Ranking albums is tough

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andyd1010
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Ranking albums is tough

Post by andyd1010 »

I've been spending most of my free time over the last couple months listening to albums, and a decent amount of time figuring out how to rank them.

I'm wondering people's thoughts on a couple of things:

1. Lots of albums have a couple different versions - for instance, a U.S. version and a U.K. version. I'm not really sure which one to count. Lots of times, a British band will release an album at home, then have a big hit single, add that for the U.S. release, and rearrange some other tracks. In that case, I feel like the U.K. version is the more authentic version, but the addition of the big hit song generally improves the album (specific example: The Rolling Stones adding Satisfaction to the U.S. version of Out of Our Heads)

2. Bonus tracks. Most of the time I don't even bother listening to these. I mentioned this somewhere else earlier, but there are some great bonus tracks that would boost the rankings of certain albums (Culture War - The Suburbs; Santa Clara - Boxer)

Lesser concern, but still interested in people's thoughts:
3. Some albums have a couple of all-time great songs, but then a bunch of mediocre-to-bad songs, whereas other albums have no particular standout songs, but they're all pretty good and fit at least pretty well together. I used to rank albums by total play count, which would hugely favor the former. But I feel like people generally prefer the latter, and I'm starting to feel that way too.
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Re: Ranking albums is tough

Post by jamieW »

I've often had the same trouble with both areas you addressed. Typically when I rate albums, I don't include bonus tracks in my rating. Also, I try to go by the original release (which, in most cases, has been the UK release). One very notable exception would be Jimi's "Are You Experienced?," where I use the 18 track version, since it's both the best known and my favorite.

For years, I've tried many methods to rate albums but nothing worked out. Finally, I discovered a method last year that's worked especially well. I just rate every song 1-10, calculate the average, and then add .5, 1, 1.5, or 2 points depending on how I feel about the album. (I can also keep it right where it is, or even deduct points the same way.) This has resulted in a fairly reliable ranking for me (though I've been in the process of applying the same system to thousands of albums I've already heard - which is why I won't be participating in the all-time albums poll this time around).

Because of this, albums are very easy for me to rank now. Songs, however, are still another story!
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Listyguy
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Re: Ranking albums is tough

Post by Listyguy »

I generally go with the original version (that is, I always don't consider bonus tracks). With US vs. UK versions, I usually go with the original as well but I'm more lenient. I sometimes just combine the US and UK versions, like with This Year's Model or Are You Experienced? (but I'd love just about any version of either album).
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Dan
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Re: Ranking albums is tough

Post by Dan »

andyd1010 wrote:I'm wondering people's thoughts on a couple of things...
How to rank albums has been a bit of a wrestling match for me too. At first I just ranked albums by going with my gut feeling. Later, I went completely the opposite way and gave every song on an album a ranking out of 100 and calculated the average. I have a slightly different method now, but I'll get into that in a moment. I'd like to respond to the points you raised first...

1. I always listen to the original release of an album - changes to the orignal release feels a little bit deceiving to me.

2. I also don't consider bonus tracks to be truly part of an album, so I don't let them affect my overall impression of the album.

3. I tend to prefer an album that is consitently good but lacks standout tracks over an album that has one or two excellent songs but a bunch of "mediocre-to-bad songs". Neither are likely to make my list of all-time favourite albums though.

The ranking method I prefer at the moment is to still give every song on an album a score, but to use specific criteria:

Score of 1 = This song has the potential to be on my list of 500 favourite songs of all time
Score of 2 = Not quite all-time top 500 but one of my favourite songs released that year
Score of 3 = Almost one of my favourite songs of the year, but not quite
Score of 4 = A solid album track, but not a contender for one of my favourite songs of the year
Score of 5 = Compared to other songs on the album, definitely not one of my favourites
Skits / short tracks: if there are more than one skit or short track on an album, I usually give them an overall score instead of giving individual scores
(Very) occasionally I would adjust scores if an album doesn't feel like it's sitting in the right place

Albums with the lowest average score come out on top.

I'm in the process of inputting scores in a spreadsheet for the all-time albums poll that is happening at the moment. I started with albums from 2016 that will likely make the cut and am working my way back in time. I'm only at 2003 at present - here's hoping I'll get to 1939 by the deadline!

Less hard work (and less geeky and more natural) would be to just trust your gut about ranking albums. But if you want to go about it more methodically, it's probably going to be a case of trial and error until you find a method that feels right.

