Most Harmful Strand of Contemporary Music Criticism

Discuss.

sociopolitical context

Harmful? I dunno how much impact music crit has beyond itself in 2020. I'm sure there's a way of doing some of these approaches well or badly.

No doubt, but ILM polls thrive on light clickbait.

It may just be the time of year, but: lists

I find lists and scores pretty insulting to art a lot of the time but I'm not in beef mode today

Scores as the be-all and end-all, especially when they contradict the review's ostensible content, should've been included. Mea culpa.

As bearers of musical notation they're pretty classic tho.

lol i was trying to recall if i'd ever seen a review that included a score which contradicted the review -- until i realised you were talking abt the other (bad) kind of score

Think most of these can be good and can be bad, a variety of approaches is to be applauded surely. talking about the context of an LP without discussing the actual music and/or how it affects (or fails to affect) the writer is a hallmark of a bad review though, imo, though even that works sometimes I suppose

"three blind mice begins with an ascending sequence of notes but its problems as a melody merely begin here"

https://www.8notes.com/digital_tradition/gif_dtrad/THREEBLN.gif

Even classical reviewers don't do that lol. It would be kind of amazing if they did: 'here (exhibit A) is incontrovertible proof that Herr F. flubbed bar 23 of the stretto'.

2xp

trying to remember which stern pianist-critic dissed a rival by pointing out that when the going got fiddly, herr x. invoked compositionally unsanctioned rubato to allow him to "pause awhile" (he wasn't pointing at a score at the time tho) (i read abt it in the NYRB so it *might* have been charles rosen being snarky at alfred brendel, since that also took place in the NYRB lol)

i like lists (because for me they serve as an exercise in contextualization and an opportunity for discovery; i find it a useful extension to the venerable "these guys sound like captain beefheart on acid!!!" school of criticism) and only cover the unknownest of the unknown, so neither of those

i don't see a difference between "biographical filler" and "riveting neuroses" in practice, probably because my biography is riveting neuroses (with a smattering of sociopolitical context thrown in for leavening). when i write about music that's what i tend to write (though i do at least try to acknowledge the _existence_ of the music unlike some biographical filler/riveting neuroses writers).

i voted "Music exists qua music sub specie aeternitatis", it just strikes me as being so much "objectivist" bullshit

my real most hated strand of contemporary music criticism, though, is people who make up genres to cover music they like such as "zolo" or "escape room". this is sort of related to "there is only one genre and its name is"... it's more "there is a genre and it is made up of all the music i like and its name is"

i voted "Music exists qua music sub specie aeternitatis", it just strikes me as being so much "objectivist" bullshit

- revenge of the jawn (rushomancy)

by which i mean that, at least in the classical world, people say that it shouldn't matter that wagner was a nazi have a not-terribly-surprising tendency to turn out to be nazis themselves

speaking of wagner that recent article on wagner that said "I HAVE AN EXCITING NEW THEORY THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING ABOUT WAGNER'S ANTI-SEMITISM" was also fairly annoying. there's the self-hype, of course, the "I HAVE FINALLY FIGURED OUT THE MYSTERY OF THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT" sort of very successful bullshit, but also the implicit notion that because nobody had thought of it before it must be a groundbreaking stroke of genius rather than a nonsensical irrelevancy.

people who make up genres to cover music they like such as "zolo" or "escape room".

Had to google both of those. The latter in particular is just such a catch-all that I can't imagine ascribing even the loosest taxonomic meaning to it.

I read “biographical filler” as distinct from “autobiographical filler”

And yeah, while I enjoyed that Wagner piece for its wealth of historical data, the analysis struck me as wanting for the most part (I did mention how Mendelssohn, a Jewish convert to Christianity, was still a target of Wagner's antisemitism because, well, Blot und Boden may in fact have been part of his worldview after all?).

I read “biographical filler” as distinct from “autobiographical filler”

Yep, that's what I meant.

Weirdly, this might be 'Lemme parse those lyrics for you. Lyrics' for me. I don't care for that shit at all. Almost any other here - like NV said - can be done well, in some way. (not that that is happening a lot, but I wouldn't call most pf them particularly harmful).

Going by the grade def a major gripe though, as a write-in.

people who make up genres to cover music they like such as (...) "escape room".

You know this specific guy is an ILM regular, yeah(?)

I voted for "sociopolitical context", although these would probably be worse:

My personality is that I hate Pitchfork
Here's a list. Here's another list
There is only one Genre and its name is […]

An approach focused on sociopolitcal context might be useful, ime usually when it is being done by an actual social scientist using actual social science research methodology. An approach based on asserting that there is nothing outside this, while technically accurate, generally results in a dud, though, and comes closest to doing harm imo. "Music qua music" and "lyrics" are at least engaging with the content of the work.

I guess lists with discussion and commentary can be good, too.

"everybody had PTO this week, so I was clearly assigned to write a review of this veteran band I've never heard in a genre I know nothing about"

voted for lyrics but only because it was my own vice back in the day

I'm (unsurprisingly) with Sund4r on this one. I take rush's point, but I feel like overemphasis on sociopolitical implications is a greater irritant in our current century. This is, of course, liable to change.

good thread. hard to pick one.

sociopolitical context and it isn't even close

I wrote a few CD reviews for a local paper when I was young and I tried to hit on all of these briefly in each review. I'll show myself out.

Which one is most likely to use the phraseology “What X understand(s) about Y is...”?

You know this specific guy is an ILM regular, yeah(?)

