Thoughts On: What is a 10/10?

A perfect 10, it's either given out too much or too little. So much so that it can seemingly be an abstract concept. Reviewing music is weird, its subjectivity entails that any sort of review that could possibly be made is entirely up to what the listener's entire experience and taste has led them to believe. It's a very intuitive process. Yeah, people can rate objectively, but those objective characteristics boil down to what sounds good to the listener, and there is no golden rule to what sounds good. This makes it very hard to give out a score in general, lest a perfect score. I mean a 10 hasn't ever been given out by Sad Moth, or me personally in a formal review setting, so it's kind of weird for us to be rating on a 1-10 scale without addressing an example of the end of said scale. If we're going to continue to use an out of 10 scale, one of us has to at least talk about what the fabled latter end potentially entails, which is a task that kind of sucks.

Although this is way too simple of a categorization, in my life so far the types of "10s" that I've come across that are pretty straightforward.

There are 10/10 albums from artists that have had huge cultural impacts to music, and history in general. These are albums that transcend their genres and become representative of a culture or a subculture. These are albums that are genre inventing, representing, or shoving (not pushing)...

The Beatles- A Hard Day's Night

Miles Davis- Kind of Blue

The Sex Pistols- Never Mind the Bollocks

Then there are albums that everyone, critics and fan bases alike, say are 10s and that you should believe are 10s because it's a collective decision that these albums are perfect...

My Bloody Valentine- Loveless

Radiohead- Kid A

Neutral Milk Hotel-In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Then there are albums that are 10s to me because of the personal significance they have for me, or that I simply enjoy entirely...

Nujabes- Modal Soul

 Wilco- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

LCD Soundsystem- Sound of Silver

These are all albums that I love in some way shape or form, but obviously they're not entirely representative of the categories that I've allotted to them or all the albums that I consider to be 10s. The most important characteristic about all of these "10s" is the placidity of the score. An album that I personally think is a 10 might not always be a 10. Maybe an album is a 10 on a first listen, and gets boring after awhile, maybe it's opposite. Good music can become relevant during certain parts of your life like when you fall in love, when you're heartbroken, when you start anew, or reconnect with old ghosts. I can't tell you what types of beats, or melodies, or lyrics, etc are 10s, they just...are. Nothing is really perfect, but it's the jagged edges of these imperfections that can align like jigsaw puzzles with the listener. That's why music means something, that's why it has so much weight on feeling. A 10 is when something perfectly fits, when something can really evoke real emotion, feeling, synthesis. When you listen to something like that you fall for it, it becomes a part of you and who you are in the world, and that's a beautiful thing.

Go out there and find your 10s, whether it's with music, people, whatever,

Happy listening, 

Emanuel

Here are some other albums off the top of my head that I consider to be 10s, this is by no means a conclusive list, maybe I can make something like that in the future if I'm interested, I'll probably just come back to this and add this when I think of it.

Johnny Cash- At Folsom

Kendrick Lamar-Good Kid, M.A.A.D City

Chet Baker- Chet Baket Sings

Death Grips- Exmilitary

James Blake- James Blake

Nujabes- Metaphorical Music

Daft Punk- Random Access Memories

The Strokes- Is This It

Weezer- Pinkerton

Frank Ocean- Channel Orange