Board 8 > Rank the Albums 6 - THE RESULTS!

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's feel-based. When I give a score to an album, I look at my excel sheet and find albums I feel have a similar level of quality.

I update my rankings once a year to calibrate those placements. Though I do also keep strict limits for anything 8.0 and above. With my music sheets currently separated by decade, I limit the 9.0+ albums to 150 total split evenly (with the 10.0s taking a small chunk of the 9.9s) and the 8.0-8.9s to the next 300. So my scores do have a meaning in a comparative sense - giving an album a 9.7 means it is in my top 45 for the decade. Of course, this means a 9.7 for the 90s and a 9.7 for the 2010s might hold different weight, but I find nothing to feel off by more than .1 point (part of my interest in art is a work's place among its contemporaries, so it's not purely qualitative - which is not to say I bump up an album because of social impact as much as most albums within a few tiers of each other cause an indistinguishable level of enjoyment, and I'm going to favor works that clearly influenced other music or is doing something unique if my general enjoyment is the same).

For me, individual songs don't matter too much in my album rankings. There are a ton of albums with great singles and a bunch of bloat. There are some albums that are more about creating an emotional experience for 40+ minutes. Since I view albums in the sense of being an artistic statement, the former feels really lazy, like the musician views the album more as an obligation.

My most listened to album ever is probably Sleigh Bells' Treats (either that or The xx's self-titled). I'm not sure if any individual track of that album lands in my top 1000 songs, but the overall experience of hearing those tracks back to back hits different. A great album makes me want to hear the whole thing - if I find myself enduring a track to get to the next hit, that's a problem.

If anything, you can probably judge an album better by comparing its lesser tracks!