All Music Guide has upgraded several albums to 5 stars recently. These include:

The Strokes - Is This It
Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Wilco - Summerteeth
Smahing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
Jeff Buckley - Grace
The White Stripes - Elephant
Splint - Spiderland
The Verve - Urban Hymns
Belle and Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister
Soundgarden - Superunknown

There's probably more but this is all I've been able to find so far.

I can get on board with six of those upgrades, two of which are in my personal top 10 (Grace and Is This It).

But since when is the 10th (and untitled) track from "In the Aeroplane" called "The Penny Arcade in California"??? http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:3r6qoa8aiijn

that's weird that they gave Summerteeth a 5 star review when they checked Being There as their favorite album in the "discography" section which only got a 4.5 star review.

I always thought that the checked albums were suggestions of where to start or the release that they think is the most representative of an artist's sound, not necessarily the artist's best album.

Thanks AJackson!

Many of you have told me that you'd like to help me out, and here's an opportunity. For most albums up to year 2004, there's an AMG link on each album page. I know it's a tedious work to check for new ratings, but maybe we can split the work between us, taking one or a few years each?

Jeff is correct, the albums checked in AMG do not necessarily refer to the artists' best albums (according to AMG).

Henrik, would like to help you here as well, but I have more than enough work supporting you with the RYM links (9% done already!).

Did anybody ever see a downgrade, like e.g. from 4.5 down to 4 stars, in AMG?

It wasn't very hard for me to make this work even more convenient. I have created a spreadsheet with the AMG link and rating side by side.

Spreadsheet

Actually, there are two things that could be done here.
1. Check for updated ratings.
2. Complete the spreadsheet with AMG links for all albums (and check for updated ratings among the albums with missing links).

Updated links need to be sent to me by email, while updated ratings could be reported here in this thread.

Andre, I'm not asking you. You're doing more than enough already.


PS1. I don't use AMG ratings that are not supported by any review comments.

PS2. As you can see, the AMG rating is missing for almost all albums from 2006 and 2007. This is because I'm not using the AMG rating for albums with the AMG rating included in metacritic's metascore. For albums with a metascore from 1999-2005 I use a different method to be able to use changes of the AMG score (like the ones that have just been found now) but not the original AMG score. However, this took too much time, so from 2006 I have simplified this work.

R.E.M.'s Document goes down from 5 to 4.5

the actual review for Grace still seems pretty negative.

I can take letter A and those bands before A if no one else hasn't done the work already.
Did I understand correctly that there's no need to find out AMG-ratings from albums that was released after 2006. What about albums from 1999-2005?

If we are splitting this work by year I can take any year that is available (for example 1997 and 1998)

pop elton, that's great! I've already done some checking myself and updated the spreadsheet with a calumn called CHECKED (you can still use the link above). The albums I have checked are marked with an 'x' and they are at the bottom of the new document.

From now on, probably alphabetic checking is preferable, as the document is sorted this way (least risk of misunderstandings).

There were a lot of changes among the albums I checked (all albums with a link and a previous ranking of < 4 stars + a few other albums), but I still think it would be best if you report changes in this thread, rather than emailing me an updated spreadsheet.

Thanks!

And albums from 1999-2005 need checking too.

Letter A
These albums ratings have changed or were missing before

ARTIST ALBUM YEAR NEW_RATING
!!! Myth Takes 2007 4
120 Days 120 Days 2006 2,5
12Twelve L'univers 2006 No stars
13th Floor Elevators Easter Everywhere 1967 4,5
4 Hero Two Pages 1998 4
Adams, Ryan Easy Tiger 2007 3,5
Adem Homesongs 2004 4
Against Me! New Wave 2007 4
Allen, Lily Alright, Still 2006 4
American Spring Spring/American Spring 1972 3
And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead So Divided 2006 4
Andy, Horace In the Light 1977 No stars
Animal Collective Strawberry Jam 2007 4
Animals, The Animalisms/Animalization 1966 Two different albums Animalisms got 4,5 stars, Animimalization 4 stars
Animals, The Animalism 1966 5
Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Volume II 1994 4
Aphex Twin Chosen Lords ??? I have never heard of this album.
Arab Strap Philophobia 1998 3,5
Arcade Fire Neon Bible 2007 4
Arctic Monkeys Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not 2006 3,5
Arctic Monkeys Favourite Worst Nightmare 2007 4,5

