A Matter of Life and Death: individual album judgement by yours truly

I don't think limiting how many of each score you're giving out is the way to go. IMO, one should rank songs based solely on what's there, instead of taking points away for what's not. For example, if I knocked my 50-something 10s down to 30, as Diesel did, songs like "Hallowed", "The Number of the Beast" and "Fear of the Dark" wouldn't get 10s, and that just isn't right for me as all three are perfect in their own way - they just got knocked out of my Top 30 because there are others I like a tad bit more than those. However, there isn't really anything in any of those songs to justify me dropping the score down to a 9 or an 8.
 
It works for me, though. Not only am I finally not giving almost every song a 10, but the ones I am giving out top marks to are the ones I really care about.
 
The 5 grade system would be far more resilient to these differences in interpretation of low scores, albeit more crude and imprecise. 5 would be a classic, 4 a very good song, 3 good track, 2 filler/boredom and 1 something you deem shitty.
 
Any of them would work, but if people have different interpretations of the scores, or say 'this is a different 10 than that one', there's no sense of trying to quantify anything.
There was a guideline somewhere for 10-based grade system, similar to the one you gave. If only people would go by that
 
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The problem is that votes are taken as-is without explanation. For instance, when someone says this song bores me to death and it's nothing more than filler and gives it 7/10, it should not be taken into account. That hypothetical person doesn't have a good distribution of scores needed to pull a good statistic. If a boring filler is 7/10 then there'll be saturation of 9s and 10s and not much value space in between to differentiate scores of very good/excellent songs, and there will be seldom any score below 5.

I presented 5-grade thing because most people here are stubborn enough to rate Maiden songs relative to some vague average standard of theirs, "muh bruh I cannot give Maiden a 3 because this song is better than 99% of stuff on radio", so they'll just subtract 5 and get the real score, and therefore that 7/10 becomes a 2/5.

There's really no point in using 10 grades if you ever use only 5 or 6, reserving "bad" scores for those few songs you politically dislike.
 
Zare said:
I presented 5-grade thing because most people here are stubborn enough to rate Maiden songs relative to some vague average standard of theirs, "muh bruh I cannot give Maiden a 3 because this song is better than 99% of stuff on radio", so they'll just subtract 5 and get the real score, and therefore that 7/10 becomes a 2/5.
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Except in the 5-score scenario I think you'll just see all the scores compress into the 3-5 range with 2's reserved for songs on their hit list.

Zare said:
There's really no point in using 10 grades if you ever use only 5 or 6, reserving "bad" scores for those few songs you politically dislike.
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I agree, but it's also worth keeping in mind that people coming to a site like this are ones who are predisposed to like the band, so the scores are going to skew higher in general. The lowest I've gone on even Maiden's worst songs was 3/10, because there were at least a couple of sections in the music that were still pretty good. A 1/10 would have to be pretty close to complete garbage if you're on a universal scale.

The standard I've been trying to use is:
10. (Nearly) Flawless
9. Excellent
8. Great
7. Good
6. OK
5. Meh
4. Kinda stinky
3. Bad
2. Horrible
1. (Nearly) Meritless
 
When I initially voted in the songs' threads, the lowest score I gave any song ("Weekend Warrior") was 4. There was one in the 5 realm ("Another Life"), and from then on it was 6 onwards. That was because I was trying to objectively vote in a universal scale, and, because they're my favorite band ever, things got confused and I messed the whole thing up. When I revised my ratings, I chose to go through with a purely Maiden scale in mind, and tried to venture into all grades' territories. Currently, I haven't given any album song a 1/10 because that's reserved for the total stinkers (Maiden-wise) like "More Tea Vicar" and "Pass the Jam", but I did give out a handful of 2 through 5 scores, even though most songs are still in the 7–10 territory. However, that's purely because, in my opinion, Maiden's discography is very consistent in terms of quality, so the songs in the 10 territory (56 of them are there) are, to me, perfect (or very very close to that). That's why I can't bring myself to limit my ratings.
 
I have given out two 1s - "Purgatory" and "Drifter" - because they are the worst Maiden songs ever released on album and thus, since I want to use the entire scale, the ones most deserving of such low rankings.
 
