Under The Radar

Under The Radar is a music magazine, and their most recent issue includes their Top 50 Albums of 2008 according to it's writers. They also rank and review the Top 20 Debut Albums, Top 20 Songs, and Top 20 Overrated / Disappointing. This brings me to my dilemma. They write that many albums I thought enjoyable, well composed, and worht while were overrated and disappointing, while things, one album in particular, that I did not enjoy at all, were ranked highly and got good reviews. This is not to say I think my musical opinion superior to professional music critics. I simply believe they shouldn't only have the writers opinions published, and maybe ought to have had readers submit their top 50 or top 20 lists and reviews. The reasons I can think of that some of these so called 'disappointing' albums were named as such extend to the said unliked (by me) album (liked by them) in my opinion just as greatly. I was just listening to this album in question today, giving it a chance, and now when I reread their review, nothing is fitting. They say it "broke the mold on the actress-turned-singer stereotype" which is a fair claim, but not enough, in my mind, to give it a #6 ranking out of all the albums released in 2008. Is this to say that if one of the singers in the 'disappointing' albums had been an actor or actress previous to their singing career, they would too have been ranked at #6? This is unfair. Music critics should not be judging on the breaking of social stereotypes, but the quality of the music. They go on to say the album was a "boy-meets-girl musical duet" which I find little to no evidence of while listening. When looking at the back story, yes, this claim makes sense. But while listening to the music, as I said before, the only thing that should matter when critiquing MUSIC, I don't hear that. I hear a girl. Singing. About girl issues. None of this 'boy-meets-girl' duetness. They finish off the review saying that Volume Two wil soon be on the way. But after listening to Volume One, do we really want to hear more?
Yes, I am being rather critical here, and its not an awful album. I just think its silly that such an opinionated matter is controlled completely from the inside, and that the reasons they give for their choices are unjustified in the terms of musical quality.