Rate-Your-Music top 500 album-by-album thread

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by NettleBed, Mar 1, 2023.

  1. NettleBed

    NettleBed Forum Transient Thread Starter

    Location:
    new york city
    This thread was created following the conclusion of the Rolling Stone 500 album-by-album thread, as the regular participants in that thread expressed a desire to continue to react to an album a day from a list. I would expect and hope that this thread follows in roughly the same manner, which is that everybody who chimes in gets to say their bit about the album of the day - no matter how positive or negative - and the conversation doesn't turn much toward critiquing the critiques.

    So the albums in question will be the top 500 albums from Rate Your Music.com, from an extract taken at the end of February, 2023. Every day (with consideration for the occasional missed day) I will post an album from the RYM list for discussion/reaction, starting with #500 (of the 500 albums I deemed eligible) and proceeding to #1, skipping over (though still taking note of) any albums that also appeared on the Rolling Stone 500, because these albums were just discussed in the other thread. This will result in I think around 325 albums to be discussed.

    Exclusions: multi-disc sets (larger than 2 CDs), non-contemporary classical music, video game music, albums rated by fewer than 1000 people (this last one encompassing most of the previous categories anyway). See below for more on the exclusions.


    Some caveats:
    The RYM algorithm (weirdly, IMO) gives a very strong weight toward the number of people rating an album (for example, an album averaging a 4.0 with 35,000 people rating it will place lower than an album averaging a 4.1 with only 10,000 people rating it). And yet, their algorithm also results in albums with a relatively very small number of raters (say, a few hundred) but a very high average rating, placing in the top 500. These tend to be, in order of volume: (1) archival live releases by well-known artists; (2) large archival sets by well-known artists; (3) classical music, or (4) studio albums by very obscure artists (and there is plenty of cross-over between (1) and (2); think the Dick's Picks series for the Grateful Dead). For the purposes of maintaining consistency (a 5-disc set is not an "album", IMO) and also making it reasonably possible for people to listen to an album that they haven’t heard before, if they were to want to, I’m designating multi-disc sets more than 2 CDs to be ineligible. Also ineligible are albums that have fewer than 1000 ratings (For what it's worth, almost all of the albums with fewer than 1000 ratings in the top 500 fit into categories (1) (2) or (3); actually only 2 studio albums were disqualified because less than 1000 people rated them). I also disqualified a couple of albums with over 1000 ratings that are video-game music (because nobody here has probably heard them) and any non-contemporary classical music (because it's not an apples-to-apples thing: any discussion would be about a particular performance of a particular piece, not the piece itself - and also, probably, hardly anybody will be familiar). Contemporary classical music was eligible, though I think there was only one instance of that with over 1000 ratings.

    Rateyourmusic.com:
    For those not familiar, Rate Your Music is a site open to anybody to start an account and rate albums on a 5-star scale (with half-stars allowed). My understanding is that the participation skews male and toward the millennial generation, although people across the age spectrum participate. The raters are more international than the Rolling Stone voters. This results in a top 500 that is more diverse than the Rolling Stone 500, in terms of genres, and also in the inclusion of albums not from the US or UK, which I think makes it interesting - not only in terms of discussion but in finding new albums that maybe you didn't already know. IMO is a great snapshot of what the world of music nerds are listening to and value.

    Still, nearly 200 of the RYM top 500 albums are repeated on the RS list. I guess some albums just have an appeal that is both broad and deep and if some us still don't like them, well, it just is what it is.
     
  2. NettleBed

    NettleBed Forum Transient Thread Starter

    Location:
    new york city
    500. Soundgarden - Superunknown (1994)
    Producer: Michael Beinhorn / Soundgarden

    Superunknown is the fourth studio album by American rock band Soundgarden, released on March 8, 1994, through A&M Records. It is the band's second album with bassist Ben Shepherd, and features new producer Michael Beinhorn. Soundgarden began work on the album after touring in support of its previous album, Badmotorfinger (1991). Superunknown captured the heaviness of the band's earlier releases while displaying a more diverse range of influences.

    Superunknown was a critical and commercial success and became the band's breakthrough album. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 310,000 copies in its opening week. The album also topped the Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand charts. Five singles were released from the album: "The Day I Tried to Live", "My Wave", "Fell on Black Days", "Spoonman", and "Black Hole Sun", the latter two of which won Grammy Awards and helped Soundgarden reach mainstream popularity. In 1995, the album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. The album has been certified six times platinum by the RIAA in the United States. Superunknown has been listed by several publications as one of the best albums of the 1990s and a quintessential grunge album. In April 2019, it was ranked No. 9 on Rolling Stone's "50 Greatest Grunge Albums" list.


