Finally, someone (Chuck Klosterman of Spin magazine, as it turns out) has come up with a unifying theory of musical quality:
Van Halen: This band should have been the biggest arena act of the early 1980s, and they were. They had the greatest guitar player of the 1980s, and everyone (except possibly Yngwie Malmsteen) seems to agree. They switched singers and became semi-crappy, and nobody aggressively disputes that fact. They also recorded the most average song in rock history: "And the Cradle Will Rock." What this means is that any song better than "And the Cradle Will Rock" is good, and any song worse than "And the Cradle Will Rock" is bad. If we were to rank every rock song (in sequential order) from best to worst, "And the Cradle Will Rock" would be right in the fucking middle.
That's Yngwie J. Malmsteen to you.
I see the middle point as being sort of arbitrary, since I think "Cradle" is worse than average, but the hypothesis is sound. So whether you want to use Klosterman's example, or create one of your own (I might put "Alive" by Pearl Jam in the center position, for example), you can make the science work. And emphasis on the sciences is something American kids sorely need.
After all, have you seen Junior's grades?
You can't put 'Alive' in the as the middle-line (and don't get me wrong, Alive is an incredibly mediocre song) for the simple reason that what that indicates is that only half of recorded music is worse than that song.
So it's got to be a much, much worse song. Something along the lines of 'Dust in The Wind' by Kansas.
"Cradle" is music's answer to baseball's Mendoza Line. Not bad.
But like you, I think the bar is higher...."Cradle" is at best a decent song on a crummy album.