How I Review an Album

By Sam Wolstenholm

Hello there. I'd like to make a short post discussing my process (so far) of how I'm reviewing and scoring albums. At the time of this writing, I've only done three reviews: Beyonce's RENAISSANCE, Mac Miller's The Divine Feminine, & Harry Styles's Harry's House. I'm trying to drop a review every Tuesday, so expect those consistently. If you have any album requests, just go ahead and comment or email them to me! I'll make sure to add it to the list. Just be aware that I may or may not agree with your opinion.

My review style is a track-by-track approach. I give my opinions on every single track on the project, then I provide my thoughts on the project as a whole afterward. I give my numerical score at the very end after considering the pros and cons I have with the album.

Before I even begin a review, I listen to the project from front to back. This is to familiarize myself with the overall sound and develop a first impression. When I do this, I'm looking for genre, consistency, depth of concepts, any standouts, and pure sonic enjoyment. Sometimes, I'll be reviewing an album I'm already familiar with. Therefore, I skip this part and just go right into it.

From there, I will sit and go through the album one track at a time. I do not move on to the second song until I am done with the first. I'll read the lyrics while listening to the song and usually end up playing it around five times. I try to write about what I like and dislike about the song as well as any major takeaways I find. I also try to highlight my pick for a "dark horse" track. This is the one I believe deserves more credit. It may not be my favorite on the album, but its one I believe shouldn't slip under the radar.

After I go through this process for every single track on the album, I read them over and listen to some songs again just to make sure I've said what I wanted to say. More often than not, this is more of a proofread than an adjustment.

At this point, I've solidified my thoughts on every song, but I still need to score the album. Here's where it may get a little confusing. There can be an album I like every single song of, but I only score it a 6 or something. On the flip side, I could also give an 8 or 9 to an album that has a few skips on it. This is because my score is based on the album as a whole. The good songs could compensate for the bad ones. There can be one song so bad that I almost won't count it if all the other ones are good. One bad song could also ruin a whole album for me sometimes. It isn't just the percentage of songs I like on the album. I take into account the instrumentals, lyrics, creative choices, vocal performances, mixing, memorability, etc. For example, my score for Harry's House may have been surprising given what I said for the individual tracks. However, the positives outweighed the negatives in my opinion even though there were plenty of both. I valued the overall maturity and consistency over the few forgettable or repetitive tracks.

I'd also like to mention that I am only reviewing the product, not the person. I don't give a shit about the artsit's personal lives. I don't follow celebrity culture. I see and hear about stuff here and there, but I never seek it out. Sometimes, it can be unavoidable. Kanye West, for example, is someone that is pretty much impossible to separate from his music. Granted, I don't think the artist and the art should be completely separated. I'd just like to learn about the artist through the art itself. I'm not reading TMZ or scrolling through Twitter to see who's dating who or whatever. Context does matter, but my reviews are strictly about the music. Please comment if you think something is worth mentioning. It very well could change the way I percieve and therefore rate the album.

I'm going to start doing film reviews here pretty soon, so look out for those. Again, if you have any requests or suggestions, just let me know! After a couple reviews, I'll do a similar post to this one about my film review process. It is very different than the one I described above. I actually consider real-life context quite a bit more in my film reviews.

If you have any questions or gripes about my process, let me know how I can improve it! Comment! I will engage with you because it can only improve my content (and that's better for all of us). Also be sure to sign up for this blog to recieve emails whenever there's a new post!