Five stars

The five star rating system is commonly used to rate many things such as hotels, films, music, and players on Football Manager games.  Football Manager got me thinking about the five star system when I discovered that on the 2011 version of the game, the best player in the game, Lionel Messi, was 4.5 stars.  How can the very best of thousands of players still not be in the equivalent of the 90-100% range?!

There are two problems with the five star system as a ranking system – one obvious and practical, one less obvious and more theoretical.

Firstly, things are often given half stars, such as 3.5 stars out of 5.  Why not just rate things out of ten instead, and make everyone’s life easier?

Secondly, upon examination of the five star system, I see that there are several possible ways to use it, which make various amounts of sense.

The first way to use this system is with a uniform distribution – so the top 20% of films get 5 stars, the next 20% get 4 stars, and so on.  This is the most helpful way, because you can immediately tell roughly how good a film is from the number of stars it has.  Sadly, this is also the least used way.  It is also impractical to use for something like films – because how can one tell how a film will compare to as yet unreleased films?

The second way is with a normal distribution – so the many films get 3 stars, some get 2 and 4, and few get 1 and 5.  This is less useful, because so many films get the standard 3 stars, but more often used than the first way.  It also suffers from the same drawback as the first way.

The third way is with an arbitrary distribution – so the reviewer or critic basically guesses the star number based on how good they thought the film was.  This is unhelpful because there is no standardisation – one critic may give a ‘reasonable’ film 3 stars, another may give a ‘reasonable’ film 2 stars.

The fourth way is the checklist system, often used for hotels – so a hotel gets four stars if it has certain facilities or services.  This is more helpful, but can’t be used for things like films or music.

The five star system is generally very unhelpful, because you never know the criteria the reviewer is using (unless you have read all the reviews by a reviewer, which is just silly).  Now I think about it, the same could be said for out-of-ten or percentage rating systems.  The numbers are fairly meaningless.  Therefore giving a film a score, out of anything, is a waste of time, unless (a) you are going to give a score to all the films you have seen, and (b) people are going to look at all those scores – then a ranking list could be produced by the reader to helpfully indicated what you think of films compared to each other.  In which case, forget the scores and just produce a ranking list!  (Some readers will be smiling at this point as I attempt to justify all my ranking lists).

A much more helpful way of communicating thoughts on films etc is with a full review.  If people would prefer a score out of 5, or 10, or 100 because they are too lazy to read a review, tough.  An isolated score is largely unhelpful.  If you want my score out of 10 for a given film, you will have to listen to my score for every film I have ever watched.  Good luck with that. 

Concept albums

Until recently I had never heard the term concept album.  I don’t know why, I must have just never come across it.  Then I researched Coldplay’s new album Mylo Xyloto on Wikipedia and found that the album was a concept album.  I found that a concept album is an album that is ‘unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical’.

This initially confused me, because I have always thought that a vital ingredient of any album is a unifying theme.  For example, my all-time favourite album, Lifehouse’s No Name Face is about identity, and the theme and how it is discussed is one of the excellent things about the album.  The idea that only some albums have a unifying theme is strange to me – I would think that if an album doesn’t have a theme then it shouldn’t be called an album.  It’s just a playlist.

Looking further, it seems that many (most?) concept albums have focussed around an imaginary character, two of the most famous being Sgt Pepper and Ziggy Stardust.  But if the theme can be ‘instrumental, compositional narrative or lyrical’, then the vast majority of recordings should be defined as concept albums – a quick scan of my music collection reveals a total of zero albums that are entirely disjointed.  While the definition above seems often quoted, reviewers and critics usually look for characters and stories when labelling a recording as a concept album.  This is a bit silly, really.  No Name Face has never been called a concept album, but if Jason Wade (singer/songwriter for Lifehouse) had come out and said that the album was about Mr. X who is struggling with his identity, it would have immediately been labelled as a concept album.

When it comes to Mylo Xyloto, Coldplay have said that the album is about ‘two protagonists, Mylo and Xyloto, who are living in an oppressive, dystopian urban environment, meet one another through a gang called "The Lost Boys", and fall in love’.  This is ridiculous.  These characters are never mentioned, and the lost boys only get a passing mention in one song.  There is no significant mention of dystopia.  The songs are generally about relationships, that is true, but there is nothing within the songs themselves to suggest that this is a story about two particular characters.  If Coldplay had not explained what the album is about, it would not have been labelled as a concept album.  The only thing that can be said for Mylo Xyloto as a concept album is that the songs could be argued to show the progression of a (any, not a specific) relationship throughout the album – the first few songs are about the past, then there are songs about meeting and falling in love, then breakup and reconciliation songs.  There is a progression in the track order.  But this is equally true of other albums.  As argued elsewhere, thoughtful tracklisting is part of what makes a good album, and is not a particular mark of one of these so-called ‘concept albums’.

An album has a theme.  That’s what sets it apart from a playlist.  The whole concept album thing is an attempt to classify albums that are about specific imaginary characters.  I don’t know much about any other of these concept albums, but Coldplay’s example is pitifully poor because there is nothing in the album itself to suggest the existence of such characters.  I’m not saying it’s a bad album (I am remaining silent on that question for now), just that it’s not a concept album.

Weather

I am a big fan of the John Ruskin quote 'there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather'.
Why do we have to spend so much time complaining about the weather?  Why can't we be happy with grey drizzly days as well as clear sunny days?  What exactly is it about some kinds of weather that people dislike?  Do you really think it will always be sunny in heaven?
We need to be grateful for the heatwaves and the thunderstorms, but we also need to be grateful for the muggy days and the drizzle.  Varied weather is part of a glorious creation, so stop complaining.