Just to clarify, because it certainly made me curious: the "no stars" for Horace Andy's IN THE LIGHT means that for the album's main AMG entry there's no review and no star rating at all, NOT a zero-star rating. A distinction that needs to be made, I think. In any case, the four-and-a-half-star rating given to a two-for-one packaging of IN THE LIGHT together with its dub version should probably be the one that Henrik uses.

pop elton, chosen lords is an album (well a compilation of tracks from EPs I think) of Aphex Twin released under the name AFX, not Aphex Twin.

I'll take the albums from T to Z by the way.

Many thanks, pop elton (and to Lonesome Panda in advance)!

If you collect new AMG links I would prefer if you
1. save the spreadsheet on your computer
2. keep all existing info and add new the links in a new column
3. Then send the spreadsheet to me by email.

pop elton, although I prefer the above, your email was fine too

Not much changes between T.Rex and Texas :

T. Rex - The Slider 1972 5 -> 4,5
T.I. - King 2006 4,5
Tapes 'n Tapes - The Loon 2006 3,5
Taylor, Maria - 11:11 2005 4
Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque 1991 4,5 -> 5
Teenage Fanclub - Grand Prix 1995 4 -> 4,5

amg is quite slow... so it might take some time to reach Z... (well, by the end of the week I guess)

Jane's Addiction:
Nothing's Shocking 4.5-->5
Ritual de lo Habitual 5-->4.5

Thermals, The - The Body, The Blood, The Machine 2006 - 3,5
Third Ear Band - Third Ear Band 1970 4,5
Throbbing Gristle - 20 Jazz Funk Greats 1979 4,5 -> 5
Timberlake, Justin - FutureSex/LoveSounds 2006 3,5
Tindersticks - Simple Pleasure 1999 4,5 -> 3,5
Tool - Aenima 1996 5 -> 4,5
Tormé, Mel - Swings Shubert Alley - (1959 on AM, 1960 on amg) 4,5 -> 5
Tosh, Peter - Legalize It 1976 5 -> 4,5
Tosh, Peter - Equal Rights 1977 4 -> 4,5
Trentemoller - The Last Resort 2006 3
TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain 2006 4
Twilight Sad, The - Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters 2007 4
Twilley, Dwight - Sincerely 1976 4,5 -> 5

I wonder if there isn't a confusion between Trio the pop band and the country female superstar trio. Both have made a self-titled album, the date and note in AMG is the one for the pop band but the country ladies seem more acclaimed !

Thanks LonesomePanda!

I'm not sure where the confusion about the two Trio groups is. Both groups are included at AM (one as "Trio" and one as "Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt & Emmylou Harris") and as far as I can see the links and information are correct.

The Flaming Lip's The Soft Bulletin used to be 4.5, now is a 5 star album

It's a shame Summerteeth's perfect score doesn't reflect on it's acclaimed music ranking, which is pretty low.

Can't wait for some of the 00s albums to start moving up to 5 stars; oddly, many of the most acclaimed albums of the 00s (Kid A, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Illinois) aren't even 4.5s on AMG yet.

I agree, I would have really expected them to update Kid A by now, since they usually fall in with the hype. I'm not complaining though, as I think their review of Kid A is one of the best and most accurate they ever did.

They have a lot of weird atypical ratings for some major artists. In Rainbows is their only radiohead album with a great score post OKC; Every Wilco album from the last decade has the exact same score from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (which should be a 5) to sky blue sky (which should be a 3 or a 3.5). The same thing happened with sufjan stevens; several 4 star ratings, making it seem like at the time amg was hedging their bets and waiting to see how popular opinion unfolded, but they simply forgot to change numbers.

The Flaming Lips, Wilco, The National, Sufjan Stevens, and TV on The Radio all have atypical best of artist choices, and best rated albums. The National's choice doesn't even make acclaimed music, and none of the other best of artists make our top 500 (The Flaming Lips having two checked off now; until recently Transmissions was their sole best of artist.)