― stop creeping my instagram storiez (morrisp)

yes i do! and i don't, you know, want to beef on ilx, i know there's a long history of that, dude has a busy life and an active job and probably shouldn't bother to even engage with my frankly marginal crackpot concerns, but, i mean, if fantano was a regular here i'd still occasionally mention that he annoys the piss out of me simply because i feel like i'd be remiss not to.

my real most hated strand of contemporary music criticism, though, is people who make up genres to cover music they like such as "zolo" or "escape room". this is sort of related to "there is only one genre and its name is"... it's more "there is a genre and it is made up of all the music i like and its name is"
― revenge of the jawn (rushomancy), Sunday, January 19, 2020 10:34 AM (four hours ago)

Music is both endlessly divisible and reducible. There was a fantastic interview with Andy Votel a few years back where he was talking about the Rosebud Discoballs version of Interstellar Overdrive and poked fun at all the genre name silliness. Here it is:

On the subject of rock follies, this is from an album paying homage to Pink Floyd—with disco? Who are Rosebud?

They are like the French version of 10cc. They were Jean-Claude Vannier's constant backing band for everything, and he did thousands of pop records. But they also pretty much single-handedly invented French cosmic disco. Now, this idea to do a pop record based on Pink Floyd is a great idea on paper, but doesn't really sound anything like Pink Floyd. Trying to put prog through a '70s disco machine is alright, but trying to put late '60s punky rock & roll through a disco machine is not going to be a good idea. I don't know what the hell this is; it's just its own problem.

When you talk about all these musical genres it just becomes embarrassing, and farcical. Every week there's a new genre. There should only be about five genres, and one of those should be overambitious music. I would love to walk into a record shop and see a section saying overambitious music, and this definitely comes into that category. Trying to do a cheap record, that's going to make people dance in a nightclub, which is based on the entire career of Pink Floyd in one record is just so misguided. Pink Floyd were bloody overambitious in the first place. But every musician who appears on that record is a hero of mine.

So there's this really interesting question of like, if 'New Grave' doesn't get to be its own genre... then isn't all 'Rock' just folk music? etc etc And the idea of a reducible musical form has been at the forefont of a lot of technology lately.

I despise lists and rankings, but it's 'sociopolitical context' by some distance. If I understand correctly "music exists qua music sub specie aeternitatis" describes something like art-historical formalism? Seems to me an alright way of thinking about things.

Re: the Wagner/Nazi stuff and the art of 'unacceptable people' more broadly, see the documentary 'Unmappable' on the cartographer Denis Wood.

this is still the best tweet

Pitchfork: King PU$$Y Eater revolutionizes our perception of bodies and spaces with his hit single "Goop on Ya Grinch" [7.6]

— guy who pays for winrar (@JucheMane) April 14, 2017

too real

I rarely see these trends in isolation, and it seems to me that most of the actual everyday annoying music crit involves some combination of at least two of them, in particular when "lemme parse those lyrics for you" becomes "let me take a very short lyric and use it to awkwardly shoehorn and justify an extended detour into sociopolitical context and/or biographical filler."

my real most hated strand of contemporary music criticism, though, is people who make up genres to cover music they like such as "zolo" or "escape room".

There probably are examples of this, but just so you know, that's not really where the terms "zolo" and "escape room" came from.

I only cover the unknownest of the unknown is one of the least bad of these, but it also very neatly describes the yearly 'what are you listening to' threads

There is only one Genre and its name is [afrobeats]

love ya really breastcrawl ;)

(tbc I really don't mind genre-specialised music criticism or genre-specialised ilm posters; i'm really only teasing and i'm grateful to said specialists for helping me discover so much)

the top one is obviously by a million miles the worst one, followed by the lyrics one

My personality is that I hate Pitchfork

this one roasts me tbf

Surely streaming an youtube are more harmful to music criticism than anything about criticism, considering I can go listen to something for thirty seconds and find out if I like it instead of having to read a website so I can guess if I’ll like it.

ah but how do you decide what to try for 30 seconds ;)

Music criticism can address issues other than whether you like something. Also, the OP doesn't say that what is being harmed is the field of music criticism.

"let me take a very short lyric and use it to awkwardly shoehorn and justify an extended detour into sociopolitical context and/or biographical filler."

this is like when future's 'march madness' came out and everyone couldn't stop talking about a non-sequitur lyric about police violence.

"I only cover the unknownest of the unknown"

tbh this is p much the only style of music crit that has any value to me nowadays

Ah, Rosebud. I've loved Rosebud since, well, probably the '90s when it was one of those legendary Pink Floyd cover albums I had a bootleg cassette of.

I like Rosebud _because_ a disco cover album of Pink Floyd songs, from "Interstellar Overdrive" through to "Have a Cigar", is such a manifestly terrible idea (and I don't think "prog disco" is any better of an idea than "psych disco", though I improbably enough have heard some pretty decent prog disco tunes, such as Tomsix's "Lookin' For A Little Light"), because Rosebud's career is a compendium of such terrible ideas of which "disco Pink Floyd cover album" is probably the best. Other ideas included a 7" disco single based on the Stanley Kubrick film "Barry Lyndon" and a record of disco Dixieland called "New Orleans Junction" (yes, I know this concept was done by others, and done well; most ideas in the realm of disco were, on paper, extremely bad ones). I've unfortunately only heard one track of each of these projects, because they are of similar high quality to their Pink Floyd cover record.

That's the sort of music I love - I know someone else arbitrarily and inaccurately came up with the idea of "outsider" music, and the sort of music I like, which I _don't_ think of as a genre, is misfit music. Bad ideas that yield results which, if not "good" in any critically defensible sense, are fascinating and enjoyable to listen to. I am in love with a world which produces artists like Rosebud.

I will have to check out "Unmappable". It sounds like an interesting film and it's less than half an hour, so I might actually watch the whole thing!

Which option is this?

https://i.postimg.cc/dQTrSs5T/HYPERLINK-TO-RAP-GENIUS.jpg
(from Yahoo)

Re: the Wagner/Nazi stuff and the art of 'unacceptable people' more broadly, see the documentary 'Unmappable' on the cartographer Denis Wood.

― Deflatormouse

well i did watch this and i didn't think it was that interesting or revelatory; what i got out of it was that there's nothing that people won't excuse or overlook if you're a white dude. which i already sort of knew?

