Giving excellent stuff the credit it deserves (part 1)

Some people are very hard to please.

Singing From The Grave
by Anna Von Hausswolff

While I was browsing Amazon one day, I came across a very enthusiastic and positive review of an album which I love, ‘Singing From The Grave’ by Anna Von Hausswolff. The full review can be found here, but it includes such quotes as:

‘I’m so passionate about this artist I’m having trouble describing all the aspects that make this one of my favourite records of all time.’

‘From the first track to the last ‘Singing From The Grave’ will captivate you, entrance you and take you to bliss.’

‘This album is all I can seem to listen to lately, I’m hooked on Anna Von Hausswolff like a drug.’

‘You will not regret purchasing this album. Listen intently all the way through and you will be blown away.’

Very high praise indeed and I would have to say that it’s all deserved because Singing From The Grave is a brilliant and beautiful album. It has a classical sound to it rather than a commercial chart sound so it definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you like this genre of music then you’ll love Singing From The Grave. In fact even if you’re not really a fan of this genre then you still might like this album because it’s such a good album. The praise is therefore thoroughly deserved.

However, despite being so generous with their praise, the reviewer is then a little more sparing when it comes to their rating:

4/5

Er ... sorry!?

‘…one of my favourite records of all time.’  4/5?
‘Listen intently all the way through and you will be blown away.’  4/5?
‘I’m hooked on Anna Von Hausswolff like a drug.’  4/5?
‘Singing From The Grave’ will captivate you, entrance you and take you to bliss.’  4/5?

Take you to bliss? 4/5? Er ... hello!?

Surely if an album is worthy of such extremely enthusiastic comments as those above then surely it has to deserve 5/5? I mean, just how good does an album have to be before it merits five stars?

Why do some people have such reluctance to giving five stars? I mean from one point of view – the mathematical point of view – you could argue that if you took a hundred albums and ranked them in order then the top twenty albums should technically qualify for five out of five. In reality you would probably find that slightly more albums would fall into the middle category and the truly outstanding albums (not to mention the atrocious albums) wouldn’t be quite so numerous, so perhaps there might only be ten or maybe even only five albums which shone out enough to be worthy of five stars.

However, surely if an album is one of your favourite albums of all time then it has to be worthy of five stars. If you’re only giving four stars to an album that 'blows you away' and 'takes you to bliss' then surely that’s got to be classed as being just a little bit stingy. In the same sense that Ronaldo is a little bit of a diver. Or that Genghis Khan was a little bit of a snide.

I realise I’m possibly coming across as a bit cheeky here towards the reviewer so if they ever happen to read this article then I apologise because I do actually really like the review. Although Singing From The Grave won't appeal uniformly to all tastes, it’s nevertheless a brilliant but largely undiscovered album so it’s nice to know there are other people out there who share my appreciation of such excellent music. Not to mention the fact that the review is written with such honest free-flowing passion that the reviewer’s love of the album comes across unmistakably in their comments. So I love the review.  It’s just the rating I find bizarre.

Anyway, even though I disagree with the rating, it’s still great that Singing From The Grave received such an otherwise positive review. There’s a lot of cool stuff in the world which doesn’t get the audience it deserves, so any attempts to rectify that situation and help spread the word about excellent stuff such as Singing From The Grave have to be applauded.

And that brings me finally to the whole point of this post. Not giving excellent stuff the credit it deserves is probably something that I myself am often guilty of, so in an attempt to rectify that, from now on I'm going to make a conscious effort to spread the word whenever I find something excellent.

Obviously I'm just one person, so any attention I draw towards cool stuff will be minimal at best, but I’m a firm believer in the butterfly effect so even a small difference is better than no difference at all.

You can find even more cool stuff below:
Giving excellent stuff the credit it deserves (part 2)
Giving excellent stuff the credit it deserves (part 3)

Please note, all promotional images used on this blog remain the copyright of the respective publishers and are used in accordance with 'Fair Use' legislation for review purposes.