Iron Maiden: individual album judgement by yours truly

Forostar

Forostar

Ancient Mariner
Hi Guys,

As you know, LooseCannon is currently revising the older song threads on the Commentary Boards, and now we all can rate the individual songs. I thought it would be cool to turn these individual ratings (only the ones which were posted) into album ratings.

I'll post all members who contributed. At the end I'll also calculate an average rating.
Note: This is only about the ratings by members who have done all the album songs, and posted all these ratings.
If you want to be part of this, and you are surprised your name is not appearing in the upcoming weeks/months, then make sure you haven't forgotten to post your review and rating in a certain track topic. If you think I have overlooked something, please tell me.

Some people (including me) want to change a song rating, but I think it's better to wait until that's technically possible (in the poll). Then I'll change it, and all will be in sync. Hope you guys don't mind. As soon as it is possible to change ratings, people can let me know what they'll change. If you regret a choice before that moment comes, write it down somewhere, or remember it well..

If people will rate in the future, I'll add them in this hopefully growing list. Here we go:

Iron Maiden (1980) by individual members:

9,0 taker64
8,9 Murder89
8,8 bearfan
8,7 Perun
8,7 _____no5
8,4 Jeffmetal
8,4 wizard
8,3 czgibson
8,3 Donner
8,2 Albie
8,1 Black_Thunder
8,1 Forostar
8,0 Fugazi
8,0 NightProwler666
7,9 maidenhead1996
7,9 Rotam
7,6 jonnytron
7,4 Eddies Wingman
7,2 LooseCannon
7,2 Jonszat
7,0 Stallion Duck
7,0 Vap
6,9 mckindog
6,7 Invader
6,7 Prowler_108
6,6 Genghis Khan
6,4 Zare
 
I like the idea, though I do not fully agree with an album being only the sum of its parts and not more/less.  I think it would be interesting to ask people to rate the album itself, and then compare those ratings with the ratings you get from the individual songs.  I would definitely rate Iron Maiden higher than 6,7 at least, as an album.  And similarly, I think Dance of Death would get a lower rating as an album than the average of its songs.
 
Cheers Khan, and Invader.

Everyone his own thoughts of course, but personally, I think that the average of all songs may present a reliable representation of an album.

Invader, see this as one out of many methods to do this. I don't say it's the only or the best method, but I find it an interesting one and not such an unrealistic alternative.

Apart from comparing with ratings by other members, now we can also compare our judgement with our own thoughts we always had about these albums, and we can put it next to other methods and topics.

Invader said:
I would definitely rate Iron Maiden higher than 6,7 at least, as an album.
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This means that your votes for individual songs (the average) does not correspond with your overall feeling for the album (according to yourself). It's your own information leading to your grade, and it provokes you to compare, and think about it. Nothing wrong with that, I hope!  :)
 
Basically, I'm with Invader, in that an album is more than the sum of its parts. An album in its entirety gives me personally a different feeling than an individual song. For instance, The Unbeliever in its function of being the album closer of The X-Factor transmits an entirely different mood to me than when I listen to it on its own. This is because it had the entire album building up to it, and it sort of makes me reassess what I heard before it while listening to the song.

However, that is a matter of reflection. I think Foro's statistical approach may lead to different results in detail, but as a general indicator, I don't think the relative value of the result would differ much. It would certainly not say anything different about which albums I prefer over which. This method would run into its limits for me if the absolute values for two individual albums are alike, although I'm not one who likes to forcibly say which album he likes better- you can like two things equally, for different reasons.

In any case, I appreciate the effort Foro puts into this, and I will make sure I'll vote on all the songs I missed in order to properly contribute to this. :)
 
Forostar said:
Cheers Khan, and Invader.
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Thanks.  I plan on going over all the songs I missed in the first two albums over the next few days.  I also noticed that some songs I though I voted for, were not voted in after all, e.g. Run to the Hillsl and Total Eclipse.

Forostar said:
Everyone his own thoughts of course, but personally, I think that the average of all songs may present a reliable representation of an album.

Invader, see this as one out of many methods to do this. I don't say it's only or the best method, but I find it an interesting one and not such an unrealistic alternative.

Apart from comparing with ratings by other members, now we can also compare our judgement with our own thoughts we always had about these albums, and we can put it next to other methods and topics.
Click to expand...

I think your method, Foro, is more mathematical.  I like this method because it is strict and easy to define.

Forostar said:
This means that your votes for individual songs (the average) does not correspond with your overall feeling for the album (according to yourself). It's your own information leading to your grade, and it provokes you to compare, and think about it. Nothing wrong with that, I hope!  :)
Click to expand...

Invader is following the Aristotelian "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts".  This is great method if you don't give each song the same representation within the album.  


@ Invader
Anyway, I'd like to know which songs Invader would give more preference, if you're up to it.
 
Forostar said:
At this moment of writing, only these four members have posted all their ratings in all Iron Maiden album song threads.
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I think I've voted on every song from NOTB, POM and Powerslave. I'll go through Iron Maiden and Killers today and rate those that I haven't done yet.
 