What do you think people should be doing about Wagner's anti-Semitism?

inexcusable, just look at it

Bach’s antisemitism was probably no less vicious, no? IIRC the Lutherans have apologized for Luther.

the sort of music I like, which I _don't_ think of as a genre, is misfit music. Bad ideas that yield results which, if not "good" in any critically defensible sense, are fascinating and enjoyable to listen to. I am in love with a world which produces artists like Rosebud.

Yes, I'm with you there. And I think that's what Votel was getting at, actually.
This is where the sociological stuff could be revelatory. I would love for an actual sociologist to explain to me why only Pop music can produce these fascinating atrocities. But my suspicion is that there's a unique potential for the calculated symbol alchemy in Pop to be miscalculated.

I mentioned 'Unmappable' specifically because I don't think it excuses Wood's sexual deviance. It also doesn't deny his brilliance as an artist. There has been a tendency to separate these two aspects, or to present this as a kind of duality. But Unmappable shows him as someone whose defiant, hostile arrogance drives both his art and his sociopathy.

If the ability to listen to whatever music you want, anytime you want has devalued music, or at least the individual unit of music (artist/album/composition), then it makes sense that the more formalist approach has fallen out of favor. Because it assigns some lofty value to art, and especially to whatever is that only art can do. And I'm probably guilty of that...

“Sexual deviance” is not a good synonym for “child abuse”

let me take a very short lyric and use it to awkwardly shoehorn and justify an extended detour into sociopolitical context and/or biographical filler

related: deep readings of some basic af 'relatable' lyric by some (for example) millionaire country-pop star

I'm not sure any of these are especially harmful or even that prominent in the new economy of the Insatiable Click Machine. More to the point I suspect the OP is irritated by them because it's no longer considered necessary to write about what the music sounds like.

Only some of these strands are explicitly at odds with writing about what the music sounds like.

My actual stance, which I assume most of us here share, is that all are necessary to varying degrees (including sociopolitical analysis). Dosage, however, remains a point of contention, perhaps partly predicated on personal listening habits (i.e. popsters and jazzsters are likely to disagree over the correct diagnosis).

I mentioned 'Unmappable' specifically because I don't think it excuses Wood's sexual deviance. It also doesn't deny his brilliance as an artist. There has been a tendency to separate these two aspects, or to present this as a kind of duality. But Unmappable shows him as someone whose defiant, hostile arrogance drives both his art and his sociopathy.

― Deflatormouse

see, i didn't get that from the film. if there's an argument to be made that wood's sexual abuse of a minor is intrinsically linked to his abilities as an artist (for the record, i strongly believe there isn't), the film does not make that argument.

i don't really blame wood for saying the shit he says. wood has to live with himself and given what he's done the easiest way to do that is to make excuses and go over all the same fallacies that most of us have heard millions of times before by this point - your tu quoque, your false equivalency, the ever-popular non sequitur, and of course always lurking in the background is exceptionalism. for him to acknowledge that he abused a vulnerable child, that he deeply damaged and hurt someone who badly needed the exact opposite, that is a hell of a lot to ask.

what frustrates me is that while he has to live with himself, we don't have to live with him, we don't have to think about the Issues he raises. i think the documentary should be about ira glass. after wood was convicted of sexual abuse of a minor, in 1998, ira, who is an Influencer with a Platform, decided that this man's theories were interesting enough that they were a good use of that Platform. my theory is that there are plenty of Interesting people who have not been convicted of sexually abusing minors and that, given this fact, there is no necessity to bend over backwards for white men who have been.

I'm not sure any of these are especially harmful or even that prominent in the new economy of the Insatiable Click Machine. More to the point I suspect the OP is irritated by them because it's no longer considered necessary to write about what the music sounds like.

― Matt DC

i think there are good reasons why it's not necessary! back in the '90s if a record sounded interesting to me it took more effort than click click listen, so i needed to be more informed about music before hearing it. "hey listen to this" is a perfectly viable form of music writing these days, i believe.

I don't really understand some of the categories/voting options but whichever one includes just focusing on an artists' career/brand narrative is by far the worst

'[eminently congenial biographical filler]', kind of.

it sort of connects to "There is nothing outside the (sociopolitical) context" as well, because artist's career arc/narrative/brand/story is almost always tied into that

so... both of those, I guess would be my vote

Like Tim said, there's quite a bit of overlap here, for sure.

tim otm that the actual worst patterns are conjoined versions of these selections

trying to vote for the one i'm guiltiest of which i think is "[eminently congenial biographical filler]"

not an invitation for anyone to suggest which one i'm guiltiest of

"lemme parse those lyrics for you" can be an amazing approach but the writer really has to be up to the task. most of the time they're not

my actual least favorite contemporary strand of music criticism podcast division is people pointing at specific sections of music and saying "this is so cool isn't it so cool" without ever articulating their reasons why or arriving at an idea beyond "this is cool." this is why describing music is still a necessary skill

Damn, I would have it included had I known it was a thing (I don't listen to podcasts).

Come to think of it, there should also be a 'Fantano' option.

i was gonna say that what i described might not be considered "criticism," but... fantano's a "critic" so i think it should count

I don't remember what Fantano's approach is... how is it distinct?

but i also may be overdoing it in even suggesting it's a "thing," i've only encountered it in one place, i hate it regardless!!!!! xp

no one remembers what fantano's approach is

Well then why do we insist on memeing about how terrible he is? Not setting up to defend him. I haven't watched his reviews so I'm curious.

oh i thought you were familiar with him and yet his approach to reviewing is so unremarkable it just vaporized completely from your mind

anyway he just kinda reacts to a record without saying anything interesting about it

fantano's approach is to try to get me to hate-click his forever-yt-recommended videos by growing the most hideous moustache he can manage

lmao

Here's a typically dismal sample:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyMX4lcKNPg

Was there really no competition when he first started out?

Fwiw it probably helps that he performatively embodies what most people conjure up in their minds when they think of a 'music nerd'. Still, I'm baffled by his overwhelming success – has anyone else even come close to the sheer of amount of views he's racked up over the years?

