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This page is intended to explain some of the finer details of how I review music artists/albums.

1. Category by age

I divide my music artists into three categories by age:

A: Artists who are now retired (or dead)
B: Currently active artists with three or more “best of” albums (not including B-sides)
C: Currently active artists with at least one “best of” album (not including B-sides)
D: Currently active artists with not even one “best of” album (not including B-sides)

Its not a perfect system, but it works for me.

2. Individual Album Review

When I review an album, I create a graph like so:

Each blue node represents one song on the album. The four zones represent how good the song is as follows:

1. Zone 0 (The lowest black zone): Does not meet the cut. The song may be just average, or outright bad. Either way, I did not like it enough to consider it worth hearing again.

2. Zone 1 (The zone above zone 0): Meets the cut. Above average, but may not be anything special.

3. Zone 2: An excellent track, worth listening to again and again.

4. Zone 3: Legendary tracks. The sort of tracks that come up in lists of greatest songs of all time. The sort of tracks you want to listen to fifty times in a row. The sort of tracks you hear once and don’t forget for the rest of your life.