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When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

Rolling Stone famously didn't like Zeppelin at first, and I believe gave Nevermind three stars upon initial review. I also recall that REM's Monster got 4.5 stars when it first came out and I think is now largely viewed as one of REM's weaker albums. It seems that RS rarely assigns 4.5 or 5 star ratings to debuts no matter how good history judges them to be. I thought it would be cool to make a list of albums for which the inital RS review proved to be way off.

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

I don't have an archive handy, but I do recall the Flaming Lips 'Soft Bulletin' getting about 3 stars from the magazine when it was first released. Later pitchforkmedia.com called it one of the most widely regarded albums since Pet Sounds, which I think is a really big deal. I admit that Soft Bulletin is one of those albums that I didn't really listen to until I heard the non-Rolling Stone hype about it being an essential 90s record a year or two after it was released. Now it's in my personal top 10 albums of all time.

Rolling Stone, as cool as they like to think they are, is the mainstream establishment of music criticism, so I think a lot of trend setting albums are going to have low ratings by them, given how new music and art forms emerge from a conscious effort to react to what the establishment deems worthy.

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

Recent memory, Bjork-Debut got 2 stars on first review.

Tom Groves wrote:
"Producer Nellee Hooper (Sinead O'Connor, Soul II Soul) has sabotaged a ferociously iconoclastic talent with a phalanx of cheap electronic gimmickry. Björk's singular skills cry out for genuine band chemistry, and instead she gets Hooper's Euro art-school schlock – and we do, too."

www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/217068/debut

I think they got that one wrong.

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

I think Weezer - Pinkerton they may have slammed on first release then later inducted it into it's 'Hall of Fame' in a later issue calling it a classic

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

I remember they gave the last Mick Jagger record 5 stars and they gave the last Beasties Boys 5 stars as well.

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

I do not have Pinkerton and haven't listened to it completely, but I do remember it being thoroughly trashed by Rolling Stone and a few other magazines as not the appropriate follow-up to the Blue Album they were expecting. Entertainment Weekly, which I had a subscription too at the time, even called it one of the worst records of the year. A few years later a few of my friends were saying how much they loved that record, and the new generation of rock critics like Pitchfork praised it.

Any other well regarded albums you can think of that not only were rated low but actively hated by a bunch of big-time critics at their release?

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

Yes, I think that's true of Pinkerton. I've read that Exile on Main Street was not well-received. Jeff Buckley's Grace got 3 stars from Stephanie Zacharek. A quote from the Rolling Stone review: "The young Buckley's vocals don't always stand up: He doesn't sound battered or desperate enough to carry off Leonard Cohen's "Halleluja." Wow! If he got anything right on that album it was the cover of Halleluja. Even the AMG review is accompanied by only 4.5 stars, a definite slight considering its place in the AM top 100. Grace is merely promising. Grace is definitely an album that splits alot of opinions.

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

I think Here, My Dear by Marvin Gaye is a pretty famous one where everybody got it wrong. As recently as 2004, RS gave it 3.5 stars in their album guide, even though the year prior they said it was one of the best 500 albums ever.

Also, it looks like RS gave Low by David Bowie 3 stars in their '79 guide. Maybe critics just didn't know what they were talking about in the mid-70s

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

Rolling Stone is the grumpy old man playing bridge at the back of the country club who hates all newcomers and will only pay anyone any attention if the majority of his few friends first recommend their character. It could be worse though, it could be the Grammy's. The Grammy's are the emotionally unstable call girl looking for the richest and most popular patron to take home.

Rolling Stone hated the Ramones and Iggy Pop when they came out. Now a day doesn't go by that they don't praise their brilliance.

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

Insert anybody who was in a famous band that puts out solo albums here.

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

Ziggy Stardust 3.5 stars I think
I find it bollocks how they just automatically give every damn Beatles release 5 stars
And patchy Rolling Stones releases they give good reviews

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

Joni Mitchell's "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" was their pick for worst album of the year when it came out.

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

Well, since the topic was just opened.. Mirrored? Most critics are ranking it 85+ while RS is giving it a meager 7.

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

What does 3.5 mean anyway? Is that good, bad or confused?

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

Joni Mitchell's "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" was their pick for worst album of the year when it came out.




That's actually not true, though it has been widely repeated. Joni Mitchell started a bit of a meme when she stated that this was the case in an interview around the time of Turbulent Indigo. In fact Rolling Stone only called it the worst album title of the year.


from the wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joni_Mitchell


A common legend holds that Rolling Stone magazine declared it the "Worst Album of the Year"; in truth it was called only the year's worst album title. (Mitchell and Rolling Stone have had a contentious relationship, initiated years earlier when RS featured a "tree" illustrating all of Mitchell's alleged romantic partners, primarily other musicians, which the singer said "hurt my feelings terribly at the time.")

