Introducing the idolthreat Threat Level Matrix

The most important music rating system ever devised

On the 25th of November 2015, the Australian government overhauled the country’s National Terrorism Threat Advisory System, changing the old and complicated system into a much simpler five level system to indicate the likelihood of an act of terrorism occurring in Australia.

On this blog, all songs reviewed will be rated based on the likelihood of a song becoming a hit in Australia — Not Expected, Possible, Probable, Expected, and of course, Certain.

The problem is, this doesn’t indicate the quality of a given song.

Australia is a funny country. We sent Killing Heidi’s really rather ace Mascara to #1 in 2000, Eminem’s iconic Lose Yourself topped the charts in 2002 and 2003, and Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ Uptown Funk in 2014. However, Blue (Da Ba Dee) by Eiffel 65, Hey Baby (Uhh, Ahh) by DJ Ötzi, and Justice Crew’s Que Sera also topped the charts in those same years respectively. So clearly, merely determining whether a song will be a hit is not necessarily helpful.

I present to you, the idolthreat Threat Level Matrix.

As you can see, the song seen in the example above is Expected to be a hit, due to its’ presence in the Expected zone. Along the bottom of the matrix, the quality of the songs increases, along the scale Awful — Average — Amazing. The song in the example is clearly up towards the Amazing end of the scale.

The closer a song gets to the top right hand corner, the better the song is.
The closer a song gets to the bottom left hand corner, the more useless it is.

This scale will be used in all song reviews on this blog, because it’s basically perfect.

Here is where you’ll find our section dedicated to music reviews so you can see it in action.

Feel free to offer your own opinions in the comments below, and Tweet at us here.