If Rolling Stone loves your album, it means...

• You are a well-established musician with legions of loyal fans who may be interested in perhaps taking out some full-page advertisements in, oh, say, some kind of mainstream rock publication.

• Your album was released 30 years ago and our critics at the time shit all over it. History, however, has chosen to remember your album as a classic, so we'll give it a second, glowing review in which we accuse the guy who reviewed it the first time of tragic short-sightedness so that we don't go down in history as the only assholes who didn't like Led Zeppelin III.

If Pitchfork loves your album, it means...

• They are going to fucking detest your second album, whether it's any good or not.

• Expect legions of new "fans" in tight, brightly colored clothes who go to your shows for the sole purpose of finding their friends and talking in a big circle while smoking outside.

• By this time next year, you will be forgotten completely.

If Entertainment Weekly loves your album, it means...

• Nothing. Entertainment Weekly loves everything.

If The Onion's A.V. Club loves your album, it means...

• You are younger than 25 and brand-new on the scene or older than 60 and never made it big.

• You must have had a ton of obscure literary/pop-culture references on the album. Keep it up.

• You now have the approval of people who think Pitchfork isn't elitist and snobby enough. So... enjoy that.

If Kerrang! loves your album, it means...

• You sound exactly the correct amount like Bad Religion.

• Skaters dig you. There are still skaters, right?

• Power chords: You can play them.

If Slant loves your album, it means...

• It must be pretty good, because those guys don't like anything.

• Congratulations, you just peaked.

If Sputnikmusic loves your album, it means...

• It's quiet, introspective, and very ambient. Exactly the kind of thing to calm the frazzled nerves of a music critic who's done way too much cocaine.

• They'll call it "your most accessible album yet" even though it isn't. By far. They just think it's funny when the average person fires up a CD expecting something human-sounding and is instead greeted by an echoing collection of computer groans and occasional taps on a marimba.

• Seriously, do you have any Xanax? I'm about to totally lose my shit.