See yeah I know a bit about who he is and who his audience is, but I've tried very hard to not click his videos even out of curiosity because at the very least I really don't want him popping up in recommended (as much), so his "style" of reviewing as would be classified by this poll is a mystery to me.

I think his success has a lot to do with the fact that youtube and his target audience do go well together. And he is probably good at doing all the youtuber things that one must do to stand out (entertaining editing, length, SEO techniques for creation of thumbnail, titles, etc.).

I actually watched a couple of his reviews. His style is to spread widely and not go into depth, make some jokes, say which tracks he likes / doesn't like. Under the memelord banter it's a very conservative old-fashioned approach really, as much as he calls himself a "music nerd" it's designed to be as easy to dip into as possible, so I can see why people watch his videos as much as I hate them. His taste in music is suspicious, I remember him slating Lil Peep while he was alive, then after the critical tide turned with his death he decided he decided he liked him after all, with no acknowledgement that he'd changed his view.

are we gonna skip over his alt right bullshit

If we want to get into that there might be a better thread. I'm just talking about his music reviews and how they might relate to the poll options.

xp yeah he has never apologised for that horrible "questions for sjws" video, but we do have a thread to discuss that. I do like to share it with people on twitter who like him and don't realise.

Didn't his defence essentially consist of 'it's just a prank bro'?

my theory is that there are plenty of Interesting people who have not been convicted of sexually abusing minors and that, given this fact, there is no necessity to bend over backwards for white men who have been.

back in the '90s if a record sounded interesting to me it took more effort than click click listen

What I was saying is that these two things are probably related.

"hey listen to this" is a perfectly viable form of music writing these days

I would think the opposite holds true. If as a writer, you can assume that anyone interested has already heard everything you care to write about, and is probably aware of the consensus, then the task is to diagnose and articulate why you like it, or don't, or what it does to you, or what it is. You have a tremendous scope to do that actually, it's really unprecedented. I think too many critics are just tracking consensus. What I miss most often is that kind of acuity.

booming post

sociopolitical context. this was why the pitchfork year and decade end lists were so insufferable. it wan't even sociopolitical context, it was like, news and social media context "setting the stage" for a description of each album

Fwiw it probably helps that he performatively embodies what most people conjure up in their minds when they think of a 'music nerd'. Still, I'm baffled by his overwhelming success – has anyone else even come close to the sheer of amount of views he's racked up over the years?

― pomenitul

he got famous the way most people get famous - impressing one or two powerful people, who then decided it would be a good idea to promote him. this is how youtube and social media work.

Poppy says we are in a post-genre world.

I find it unfair when a strand of criticism is only levelled at specific segments of the music ecosystem. Especially the "Unfortunately, [woman musician performing pop, hip-hop or country] doesn't tell us who she *really* is" critique, followed by examination of multiple lyrical passages cherry-picked to advance said critique, that's rarely ever an issue when reviewing a rock, alt-country, or indie record.

Why are we OK to not know the "real" Adam Granduciel or Win Butler, but we require such insight with regards to Nicki Minaj or Ariana Grande?

There are no “real” people, the whole line of inquiry is an error

I'm real butthole

I mean in terms of critiquing artists - the degree to which artists reveal their “true” selves is a false metric

I find it unfair when a strand of criticism is only levelled at specific segments of the music ecosystem. Especially the "Unfortunately, [woman musician performing pop, hip-hop or country] doesn't tell us who she *really* is" critique, followed by examination of multiple lyrical passages cherry-picked to advance said critique, that's rarely ever an issue when reviewing a rock, alt-country, or indie record.

There's no reason on earth, six albums into her career, for a writer to be making a big point of inserting Lana Del Rey's real name into whatever you're writing about her. And yet they do, with the sneering glee of an incel. Iggy Pop wasn't born Iggy Pop; that's not Gene Simmons' real name, either. Get the fuck over it.

Lana Del Rey's stage name is least-objectionable thing about her

I suspect there is a very strong overlap between "artists who are asked to reveal their 'real' selves" and "artists who have a very large following on instagram".

There's no reason on earth, six albums into her career, for a writer to be making a big point of inserting Lana Del Rey's real name into whatever you're writing about her. And yet they do, with the sneering glee of an incel. Iggy Pop wasn't born Iggy Pop; that's not Gene Simmons' real name, either. Get the fuck over it.

When I see a reviewer drop in a reference to the real name of Iggy Pop, Elton John, Bob Dylan, or a similarly-regarded man who uses an alias, it appears moreso to make it seem like they are buds, or to be playful ("In Dylan's cover of 'The Boxer', Zimmy becomes a one-man Simon & Garfunkel..."), but never with the "I know who you really are!" vibe we see with LDR or Pink.

Can’t trust anyone who goes around using someone’s government name when they’ve implicitly been asked not to

Let alone explicitly.

but never with the "I know who you really are!" vibe we see with LDR or Pink.

I'm a fan of Robert Christgau because he has turned me on to countless records over the decades, but his review of this Jane's Addiction album is uncool to say the least.

Kettle Whistle [Warner Bros., 1997]
As its current projects crumble from irrelevance to negative cash flow, a band that never made music or money commensurate with its myth bestows upon a shock-sated marketplace outtakes, demos, live tracks, and four proofs of physical reunion. Chutzpah has never been Perry Bernstein's problem.

A big one is the thing someone on here was talking about in a different thread where it feels like rather than trying to understand the art the critic is sort of exerting their power over the artist

As someone who doesn’t live in a properly developed country. Sociopolitical context is often alienating.

Kettle Whistle [Warner Bros., 1997]
As its current projects crumble from irrelevance to negative cash flow, a band that never made music or money commensurate with its myth bestows upon a shock-sated marketplace outtakes, demos, live tracks, and four proofs of physical reunion. Chutzpah has never been Perry Bernstein's problem.

