I've noticed a few complaints about Q magazine throughout the forums, and I have to say that I agree. I just wanted to bring in examples to give this some perspective:

Coldplay - X&Y: 100/100

"A substantially more visceral and emotionally rewarding experience than both its predecessors"

Weezer - Make Believe: 80/100

"Hints that Cuomo may be approaching some sort of personal epiphany about his place in the world." - huh? how? Since when do lines like "my fashion sense is whack" indicate a personal epiphany?

Keane - Hopes and Fears: 80/100

"As a collection of songs, this is hugely impressive. As a debut album, its confidence is right up there with Definitely Maybe"

Nickelback - The Long Road: 60/100

"None of their new album will be remembered in a few years' time. Yet, like most fast food, there's very little wrong with it right now"

Liars - Drum's Not Dead: 40/100

"The dual-drumkit, tribal incantations and ominous drones have a pleasing menace but when you factor in the "concept"... patience starts to wane"

Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock & Roll" 40/100

"This is essentially a couple of singles spread way too thinly"

The Knife - Silent Shout: 10/100

"A hideous mess of electro noodling and maddeningly obtuse, tuneless vocals"

Nickelback and Keane are somehow better then Liars? Silent Shout gets a 10/100? I would think that most people on here are going to agree that these reviews I've picked are erroneous in some way or another, but the real question is - does anyone here actually like Q?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: less_success,

I like Q simply for the amount of info contained in each issue. After they gave "Be Here Now" by Oasis 5 stars, then managed to trash it for the last nine years. I don't respect or necessarily agree with their reviews, but the sheer volume that they provide every issue is a good thing. I remember Blender tried to do the same thing when they launched, but 200 lackluster reviews was nothing anyone wanted to be a part of.

Agreed. I think that their reviews can be accurate sometimes, but overall they are unreliable at best. I do think that their features and stories are pretty good though, and they usually manage to score some pretty good interviews, unfortunately it's usually with musicians nobody really cares about, such as Jamiroquai's Jay Kay.

My rule of thumb for Q is that it's not worth the $12 an issue unless the cover(and thus, feature story) has a very good band on it, but that still hasn't been enough for me to buy it in the past year or so.

I really haven't read much of Q, although I do notice their reviews from time to time on Metacritic. Like NME, they seem to have a bit of a British slant, ranking bands that hail from the Isles a bit higher than most American publications would rank them, which explains their love of Coldplay and Oasis. So, unless you're a real Anglophile, you're probably going to be disappointed in a lot of their reviews.

That being said, I pretty much agree with their assessment of Drums Not Dead and Silent Shout. I find both pretty unlistenable (with the exception of a couple of great tracks from the Liars).

I don't generally trust their reviews. They do like some good albums, like TV On The Radio, but most of the time my taste is very different from theirs.

The 10 for Silent Shout is ridiculous, I love that album. But not everyone's going to like the same things.

those reviews are embarassingly bad.

quote:

Originally posted by stereo:
But not everyone's going to like the same things.

True, that's a given. But they gave Make Believe an 80! That album was a tremendous disgrace. That's like giving a guy a gold medal in diving for doing a watermellon. All of the sudden the gold medal dosen't mean much anymore...

First of all, consider that the numerical scores you list are Metacritic's estimates. Q uses a 'star' scoring system. But I do find it odd that Nickelback would rate higher than The Knife. I dislike Silent Shout, but I can respect the effort. It's original, at least, which Nickelback is far from.

But, the main issue is the simple that you are committing the fallacy of composition towards Q Magazine. It may be true that there are some writers with credibility issues at Q, but does that mean EVERY reviewer at Q is not credible? That would seem to be a silly claim.

The list of reviews you offer here might have some problems, but I fail to see how it is somehow problematic that a reviewer gave Keane's debut 4 out of 5 stars. You seem to take it as a given either that certain records objectively suck and everyone ought to know it (Weezer?) OR that, based on scores, it should be the case that record A must 'beat' record B. The former argument is odd, at best. The latter argument would require some overseeing of the reviewers at Q ("take this back, John, and give it a more reasonable score. Make Beleive can't score higher than record X...") which would take the legs out under reviewers.

