Applying String Theory to Album Reviews

While Jed continues to post Kevin Costner's America in hopes of winning an Ansel Adams Award, I turn your attention for a brief moment to the world of quantum mechanics, string theory, and the world of relativity.

I recently tried to dive into a book by Brain Greene (not the dude from 90210) about the universe. People, my mind was blown in the acknowledgements. I simply wasn't ready for that.

So, I took a flying dive into Stephen Hawking's illustrated A Briefer History of Time. While I was hoping for an entirely illustrated, watered down explanation of gravity, there were some pictures of Stephen Hawking using the powers of his mind to attract Marilyn Monroe (seriously), because Stephen Hawking could totally use his mind to control you. He's that smart, people.

In the book, there is some discussion of Newton's Principia Mathematica. Newton was so awesome that he invented calculus to explain the universe, which field of math eventually led to the downfall of so many high school seniors across the land. Thanks, Isaac, for ruining my grades.

However, by the power of Stehpen Hawking's awesome mind, I am now as much as 3% smarter. Apparently, just by reading the book, Mr. Hawking replicated his DNA into my
cerebrum.

What does this have to do with Album reviews, as the title of the post says?

I have long despised the pomposity of album reviews. They sicken me. Whenever I read one, it's like the author is an English literature graduate student that mixed the album review with their thesis on the transcendentalist civil disobedience of the newest Van Halen album. Actually, a "serious" music reviewer, such as anyone that writes for that Idolator website would never listen to Van Halen. Van Halen is to awesome for that. What sickens me more about album reviews is a) the reviewer is trying sooooooo hard to sound smart, which usually turns into underhanded insults about how their music is better than yours and b) if the music they reviewed was that good, why aren't more people listening?

Music is very subjective. You, by now, are aware that I think Van Halen is awesome. While this is the case for me, you might be looking at your thesaurus right now, looking up how many ways you can say "suck" to describe how you feel about Van Halen.

Thus, I have devised a new equation which reduces album reviews to relativity within the gravity of a bands influence.

Here's how the equation works. An album reviewer takes the number of songs listened through divided by the number of total songs to arrive at the percentile score of the album. Essentially, you're doing the same thing your high school calculus teacher would do when grading your test -- number correct/number possible= percent score. So, you're saying number of good songs on one album out of the entire album listing. This is your rating relative to you.

Here's an example: The Nine Inch Nails album Broken has 99 tracks. I dislike all 99 tracks, so the album gets a Grand Canyon size zero percent. Not only that, the album gets negative points for 99 tracks, which gives my stereo a nervous breakdown counting through. So, I rate Broken as negative percent, which, in Newton's world, is not possible.

So, to honor Mr. Newton and the mind prowess of Hawking, I present the caveat of the equation -- a band's rating would only be applied within the "gravitational pull" of that bands universe. I don't subscribe to the gravitational pull of the NIN universe, therefore my score doesn't count, as I don't like NIN.

When rating an album, the question "Do I like this band?" must be asked. If no, simply skip ahead from your rating, as you aren't in the "gravity" of that band. Thus, a "yes, I like this band"allows you to score, a "no, hearing this band is like being being stuck in hell" gets you a move along please.

Now, Part Two of the equation -- calculating the "gravity" of a band. How to calculate gravity:

Total of all percentile scores divided by number total number of "yes" raters. Essentially, like your calculus teacher, you're going to find the "average" score. So, the higher the collective or "average" score, the higher the pull.

Now, the final part -- as Newton so aptly calculated, the bigger the mass of the object, the bigger the pull of the object. Thus, we need to calculate the "mass"of an object. Certainly, one must realize that in the music universe, there are those that have a cosmic pull and luminosity whatever it is in the center of the Milky Way that everything else seems to revolve around, and there are those that slowly float around somewhere around the rim of the universe, burning so low and so dull that no one notices but obnoxious album reviewers.

To calculate the mass of a band, we find the average of the averages for a band-- meaning that you total the number of collective scores for one band, then divide by the number of albums. For example, Public Enemy has fourteen albums. I add up the scores from each of the albums, then divide by fourteen. Since Public Enemy is mind-blowingly, in yo' face awesome, Public Enemy's "mass" is 100. So, Public enemy is a class-O, superhot and "o"-so luminous star.