Literally how dare he

x^n post:
Butch Firbanks to thread!

and he would've gotten away with it if it weren't for that darn toefucker

I don't really like Fantano either but I don't see how what he's doing is harmful. He reminds me of those old WRC guys like George Starostin or John McFerrin except he's reading his reviews instead of typing them. I know he's got a bad history pandering to the 4chan/reddit types who made him famous but he just seems more annoying than bad

wow christgau being an arrogant creep and dickhead not like him

lol shakey

A big one is the thing someone on here was talking about in a different thread where it feels like rather than trying to understand the art the critic is sort of exerting their power over the artist

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40), Monday, 20 January 2020 22:59 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Like a lot of current trends I trace some of this back to current social media dynamics: in a world where you can @ an artist on twitter or instagram and potentially even get their attention (and/or score points at their expense) it's a lot easier for critics to adopt the mindset that the artwork and their review of it comprise a conversation or argument on an even playing field.

literally lists!

Music exists qua music sub specie aeternitatis

however this takes a close second. its noxious influence is subtle but so pervasive.

also can't stand when "biographical filler" in music crit is just celeb tabloid gossip stories

related: deep readings of some basic af 'relatable' lyric by some (for example) millionaire country-pop star

is this about taylor swift or the bizarrely overblown analyses of the lyrics to "old town road"?

sociopolitical

"this is like when future's 'march madness' came out and everyone couldn't stop talking about a non-sequitur lyric about police violence."

oh come the fuck on "march madness" is pretty blatantly about police brutality, how his fame contrasts with and protects him from it and how both of these things inform his anxiety and addictions do you even know how to listen to rap songs

or music for that matter

shit like this is why we need critics

'music qua music' and 'nothing outside the sociopolitical political context' are diff sides of the same coin, both equally wrong, anyone trying divorce sound from politics or vice versa should be barred from writing about music imo

Otm yeah ppl do this continually w rappers who they seem to think are just sorta filling out verses instead of speaking with intention. I remember a former music critic coming at me for claiming I was trying to indicate “caverns” of unintended meaning in waka flocka talking about his brother being killed in flockaveli which first of all was projecting onto my own intent, and second of all implies a kind of accidental expressiveness rather than authorial intent that’s basically racist

*in my review of flockaveli

Doesn't he explicitly bring up his brother's death on the album? It's hardly speculation.

Right & future brings up police shootings

I think the implication was in drawing attention to a specific sociopolitical lyric the critic is trying to give the artist a sociopolitical context that isn’t there instead of drawing attention to the non political lyric bc the rapper doesn’t have a Brand of being “political”

I’m explaining this badly sorry — in my brain is halfway in ilx posting & halfway In my work I’ll try to clarify later

The poll really needs an option "Christgau", the useless tosser.

'music qua music' and 'nothing outside the sociopolitical political context' are diff sides of the same coin, both equally wrong, anyone trying divorce sound from politics or vice versa should be barred from writing about music imo

bingo

they're different sides of the same coin, but only one of those sides is ubiquitous in what's left of the music press

I think the implication was in drawing attention to a specific sociopolitical lyric the critic is trying to give the artist a sociopolitical context that isn’t there instead of drawing attention to the non political lyric bc the rapper doesn’t have a Brand of being “political”

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40), Tuesday, January 21, 2020 3:14 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

my point was that a song doesn't have to be about police violence or something equally weighty to be great or even important.

i'll concede that march madness was a bad example because the socio-political context does add meaning to the song that will likely be lost over time.

"they're different sides of the same coin, but only one of those sides is ubiquitous in what's left of the music press"

i don't know if that's necessarily true ? certainly one side feels more ubiquitous because it gets a lot of retweets / makes some ppl very mad whereas the other one mostly just gets ignored entirely but both still happen frequently and both still suck

and re march madness authorial intent is such a cop out in these conversations too - even in the highly unlikely scenario where Future just randomly decided to shout THESE FUCKING POLICE CANT TOUCH ME repeatedly into a microphone without thinking at all about what those words mean the fact that he said them warrants analysis, particularly given the cultural climate when that song came out plus the sonic tenor of his entire body of work/especially 56 nights, the whole purpose of criticism is to consider this sort of shit

Hmm yeah to be clear I don’t think there needs to be intent for us to demand critics talk about these things, but I do think there is a tendency for critics (esp white critics talking about black art) to erase intentionality unless it matches the bigger brand of the rapper overall ... ie the layers and levels of what they’re speaking of get lost in the bigger picture of their marketing lanes

an early example would be Melle Mel's famous "The Message" being dropped into the middle of "Superrappin's" party rock shockin the fly ladies......Flash and Melle got wise and dropped again in a song that was designed to feel important in ways white rock critics would notice

(the Message is a classic song obv - not dissing it)

xp "hard in the paint!"

The first option.

very close call between bio & politics but because everybody's so bad at politics but the mandate to talk about politics is general, that one "wins"

whereas ppl who only cover the unknown are fuckin champions, I sure as fuck don't need to read more about the same shit everybody else is already goin on about

Good albums create their own context. Not they come from nowhere, but they reconfigure their source material—musical, biographical, political—into something new, so approaches that seek to “explain” the piece by talking about these things will always seem incomplete. If the music is good.

For bad albums, describing the milieu in which it was created, some of its influences, or whatever, is probably enough.

Still boring though. Good criticism is just good writing. The critic needs to see something meaningful and interesting with the work and share that with the reader.

I only cover the unknownest of the unknown is one of the least bad of these, but it also very neatly describes the yearly 'what are you listening to' threads

― opden gnash (imago), Sunday, January 19, 2020 5:22 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is essentially my music crit career now lol

The poll really needs an option "Christgau", the useless tosser.

― sbahnhof

christgau is certainly the most harmful strand of music criticism _to other critics_.