To your (presumably rhetorical) question about Keane or Nickelback being 'better' than Liars or The Knife, the answer would clearly be that, for the reviewer in question, Keane earned 4 out of 5 stars. That same reviewer might not even ever HEAR (or review) Liars, so the comparisons don't hold up.

I understand how the reviewing process works. Of course the guy who reviewed Make Believe more then likely had nothing to do with the guy who reviewed Silent Shout. The main thing I was trying to point out, which I admittedly did not make explicit in my initial post, was that the records I listed which Q reviewed positively (Nickelback, Weezer, Keane, Coldplay) weren't very well received by others -X&Y is an exception because there were actually a number of 100s given to that record, but also a lot of low scores. On the other hand, two of the records that Q reviewed poorly (Art Brut, The Knife) received their lowest scores from the magazine, while Drum's Not Dead got its second lowest score from them. These three have been some of the most well received albums for awhile, while the other four were for the most considered mediocre releases.

It's more of a shot at the reviewers of Q. Of course the magazine isn't going to tell a reviewer to go back and change his score - that would make the reviewer essentially useless. I just felt like some of these scores and quotes were laughable, is all. I don't think all reviews from Q are laughable, and other music publications have reviews I disagree with. I was just voicing that Q tends to be opposite of my opinion more often then any other publication out there (and I think other forum members would agree.)

quote:

Originally posted by less_success:
It's more of a shot at the reviewers of Q. Of course the magazine isn't going to tell a reviewer to go back and change his score - that would make the reviewer essentially useless. I just felt like some of these scores and quotes were laughable, is all. I don't think all reviews from Q are laughable, and other music publications have reviews I disagree with. I was just voicing that Q tends to be opposite of my opinion more often then any other publication out there (and I think other forum members would agree.)

True enough, although I would be more than a little wary if EVERY magazine rating things the same. Just because there is a general critical consensus that Silent Shout is great doesn't make it the case that every person who reviews it will think so. Interesting, contradictory takes are often quite interesting, even if you don't agree with them.

I generally read Q to hear about new UK bands, generally Britpop. What they like in that genre, I generally like as well. And those bands often end up with terrible critical reviews in the US. Of the records in the lowest rated on Metacritic, at least EIGHT are Britpop bands or artists: Athlete, Paul Weller, John Squire, Damon Albarn, Ordinary Boys, Shaun Ryder, The Others, and Gay Dad. The American media usually doesn't like Britpop, and the Metascores seem to show that.

quote:

PhilosepherEric:
The American media usually doesn't like Britpop

True. I guess that's the flipside to it.

quote:

Originally posted by Crowdiggs:
I like Q simply for the amount of info contained in each issue. After they gave "Be Here Now" by Oasis 5 stars, then managed to trash it for the last nine years. I don't respect or necessarily agree with their reviews, but the sheer volume that they provide every issue is a good thing. I remember Blender tried to do the same thing when they launched, but 200 lackluster reviews was nothing anyone wanted to be a part of.

Blender is now officially better than Q.

Q was my number one mag through the latter nineties and early 00s (largely because i could borrow it from the library) and i always thought it was a good read. The reviews were always abit on the dodgy side, and generally didn't match my own views. Thank god for the internet and metacritic, cause if you just read Q you would miss out on appreciating some good bands.

quote:

Originally posted by Kyla:
Q was my number one mag through the latter nineties and early 00s (largely because i could borrow it from the library) and i always thought it was a good read. The reviews were always abit on the dodgy side, and generally didn't match my own views. Thank god for the internet and metacritic, cause if you just read Q you would miss out on appreciating some good bands.

most of the comments for Q r so unfair
u can find bad reviews n big music crimes in every MUSIC magazine n site
most of the users of that site should know it better

to correct your sentence:
Thank god for the internet and metacritic, cause if you just read one music mag you would miss out on appreciating some good bands

Q magazine is utterly irrelevant. I used to buy it religiously. Now I don't even flick through its pages in Tesco every month. The reviews are so predictable. Coldplay would have got 5 stars if they'd released an album of Chris Martin making sounds by molesting goats.

