In a review published by The Guardian last week, Phil Mongredien gave the new album “Rocket” by (Sandy) Alex G a two-star rating without offering any substantial evidence to justify why the music deserved such a pitiful designation.
Like Mongredien, many music critics today usually attach a rating of some sort to their reviews.
Be it stars, a certain number or a letter grade, critics typically use a scale-based rating system of some kind. The odd thing is, they rarely qualify exactly what each rating specifically means.
Without parameters or rubrics for these ratings, the rating is hardly able to define the “overall” quality of the work. Music – and art in general – is infinitely more fluid and dynamic than a simple rating could suggest.
Usually, we use scale-based grading as a symbolic stand-in for things that can be reduced to a single rating and still maintain the same degree of meaning, like the score of a math test or the dependability of a car.
It’s for things where all we need is the rating to understand the power or quality of something. Of course, scale-based grading is also effective when it comes to competitions, where we trust judges who have the tools necessary to assess these things.
We might label music critics “judges” for the competition of the musical realm, but I don’t think this is an effective way to view or assess works of art. It transforms art into a surface-level competition instead of allowing each piece the space to breathe and exist in discussion on its own.
Often times, the specific rating and the content of the review fail to connect. The review might display an ambivalence or a contradiction that doesn’t match the implication of the rating. Beyond the lackluster writing of the review itself, numerical ratings just don’t really add much to the descriptive power of a critical piece.
In Mongredien's review, for instance, he makes numerous claims about the album, calling it "disengaged," without giving specific information about why he felt that way. Instead, he supplements his critical opinion with a simple rating.
A rating might give you a general sense of the review’s intention, but if the review is coherent and well-written, it should be able to stand on its own two feet without the aid of a number.
The number is, at best, redundant.
The number almost assumes that the reader will not read the review in the first place. In fact, I think it encourages the reader not to, especially in today’s fast-paced world. A number allows the reader to misjudge and preconceive a piece of music without reading the why, which should be the most important part.
The rating by itself is too abstract to fully understand. It’s a number in place of a work of art. We might generally understand the judgment of the rating, but only competitively and in relation to other works of art, which can be harmful to our understanding of the piece.
What defines a 9.7 versus a 9.8 can be difficult to articulate. It’s impossible to know what subtle differences in the music distinguish these two ratings without reading the full review. While I believe in a hierarchy of quality when it comes to music, it’s simply too gray to assign definitive numbers.
Descriptive and substantiated criticism is what allows us to better understand and appreciate the music. It works in tandem with the art itself by revealing something interesting about the zeitgeist.
Criticism should be the connective tissue between pieces of art, pushing the art forward instead of limiting its power. Giving works of art a rating is cheap, easy, non-descriptive and abandons any sense of narrative.
Discussion should be at the heart of criticism – not numbers.
nlykoudi@indiana.edu
