(Thank God): Question for/about the Singles Jukebox
I’ve noticed that a large number of recent reviews (by “recent” I mean the past few weeks, but I’m sure this could be said about the past few/several months, etc.) have an aggregate score of around five (5) out of ten (10).
My question is this: are these average scores purely the result of simple mathematics (in that any relatively large grouping of numbers would result in a theoretical “five”)? Or are these fives a sign of an overall relative blandness (or “averageness”) in today’s pop music?
I know that each reviewer has her or his own opinions of what is and isn’t a “good” song, and I realize that these reviewers are probably not the be-all end-all of music raters. I also realize that the term “average” is also relative depending on who you’re talking to. However it is interesting to see so many songs get such “average” scores. (By the way, if this has already been addressed before or anything, let me know! I’d love to hear what people have to say!)
What do you think?
I think it’s better to think of 5 as “average,” rather than “bland”. (Especially in pop music, where bland is a cardinal sin, and is thus likelier to push a song’s score below a 5.) Plus, it’s not a very self-selected voting group. The writers’ interests lie across the musical landscape, but most of them try to get to as many songs as possible. If you contacted, say, a dozen writers at random from the Pazz & Jop electorate and asked them to score some publication’s top 20, I bet you’d see a lot of middling averages.
But “blandness” is the wrong way to think of it. You never know when a neat sound or melody or hook or personality is going to come at you, which is super exciting. (That’s not just a pop thing, of course, but when it comes to throwing stuff to see what sticks, pop traffics in the highest volume.)
Also, we are the end-all and be-all of music raters. Wanted to clear that up for everyone.
Three things:
- There’s often a lot of variation within these “average” scores. I’ve given [8]s or [9]s to things that have ended up scoring [5.xx]s, and the middling score in those cases represented disputation among the panel, not indifference! If I give a [9] to something, it’s definitely because I think it’s great, not bland.
- Dave keeps track of what he calls the Jukebox’s “controversy index.” He can probably talk more about which tracks get middle of the range scores because they’re controversial and which ones we just don’t give a shit about.
- Yeah, we actually are the be-all and end-all of music raters.
Haven’t started the Controversy index for 2012. But since the calculation uses average deviation, theoretically the most controversial score (the one that almost by definition would not be “bland”) would be 5.0 (even 10’s and 0’s).
Generally controversy tracks fall into three categories:
(1) All-out love/hate controversy, lots of very low and very high scores. This is certainly true of our previous three Controversy Champions, Das Racist (“Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell (Wallpaper remix)”), Ke$ha (“Cannibal”), and Rebecca Black (“Friday”).
(2) Lone wolf controversy — these tend to be tracks that would otherwise do pretty well (or pretty poorly) but have a few exceptional voters that throw wrenches in the system, both consciously and not. Using average deviation over standard deviation limits the impact of a lone wrench-thrower, but there are still examples of wrenches ending up with high controversy. Lloyd is an OK example, where two “1’s” and a “2” create the controversy for what would be more middling-to-pretty-good scores.
(3) Formation of lower-intensity partisan camps — this is a category for songs where most people think it’s either (e.g.) an “8” or a “3,” generally very good if not the greatest song ever or generally bad if not the worst song ever. Thee Oh Sees is a recent example.
This is awesome, guys! I definitely didn’t think anyone would see this besides the few people who follow me, so this is a neat surprise. I am enlightened.