Forostar said:
Well, then definitely not that personal at all. The most unpersonal album perhaps?
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Nonsense.
  • "Different World" is entirely about a person's inner thoughts and sharing them with others.
  • "These Colours Don't Run" is about patriotism and sacrifice from the perspective of the soldier.
  • "Brighter Than A Thousand Suns" is about the regrets of the creators of the atomic bomb.
  • "The Pilgrim" is about the faith and motivation of those who left Britain to come to the new world to pursue their beliefs, told from their perspective.
  • "The Longest Day" is about the experience of a foot soldier storming the beach at Normandy, told largely from their own perspective.
  • "Out Of The Shadows" could be about a number of things (the cycle of birth and death, the meaninglessness of life for a vampire, a recluse struggling with the thought of re-engaging with the world, etc.), but all of these are internal, personal struggles.
  • "The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg" is a man personally telling the story of his ability to see and communicate with spirits, and the effect it's had on him.
  • "For The Greater Good Of God" is about Steve Harris's struggle with his own faith, and much of it is couched as questions posed directly to God.
  • "Lord Of Light" is a counterpoint to the previous track from the perspective of one of Lucifer's minions who is a true believer.
  • "The Legacy" is a former follower of a dictator reading him the riot act on his death bed for the horrors he was committing that his followers didn't know about at the time.
All of those seem extremely personal to me.
 
Jer said:
"The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg" is a man personally telling the story of his ability to see and communicate with spirits, and the effect it's had on him.
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I always thought of it more as a song from the viewpoint of a person suffering from PTSD, sort of like "Fortunes of War". Though this could've brought on the communication with spirits....
 
Also Out of the Shadows is about birth according to Bruce:

"...actually it's about birth, it's about being born. Until you appear... until you pop out into the world nobody knows who you are, but the moment you do you are King for a day, you are absolutely special, you're unique, it's an absolutely blessed moment, y'know? And it's just a song reflecting on that."

Source:

 
Edington said:
Also Out of the Shadows is about birth according to Bruce
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Sure, but it's not solely about birth:

Dusty dreams in fading daylight​
Flicker on the walls
Nothing new your life's adrift
What purpose to it all?
Eyes are closed and death is calling
Reaching out its hand
Call upon the starlight to surround you​
 
Jer said:
Except in the 5-score scenario I think you'll just see all the scores compress into the 3-5 range with 2's reserved for songs on their hit list.


I agree, but it's also worth keeping in mind that people coming to a site like this are ones who are predisposed to like the band, so the scores are going to skew higher in general. The lowest I've gone on even Maiden's worst songs was 3/10, because there were at least a couple of sections in the music that were still pretty good. A 1/10 would have to be pretty close to complete garbage if you're on a universal scale.

The standard I've been trying to use is:
10. (Nearly) Flawless
9. Excellent
8. Great
7. Good
6. OK
5. Meh
4. Kinda stinky
3. Bad
2. Horrible
1. (Nearly) Meritless
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I try do this (taken from Academic grading in the Netherlands).

the positives (pass):
10 uitstekend excellent
9 zeer goed very good
8 goed good
7 ruim voldoende more than sufficient (or "satisfactory")
6 voldoende sufficient

the negatives (fail):
5 zwak insufficient (or below suffcient) = highest failing grade
4 onvoldoende insufficient
3 ruim onvoldoende strongly/very insufficient
2 slecht poor (or bad)
1 zeer slecht very poor (or very bad)

Maiden have never done a 1-3 for me. I did give a 4 a couple of timss, but now I'm milder about some of these tracks. One still has a 4.
 
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Zare said:
The problem is that votes are taken as-is without explanation. For instance, when someone says this song bores me to death and it's nothing more than filler and gives it 7/10, it should not be taken into account. That hypothetical person doesn't have a good distribution of scores needed to pull a good statistic. If a boring filler is 7/10 then there'll be saturation of 9s and 10s and not much value space in between to differentiate scores of very good/excellent songs, and there will be seldom any score below 5.
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And then what happens? No problem. The numero uno band does not have to have many scores below 5. A band isn't the most favourite band for nothing. It means that it is possible to like most of the songs that are heard. And it is possible that the weaker ones can still be beareable. It is not mandatory to call the weakest songs in the catalogue total shit because it is weaker compared to most Maiden. Duh. Of course not every song has an excellent high standard. But that does not mean there is no room for tolerance or subtlely when judging.

Not unimportant: the Maiden songs I like the least still have more than 50% of the time nice to great music. So, no way a song deserves a 1, 2 or 3 that easily. Not in my book (of souls).

EDIT:
Imagine a father has 10 children and he lets them run a 400 meter race. Should the child that finishes last always be punished most severely (get the most terrible grade)? Perhaps, if the child arrives 5 minutes behind the number one. Rather not if it only arrives a few seconds behind the number one. Especially not if the least had a better race than the rest of the kids in his country. Being one of the least good, can still mean there is enough quality to appreciate.

Should a teacher always give a 1 to the student with the least good test score? Nope. Rather let it depend on how bad it really was.
 
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