Album Scores Are Meaningless

If most records get a 7/10, why bother scoring them at all?

There are a few reasons why I stopped writing music reviews.

First, it took up too much time. I was obsessive in my approach, doggedly insisting that listening to an album at least thrice through and researching the entire artist’s back catalog was the bare minimum prerequisite for giving a score. It was untenable.

Second, I got bored. Maybe that speaks to my limitations as a writer, but there are only so many ways to describe yet another “sophomore effort.” Going rogue on form only added to the load.

Third, I’m sick to death of giving scores.

Who is the score helping? What’s the difference between a 6.9 and a 7.1? Why are we endlessly reducing art to flat decimal places?

This might sound like distinction without a difference (and an unbelievably pretentious one, at that), but I don’t review music now; I curate it. And when I do — whether in playlists, posts, or best-of lists — I don’t assign scores. I don’t even assign rank; my lists have evolved from numbered chaos to simple alphabetic…