What approach to rating music do you prefer?

I noticed that Pitchfork has this approach where they give out 10s like candy, or at least they used to. Between Rubber Soul and Abbey Road, every album from The Beatles is a 10 on Pitchfork. This applies mostly to classic albums though, since now, the highest contemporary rating they've given an album since 2020 was a 9.1 to Cindy Lee, and they ranked Diamond Jubilee as the 3rd best album of the decade so far (somehow beyond WLR, but that's a different conversation).

On the other hand, you have an approach like Fantano's, where he is extremely selective of what he gives a 10. He's given 10s to like 30 albums total, and even to the best decades in music history (90s and 70s), he's only given two like 5-6 10s to each.

What approach do you personally take? I honestly think that the hair-splitting over "Is this a 10 or is it a strong 9?" is a little self-indulgent and unproductive. In rym, I give both strong 9s and 10s 5 star ratings, and I've given like 18 10s to the 90s and something around that for the 70s. Also a little less for the 2000s and 80s. To illustrate my point, for TPAB vs GKMC, I give both 5 star ratings, eventhough I think TPAB definitely better. I think that's honestly the only "sin" that can be attributed to GKMC, that it's not "Kendrick's best."

My point is, if something is a fantastic great, which everyone agrees is mind-blowing and a complete classic (like Pet Sounds, for example), who cares if it has some tiny "flaw"? I feel like "perfect albums" and can be worse than 10s with a minor nitpick criticism. Not to be like a golden mean fallacy person, but I think that a measured in-between position is best here. What Fantano considers to be a 10 is what I give to albums which are top 10 for an entire decade, where I'd rank them even above other 5 star albums.