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Missing Ratings Thread

As a continuation of a thread from the old forum, I'd like to post any incidents here where a review is missing a rating. I'll continue to post here if more missing ratings are found, unless the moderators would prefer for seperate threads to be created with each newly-located incident.

Just one missing rating to start with:

While the review is short, the reviewer does breifly descibe the music. Furthermore, a similarly short review for the act's previous album, 'Is Survived By' has already been rated.

75 replies

Okay, this selection of unrated reviews has a distinctly heavy-metalic quality to them. Let's see if the editorial team feel any of these deserve a star rating:

A bit delayed this month with posting this one. So the list may be longer than usual. It will at least give your team plenty to chew over, if they don't mind rating them:

Brandenburger Symphoniker | Tangerine Dream - Paradiso
Clint Mansell - Smoking Aces
Metropole Orkest | Within Temptation - Black Symphony
Depeche Mode - Tour of the Universe: Barcelona 20/21.11.09
Emily King - East Side Story
Enter Shikari - The Mindsweep
Iggy Pop - Après
Jason Isbell - Live at Twist and Shout
Julian Cope - Followers of Saint Julian
Kevin Ayers - Garden of Love
Kronos Quartet, Clint Mansell, Mogwai - The Fountain [Music from the Motion Picture]
Murcof - The Versailles Sessions
Mutual Admiration Society - Mutual Admiration Society
The Orb - The Art of Chill 4
The Pop Group - Curiosities
Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine [DVD/VHS]
The Roches - Will You Be My Friend?
Sade - Bring Me Home: Live 2011
Serge Gainsbourg - Le Zénith de Gainsbourg
Tangerine Dream - Madcap's Flaming Duty
Tangerine Dream - The Virgin Years: 1974-1978
Yes - Songs From Tsongas: The 35th Anniversary Concert

Is there still a chance of these releases getting a rating? Some of them were given one a few days after after that list was posted but many of them remain unrated.

The editors went through the list and rated the ones they felt had a critical review.

They didn't think Jim Allen's take on the Jason Isbell record provided enough of a critical opinion? Or Ned's take on Julian Cope? Or Mark Deming on The Pop Group?

Yeesh, tough crowd. Ok, let's see how the next batch fare...

Below you'll find last month's collection of unrated reviews, for your team to look over. As always, adding a rating to them would be greatly appreciated:

Here' another list of unrated albums with reviews. Please add some ratings to them:

Nice work with the last selection of ratings. Here's another set for your editors to check out and rate, if they are willing to take a look:

Got some more unrated reviews for you. Can you attach some ratings to them, if possible:

Here's another selection of unrated reviews for your team to look at. Some of them are probably closer to overviews or summaries than reviews but see what they think:

Found a pair of unrated reviews today:

Do you think they are worth rating?

Yet again, just a single find for your team to look into this week: The Kinks - Kinks Size

As usual, I would be thankful if you put it forward for a rating.

Also, did the editorial team decide against rating those two Walter Trout albums? The articles for both The Outsider and The Blues Came Callin' read like full reviews. Did the team just feel that ratings are unnecessary for both releases?

Just noticed that the ratings have gone up for all these entries. Thanks for passing along the request!

Just one unrated album to rate this week. It's another one for "Ol' Wheeler":

Wheeler Walker Jr. - Ol' Wheeler

I actually felt this was a descriptive blurb (not a full review), because it seemed to be a generic description about the album's release rather than its music.  If the editor didn't actually listen to the album, then I don't think that it should have an editor rating.  I expect full reviews to be more specific and more opinionated about songs.

P.S. for some reason, I can comment on your reply but I can't add another reply to your original problem.

Spotted some more unrated reviews in the last few days:

Some of those may just be summaries but I figured it would be best to put them forward, just to be sure. Please could your team look into them?

I would also like to ask you about The Groop Played "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music" by Stereolab. The release is less than thirty minutes long and is stated to be an EP within the review. Wouldn't it make more sense for it to be placed within the 'Singles & EPs' section of Stereolab's discography instead? It is an issue I submitted a correction for several months ago, but there hasn't been a response to it.

I'll pass these along and ask after the Stereolab album. I think the general rule of thumb is that recordings with fewer than 8 songs usually are considered EPs but obviously this is not a hard rule. We'll see what the editors think.

Thanks. Let me know if you receive a definition from the editorial team on what they consider to be an EP. Everyone seems to have a different interpretation. It will be helpful to know which releases count, if I find any similar issues in the future.

Just wanted to add - the eight song guildeline/rule seems somewhat arbitrary. There are other eight track EPs have been placed within the 'Singles & EPs' section. For example, My Iron Lung by Radiohead.

It would be great if music came with hard and fast rules to follow, but sometimes things that might not fall under the general guidelines of an EP are an EP.

Pink Floyd's Animals only has five songs but is an album.

Radiohead's My Iron Lung has three more songs than Animals but is not a full Radiohead album.

As with many prog-rock records, 'Animals' demonstrates why making a division between EPs and albums based on the amount of tracks causes problems.

In any case, I used Wayback Machine to see how the band officially classified it: "Mini-LP" was the term the site used. Outside the name, there's little difference between that and an EP but it's probably the reason it's in the albums section.