"but I do think there is a tendency for critics (esp white critics talking about black art) to erase intentionality unless it matches the bigger brand of the rapper overall ... ie the layers and levels of what they’re speaking of get lost in the bigger picture of their marketing lanes"

yeah we're on the same page here.

i think part of the reason this happens is that rappers are so often completely disinterested in explaining their politics to outsiders or for that matter even explicitly centering their songs on a single ideological axis (compared to idk blood orange doing a song about sandra bland, which makes for a tidy press release and an easier review). the whole genre is and almost always has been about spitting endless runs non sequitur ideas, sometimes even conflicting ones. melle did "the message" at the behest of sylvia robinson, who zoomed in on the marketability of his "superrappin" tangent and asked him to expand it, iirc the rest of the five sat that one out because they thought the beat and concept were corny.

- the idea that anything besides a glowing PR write-up is a personal attack against the artist, in which case you will be mercilessly attacked. unless it's a positive review of an artist perceived to not deserve it, in which case you'll also be mercilessly attacked. want to know how to not be mercilessly attacked? fuck you, you can't

- addressed above, you must only talk about The Music. it doesn't matter if the artist is a world-class lyricist, operating at the absolute peak of their songwriting ability, and that listeners are deeply devoted to them because of their lyrics. that isn't part of The Music, despite the musician putting it there and it being central to how it's received. the only meaningful thing is how angular the guitars are, that one song has synths, and the fact that one song is in C minor. they are all you are allowed to talk about, otherwise you will be mocked.

- The Big Bad Algorithms, and inferences about how "they" "sound" as reflected in the music; I'd say "particularly if they're only ever mentioned in pans of artists one is predisposed to dislike" but that goes without saying.

- in reviews of pop music, either totally ignoring the role of songwriters/producers in the music ("this emily warren song is a reflection of [pop artist]'s true songwriting acumen") or getting it completely wrong ("omg it took 6 people to write this song that has a prominent sample, [pop artist] is a hack")

- you are not allowed to compare artists to other artists, despite this being how artist influence works, how the human brain categorizes new information into schemas, and one way how people who read reviews (yes, all three of them) can discover new artists they may love that isn't THE BIG BAD ALGORITHMS

would like to add to the choices "palliative sentiments regarding mental health"

(just realized the scare quotes around "they" were misleading -- what I meant to get at was personifying "the algorithms" as if it's meaningful, or at least meaningful about something other than the songwriter/listener input involved)

All worthy write-ins imo (unless already covered, of course).

and i know this is a necessary evil but god knows i hate reading the "this artist has been accused of abuse but we're reviewing the record anyway! it's not very good" review

Good criticism is just good writing.

^^ this x1000000. Many of my favorite critics engage in some of these strands, but are just good enough writers that they can do so in an insightful productive way. That being said voting sociopolitical bc its not just boring & useless re:music but actively contributes to the twitterfied everything-is-political brainwarp that makes readers worse at thinking & the world a worse place.

I'm frankly a little surprised by how hated option no. 1 is (I voted for it myself, so this is a mere observation). I guess times have changed.

and i know this is a necessary evil but god knows i hate reading the "this artist has been accused of abuse but we're reviewing the record anyway! it's not very good" review

this is getting into tricky territory I guess but I've that when these accusations come out the music is treated much more critically, there's got to be enough p4k data by now to prove this but I'm thinking specifically of Pinegrove and Swans

as brad was hinting at you can always just not cover things

good music writing is all good writing; all bad music writing is bad in its own way

the flip side is — I’m explicitly quoting someone but I forget who said it, apologies— by not critically engaging with artists accused of bad shit, the ground is ceded to uncritical coverage. I realize this intersects with commercial mandates in not totally flattering ways but also it’s not like high-mindedly refusing to review xxxtentacion ended his career

worse is when institutional knowledge erodes, so stuff just no longer is mentioned

yeah there's got to be good/enlightening ways to do it, it so often just feels like box-ticking (at least when I'm reading it)

fundamentally agree with all the posts above, thus my frustration

the flip side is — I’m explicitly quoting someone but I forget who said it, apologies— by not critically engaging with artists accused of bad shit, the ground is ceded to uncritical coverage. I realize this intersects with commercial mandates in not totally flattering ways but also it’s not like high-mindedly refusing to review xxxtentacion ended his career

The question I always have with this is, when is a tipping point reached? How many crimes, of what degree of severity, does it take until you're no longer dealing with an artist accused of a crime, and are now dealing with a criminal who happened to record a popular song? And shouldn't one's "coverage" or "critical engagement" be shaped accordingly? If you're writing about a performer who's in prison for rape, is he a rapist or a musician? And, to be frank, who the fuck cares if his music's any good? He raped someone!

mmmm, i'm not sure it's about ceding the ground to uncritical coverage. the artists drive the clicks, and what gets the clicks is anything that touches on the readers' favorite brands of the moment. what one actually says about those things doesn't matter, hence prevalence of clickbait.

while i would appreciate a concerted effort by the people with the power to do so (who are, by and large _not_ the writers) to not use that power to promote abusive and hateful people, in practice it seems like those people are more interested in using that power to cover up their own abuses.

it occurs to me more and more that perhaps "THE ALGORITHMS" is a classic bit of misdirection, that the way virality works is more comprehensible if one assumes that there is, in fact, a man behind the curtain, a tiny little Mechanical Racist inside the machine.

rich juzwiak had a good (well, good, but also depressing as all hell) about how allegations tended to increase streams of artists’ songs, despite removing songs from playlists and the like. audiences want this shit

- addressed above, you must only talk about The Music. it doesn't matter if the artist is a world-class lyricist, operating at the absolute peak of their songwriting ability, and that listeners are deeply devoted to them because of their lyrics. that isn't part of The Music, despite the musician putting it there and it being central to how it's received. the only meaningful thing is how angular the guitars are, that one song has synths, and the fact that one song is in C minor. they are all you are allowed to talk about, otherwise you will be mocked.