    Critical Reception
    AllMusic 5/5
    Blender 5/5
    Christgau's Record Guide A-
    Entertainment Weekly A
    Los Angeles Times 3.5/4
    Pitchfork 8.5/10
    Q 5/5
    Rolling Stone 4/5
    The Rolling Stone Album Guide 5/5
    Spin 5/5
     
  3. NettleBed

    NettleBed Forum Transient Thread Starter

    Location:
    new york city
    Superunknown
    A
    I consider this one of the pillars of grunge. Although I think highly of all three Nirvana studio albums, I'm partial to my favorite albums by Soundgarden, Jane's Addiction and Dinosaur Jr. when in the mood for this style of music. I was surprised to not see this on the RS list. I agree that it's probably longer than it needs to be, but I don't mind the few samey-sounding songs that might prevent this from being getting to the highest reaches of excellence - this is a place I don't mind wallowing in for awhile.
    Prediction: this is an Alf MISS! :)
     
  4. danasgoodstuff

    danasgoodstuff Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    Thanks for getting this going. I'm not familiar with this album, I have been to the band's namesake art installation in Seattle. A Sound Garden - Wikipedia
     
  5. danasgoodstuff

    danasgoodstuff Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    Although I've long favoured flannel attire as a resident of the PNW, I'm a little old to have been taken by grunge.
     
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  6. RVA_101

    RVA_101 Hoops McCann

    Location:
    Richmond, VA
    Gonna follow this thread so I don't miss everything like I seemed to with the RS500 list. Also looking forward to seeing the unique, creative ways Alf manages to put down each album as a miss until we get to the Suicide debut record upon which we will all be regaled about the glories of "Frankie Teardrop".

    Superunknown
    B

    I like grunge, I do. But if I'm in the mood for Soundgarden, I'm putting on Badmotorfinger. This album just kind of washes over me. Seminal record for sure, but it just kind of exists for me. Doesn't inspire the deep appreciation I get when I listen to Badmotorfinger, In Utero, Dirt, or even Core.
     
  7. Jamsterdammer

    Jamsterdammer The Great CD in the Sky

    Location:
    Málaga, Spain
    Thanks, @NettleBed for starting this new thread.

    Regarding Superunknown, I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of grunge in general, but this is an OK album. Some songs, such as "Black Hole Sun", are great. And I always loved the band name.
     
  8. Fischman

    Fischman RockMonster, ClassicalMaster, and JazzMeister

    Location:
    New Mexico
    Superunknown

    By far the bands most popular and acclaimed album. By far, I really appreciate Badmotorfinger sooooooooo much more.
     
  9. dunkoid

    dunkoid Forum Resident

    Location:
    Scotland
    Superunknown
    This is considered by many to be their finest moment, but Badmotorfinger gets my vote. It could do with trimming down, 75 minutes is too much.
     
  10. Reckoner

    Reckoner Made in Canada

    Thanks @NettleBed for giving the RYM Top 500 a go.

    Superunknown - Soundgarden

    I'm not the biggest fan of grunge but this release was turned down just enough to appeal to me and I absolutely adored "Spoonman" enough to pick up this CD in '94. I played the heck out of it and Chris Cornell became one of my favorite frontmen and I was going to be all-in on everything after this release, including the Audioslave work and his solo stuff. He died way too soon.
    4/5

    Position in my personal Top 500: 85
     
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  11. prymel

    prymel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston
    Superunknown - Almost every song is really good to great on a standalone basis, but listening to it in its entirety is very fatiguing. It's so incessantly heavy and dense. It's a good album to cherry pick, but I have difficulty sitting through the entire thing. 3/5
     
  12. danasgoodstuff

    danasgoodstuff Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    So I pulled up Superunknown on the YouTube and started watching/listening, but I had to quit when I got to the part with the caption "(intense rock music)"... sure, if you say so. What can I say, it just don't speak to me at all.
     
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  13. CHALKERS

    CHALKERS Forum Resident

    Location:
    Abingdon
    How I feel about it too.
     
  14. caleb1138

    caleb1138 Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    I'd check the RS thread every now and then when it popped up on the front page. I'm interested in following this one and will use it to check out albums I haven't listened to before and consider others' perspectives.