All of this might make more sense if you look at my spreadsheet-in-progress:
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Re: Ranking albums is tough

Post by Nassim »

For 1 and 2 : I go with the version I like the best, but without the bonus tracks (but there's very little case where bonus tracks would improve my opinion of an album... only RTJ1 comes to mind.)
The only case where it makes a real difference and on which I haven't made up my mind is the self titled LCD Soundsystem album, the 2nd CD being there right from the start, but in theory not part of the album, it's hard to say whether or not it should be taken into account.

For 3 : depends if you talk all time lists or ranking a predetermined set of albums (like for the final round of a decade poll).
For my all time list, I only have albums I like to listen in full (which might be why I only ranked 425). Some have higher highs but are a bit less consistent, other are consistent but with less stand outs, and my ranking to compare those is nothing scientific, I just try to figure which one I like the most, mostly by gut feeling : how often I listen to them, how easily I could remember how the album goes or which I'd be most likely to pick in the moment are all factors, but in the end there's no clear rule besides thinking "I like that one more". Spiderland is a good example as it's not an album I'd listen to that often, because it requires a specific mood and would not fit just any context, but in the end I "like" it more than some albums I listen to more often.
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Re: Ranking albums is tough

Post by Sweepstakes Ron »

Dan wrote: All of this might make more sense if you look at my spreadsheet-in-progress:
Dan, do you use any formulas to make the spreadsheet work, with the colors and such? If so, I'd greatly appreciate a blank version of the spreadsheet for personal use (not for this year's poll, sadly).
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andyd1010
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Re: Ranking albums is tough

Post by andyd1010 »

Dan wrote: I'm in the process of inputting scores in a spreadsheet for the all-time albums poll that is happening at the moment. I started with albums from 2016 that will likely make the cut and am working my way back in time. I'm only at 2003 at present - here's hoping I'll get to 1939 by the deadline!

Less hard work (and less geeky and more natural) would be to just trust your gut about ranking albums. But if you want to go about it more methodically, it's probably going to be a case of trial and error until you find a method that feels right.

All of this might make more sense if you look at my spreadsheet-in-progress:
Cool spreadsheet! Doing it by ratings hurts albums with bad songs a lot more than by play count. I've never done anything with ratings - my main problem is that the difference in the quality of songs is the most extreme near the top of my list, so giving all of my top 100 or 500 songs a perfect score doesn't accurately portray how I feel about them. Plus, my opinions change all the time.

But there are also decent songs that are not quite good enough for me to want to return to, versus horrendous songs that I never want to hear again, and they both get a 1 with my system. And songs I get sick of or start to notice flaws in, but they take a long time to fall significantly in the rankings. So there's a middleground I'll try to find there, probably by a pretty unscientific method.

With albums that have multiple different releases, so far I've been taking the main release and tacking on songs I like from later releases to the end of it. Maybe I'll change my mind on that.
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Re: Ranking albums is tough

Post by bonnielaurel »

First of all I prefer to focus on year lists, so you don't have to compare too many albums of completely different styles and periods. For an all-time list I make a compilation of my year lists. This is the kind of point system I use to compare great albums:

3 points for a track that's an all-time classic. (Song top 500 ca.)
2 points for a great track. (Song top 3000 ca.)
1 point for an album track that's worth remembering, but not outstanding. (Not in top 3000)
0 points for tracks that aren't bad but easy to forget.
-1 for a bad track, a song that I would skip while relistening.

I can adjust the score as often as I like. The good thing about 0 points for forgettable tracks is that the number of tracks doesn't have too much influence.
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Dan
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Re: Ranking albums is tough

Post by Dan »

Sweepstakes Ron wrote:Dan, do you use any formulas to make the spreadsheet work, with the colors and such? If so, I'd greatly appreciate a blank version of the spreadsheet for personal use (not for this year's poll, sadly).
:greetings-waveyellow: Here's a blank, formatted spreadsheet. A cell will turn a specific colour when you enter a score from 1 to 5 in it (in columns E to AR). The "Score" column (column A) will calculate the average score and has been formatted to highlight duplicate values with red text, so that you can more easily see if there are albums that have the same score.

