Music

The Ears Have It!

Many of the magazines have written for ask that numerical ratings accompany the review. I much prefer if you read what I write and derive what that means to you – that’s the way things roll at The Prescription. Hope that’s okay?

I mean really – one man’s 3 is another man’s 8, right?

One magazine put a gun to my head and asked me to see if I could match my emotions with numbers, so I did. And then they printed it. I think it’s a pretty good benchmark of what you’ll find in most sites. Hope so, anyway.

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Before I get to the links below I should probably explain some of the terminology I use on the site.

New Album (pretty self-explanatory)
Blast From The Past! (older album or artist I’ve been digging and decided to write about)
Under The Radar (a recent album you might have missed; I might have also!)
Bridesmaids (very close to the “best of” list, might even be there if I was asked another day)
Close But No Cigar (good album, just not the cream of the crop that year)
Countdown (saved for when I’m doing some list in sequence)

Every year I compile a best-of list. Here are links to the last decade or so (you’ll find verbose reviews of many of the 2008 and later titles if you use the Search feature on my blog). Of course I’m only two ears and one wallet – I can’t hear them all, right? I always keep looking for old and new music, so quite often an album I rated lower (or not at all) winds up being an all-time favorite…I just didn’t hear it that year.

Village Voice Pazz & Jop Polls

(The year refers to the music; the poll is published the following February)

Pazz & Jop 2006 and prior

(The links to my older individual critic Pazz & Jop entries are no longer on the Village Voice site – that’s a shame. Robert Christgau has the results for the prior years on his site. The fact that he’s fired, the Pazz& Jop is changing its name and the website no longer stores all these cross-referenced tables is just pure coincidence, I’m sure.)