Scoring...

Every one who does something like this, be it magazine reviewer or whatever, seems to come up against the issue of the scoring system and how it should work. And, four singles in and just before we reach that song (which I'm already struggling with), it's probably time for me to do the same.

Most reviews I've read are of computer/video games, rather than music (though I was a reader of Q magazine for a while), most of which give scores as a percentage, rather than a mark outof 10. This seems a bit pointless to me: what does a 93% game have that a 92% doesn't? Or a 51% over a 48%? Is it possible for a game to be worth 100%? What about a 0%? There's too much room for arbitrariness here.

I chose marks out of 10, rather than 5, partly because it seemed to be the way to do things (i.e. Popular do it), but also because there's more room for indicating various grades of quality. For example, if you score out of 5, at least if you follow it logically, you've no mark for a truly average product (unless you give it a 2.5 - but no one ever seems to do that). Whereas, with a range from 0-10, you can start from 5 being purely avaerage (whatever that may mean) and work from there - 10 being utterly astonishing and groundbreaking, and 0 being unlistenable.

This is the scheme I (roughly) want to work from. It's not intended to be harsh, or anything like that. Nor do I want high scores to become "events" (I don't think there's enough people reading this to do that). But, to get a high score, the song's going to have to be good.

Now, it just so happens that I like Queen, so the chances are I'm slightly biased towards the higher scores. But, the aim is to be fair and as unbiased as possible, so that, if a song is a clunker (and there are some) it should be marked in that light. Each song on its own merits.

You can debate the merits of a score for each song till the cows come home - I don't intend to do it here (and I'd rather you read the words more than the number at the end). But I am already wondering if I've overplayed my hand already with an '8' for Seven Seas of Rhye and a '9' for Killer Queen. It doesn't leave much room to go upwards for... well, you know (that song is looming over this project like a dark thundercloud - the sooner we get over and done with, the better). And is the former really better than Now I'm here, which only got a '7'? I would say probably: it's a tighter, slightly more ambitious song which seems less in danger of getting bogged down. But then again, maybe I'm just biased towards Freddie's songs, rather than Brian's.

So, you'll have to wait and see what Bohemian Rhapsody gets. But I hope the above makes some kind of sense and doesn't sound too pretentious.