Perun said:
Basically, I'm with Invader, in that an album is more than the sum of its parts. An album in its entirety gives me personally a different feeling than an individual song. For instance, The Unbeliever in its function of being the album closer of The X-Factor transmits an entirely different mood to me than when I listen to it on its own. This is because it had the entire album building up to it, and it sort of makes me reassess what I heard before it while listening to the song.
Click to expand...

I understand this.  This method of evaluating had more affect on me when I was younger, and had ample time to immerse myself in albums.  Now much like today's teenagers, I find I lose that common thread within the album that gives each song a special place within the whole.
 
In the end, average song ratings are used to gauge the album in the end.

However.

A general album review/voting thread would be a good idea too - then we can look at how people rank albums as compared to ranking the individual songs. I'm prepared to bet the differences are going to be pretty low in the higher ranked albums, and quite high when it comes to TXF and VXI.
 
LooseCannon said:
In the end, average song ratings are used to gauge the album in the end.

However.

A general album review/voting thread would be a good idea too - then we can look at how people rank albums as compared to ranking the individual songs. I'm prepared to bet the differences are going to be pretty low in the higher ranked albums, and quite high when it comes to TXF and VXI.
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Agreed. No need to complicate things by deviating from average song ratings when calculating album scores. I like the idea of doing a thorough rating on albums to compare, though. (This would also force me to reassess my earlier album ratings, I'm not sure if I would rate them the same today).
 
Nice idea Foro. I've PMed all my rankings to you to get added to the list.

..and for the record IM averaged a 6.9. I would have given it an eight.
 
In many European languages, valacirca, they use commas instead of periods for decimal places in numbers.

6,7 = 6.7.
 
Genghis Khan said:
Invader is following the Aristotelian "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts".  This is great method if you don't give each song the same representation within the album.  
@ Invader
Anyway, I'd like to know which songs Invader would give more preference, if you're up to it.
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In the case of Iron Maiden, I find I tend to give more preference to the good ones and sort of ignore the worse ones.  "Good ones" here include Remember Tomorrow, Phantom, Running Free, Transylvania, Sanctuary, and Iron Maiden, and the bad ones I'd say are Prowler, Charlotte, and Strange World.  I also enjoy the overall feel of the album that is not properly taken into consideration when I rate individual songs.  The same thing applies to a few other albums, like SIT, Seventh Son, TXF and AMOLAD.  On some other albums, the bad stuff tends to eclipse my enjoyment of the good songs, for example Fear or VXI. 

In hindsight, I also think I was a bit harsh with the first two albums, and considering how I've rated later songs, I'd now rate several IM songs higher.
 
Before I start compiling final numbers, I'll re-edit all the polls to allow people to change their rankings. Hopefully we can keep these polls as living.
 
Eddies Wingman said:
I think I've voted on every song from NOTB, POM and Powerslave. I'll go through Iron Maiden and Killers today and rate those that I haven't done yet.
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Cheers. Added you for the debut and Killers. I didn't start the Bruce era albums yet (might take a while to be honest, we'll see).
 
LooseCannon said:
Before I start compiling final numbers, I'll re-edit all the polls to allow people to change their rankings. Hopefully we can keep these polls as living.
Click to expand...

If members are going to change their rankings in the future (whenever that is possible) I hope that they will let that know when that happens, because then the album rankings can be changed too. Thanks to all members in advance.  :)

mckindog said:
Nice idea Foro. I've PMed all my rankings to you to get added to the list.

..and for the record IM averaged a 6.9. I would have given it an eight.
Click to expand...

You're added.

Now a bit more philosophy about this method. The thing is: when people rank songs, it's possible to define the average song ranking of an album. If people don't want to name that "album judgement", that's fine. But it surely is an indicator to see how someone judges a total album, without skipping any tracks, or without playing the best song another two times.

It's some kind of automatical reflection, rid of anything else. Let me explain. The following is not per se truth, just an idea I have.

When I listen to an album with 9 songs, I can have different feelings about each song, but in the end it's the total picture that matters. Some people tend to make the lesser songs less important, so that they'll be "surprised" to find out that the total album was so bad (via this method). Others might overemphasize bad songs, and will make better songs less important. They don't talk about these, perhaps they don't even want to listen to them. They'll be surprised that the total result is not as negative as they thought.

LooseCannon said:
I'm prepared to bet the differences are going to be pretty low in the higher ranked albums, and quite high when it comes to TXF and VXI.
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I have the feeling that this occurs more than once with Maiden albums from the nineties, especially the first two. More than just a couple of people keep on talking about the negative tracks, and hardly want to pay attention to the better ones, which they also have stained with the bad image.

I hope this topic serves an alternative view, where every song has the same amount of weight. If I am wrong, no problem. Then it's cold mathematics, which I like as well ;)

Perun said:
In any case, I appreciate the effort Foro puts into this, and I will make sure I'll vote on all the songs I missed in order to properly contribute to this. :)
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Appreciated mate, you're added!  :ok:
 
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