I hope this helps.
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Re: Ranking albums is tough

Post by Live in Phoenix »

I’ve hardly ever ranked songs. But I rank albums on a 5-point scale out of 5. So then, just out of my 5 star albums, what clump of albums belongs at the very top, and what clump belongs at the bottom. I do a lot of “what goes at the top / what goes at the bottom” for either individual albums or clumps of albums. I don’t count bonus tracks. Right or wrong, I count the version of Are You Experienced that I actually own, the 11-song U.S. version. Every album feels like an individual case, sort of like a movie, and I just ask myself how I felt about the whole thing after it was over. I could try and break it down into components and have a formula, but I’d probably overrule my own formula right away.

The closest I have to a formula is if an album has many "good or very good" songs and a small number of weak ones, that's probably a 4-star rating (like the INXS album in my signature). If there are 2 or 3 classics and the album totally dies elsewhere, that's like 3-star territory. (In the case of only 2 classics, that might be what I call a "soft" or "weak" 3-stars -- what I should really just call 2 1/2 stars.) Basically, can the other songs sort of keep pace?
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Re: Ranking albums is tough

Post by Jirin »

I wrote a computer program similar to Moonbeam's to help me rank albums.

Before I tried to be systematic I had a hard time making lists. It's hard to compare an album you listened to a month ago against an album you listened to six months ago and honestly remember which you like more. I ended up forgetting albums existed for years then listening to them again and wondering why, or realizing suddenly I didn't actually like albums I thought were my favorites that much. Then realizing I was stubbornly insisting something was still one of my favorites just because I spent time thinking of it as one.

That's why I wrote a program based on comparing albums together that you just listened to side by side. Easy to be honest with yourself when you wrote things down and then mathematically compared all those things.
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Re: Ranking albums is tough

Post by Red Ant »

The other question is how you handle albums that have some awful tracks that make the whole thing unlistenable. An obvious example is the Double Fantasy by Lennon / Ono, where some decent Lennon tracks are interspersed with some "input" from Yoko Oko. In the analogue days we couldn't easily skip those tracks, so the whole album was dragged down in many people's opinions.
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Re: Ranking albums is tough

Post by Henrik »

Red Ant wrote:The other question is how you handle albums that have some awful tracks that make the whole thing unlistenable. An obvious example is the Double Fantasy by Lennon / Ono, where some decent Lennon tracks are interspersed with some "input" from Yoko Oko. In the analogue days we couldn't easily skip those tracks, so the whole album was dragged down in many people's opinions.
For me, a terrible track might hurt an album more than the benefit of a song that I consider one of the best of all time. Also, the flow, or interaction between songs, is very important to me, so on top of a simple point system I need to factor that in too.

I often debate with myself what a good flow is though. It can be both The Beatles' White Album (huge variation) and Julee Cruise's "Floating Into the Night" (very similar throughout). For albums with small variation it really depends on if they have a unique sound if I see that as a good thing or not. For albums with huge variation there needs to be something that hold the songs together, which is a feeling that is hard to describe. Sometimes a "different" track add to the album's charm and sometimes it drags down the album.
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Re: Ranking albums is tough

Post by Henrik »

I'm a bit surprised that I'm the first to mention flow as an important factor, as I don't listen very often to albums nowadays. I mostly jump a lot between genres and artists in Spotify, or I listen to selfmade playlists of my favorite songs by artists. There's no point in listening to original albums compared to selfarranged lists if they have no "extra value", is there?

I realized just now that this listening pattern has probably lead me to further require an extra flow when I actually get around to listen to (or judge) a full album.
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Re: Ranking albums is tough

Post by Red Ant »

Henrik wrote:I'm a bit surprised that I'm the first to mention flow as an important factor, as I don't listen very often to albums nowadays. I mostly jump a lot between genres and artists in Spotify, or I listen to selfmade playlists of my favorite songs by artists. There's no point in listening to original albums compared to selfarranged lists if they have no "extra value", is there?

I realized just now that this listening pattern has probably lead me to further require an extra flow when I actually get around to listen to (or judge) a full album.
You're absolutely right about judging an album on the flow - often something the artist has spent ages thinking about to produce a complete work, played in a specific order. I do wonder if this has been lost in the digital age. I always get annoyed when an album that had an original flow without gaps between tracks on an analogue medium, ends up with enforced gaps when played digitally, even with tools like gapless playback.

People were much more likely to listen to the all the tracks on an album in roughly equal proportions when you had to get up and lift a stylus to skip a track - or indeed to access side 2 of an album. Sometimes that meant a track that you originally might not give much merit could "grow on you", whereas today it might not get a second hearing.
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