the ratings) than they do I have a very different take and angle on this, which is why this has been discussed with a few of us participating over many thousands of words in this thread and others. Bruce Springsteen's top rated album there, Born to Run has a 3.95 rating, 15,715 ratings by the way. His next most popular, Nebraska, has 11,538 ratings, Born in the USA has 10,045 ratings. Those all would be very high numbers at PA, but RYM of course is much bigger. By comparison, Close to the Edge at PA has 4, 944 ratings. Springsteen has six albums at RYM with considerably higher numbers of ratings than Close to The Edge here, and another that has almost as many ratings. So not ignored, just a smaller number of fan raters than various others at RYM.

I think (maybe excluding some very latest Bruce albums) I've got pretty much the whole discographies from both on my shelves. Both have some really great albums (OK, Kid, Rainbows / pretty much everything from Born to Run to Born in the USA) and some that I barely ever listen to (Pablo, Bends, Moon / pretty much everything from the 90s onwards).