Album Ratings Guide | mari@macintosh.garden
I've started questioning the grades I give to records, so I figured it'd be useful for me and for you if I wrote out what each one means. If I think grade inflation is ever an issue in the future, I'll start adjusting them downwards.
Awful
I find this record unlistenable. To my admittedly short memory, I've only ever encountered a small handful of records I would seriously describe as this, and none of them, I'd ever consider for proper reviews. (Perhaps I should, though, to balance out the unending positivity with some fun-to-pick-on records. Or to make people take me even less seriously.)
Eh
An album that mostly disappoints, save for a few legitimately good songs that would be best suited as singles. Thankfully, these are usually the singles. Eh albums have more merit than Awful ones, since they're not aggressively bad (usually), just not really my thing.
Good
An enjoyable album! Good albums can have a bunch of cool songs, but something about them makes them as a whole less than satisfactory. It can be a schizophrenic running order, it can be production issues, or it can be a record that runs too long or too short, but is otherwise quite good. I do recommend these for fans of the band, but no one else should start with them.
Great
Now we're getting into records I'm truly passionate about. These aren't perfect, and I might not love every single song on them, but I love a significant amount of them. It's easy for me to give the albums in my own collection Great scores, because I keep a tight collection where only the stuff I'm super into sticks around, hence why this is currently the most common rating you see.
Classic
Stunner. These are albums I love front to back and albums that mean a lot to me. There's no significant issues with them and I want you all to listen to them. I think the name of this one might be a little inflammatory, so to make it clear, I don't give Classic scores to albums just for being widely considered classics. These are classics to me and me alone, since this is my stupid little review section.