I thought it would be interesting to examine how many five star ratings each of us has on our RYM page. As for me, I give 16 five star ratings out of 175 rankings for roughly a 9% five star review percentage. Of course, like so many others on here, I primarily listen to highly acclaimed music. Also, the most recent album I rate five stars is Lucinda Williams' "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road." from 1998. What's the most recent album you give 5 stars to?
I don't go to RYM, but there are approximately 50 albums I'd give 5 stars on that rating scale. The most recent is "White Blood Cells," but "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" and "Elephant" are both very close.
on rym i have 5 stars defined as "one of the top 50-100 albums of the decade" (the range allowing for the fact that some decades have produced better music than others). i only have the current and previous decade fully rated so far, and i've listened to +/- 1,000 albums in each, so it works out to 5-10%. that seems a bit high to me.
however, i also have a rule that i don't rate an album unless i've listened to it fully 3 times - somewhat arbitrary, but i've found that after 3 listens, my opinion of an album won't change radically and that it takes 3 listens to form a fair opinion of an album (basically, the first listen dispels whatever preconceptions you brought to it, the second listen dispels impressions formed after the first listen, and the third listen is somewhat more neutral). clearly, some albums take many more listens to reveal their strengths, and other albums get old after a certain number of listens, but i think 3's a good minimum. anyway, all i'm saying is that the i've sort of weeded out the dregs (albums that i couldn't listen to all the way through or more than once) so realistically i think my percentage of 5-star ratings is more like 3-7% or something like that.
on a sidenote, i wonder about people like fastnbulbous. i love his eclectic taste and i've discovered some great albums from his lists, but i do find the amount of music he's listened to difficult to believe. in 2008, for instance, he had 400-something albums listed (and those are just the ones he liked!) i feel like i'm constantly listening to music and i would guess that i hear (3+ times) about 300-400 new albums per year - 100 or so from the current year, and 200-300 from previous years. so, honestly, i don't know how he is able to give that many albums a fair listen.
Interesting points, Greg. I can't tell anything about an album on the first listen. After the first listen, it could be a 2 or it could be a 5. But I have a feeling that alot of people on RYM are rating albums after half a listen--"this albums was so bad I couldn't make it all the way through it, so I deleted it off my hard drive!"--I've actually seen similar reviews on RYM. Of course, in the end, it seems to work out because the average RYM score is never too far off what I would think is reasonable. Of course, what is reasonable when it comes to opinion?!