This sounds like a weird stance for anyone to take. Even academic music theorists are generally expected to discuss how the music relates to text when they analyse music with words.

you would think so, and yet the amount of hand-waving freakoutery about critics NoT tAlKiNg AbOuT tHe MUSIC is immense

So is it a grievance with not talking about the music enough as well, or that the music is "all you are allowed to talk about"?

i mean, it makes sense to me. i don't think art and morality are intrinsically linked. there's a lot of "should" in there, and i'm a moralist so i put a lot of "should" in there as well - i don't think people _should_ go out of their way to promote wood's cartographical theories, regardless of how interesting and meritorious they are, because of his conviction for sexual abuse for a minor, but even though i'm probably more moralistic than most people, i'm not an absolutist. i listen to jerry lee lewis, even though there's pretty strong evidence that he murdered his wife and got away with it. why would i expect that someone else would stop listening to xxxtentacion because of what he did? there's no hard and fast rule one can apply that doesn't make use all, on some level, complicit, and without a hard and fast rule people will tend to act in accordance with their personal convenience. choosing not to listen to music i enjoy for moral reasons is pretty inconvenient, and that's without the "fuck you, i won't do what you tell me" reaction i have against anybody who tries to set themselves up as a moral arbiter over my personal choices.

i don't really think less of anybody for listening to xxxtentacion.

it's even a thing in theater criticism, a local theater critic here got a lot of shit for his teardown of a local production of Little Shop of Horror because he included the theater's pre-show braggadocio and questionable ethics leading up to the show and everybody screamed OMG THAT'S NOT RELEVANT, THAT'S OFF LIMITS

xpost

you would think so, and yet the amount of hand-waving freakoutery about critics NoT tAlKiNg AbOuT tHe MUSIC is immense

― like, I’m eating an elephant head (katherine)

who's doing the hand-wringing, though? when i hear that argument it tends to be from people like those faux-objectivists who are permanently outraged about the bias The Critics have against Dream Theater or, i don't know, Devin Townsend.

nobody shits on Devin Townsend on my watch

I do find the "I don't care about lyrics" stance really weird sometimes...understanding that great music can definitely overcome bad lyrics or sometimes the overall vibe and how they flow with music works even if it doesn't scan on paper....but it's still something that could be better or worse so isn't better if lyrics are better?

or like say "Heroes" by David Bowie's greatness is the soaring melody and the production but it's not like it would work if he was singing "we could be pandas, poo poo caca sundae"

xpost I think Dream Theater fans actually think their terrible lyrics are good and smart though

xp — so many examples; most recently someone on twitter who got no pushback was like “you can tell when a critic doesn’t care about the record when they only talk about the lyrics” when for me it is the exact opposite—if I engage with the lyrics it’s a sign that I have found a way in (and also, given how few PRs release lyric sheets, that I’ve been listening closely to know what the fuck they even are)

I'm not big on lyrics and tend to gravitate towards music that ascribes comparatively little importance to them, but my ears do perk up if something interesting is going on, and some genres interweave the words and the music to such a degree that I can't imagine dismissing the former outright (unless the lyrical material is so godawful you, as a sympathetic listener, are forced to tune it out completely in order to focus on sound for sound's sake).

itt: a palpable improvement to d bowie's song "heroes"

lyrics are obviously an iffy proposition in metal, depending on the subgenre, but good lyrics or even something that's not profound but at least sounds 'cool' lifts a song for me. but also the vowels and consonant sounds. like rap, lyrics might not always be good but they might 'sound cool' when said/sung, based on the intonation of the singer, vowels, consonants. i've had verses that I liked in songs sound not so good because I heard early versions where there were different words and a different set of vowels didn't hit my ears the same way.

double a-side featuring "Pandas" and Adam Ant's Save The Gorilla

But again, the people who complain about reviews only talking about the lyrics aren't necessarily saying they instead want it to only talk about the music, right?

As far as metal lyrics go, I was relistening to At the Gates's With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness this morning and its neo-Romantic pastiche holds up. 'Ever-Opening Flower' in particular is a great title, and not at all what you'd expect from a death metal lyricist.

Fair and balanced (without the square quotes) is what I want tbh.

xp

*scare, although I like the idea of square quotes.

that's one reason ATG fans are split between thinking Slaughter of the Soul is their greatest album and thinking SotS is where they sold out and that they were more interesting during The Red in the Sky is Ours days

But again, the people who complain about reviews only talking about the lyrics aren't necessarily saying they instead want it to only talk about the music, right?

whether they really do or not that’s what they claim

anyway sorry to hijack this with my personal pet peeve (I do think it’s harmful, though, in that it sidelines or misreads the most accomplished work of many lyricists, and also contributes to certain artists being deemed as more “political” because they’re the only ones whose lyrics get any serious attention)

the people who complain about reviews only talking about the lyrics aren't necessarily saying they instead want it to only talk about the music, right?

Speaking only for myself, when I complain that a review only talks about the lyrics (and I usually encounter this when reading about an indie rock or singer-songwriter album), it's because I take it as an implication that the music is not worth discussing, and that's not a problem for the reviewer — "it's indie rock, you and I and anyone else reading this knows what indie rock sounds like, right?" — there's a reinforcement of presumably shared musical values and a general cultural insularity going on there, where for me, if there's nothing musically original or surprising or preconception-challenging going on, that's a major flaw and deserving of exploration.

In other words, when a critic totally ignores the actual sounds going on behind the singer, it's a signal (to the reader, and to musicians) that the music isn't important — which in turn says that there's no reason to try to make the music more interesting, because the critics (who are viewed as an extension of the audience) won't care anyway.

I want to think we can agree that a piece that talks about the lovely melodies of Prussian Blue without once going into the subject matter is as unhelpful as a review that analyzes the lyrics of Babymetal without mentioning anything about what those lyrics sound like when presented as music.

"it's indie rock, you and I and anyone else reading this knows what indie rock sounds like, right?"

