"You can take my body, put it in a boat, light it on fire, use the gasoline"
Willow Tree - Chad VanGaalen

Thursday 13 March 2008

overwhelming opinions

the conundrum will always exist.

there's the reader, the person looking for something new, something to satisfy a desire.

there's the reviewer, someone who releases his thoughts of that something for a reader to see.

the reader expects to get something he will like, and the reviewer wants the reader to like what he is writing about. both have a general need for one another, but there always exists a rift between them.

the system of rating an album, book, website, camera, chair, episode of scooby doo, empty beer bottle, and/or color is up solely to the reviewer. most of the time, the system simply boils down to a numerical/star/thumb-up grade. it's the easiest way to garner any sort of response from the reader.

more often than not, there are explanations (which can be either confusingly short or mind numbingly long) that will attempt to prove to the reader what the author "really means" behind his rating. the ratings can be broken up even further into sub-categories ranging from originality to production values to what the singer put in his hair at the photo shoot for the promos.

while all this information is very interesting, seeing it on the computer screen will have little to no affect on one's true opinion of the music.

listening is what matters.

a writer can not express the same emotion that purges through the speakers on any level. the genre can be named, the other artists that they sound like can be listed, descriptive language can try to paint the picture... but nothing will get the point across better than putting an ear (preferably two) between those headphones.

reviews should be taken as they are. they're important for everyone who enjoys music. no one would be able to find much without a recommendation. they shouldn't, however, be trusted blindly. tastes differ. people like what they like and there's not a single way in the world to explain that fact. the reader needs to know where his interests lie before taking a reviewers word to heart. he should be familiar with the reviewers previous works to know where he's coming from with what he has to say.

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