I did see it's best of 2006 albums:

1. Arctic Monkeys – Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
2. Muse - Black Holes and Revelations
3. Razorlight – Razorlight
4. Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Stadium Arcadium
5. The Killers – Sam's Town
6. Keane – Under The Iron Sea
7. Bob Dylan – Modern Times
8. Kasabian – Empire
9. Scissor Sisters – Ta-Dah
10. Gnarls Barkley – St. Elsewhere

Imaginative list. I can guess how they arrived at it. The formula was something like:

Best selling albums of the year - Westlife - anyone who doesn't play guitars + token dance group (to make it look as though we have our fingers on the pulse) + Bob Dylan (for added credibility) = Q Magazine Top Ten of 2006.

Nobody I know takes it seriously. Even my Dad stopped buying it.

its not only Q , dont u think?
i think that most of the popular magazines or sites do the same in the year end lists

Q is awful. I don't even have an excuse to read it. I'm not even British.

I'll often read Q, but I hate it's reviews. It gets a good interview every now and again. Plus it's lists are always good for a laugh (Maddonna - 1 of their top 5 essential artists of all time? Ha, I laugh at you Q)

Q's reviews are normally based on how popular the band is (or more importantly how popular they think the band is). They try to guess what people will think about something. They seem to follow the hype, but after the hype happened, and no-one cares anymore. Q is are scared of going out on a limb with a debut album, they don't give debuts top marks because they don't know if the public will like it. And Q is too nervous to give a well respected artist a bad review.

To back up my last point I cite the following examples:
Oasis - Be Here Now 5* they've since repented and reduced it to 2* and uped Oasis' first two to the 5* they deserve - don't judge me, I'm British I have to like these albums, just like I have to sing the chorus from Parklife followed by a 7 man rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody when I'm pissed as a fart at 3AM and wandering through town with my Kebab
Razorlight - Razorlight 5* seriously, I kid you not, Razorlight better than Kid A, which got 3*
Morrissey - Both of "Your Arsenal" and "Vaxhall & I" 5* I just don't get it, Morrissey's solo work, 5*, as good, or indeed better than, anything The Smiths ever did? In what world?
The Strokes - Room On Fire 5* just because so many people thought the previous deserved 5* doesn't mean this one does
Coldplay - X&Y 5*
Guns and Roses - Use Your Illusion II 5* however not Appitite for Destruction
Semisonic - All About Chemistry 5* that's right, from the band that brought you 'Closing Time' here's some more drivel
R.E.M. - Reveal 5* but neither of Document or Automatic for the People - hmm? - though Q did completely change its oppinion on almost every R.E.M. album when they reviewed the re-issues a couple of years ago
Terance Trent D'Arby - Symphony or Damn 5* I believe our Spanish friends would say "Qué?"
Prodigy - Fat of the Land 5*
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stadium Arcadium 5*

I'm not saying any of these are bad (though most are definately bad), but given Q on average awards two albums 5* each year, what the hell are these doing in that list? These are among the 40 best albums since 1986? These albums, the ones listed above, the best, in 20 years. All are a must hear! What is Q thinking?

More shocking no 5* albums in 1998, 1999 or 2000...

Q was right for some of these albums...

strokes - room on fire is a pure 5* (for some ppeople its better than their debut)
Guns and Roses - Use Your Illusion II 5* (appetite what?...)
prodigy - fat of the land 5* (unless u prefer the verve...)
even oasis-be here now 5* (a lost classic.still remember the review.u should read it again to remember the spirit)

blah blah blah...n btw whats a 5* , 4* , 3* anyway ?

quote:

Prodigy - Fat of the Land 5*
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Stadium Arcadium 5*

Prodigy's record is absolutely worthy of five stars, as is the preceding record, "The Jilted Generation".

"Stadium Arcadium"? Not so much.