    One of those albums is Superunknown. I'm aware of the song "Black Hole Sun" but don't know anything else about the band, besides the fact that Chris Cornell died a few years ago. On the second track now and it's not bad, but not quite what I'm into these days.

    Edit: Ok, a little further in now and I'm liking the run of the title track through "Head Down" and "Black Hole Sun" more than the first part of the album. "Head Down" opens with some refreshing acoustic playing, the rhyhtm of which carries into the rest of the track and makes it feel lively against the dozy vocals.
     
    Last edited: Mar 1, 2023
  15. Synthfreek

    Synthfreek I’m a ray of sunshine & bastion of positivity

    I like the album pretty well but my favorite's Louder Than Love. I just sold my unplayed original 2LP orange version for $225 last week. Thanks for getting this rolling @NettleBed, I'm sure we'll see some great, and more underground picks than the RS list.
     
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  16. NettleBed

    NettleBed Forum Transient Thread Starter

    Location:
    new york city
    You just wait for tomorrow's! It doesn't even have its own Wikipedia page.
     
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  17. Saturns Pattern

    Saturns Pattern Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    Superunknown
    It's funny, because I was just discussing this album with one of my friends earlier. Back when I was listening to Soundgarden regularly (as I don't listen to them so much these days), I would have said Down on the Upside was my favourite, simply because they really went to town with the odd time signatures on that record and a huge part of the appeal of Soundgarden's music for me (and something that set them apart from other mainstream grunge acts of the time) was their use of odd time signatures and their approach to tuning. It surely must have been a headache for them to play gigs sometimes, given the amount of different tunings they used.

    Nowadays, Superunknown is my favourite record of theirs. I still remember seeing the "Black Hole Sun" video for the first time and being mildly freaked out by it, all bright garish colours and those distorted, contorting faces. It all looks comical to me now, but at the time I found the video mildly unsettling which I suppose was the point. Also, musically it had that killer chorus and the weird middle eight where it slipped out of 4/4 and into (if I remember correctly) 9 beats to the bar briefly for the solo, which is completely the opposite to something like, say, Pink Floyd's "Money" which slipped out of an odd time signature into common time for the solo.

    But "Black Hole Sun" is not the only thing this record has to offer. What about the 5/4 riffery of "My Wave", or the beautiful "Fell on Black Days", or the psychedelic likes of "Head Down" and "Half"? What about the infuriatingly catchy "Spoonman"? Or the way the title track sounds incredibly straightforward in the context of this album? Also, after Cornell's death it's fair to say that I don't quite listen to "Like Suicide" in the same way anymore, although those arpeggios in the chorus will always be a pleasure to listen to.

    The production, of course, is excellent. Having read all about Beinhorn's methods when working with the likes of Hole and Korn, I'll bet he was as much of a hard taskmaster on this record as he was on Celebrity Skin or Untouchables, but of course it's difficult to quibble with the results.

    Great record, although one I don't listen to often enough, and for such a lengthy record there really isn't any fat.
     
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  18. danasgoodstuff

    danasgoodstuff Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    Is there a full list we could link to?
     
  19. caleb1138

    caleb1138 Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    Here's the top 500 with video game music and "classical" as a genre filtered out. Superunknown comes in at number 539, so there are several here that aren't on OP's list. I'm not sure if it's possible to apply the other filters we've established, but you can skip over the albums that have fewer than one thousand ratings.
     
    Last edited: Mar 1, 2023
  20. caleb1138

    caleb1138 Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    Sorry, it's actually at 461 the way I've linked it. I got caught up in the sorting and weighing options. The site overcomplicates these things, in my opinion.
     
  21. Alf.

    Alf. Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    Superunknown Overlong, but there's plenty of 'in yer face' musical punches. Glorious riffs; fab muscular vocals; kickass drumming. Refreshingly exhilarating overall. HIT. So there.
     
  22. in_the_fog

    in_the_fog Forum Resident

    Location:
    Sweden
    Sorry, but I find this thread totally useless given how rate your music works.
     
  23. TimM

    TimM Senior Member

    The rate your music list appears more worthless than the Rolling Stone list, but if there are a group of people that will enjoy the journey,more power to you.
     
  24. NettleBed

    NettleBed Forum Transient Thread Starter

    Location:
    new york city
    The list is already different (not so much at the top, but definitely at the lowest levels) from the day I extracted it, as new data is applied daily.
     
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  25. NettleBed

    NettleBed Forum Transient Thread Starter

    Location:
    new york city
    :) I stand corrected. Although, if this is actually genuine, I feel like I have completely lost the handle on what you like.
     
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