I guess I was taking that post about "your favorite albums of the 2000s" a little too seriously. Because I love Prince so much, there's not a single album of his that I "hate." And on almost every one of his albums, there's at least one track I'd rather skip. Since it was too hard for me to figure out what order to put his 2000s releases in, I came up with a little formula, because I had too much time today and should be shot for wasting so much time to make how I feel about Prince scientific.

For the sake of fun, however, here's a formula you might try out yourself. I think it becomes pretty revealing when you do it this way. You will find that percentages are LOW if you are thinking in terms of a 68% being a "D" by school standards. But don't think about it that way. Just do the math and then rank by totals. You might find out that, when taken as a whole, your favorites are not what you thought they were!

How to calulate a score for each album...
1. Rank each track on the disc on a scale of 1-5. A 1 is a track you skip over. A 2 is a track you don't particularly care for but don't mind. A 3 is a song you like, a 4 is one you love, and a 5 is on your list of favorite Prince songs.
2. Add up the total number from step 1. Then, take the total number of tracks on the album and multiply it by 5. Divide the first number into the second for a percentage score. I wrote these down to the hundredths because a few were close for me (i.e. 52.85%).
3. To see what your average 1-5 ranking was...well...you remember good old math class! Take your total number from step one and divide by the number of tracks instead of the number multiplied by 5. (For instance, 3121 has 12 tracks, so your percentage is the score divided by 60 and your average is the score divided by 12...sorry to be patronizing with the math stuff...)

Once you've done this, you can rank albums in an order based on the sum of your feelings for individual tracks.

Brought to you from the "complete waste of time while still being entertaining" files!

And now that I have done this with all 9 albums of the 2000s, I have to post my results over there.

Keith/Kacey

You know...this is really interesting.

So many of you are critical of Prince's output and talk about how the quality has gotten more scattershot or gone down overall. I have tried not to participate in these discussions.

And yet, when I use this math formula, I came to the following conclusion (based only on MY personal tastes).

This data is based on all 81 Prince tracks released in the 2000s (officially):

for ME...

38% of the songs are "good" or "great"
25% of them are "okay"
49% of them are "not very memorable" or "bad"

I'm a little suprised at myself! It's really interesting when you only get emotional to assign that original 1-5 score for a track and then you just crunch numbers for your own personal truth!

Keith/Kacey

I just realized that that adds up to over 100%. Don't shoot me. I hate math...why am I doing this? Ha ha.

Keith/Kacey

I guess I'm the only one posting here...ha ha.

In any case, I just wasted the better part of a free afternoon applying my equation to ALL of Prince's albums, not including hits collections. There is some inconsistency in the fact that I DID include Crystal Ball and The Truth but did NOT include Rave IN2 (mostly remixes of Rave UN2) or any hits collections. I did include The Truth but not disc 3 of Hits/B-Sides. FYI.

So my top 3 were just as I reported for that other thread:

1. Sign O The Times
2. Parade
3. Around the World in a Day

And then I discovered the rest of my top 10...

3. (tie) Purple Rain
5. Batman
6. The Gold Experience
7. (tie) Planet Earth
7. (tie) 1999
9. Controversy
10. Lovesexy

I'm a little surpised by a few things (like Batman so high!) but much of it plays out in a way that makes sense. It's fun to take into account each track on each album instead of using awesome favorite tracks on a given disc as a crutch to pull that album along as a higher ranking.

TRY IT, YOU'LL LIKE IT!

...and by the way, N.E.W.S. brought up the rear on my list.

Keith/Kacey

This sounds interesting!

However, I'm drunk at the moment, so I'll have to come back to it.

I used to use this as a way to rank albums, but I find that some albums have a lot of great parts but don't add up to much in terms of cohesion, while others maximize their parts to a great whole. For instance, I think Purple Rain would average to a higher number for me, but I know I like Parade more...

In any case, as the resident math geek, I'll get to this.

Moonbeam said:

I totally know what you mean by this, but I still found it interesting. I spent all afternoon yesterday and crunched numbers for every album and found things that I didn't expect. Like "Lovesexy" made my top 10, but I don't listen to it that much. And "Purple Rain" tied with "Around the World in a Day" for me.

You are right about the parts. And there's no accounting this way for an overall vibe that a disc gives off. "Parade" and "The Gold Experience" are great examples of albums with cohesive sound.

All said, though, I think this works fairly well. With only a few exceptions, it gets you pretty close to the right order for you.

I'd be curious to hear what some of you discover...


Keith/Kacey