Can you also ask the editorial team to look into rating these two reviews:

And while things are being fixed/updated, Diablo by Gabe Gurnesy was flagged for last week's Featured New Releases, despite not having a review. Maybe a new thread is needed for those types of errors...

We'll look into the Walter Trout albums.

Regarding the recent release by Gabe Gurnsey: Each week we select 40-50 new release albums that we think might end up receiving a review, and we publish the ones that do get a review on the Featured New Releases page. This one was accidentally marked for approval on that page without receiving a review. If it does end up getting reviewed further down the road, we'll mark it and it will show up again on the Featured New Releases page for that week.

Got a selection of unrated hip hop albums this time (oh, and 1 for Lauv). As usual, adding some ratings to them would be greatly appreciated:

Had a look through the rest of Bruce Hornsby's discography on AllMusic and noticed a couple of other reviews that are unrated:

The latter entry was anoymously reviewed so I doubt it qualifies for a rating but just to make sure, I though I'd list it too. Also found an unrated review in Jethro Tull's discography:

.It's short write-up but it's possibly one worthy of a rating.

Found this unrated review thanks to Milton Nascimento being highlighted on the 'Staff Picks', earlier in the week. It looks eligible:

Milton Nascimento - Milton [1970]

Here a few more unrated reviews for the editorial team to puzzle over:

It seems AllMusic's senior editor has not provided ratings to a couple of his recent reviews. Can you hassle him into rating them? Here are the reviews in question:

The Prince album rating should become available today. We'll ask after the Bruce Hornsby album rating.

It's just been updated. Thanks again, Zac.

Have only spotted one unrated review this week. It belongs to the review for 'The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll' by Simon Joyner. Yet again, happy if your team could look into it.

I have noticed two other issues. This first is to do with Vicky Chow's recent album, Jane Antonia Cornish: Sierra. On the album's page it shows up with a 4.5 star rating but on both the 'New Releases' page and the advanced search it shows up as a 4.0 star rating. Regardless of which rating it actually is, could we get it fixed so it's consistent?

The second is about M Huncho's new release - Chasing Euphoria. Was there meant to be a new review for it? This isn't a request for a review. It's just that it's unusual for a new record to added to the New Releases page without one. Was it added to the New Releases page in error or has there just been a delay with getting the review uploaded?

We'll pass along the Simon Joyner album rating request.

The ratings disconnect on the Vicky Show album is a stumper. My guess is that the editor may have initially rated it 4 stars, that got ingested into the Advanced Search data set, and then the rating got bumped up to 4½ stars in the core database but the Advanced Search data set has not been updated yet. We'll ask about it.

Chasing Euphoria was mistakenly marked to display on the New Releases page (even though it doesn't have a review). We've corrected this.

Thanks.

Speedy response, Zac. Much appreciated.

In light of Klaus Schulze's recent passing, I've been going through his back catalogue. While looking at it on AllMusic, I've noticed a few reviews with missing ratings. Could you take a look at these entries and find out if they are worth rating?:

I'll make the request.

Thanks.

Been scanning through Mike Oldfield's discography this week. A few of his releases have unrated reviews:

As usual, please could you forward these names on to the editorial team?

I would also still appreciate it if the Cowboy Junkies release (see previous request) could be looked into, if it hasn't already. If the editors already did look at it but decided not to rate it then that's understandable.

These have been rated.

Thanks very much.

Nothing new to add the thread this week - a well-earned reprieve from these ongoing requests.

Could you add 'Sing in My Meadow: The Nomad Series, Vol. 3' by Cowboy Junkies to the rating check list? It is a short write-up but it does descibe the music as "raw and soulful".

Just to sidestep into a different topic briefly; the same editor reviewed Mark Turner's 'Return to the Stars' last week. It was a well-written piece but I was curious if the choice to label it a Pop/Rock album rather than a Jazz album was done on purpose? Conisdering all four sub-genre 'styles' listed underneath are jazz-related, it's a somewhat surprising choice.

The Cowboy Junkies album has been rated and the genre and styles for Mark Turner's album have been properly assigned.

Thanks for the heads-up.

No problem.

Keeping it short this time - if you could look into these two reviews for MC5 please:

Done

Got to give kudos to the editors that were tasked with reviewing dozens of The Grateful Dead's live albums. Quite the herculean feat. Saying that, many of those reviews have been uploaded without a rating. Here's the list so far:

And here are some non-Dead reviews, also without their ratings:

My gut feel on many (all) of the Dead albums is that they are the more objective pre-release reviews that give an overview of what to expect on the album (the players, who recorded it, maybe some of the known tracks on the album) but not full, critical reviews of the music.

I'll pass these along (including the four at the end which do seem more like proper reviews).

Can see what you mean. Maybe it is unlikely that those entries will be given a rating but thanks for forwarding them on nonetheless.

Surprisingly, it seems the editorial team have decided to rate all the Grateful Dead reviews. Many thanks to all involved.

Hey Zac, thanks for forwarding those last three albums on. Could your team check out the Franz Ferdinand LateNightTales entry and see if it's worthy of a rating? Cheers.

Lengthy review missing ratings (user rating 4.5) at https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-first-edition-mw0002644457

Fixed https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-first-edition-mw0002644457