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The
Role of the Critic:
Radiohead's Kid A & The Next Great Rock 'N Roll Swindle Page
4
Audiences
React
In
early October of 2000, Kid A debuted at number one on Billboard's
Top 200 albums chart (Billboard). Albums flew off the shelves
while talk about the validity of Kid A filled music enthusiasts'
conversations everywhere. It seemed that by album sales alone,
the audience had overwhelmingly approved, but upon examination,
I initially found audience reactions to be surprisingly polar
in nature.
The
first part of my audience study came from a bulletin board on
Rolling Stone Magazine's website where fans are asked to use Rolling
Stone's ranking system of one to five to rate the album. The current
average results gave the album a 3.5 rating (below RS's 4 rating),
but the average is misleading. Thirty-six of the reviews, nearly
half of all the responses, gave the album five stars. In fact,
only about ten percent of the reviews were less than that of Rolling
Stone's four-star review. Of these sub four-star votes, almost
all of them were two stars and below. While the words "brilliant"
and "masterpiece" were common among many reviews, perhaps
the most intriguing review of all was the user RideCliche's explanation
of his one star review. He stated in his defense, "I'm so
sorry Rolling Stone that you buy into the hype that you created.
Once the snowball starts rolling right? I guess it can't be stopped.
First let me say that "OK Computer" and "The Bends"
are two of the greatest albums of the nineties, but I was born
with an Ayn Rand sense of objectiveness". This review is
very telling because RideCliche is a fan that is trying to extend
him or herself from a possible bias and objectively look at the
piece.
Sparked
by this review, I realized that I might have initially headed
to the wrong place for an objective opinion of the text. Naturally,
most every music fan will carry a slightly biased opinion. This
was not the problem, though. In order to post a review, you would
have to be at Radiohead's portion of the Rolling Stone site and
taken the time and effort to already be reading up on the band.
In other words, if one chose to post, they were already likely
a fan, and a positive review would be no surprise. Thus, to achieve
a slightly more sampled audience reading, I setup my own survey
on Guitar.com's website.
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