Idiotic album reviews

Mike Blakesley

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Found this on Amazon. The listing is for the "tan" album, but most of the reviewers are clearly talking about the Singles 1969-1973 album, so the reviews must have gotten misplaced, but that still doesn't make these "three star" reviews of the album any less funny. This just proves that true artistry will still torque some people off... plus you gotta love the exaggerations. Poor editing??!

Love the music, hate the fact that only two songs can be listened to standalone, due to each song running butt-first into the next. Luckily, one of my favorites - For All We Know, is not ruined by this poor editing. Great sounding CD, if you don't mind listening to these classic's codas running into the first 10 - 20 seconds of the next song.

And here's another one, from the same listing. How is it that even a casual Carpenters fan can be so.... out of touch?

After reading the glowing reviews, bought CD. Was looking so forward to getting it, but after listening to the very first track wondered if I had gotten the wrong CD by accident. The first track "CLOSE TO YOU" was less than a few seconds - the liner notes said it should be >4 minutes. More than 1/2 the song was missing. I had a random thought that maybe the last track was really the first track - it was. Strange.

I suppose this thread can be an archive of hilariously off-track reviews that people manage to collect. Join the fun, post your finds here!
 
Found this on Amazon. The listing is for the "tan" album, but most of the reviewers are clearly talking about the Singles 1969-1973 album, so the reviews must have gotten misplaced

My experience isn’t specific to Carpenters but I thought was worth mentioning for the uninitiated. You have to be very, very careful when reading reviews on Amazon because many of them “cross over” from other related products. For example, many times I’ve read customer reviews of a particular DVD I’ve wanted, say for the extras, and then realised from the review that the author is talking about a different release/edition of the same item, released at a different time, that doesn’t include any of the features I’m looking for. When I’ve gone to other editions of the same release, I’ve then found the exact same reviews in exactly the same order. So I think Amazon lump all the reviews together, irrespective of edition or release date, making it sometimes impossible to tell if you’re reading a review of the particular item you’re interested in. Often the only way to tell is if there are pictures of the item - that way you can scan the rear cover for the listed content to see if it includes what you were looking for.
 
It's Been well said " Buyer Beware"Look carefully And double check everything When i shop on amazon its not all influenced by the reviews( but good ones do help) but it's usually getting what I want or need for the best possible price and when I receive it my results are the final word. After that no other review from anyone else matters.
 
My experience isn’t specific to Carpenters but I thought was worth mentioning for the uninitiated. You have to be very, very careful when reading reviews on Amazon because many of them “cross over” from other related products. For example, many times I’ve read customer reviews of a particular DVD I’ve wanted, say for the extras, and then realised from the review that the author is talking about a different release/edition of the same item, released at a different time, that doesn’t include any of the features I’m looking for. When I’ve gone to other editions of the same release, I’ve then found the exact same reviews in exactly the same order. So I think Amazon lump all the reviews together, irrespective of edition or release date, making it sometimes impossible to tell if you’re reading a review of the particular item you’re interested in. Often the only way to tell is if there are pictures of the item - that way you can scan the rear cover for the listed content to see if it includes what you were looking for.

This is a bad habit Amazon have recently gotten into. Rather than listing different versions of CD/DVD releases as separate entries, which is what they used to do, they've now combined most of these into a single entry under the most recent permutation of the release as the headline entry, which then also combines reviews from those different entries together. Sometimes the review will note in small type above it that it relates to a different version of the release, sometimes you'll only work it out from the review itself, sometimes it won't be clear at all.

This also makes it much harder to find specific old (or secondhand) versions of a release. These used to be fairly easy to find, but now it seems to be much more down to luck (and a lot of time spent digging through the pages) to find the version you're actually for.
 
With Amazon's reviews for anything that's had multiple releases, you have to note the format and then the date of the review. That will sort out *most* of the reviews that you might be looking for, but then there could be cases of a buyer picking up an old CD (or DVD) and writing a current review.
 
Sometimes the comments in response to Amazon customer reviews can be interesting, too. Trust me, you do NOT want to submit an even marginally critical review of a Springsteen or Stevie Nicks album! I love 'em both, but after posting a somewhat tepid review of Springsteen's album of Pete Seeger covers, you'd have thought I insulted the Pope. Kudos to Carpenters fans who, in my experience, take a few light critiques of K&R's music right in stride.
 
Sinatra too. I submitted a review of the Sinatra/Jobim COMPLETE album released back in 2010. Concord released a disc that contained all of the Sinatra and Jobim tracks, finally, and botched it big-time by narrowing the stereo and almost burying Mr. Jobim's vocals. They also didn't properly insert certain vocal fly-ins the way Sinatra wanted the album to sound in order to cover up some slight "clams".

Well, I still get flak for that review, mostly by newbie hipster types who think the narrowed stereo sounds fabulous. And for the earbud generation, it probably DOES sound better - but it's not right - not for anyone who knows the original mixes.
 
Well, I still get flak for that review, mostly by newbie hipster types who think the narrowed stereo sounds fabulous. And for the earbud generation, it probably DOES sound better - but it's not right - not for anyone who knows the original mixes.
The Best Review Published or Not is according to one's personal Experience and for those of us who remember how our older original recordings sounded we expect the reissue to at least Equal it or close enough to it the newbies and hipsters sadly have never experienced hearing these classics in their original mixes. And I tend to ignore those kind of Negative idiotic reviews.
 
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