Music Reviews

 Posted by at 1:34 pm on November 21, 2020
 

Welcome to our home page for Music Reviews!  Here we will provide links to our Album Reviews page, Song Reviews page, and info on how we score our music.  You can view a running list of all of our reviews by clicking one of the links below.

The HCM Scoring Scale is based on 10 categories that we score a song on.  We then take an average of the 10 categories to give the song a score.  If we are reviewing an album, we give the album a score based on the average score of each song.  We are a country music site, so music is graded through the lens of country music expectations.  We may think a song is GREAT, but if it doesn’t fit the genre, it will be docked points.  Here is what our scores translate into:

  • 9.0-10 = Great country song/album
  • 8.0-8.9 = Very good country song/album
  • 7.0-7.9 = Good country song/album
  • 6.0-6.9 = Decent country song/album
  • 5.0-5.9 = Average country song/album
  • 4.0-4.9 = Below average country song/album
  • 0-3.9 = Not a good country song/album

The 10 categories we score on are:

  • Song Intro – Is it unique?  Does it grab your attention right off the bat?
  • Vocal Quality – How good is their voice?
  • Instruments – Does the instrumentation make sense for the song?  Are they performed well?  Do we detect signature country instruments such as the steel guitar, fiddle, or banjo?
  • Lyrics – Quality of the written lyrics to the song.  Do we get a tingle down our spine listening to the words?
  • Recording Quality – Was this recorded in professional studio with a top-notch producer, or did you record this in your garage?
  • Longevity – Does this song have lasting power?  Will it be relevant 10 years from now, or would it have been relevant 10 years ago?  Or is it just album filler?
  • Emotional Impact – Do we FEEL something?  If the Vocal Quality/Instruments/Lyrics mix well, and the song has longevity to it, odds are we’ll score this one really well.
  • How Country Is It? – Does it belong on country radio?  The more steel guitar/fiddle/banjo/twang we hear, the better the score!  Many songs get a big ding on this category these days.
  • Audience Range – Would this make your parents blush?  Would you not want your kids listening to it?  Then you’ll get dinged here.  The biggest hits usually have mass appeal!
  • Catchiness/Overall Feel – This is a final score put down in the 10th column based on how catchy we feel the song is and how our overall feeling is after we listen to it.  In other words, if we weren’t breaking this down into micro-scores, how would we rate the song overall?  Generally this ends up being close to the average of the 9 other categories which helps us confirm and lock in the final score.