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

Tim,
Rolling Stone's scale is:

1 star = Poor
2 star = Fair
3 star = Good
4 star = Excellent
5 star = Classic

So, I guess that means that 3.5 stars is maybe "very good." They seem to give out alot of 3.5 star rankings. Of course, I guess that 5 stars should be very rare.

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

Actually, with RS I'm pretty sure 3.5 stars means the following: "This is an artist that we respect for prior glorys or is a modern artist willing to be scantily clad on our cover or do an interview with us so we're unwilling to state anything decisive that might actually offend the artist."

RS seems pretty afraid of actually criticizing or lauding anything these days so it seems a lot of albums just get that 3.5 star thing. I mean, if they gave something 5 stars, that'd be like saying its as good as anything released in the 60s and we know the cranky weasles at RS wouldn't like to admit that.

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

I think you can't judge RS reviews by the rating but instead have to read the review. It seems most critics don't understand the star system they use.

For example, Rolling Stone called Stankonia by Outkast "one of the best albums of the year" and gave it 4 stars. Well, 4 stars sounds great RS, but in actuality that's 80 percent and one of the worst ratings that album received that year. Oops.

I know they won't but they should really revamp that 5 star system since the critics can't seem to figure it out.

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

it's actually 75% because they don't go below 1 star. Try to explain that to metacritic (they still don't get it, and give every two star album 40% (when it's actually 25%!)).

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

it's actually 75% because they don't go below 1 star. Try to explain that to metacritic (they still don't get it, and give every two star album 40% (when it's actually 25%!)).

Yes, this has annoyed me too. But now when I created the non-US/UK spreadsheet I have done the same "mistake", for two reasons.

1. Few people would understand how e.g. ratings of 5/10 and 4/6 would translate to 44 and 60 on a 0-100 scale.

2. At least in Sweden, magazines with a few-point scale tend to give albums lower ratings to a much greater extent (and only use the high ratings for the really good albums). For example, this is the scale of my hometown newspaper:
1=Bad
2=Average
3=Good
4=Really good
5=Excellent
Given this rating system, most albums get rating 2 or 3, whereas if they used a 10-point system I don't think the same albums would get 3-6.

The "correct" translation from a 1-5 scale to a 0-100 scale would be 0, 25, 50, 75, 100. The "simple" translation would be 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, which, for the reasons above, could actually make more sense (not only for my hometown paper).

(Thinking of it, the score 1 would actually be equivalent to something in the 0-20 interval, score 2 would be between 21 and 40, etc., so maybe the most "correct" translation would be 10, 30, 50, 70, 90? But it wouldn't be any fun if no albums would get a 100 unless the source actually use a 100-point scale. Alright, I'll shut up here...)

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

Well Nirvana topped their list and only got 3 stars. They give average reviews to good albums by up and coming artists and once they see that all the other magazines are digging and album they go ahead and put it in their top 10 year end list as if we didn't notice they gave an album an average rating in the first place. THAN when their NEXT album comes out that's when they swoon all over the band. Perfect example is the White Stripes. First to review "Elephant so they gave it 5 stars so it will make them look cool and cutting edge again. But since their prior albim "Get Behind Me Satan" didn't sell as well as "Elephant" than that automatically means "Icky Thump" may not sell as well either which is why they gave them their infamous 3.5 stars. The band gets downgraded once the hype stops. Spin is doing the exact same thing now. Twenty or thirty years later when the band is in their 50s and become cool again that's when we see more of their 5 star reviews.

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

I think that's right Tim. It's hard to look back on the RS site at original reviews because sometimes the original review has been replaced by a Hall of Fame review, but you can definitely see a trend when you look at debut albums that were big and the follow-ups to those albums. The debut usually gets an average review and the follow up inevitably gets a better review.

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

Didn't Kevin Federline's album get less than one star?

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

The fact that Rolling Stone even bothered to review K-Fed says a lot. I'm sure that record review space in the magazine could have gone to an interesting indie band.

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

Say what you want but you have to admit that Rolling Stone has by far the strongest writing. Whenever I want an insightful analysis of a favourite record they never disappoint.

Re: When has Rolling Stone gotten it right / wrong?

(Thinking of it, the score 1 would actually be equivalent to something in the 0-20 interval, score 2 would be between 21 and 40, etc., so maybe the most "correct" translation would be 10, 30, 50, 70, 90? But it wouldn't be any fun if no albums would get a 100 unless the source actually use a 100-point scale. Alright, I'll shut up here...)

Maybe the best way to think of it would be as a logarithmic scale rather than a linear one, in both directions too. So 1/5 would be 0%, 2/5 33%, 3/5 50%, 4/5 67% and 5/5 100%. It seems like that's the way the critics think of them anyways. They care much less about the interval between 3 and 4 stars than the one between 4 and 5.