Let's rate: Labor Of Love

You said it before I could Matt

That's not crap and it's not a comparison thing... You are rating a song as to how much you like it but I can't fairly rate a 55 year old JBJ against a 22 year old JBJ... I do have to factor in that it's 2016. Teardrop To The Sea verses Make A Memory works... Teardrop To The Sea verses She Don't Know Me doesn't... I could rate both songs the same for completely different reasons...

Based on your logic, if you rate Dry County a 10, then that's the greatest song in the world. There is nothing better, right? If I rate Born To Run by Springsteen as a 9, does that mean that Dry County is a better song? Not necessarily... They are just not comparable...

I hear keyboards, I hear drums. What makes this a JBJ solo song? I feel like you're theorizing and then running with that theory.

Agreed, you can't say it's a solo song simply because it's only Jon's voice. There are other bon Jovi songs where that is the case.

There are quite a few songs with Jon and no backing vocals, it doesn't make it a solo song. Unless you can prove Dave and Tico aren't on it, it's a silly claim to make. Dave is playing the same type of synth parts he's been doing since 2000.

I don't rate songs either lyrically, vocally or musically. I rate it on how much I enjoy listening to it which is all that counts.

That can also vary, which is the great thing about music, everyone can hear and feel different things for the exact same song.

So Labor Of Love is an eight, which would put it around the same as something like Superman Tonight, or Hearts Breaking Even for me.

A Teardrop to the Sea would be a 10, alongside the likes of Dry County or I'll Be There For You or Keep The Faith or Blaze Of Glory or These Days. All very different songs in style or musically, but they each get that 10 because of my own personal enjoyment of them.

Would be nice if this album had a 10....

So if "Dry County" is a 10, I have to rate "It's My Life" as a 5 because it is completely commercial and features dumbed down lyrics in comparison to "Dry County?" What about "You Give Love A Bad Name?" How do I rate that on the "Dry County" scale? What if I'm not in the mood for "all my dreams went up in ashes and my future blew away?" I'm not going to rate "Dry County" so highly on days where I find it to be a depressing, bloated mess.

They are completely different songs and should be rated on their own merits. You can't determine how a song makes another person feel. You have people who declare "Thick As Thieves" or "When We Were Beautiful" to be rubbish whereas I give them both solid 9s. People change their ratings/views of a song over the years for a variety of reasons.

No one here gets to "factually" determine what makes a song good or suck, they can just beat their opinion over and over until more members leave because someone has personal problems and uses the board for their personal "shit-wiping" wall.

I've had my eyes opened to songs I've overlooked through the years because someone expressed what they liked about it. Try it. No song is ever put out on an album with the mindset, "this song sucks, so we are just going to use it to fill space." It just may not work for or speak to you at that point in time.

IMO, if comparisons are being made, it would be logical to assume that the song is being rated only in comparison with other Bon Jovi songs, not every other song in the world. Otherwise, you'd have to throw in The Hallelujah Chorus, The Sound of Music, Johnny B. Goode, Blowin' In The Wind, or any other song one might think represents a high-water mark in music history.

If the song is being rated in comparison to other songs in the Jovi catalog, then Destination Jovi's argument makes sense.

If the comparison is only with songs from a particular era in Bon Jovi history, I would agree with your logic. In that case, though, I think it would be helpful to know what the rating scale represents at either end.

If it's just a rating of how well a person likes the song, with 10 being "I love it" and 0 being "I hate it", then comparisons to other songs or another era are unnecessary. It's just based on that person's opinion of that one song. And in that case, Captain Jovi and bjcrazy make good points. I'm not being sarcastic when I say "there's no accounting for taste."

I don't usually rate songs because my opinion varies depending on mood. If I were going to rate how well I like this one, I'd probably give it a 5 at the current moment, and reserve the right to change my mind after I see how well it flows with the rest of the album when I hear it. It doesn't hurt my ears by a long shot; but I don't hear much that makes it stand out - vocally, lyrically, or musically - from anything else they've done.

The only thing that bothers me is knowing that it will soon be referred to as "LOL" and that's just wrong - on SO many levels!!

Haha never thought of that.

Beautifully said.