[Riordan]

www.allmusic.com is a fine database for music fans and has some nice reviews - but their rating system and its outcome is less than helpful. there are some blatant mistakes that go way beyond "subjectivity". you know what i'm talking about, you've scratched your heads (or ears) yourself?

my vote for most ridiculous rating goes to:

queen: hot space.

this abyssmal piece of synthified 80's disco dreck has a better rating than both "the works" and "a kind of magic".

sure, there's "under pressure" and "las palabras de amor" isn't their worst ballad - but practically all of the rest ARE the worst songs of their entire career.

care to share similar rating jokes?

 

[Braver]

well, I don't remember any actual albums where they screwed up, but there's lots of cases where they praise an album to heaven and back and give it three stars, and the other way around.

more curiously even is when a re-release gets a different score than the original. not like a half star for better soundquality, but like two stars difference.

besides that, AMG is invaluable to me, cause if you're not really sure, they're always spot-on with their picks and tend to agree with the general fan favourites. special 'old' music. the reviews are quite useless most of the time tho...

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Worst "too high rating" : Metallica - St Anger gets 4 stars, almost the same rating as their "classic" albums. Even the people I know who only like 90's Metallica think this album sucks. 4 stars???

Worst "too low rating": Iron Maiden - Somwhere In Time gets 2 stars, the same as the oft-hated Blaze Bayley albums. Again this is nuts, since SiT is a fan favorite, and sits right in the meaty part of Maiden's career. The only "classic" Maiden album generally considered to contain filler, Piece of Mind, gets a much better rating.


Yeah, the reviews are pretty out-of-whach, but the site is still very useful in spite of them.

 

[MusicLover]

At least once every day when I look at the ratings at AMG, I think to myself, What? A lot of the ratings are pretty screwed up, although some are just right.

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Yeah, they get many right, but they also succumb to many of the pitfalls of elitist rock critics.

 

[Thump]

I personally think AMG is great, the best overall music crtique/review source I have ever encountered-including the early days of Rolling Stone. You can count on AMG for an insignt into just about any possible artist you can think of.

As far as their ratings for individual albums, that's just an opinion, that's all. You could love an album that I think is mediocre, or vice versa. The only attention I pay to their album ratings is within an artist's catalog-which do they think are that artists best and worst, for example.

 

[GirgleMirt]

haha, well Pink Floyd

A Momentary Lapse of Reason 2 stars....
The Division Bell 2 stars.......
Pulse [live] 2 stars......

Momentary lapse of reason review: Quote:

A David Gilmour solo album in all but name, heavily featuring the kind of atmospheric instrumental music and Gilmour guitar sound typical of the Floyd before the now-departed Roger Waters took over but lacking Waters' unifying vision and lyrical ability.

then David Gilmour's About face rated 4.5 stars...

There Britney '****' Spears scores an incredible 4 Stars for her album Baby One More Time! Anyway, thats pretty obvious though, we're not really in the same league here, I hope Gilmour and other PF members have taken a good listen to Britney's album and learned some things. And it better show in their next album...

Led Zep's first 6 albums are rated 5 stars?

 

[Ebonyks]

The 4.5 stars for weezer's green album tops my list of ridiclious ratings

 

[redshifter]

i like amg, but strongly disagree with:
sheryl crow:
1993 Tuesday Night Music Club ***
1996 Sheryl Crow *****1/2 amg pick

tuesday night music club is imho a much more dynamic and interesting album than her self titled.

 

[djgustashaw]

out of all the reviews i've read there, only one has really made me mad. that's the two-star review for "ours - distorted lullibies." they claim it's a buckley ripoff, but that's hardly how i'd describe it. yeah, jimmy gnecco has a really similar voice, but ours' music is much louder and has more impact. not nearly as sophisticated as buckley, IMO. that album deserved at least 4 and a half stars.

 

[Dusty Chalk]

Songs of the Witchblade: A Soundtrack to the Comic Books (mostly by main Babe in Toyland Kat Bjelland) -- they gave it 2 1/2 stars, I give it a 4.5 (would give it a 4.9 if I could, but no-one else usually cuts it that fine). I do agree with their assessment that the voice-overs get a little embarassing. But...it's based on a comic book, fer pete's sake! Quote:

Originally posted by Iron_Dreamer Yeah, the reviews are pretty out-of-whach, but the site is still very useful in spite of them.

Pretty much sums up my feelings about them. It's the problem with having lots of authors that don't necessarily communicate with one another, and they don't go back and re-review ratings.

 

[sapphiremodena]

Quote:

Originally posted by djgustashaw out of all the reviews i've read there, only one has really made me mad. that's the two-star review for "ours - distorted lullibies." they claim it's a buckley ripoff, but that's hardly how i'd describe it. yeah, jimmy gnecco has a really similar voice, but ours' music is much louder and has more impact. not nearly as sophisticated as buckley, IMO. that album deserved at least 4 and a half stars.

They gave Distorted Lullabies two stars?! Bah. I'd give it four. It's especially good considering it's a debut album.
I didn't like Precious as much as I did DL though. Don't get me wrong, Precious is a good album, definitely, but I just sort of expected something better I suppose. There are some really good songs on there but some of the songs aren't as outstanding as I hoped for. On its own it's still a strong album.

I remember hearing somewhere that Jeff Buckley taught Jimmy Gnecco how to sing, or that he was his vocal instructor or something...? Is this true or is it just a rumour?

 

[fractus2]

I've gotten some great recommendations on artists that I've never heard and wanted to try. The latest was when I was looking for some Thelonious Monk recommendations (re:

to

). They add a red check mark for their pics and I got Brilliant Corners and Monk's Dream, outstanding recordings worthy of the five stars and red check in my book.

I had also never heard Erroll Garner and wanted to check out what they thought of Body and Soul (Head-Fi member recommended). AMG said four and a half and I went with those two and love the album.

I'm sure I could look up some of my favorite albums/artists and find drastically different assessments and/or reviews. It's a tool that can help you out or sometimes you can take with a grain of salt. Lets see, where else can you get recommendations you don't agree with yet you come back to again and again?

Quote:

Led Zep's first 6 albums are rated 5 stars?

What's wrong with that?

Just did a classic rock sanity check on The Who and Who's Next is a five star with red check. All is right with the world.

YMMV.

 

[Riordan]

we all seem to agree that amg is wonderful - it gave me a lot of new avenues to explore (well, so did head-fi) and i even discovered some of my favorite artists' albums that i had somehow overlooked before.

this thread wasn't intended as amg-bashing - far from it. it's just that every once in a while, one of their ratings goes way off the mark (up to now in my experience, this has never happened with a review - i don't always agree, but i can see the reviewer's point).

redshifter was on to something, but he gave his observation the ol' IMHO-treatment.

hey, it's nothing to do with opinion

queen's "hot space" is worse than "the works" by well-established and objective scientific standards - imho...

i dare you to find a single queen fan saying otherwise... if you do, my point is moot.

another mainstream example: mike oldfield's "islands" has a better rating than "crisis" - how come?

 

[waylman]

I love allmusic to death. IMO, it is the best site on the net. They are way off sometimes though. They gave the album below 4.5 stars. I kid you not.