One week ago, music history was made when Pitchfork gave Fiona Apple’s new album Fetch The Bolt Cutters a perfect 10 rating. The last time Pitchfork gave an album a 10 was a decade ago, when they bestowed the honor upon Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. And in total, Pitchfork has only given twelve perfect scores to albums on initial release. So unsurprisingly, the rating has gotten just as much attention as the album itself.
I myself have a cranky rant some thoughts on Pitchfork’s review. But just to be clear: my issue, and the motivation behind me writing this, is not the album itself. I thought Fetch The Bolt Cutters was fantastic. It had plenty of “tenspirational” moments (I will be copyrighting that word as soon as I’m done writing this, by the way), and I’m not at all surprised Pitchfork rated it so favorably. No, my issue is with the “perfect” 10 rating itself, and the numerical rating scale in general.
The most immediate issue I have with the 10 rating has a lot to do with who I am as a music fan. I tend to be skeptical of Pitchfork and other music reviewing publications. They make their money off of clicks, and head-turning scores attract more clicks. There’s incentive to start drama with a controversial rating. Pitchfork, even compared to other publications, is also very image-conscious. As one of the biggest names in music criticism, especially indie music criticism, Pitchfork is under a lot of pressure to like the right things at the right time. Basically, they’re trying to be the cool kids. And there’s nothing cooler than trying really hard to be cool, right?
Now that I’ve alienated some industry peers, I want to move on to the more philosophical reason why I don’t like the perfect 10. Perfect 10s are certainly the most annoying of the ratings, but I’m not exactly a fan of 1 through 9 either. Or 9.9, if we’re being as obnoxiously precise as Pitchfork. With numerical rating systems, the focus of the conversation too often becomes the number, even when the scores aren’t super low or high. This feeds into another of my pet peeves: when music nerds simply parrot the opinions of their indie overlords. (Not saying I haven’t been guilty of it, but it’s still a pet peeve.) This would happen even without the numerical score, but it’s a lot easier to regurgitate a number than it is a page’s worth of praise. If you’re out here reciting paragraphs, I’m sure as hell not going to be the one to question your dedication.
Whew, ok, that was a lot of negativity. Let me walk it back a bit. I get it. Getting clicks IS Pitchfork’s business. I know it. You know it. They know we know it. There’s no duping here; we see an attention-grabbing number and we click with a crystal-clear idea of what we’re in for. Plus, numerical rating systems are easily digestible, and they allow fans to quickly compare and contrast albums. And while I don’t review albums, I myself rate music via Rate Your Music, as a personal catalogue of the music I’ve listened to.
This convenience factor makes a pretty compelling case for numerical ratings. Unfortunately, this is an ANTI-numerical ratings article! My hands are tied! I guess my question is: why try and make music discussion easy? For me, and I’m sure for plenty of you, the in-depth discussion is the most fun part of being a fan. I love winning arguments, and I find I win waaay more when I’m armed with a well-thought out opinion instead of an arbitrary number. That I based on someone else’s arbitrary number. I don’t want my thoughts to come easy (luckily, they almost never do). I want the discussion to be challenging, and thought-provoking, and ultimately fulfilling. Trying to quantify art into something easily digestible just seems like the opposite of that.
Maybe I’m being too hard on Pitchfork. After all, there is a full review attached to every single one of those numerical ratings. Also, I wrote an entire article about a rating and like three sentences about the album itself. None of us are perfect. I just think music publications should do more to get the reader involved in and excited about music discussion without some frivolous rating. And since my chances of getting hired by Pitchfork just decreased dramatically, Off Pitch is the only place I can make that happen. So let’s make it happen.
Now stop reading and go listen to Fetch The Bolt Cutters.
Lyle B.