Why All the Ranking

Jill Mapes, in Hearing Things:

The hierarchy of ranking music is a dude thing, an inherently anti-feminist approach: this is what some of my smartest women friends in music journalism say, and after years of doing it down to the decimal point, I have to agree. This is a subjective artform that, for me at least, is highly connected to memory and emotion. I don’t know how to write about or even listen to music while putting those parts of myself aside. There’s no unified theory of Good Music that creates an easy rubric by which to judge a song or album. It’s based on gut feeling, and educating yourself on music as much as you can, in order to understand what came before as you look forward.

I’ve never liked the idea of ranking art. It’s a goofy way to share the things you think are beautiful, or meaningful, or important, etc. That’s why I just use two groups to share. 1) I liked these records a lot! 2) These other records are also good! And I suppose a third group would be the records which were fine but not that impressive and but what’s the point of sharing those?