A summary of the "How do you rate Paul McCartney's Albums?" polls...

Ahh yes, but that was in subsection two, paragraph four, sectionB7, lines 14-17 of the vote recap: RDR truly was last-placed in the "Total Votes" category! So, yes, more bang/buck!

 

Some votes just pack a bigger wallop!

(Now that I've finished with Broad Street I guess I'll be working my way through RDR and Choba. I'm not much of a 50's kinda guy ... so I take this as an act of drudgery, but something that must be endured. )

Edit: hmm, maybe I'll become a believer. Bring it on Home to Me on Choba is fantastic!

 

Back to the Egg needs more love!

 

I completely agree! I have always loved the fact that the album 'rawks' as hard as it does, and I love Paul's gritty vocals.

Seeing your avatar also made me draw an interesting comparison/link between 'BTTE' and GBV; fantastic, rocking power-pop, genre exercises and experimental song fragments with some unusual lyrics (Salamander, cattle beware of snipers, etc). I had never made that connection before, but I don't think that they are too dissimilar.

 

Sunny side up or over easy?

 

Definitely. I once turned a friend onto Back to the Egg by telling him it was McCartney's Alien Lanes.

 

Where's Live in New York....

But seriously, I am super surprised how low McCartney 2 fared - I love that album. But Obviously Ram and McCartney the two best. Sort of down hill from there for me, other that M2.

 

I love your work on this series @mrjinks !!! I'm thinking of doing something similar for Pink Floyd using your system for a basis, would that be okay?

 

Absolutely. My words of wisdom for this would be:

• Be organized! Excel is your friend - track results there and build a spreadsheet you can easily update - then note the dates when you do.
• Quirk #1: it's easy to have people rate albums on a 1 to 5 star basis, but I didn't want to do that. I was mostly happy with what I came up with, although my "scale" was initially done for just one album - I didn't plan on doing all 25! After a few polls, I wished I'd made my "worst" choice a little less harsh. Something like: "Clearly one of his worst - avoid at all costs only for diehard fans". But at that point I'd done a bunch of polls, so it didn't seem right to re-write the scale...
• Quirk #2: don't go chronologically! Start and end with something that will garner lots of attention and sprinkle in the "Obscured by Clouds"-type releases in between the bigger sets. I suspect The Wall could be the most interesting poll, as many see it as a classic, but many others seem to regard it rather harshly these days (from my limited Floyd knowledge).
• Don't be in a rush! Members and gorts don't like to see a bunch of similar polls clogging up the first page or two all the time, so space out your polls and take the long-term view. I wound up doing 25 polls in exactly one year and I liked the symmetry of that.
• Having said that, do have links to your previous polls in your "new" ones. That will make for easy tracking for your participants.
• Have FUN with it!

 

Thanks for the tips! I will be sure to follow them, and I'll have the first one up today!

 

Thanks for posting this, may lead me to listen to some stuff again.
I always loved "Not Such a Bad Boy" off of "Give My Regards"
I just bought a used copy of "Wild Life", going to give it a spin and see if any of it sticks.

 

Thanks again for the tips! I decided to start with "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" since many here like that album. Here it is: Poll: How do you rate Pink Floyd's "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" album? I copied much of your text from these threads verbatim; I hope you don't mind!

 

Back to the Egg is my favorite Wings album and THIS ALBUM ROCKS

FOR YOU - OLD SIAM SON - SPIN IT ON just a great album and Arrow thru me just seals the deal

then I read some stupid **** in rolling stone saying that if any band besides McCartney gave them this album it would be rejected.

I guess Im looking for a poll on this album cause I was looking over the Wings at the speed of sound poll and thinking GEE BACK TO THE EGG just smokes most of these albums

 

#1: "Band on the Run". 436 votes, with the highest average rating of 4.65 (out of 5.00).
#2: "Ram". 603 votes, average rating: 4.58.

#3: "Venus & Mars". 278 votes, average rating: 4.26.
#4: "Chaos & Creation". 225 votes, average rating: 4.16.
#5: "Tug of War". 248 votes, average rating: 4.09.
#6: "Flaming Pie". 400 votes, average rating: 4.08.
#7: "McCartney". 358 votes, average rating: 4.04.

#8: "Flowers in the Dirt". 388 votes, average rating: 3.76.
#9: "Run Devil Run". 156 votes, average rating: 3.71.
#10: "Electric Arguments". 215 votes, average rating: 3.70.
#11: "New". 404 votes, average rating: 3.64.
#12: "Back To The Egg". 371 votes, average rating: 3.60.



ARE YOU JOKING ME - like in what world does 2-11 smoke Back to the egg

 

Wild Life fans?

 

Four of those were just above, not exactly "smoked". But in my world there'd be one more placed above Back to the Egg.

 

Clearly in the Steve Hoffman Music Forum world...

"Arrow Through Me" is the best song on the album, for sure.

 

That's because "Memory Almost Full" is nearly unlistenable due to atrocious mastering.

 

Two and a half years later and I still think this is quite a poll series. It's really well thought out.

But here's something to possibly consider: A "weighted" system that factors in the sheer number of votes. In other words, if 450 people are casting votes for a particular album vs. 290 votes for a separate album, that means the 450 one is more popular. Some of that "popularity" is inevitably by bashers who may deliberately target the big gun albums. By weighing the vote a bit (every ten percent more than 310 (average per above) gets an additional 0.1 or 0.05, for instance. If I'm wrong and there isn't that kind of voter, it still rewards the excess vote count.

Anyway, this is a great resource!

 

The brickwalling notwithstanding I love this album. It's a Top 5 Macca album for me, probably #3 or #4. I'd welcome a remastered or remixed version but the songs are very strong. Feet In The Clouds blows me away.

 

The reason I don't care much for Chaos & Creation is because I don't listen to Paul's albums for moody, dark material. I like his melodies, bass playing, up-beat pop and above all, his nice voice. The voice really started to decline substantially after Flaming Pie and his melodies often became less interesting to me as well. There are still many strong songs post-Flaming Pie, including a few on C&C, but I don't rate any of these post-Flaming Pie albums very high. I don't deny the talent he continues to display making these albums, it's just the finished product underwhelms me.

 

certainly an interesting poll result. i don't hate pipes of peace, but it looks like everyone else does lol
i am not familiar with the latter day mccartney stuff, p.o.p. was the last album i got, although i do mean to pick up flowers in the dirt one day as i hear great things about it.
i am essentially waiting for london town, back to the egg and red rose to be redone, so i can have those in the collection. not familiar with wild life, but that may be on the cards also.
i only picked up ram when the recent redo came out and really liked it. i was surprised that over the years it had got a bad rap, because i thought it was great.

 

McCartney albums have never been as good many on this forum claim, exceptions being Band On The Run and Tug Of War.
Folks can attempt revisionism in words all they please.
There are no doubt plenty of individual great songs by Paul spread out over all his albums but that's another point.

 

to be honest i find it hard to believe that "mccartney" the album is rated so highly. It has a couple of great songs on it, but as an album it is a cheap demo.
when i bought the album in the most recent reissue state i expected it to be quite good, due to the huff and puff that people give it. to me it is full of half written, half finished songs and a couple of great tracks. the most disappointing mccartney album i have actually heard by a long way.

 

I've always said had Paul been more patient he could have combined the best of McCartney and RAM and had a true classic.