ugggh i want my 10% grind back

You didn't really say why you think it's an 'excellent' record

Album Rating: 1.0

Your point was well proven, but still, a 4?! A goddamn 4?! C'mon now.

"You're being a bit harsh on Hitler. Don't judge him from the point of view of a normal, non-sociopath, non misanthropist individual. Judge him from the point of view of his target audience, the Aryans. Was he a good leader and a nice person who did what he thought was best for his people then? Yes. You weren't his target audience so your opinion is biased, irrelevant, elitist and misguided.....sorry bro".

What......why are you all looking at me like that............? o_O

Mmm.. this album sucks extremelly hard, even by pop album standards. His ego is so big that he uses his face as an album cover twice + shitty pun in the title.
Actually it's a very good album...for get away guests in the house who overstayed their welcome.

Pos'd, loved reading this.

Album Rating: 1.0

neg



Exorbiantly unnecessary review

Thanks for all the feedback everyone.

A lot of you seem to think that this review indicates every album can be automatically 5'd if looking at it from the opinion of the target audience. That is not the case. An album can be targeted at a particular group and not live entirely up to the expectation. I'm not looking at this on an individual, case-by-case basis of every possible person. Instead, I put myself in the position of who I believe an album was targeted too, and listen from that perspective. How well does the record work in that context? With this record in particular, it does a pretty good job at that. Some of the melodies are lazy and vocals underwhelming, but for what it is trying to be- in this case, for dancing, playing in clubs, etc.- it works excellently, if not perfectly (hence the 4).

St. Anger is an album a lot of you have brought up. Shouldn't that be 5'd because, well, I simply wasn't the target audience and if I use my method, everyone loved it? No. St. Anger was targeted at the same people Metallica always target their albums at, and it failed. It wasn't engaging, interesting, the production was terrible, etc. It was an abysmal album in every sense of the word. It doesn't work in the context for which it was recorded, aside from a couple of moments.

This does not render music criticism worthless at all. Rather, it forces critics to look outside of themselves and analyze a record not against solely their own taste, but against that of which the record was designed.

I'll respond to a couple of specific comments here:

"If you produce shit, you get a 1 regardless of who you are"

Is it shit though? Not for who it was designed. It's like a right-handed man trying to use a left-handed pair of scissors. He will never enjoy them, or use them, but left-handed people will. And if that right-handed man were to review that pair of scissors, what would he say? "They're shit, 1/5?" Or would he say, "For me, these don't work. But I bet they'd be great for left-handed people."

"and btw how do you know what the intentions of a record is unless you either made the record or talked to the person who made it?"

You will never know. But you can use your best judgement. It's like looking at song lyrics.

"Using the "well what did you expect?!" excuse can literally be used to justify a high rating on any and every album/song/movie/show/etc.."

No, it can't. See above.

Anyway, thanks again for all the feedback guys. breakingthefragile, Trebor17, Gyromania, and toxin. especially.

Album Rating: 1.0

thanks for the clarification!



i'm interested in what you have to say with regards to my thoughts. the reason i don't like the point of view that you're supposed to place yourself in the projected listener's shoes is because you have to make the (somewhat arrogant) assumption that you know exactly who the music is intended for. with will.i.am. it's an easy enough guess to make, but how about paramore? its fanbase includes a lot of teenage girls, doesn't include people who think their music is girly or too poppy, but then also includes quite a few "discerning males" (e.g. sputnik users). so who is this music intended for? i don't really know and that's my main issue with your logic.



let's take this example. say i liked his earlier stuff, so i have a reason to review his stuff, but now that he's aiming for a younger audience, i'm not longer in his audience base. how do i approach it? do i say, "well i guess his audience doesn't care about how bad the lyrics, beat, autotune, and melodies are, it's bombastic enough to be a dance hit so i'll tack a 4" on it? isn't this a little presumptuous, to say that you know exactly how the audiencebase will interpret it?



help me understand.



by the way regardless of this discussion, you still haven't said enough positive stuff (even from the perspective of who it's intended for) to justify a 4 honestly. a 4 is excellent, are there any superb danceable tracks or whatever?

Album Rating: 1.0

Everything you said in your review is prior knowledge for most of the people on the site



what the hell is pop music supposed to be anyway

Album Rating: 1.5

mindless, catchy, simple, repetitive, more often than not shallow, ababcb progression, 3 or 4 chords and the truth, banal, fun

Album Rating: 1.0

I bet you didn't learn all that from this review

"but how about paramore? its fanbase includes a lot of teenage girls, doesn't include people who think their music is girly or too poppy, but then also includes quite a few "discerning males" (e.g. sputnik users). so who is this music intended for? i don't really know and that's my main issue with your logic."

Then I think about how all those people would react to it. Does the music do a job of spanning the gap between discerning males and poppy girls?

"let's take this example. say i liked his earlier stuff, so i have a reason to review his stuff, but now that he's aiming for a younger audience, i'm not longer in his audience base. how do i approach it?"

From the point of view of a younger audience. There's no reason to look at it from the previous perspective, aside from comparison with older material, as he is now aiming for another crowd. Did he succeed in his goal?

"do i say, "well i guess his audience doesn't care about how bad the lyrics, beat, autotune, and melodies are, it's bombastic enough to be a dance hit so i'll tack a 4" on it? isn't this a little presumptuous, to say that you know exactly how the audiencebase will interpret it?"

It is indeed presumptuous, however this presumptuousness has to come with a fair deal of self-confidence as well. I believe I am well-versed enough in some musical areas and with some musical audiences- such as with this album- to make a judgement on who the record was intended for.

"by the way regardless of this discussion, you still haven't said enough positive stuff (even from the perspective of who it's intended for) to justify a 4 honestly. a 4 is excellent, are there any superb danceable tracks or whatever?"

I dunno, I think if you read all of my comments and the review I have said some pretty positive things; enough to warrant a 4. Keep in mind that it's an arbitrary numbering system, so a 4 may have a different weight to you than to me.

Album Rating: 1.0

your approach to reviewing music is interesting, but is also suggesting that music is alienating to everybody.

Album Rating: 1.0

"Then I think about how all those people would react to it. Does the music do a job of spanning the gap between discerning males and poppy girls?"



this doesn't make sense though, what if the appeal to discerning males is purely incidental? then you might be rating them on something they didn't intend. the other alternative is that they do indeed intend to make music that self-confident males can rock out to as well, so if you only judge them on their appeal to teenage girls, then you might be robbing them of some credit.



this is sort of my point with your system. unless you can say for certain whom they're writing for (and it's not always immediately obvious: paramore. or, who's drake writing for? afaik teenage girls & discerning rap fans enjoy his stuff) it risks being unfounded.

c'mon barbie lets go party

Easy Mac's target audience is poor college kids... does that make it gourmet food? No.

Album Rating: 1.5

I didn't expect Beethoven, but that doesn't mean his music has to be downright dreadful, in my mind at least.

Very concise, I have to give you that. That being said, if you yourself admit that its nothing but filler, how in the world does it warrant anything but a filler rating? So, neg for a review that doesn't add up to the score you gave it.

what's so bad about this album?