Poptimists Album Science #1

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

This is about Proving By Science how good an album REALLY is. How do you do this? The best way to go about it is to mark each track out of ten and then calculate a percentage from the total score. So that is what we're going to do!

Instructions: simply give each track from the album below a mark out of ten by clicking the corresponding radio button - it's that simple!

If you've not heard the song before or need a reminder there are several ways you can remedy this. if you have iTunes you can search for the album on there and listen to the 30 second clips - or you can use Amazon and other sites in a similar way. If the song was released as a single you may well find the video on YouTube.

If you've not heard the song and can't hear it you could either not mark it (if you dislike the artist generally) or give it a 5 for balance if you do like the artist generally (seems fair to me all in all).

The first album to be rated will be Michael Jackson's 'Thriller'. If the experiment proves popular and successful I'll do two more albums from the 80s and then three from the 90s and 00s over the next few weeks.

[Poll #847685]
Don't worry too much about the position of the song in the tracklist and it's relation to what comes before and after it - unless you think that sort of thing affects your response to a track significantly or indeed your judgement of an album as a whole (see comments for big argument about this, probably).

Comments

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Hmm.... Were there really only two non-single tracks on this album? "Baby Be Mine" I don't remember at all, and my recollection is that "The Lady in My Life" is a sappy ballad (and definitely written by Rod Temperton - I remember thinking at the time, who the hell is this guy? and why are people saying Quincy Jones is important, he only co-wrote one song!).

Lex should definitely hear this.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

so what's up with you hating on the title track br?

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

funny, i expected more people would be lukewarm about it. and i certainly didn't expect so many perfect scores!

to be honest, i have just never really liked the song, end of story. and to the extent that i would change the channel if it came on. it's got a good hook, the video of course, but no sale. (the vincent price rap didn't help but that isn't the motivating factor.)

[lockedintheatti.livejournal.com]

Don't think Human Nature was a single in the UK - it may have been elsewhere though.

Speaking of which, the main thing I like about Human Nature is that whenever I hear it I think of SWV's Right Here, which samples it and is heavenly.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah this is why it got bigger points from me too.