Something Different - What Is A Review?

Hello!

Welcome to blog post 19! Today I wanted to do something different,  a little bit of a rethink to what actually is a review because ive been reading a lot recently and its got me thinking about what I do for this blog.

A lot of friends and family have asked me in the past few weeks or so "why are you doing this blog"? Well its for a number of reasons to be honest. One being the fact that I love discovering music and most of the bands that I have reviewed have come from doing this blog. Looking down the list of previous posts, I really enjoyed making every single one and will hopefully continue to do so.

Another reason why I do this is partly to give something back to the music industry. A lot of us take music for granted and don't actually pay for their hard work they put into the songs and I want to do something more than that because music is my life. As well as giving back to the industry,  I also want to be apart of it.

Anyway, onto the reason for the post! 

I was listening to BBC Radio 2 the other day in the car and Chris Martin from Coldplay was on it talking about how so many people now give their different opinions on Coldplays music that he sometimes forgets his own opinion on the songs. 

This got me thinking about how I think about songs or albums when I go to review them. When I was writing about the new Coldplay album 'Ghost Stories', I read a few reviews about it first and I came across a quite high caliber review.  It was saying how Martin made this more into an album that suited himself in his situation right now with his break-up etc, but also saying it should be a solo album too.

After reading this review I had a certain mind set about the album and was going to go on and write about how his album shouldve been a solo album etc. Then I stopped,  took a break and came back to it because something wasn't right. I had another listen and realised that these were not my thoughts to the album at all! It was then I realised what a review is... its a personal thought to something that you have much knowledge and passion to write about.

I think album reviews these days are written too quickly from major press and websites. They jump the gun too quickly without realising the potential of the review. I've listened to 'Ghost Stories' many more times and now and I read the same 'high caliber' review that I read before and I think its wrong. Yes I have said about it being personal but these reviews come out the same day they're released and they don't exactly get given a lot of time to listen to the albums before the review has to be printed.

I am aware that these companies that I am talking about get early copies of the album, but some of these reviews I have seen still seem too rushed, as if the content they want to put out its just another review. I never get the feeling they take in every essence of every note in that album to write about.

I hope you've reached this point and can now either agree or disagree with my opinions on reviews these days and how they are written for major magazines, newspapers and websites. What are your thoughts? 

Thanks for reading and until next time

Lewis