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Wednesday, January 22, 2020 8:34 AM (fifty-two minutes ago)

idk man if the guitars are fuzzy enough and the lyrics are sad enough that's what I'm showing up for y'know

unperson very OTM (I have complained, in the Pitchfork thread, about lyrics-only reviews -- or reviews that, at most, mention that the music is "brisk punk," or whatever -- and this gets to the heart of it).

Damn I wrote a really fuckin smart thing here and it was lost in a login snafu. Fuck me

New board description

Speaking only for myself, when I complain that a review only talks about the lyrics (and I usually encounter this when reading about an indie rock or singer-songwriter album), it's because I take it as an implication that the music is not worth discussing, and that's not a problem for the reviewer — "it's indie rock, you and I and anyone else reading this knows what indie rock sounds like, right?" — there's a reinforcement of presumably shared musical values and a general cultural insularity going on there, where for me, if there's nothing musically original or surprising or preconception-challenging going on, that's a major flaw and deserving of exploration.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Wednesday, January 22, 2020 11:34 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

the opposite, however, also applies. when a review does not talk about the lyrics or does so in one cursory mention -- shockingly common on singer-songwriter albums, where generally speaking they are quite important -- it is an implication that the lyrics are not worth discussing, and that's not a problem for the reviewer -- "they're words, you and I and anyone else reading this know they're there, right?" and this, in my experience, is far more common, and certainly more common as a proportion of coverage

when a review does not talk about the lyrics or does so in one cursory mention ... this, in my experience, is far more common, and certainly more common as a proportion of coverage

You and I live on different planets.

I mean it; I have never read a review of a conventional pop-rock album and not encountered in-depth discussion of the lyrical subject matter, usually as it relates to the artist's personal life. Now, the writer may not go track by track, or discuss rhyme scheme — they usually focus on one or two songs and pull a few lines out in order to jackhammer their interpretation of What This Means For Us At This Moment into the reader's skull — but that's far more consideration than is given to the actual sounds.

if there's nothing musically original or surprising or preconception-challenging going on

always good to judge music using your own ignorance as a metric lol

honestly that's probably the most harmful strand of criticism ever - that music must be new or original or surprising or "innovative" in order to be good worth talking about - but this is a truism of critical discourse that predates modern music.

I take it as an implication that the music is not worth discussing, and that's not a problem for the reviewer — "it's indie rock, you and I and anyone else reading this knows what indie rock sounds like, right?" — there's a reinforcement of presumably shared musical values and a general cultural insularity going on there

totally agree about this tho fwiw

like, for instance, not to pick on this reviewer, they were just the second google result (the first was me), but my favorite album of 2019 was ladytron's self-titled. it also has a lot to say about apocalypse, trauma, human nature, etc. not once does this reviewer engage with any of it at all. not even for one word! you'd think it was instrumental!

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/feb/17/ladytron-ladytron-review-sixth-album-sepultura

Οὖτις and i both abt to be startled that we strongly agree on something lol (= how damaging the critical over-focus on formal originality as a necessary value is)

so i'm going to work in a niggly disagreement to restore the balance: i don't think this kind of badness predates modern music bcz i think its arrival is a key marker of "modernity" as an issue

I have to agree with unperson that, ime, critics/reviews at least of the Pitchfork variety spend far, far, far more time/words discussing lyrical content and meaning then the music itself. My sense is that this is because the average reviewer has insufficient musical education/vocabulary to discuss the music in any critically meaningful way. NB, I have no musical education/vocabulary.

Is it better to focus on what differentiates an artist's approach/identity/style rather than how "original" they are? Or do you all see that as the same thing? I don't.

^^ this is what most people actually mean when they say "original"

another example is a record I didn't like exactly, but bat for lashes' lost girls is a great example.

natasha khan on the record: "With most albums I’ll start them as a film idea then write a script, a narrative or a story, then I’ll flesh out the soundtrack in my mind and that becomes the album." protip: if an artist writes an entire fucking screenplay around a record, then it's a sign that perhaps their lyrics are going to be pertinent to it. (source: https://www.nme.com/features/bat-for-lashes-2019-lost-girls-interview-spielberg-80s-2544844)

reviewers on the record: really do not engage with any of this much, besides quote a lyric or two and then move on

Lost Girls is not a bad example of another thing: an extremely good artist who releases an extremely good album that isn't given enough fair notice bc the artist isn't a hot new riser anymore, they're just consistently good. (this occurred w/the aforementioned Ladytron, too).

not like they're 100% ignored but their creative moves aren't given the same respect as others who have risen to a level or two above not in terms of artistic achievement but in terms of narrative.

i don't think this kind of badness predates modern music bcz i think its arrival is a key marker of "modernity" as an issue

fair point, I just meant it was a pretty old approach by now

yeah, that's a separate but related concern, in that after a certain point (often correlated with a certain age) nobody cares what you have to say anymore. and when you don't care what someone has to say, it's easier to engage with the part that doesn't involve listening to what they're saying

Is it better to focus on what differentiates an artist's approach/identity/style rather than how "original" they are? Or do you all see that as the same thing? I don't.

― Evan, Wednesday, January 22, 2020 10:26 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^ this is what most people actually mean when they say "original"

kinda think this is still a trap and basically bullshit (also very rockist lol) Where are the poptimists to praise the 00s faceless factory-generated material top 40 shit or bubblegum or brill building etc etc. For ex. asking what differentiates the 1920 Fruitgum Company from the Archies (or the Ronettes from the Crystals) is not really relevant or useful imo.

xps

Is it better to focus on what differentiates an artist's approach/identity/style rather than how "original" they are? Or do you all see that as the same thing? I don't.

I meant the former and not the latter, so that's on me.

For ex. asking what differentiates the 1920 Fruitgum Company from the Archies (or the Ronettes from the Crystals) is not really relevant or useful imo.

I think that's very relevant and useful (and important)!

after a certain point (often correlated with a certain age) nobody cares what you have to say anymore.

this is due to fucked up industry dynamics that are driven by what markets/age groups buy music and pay attention to critical discourse. The grind of pop music in capitalism is attuned to successive generations of youths opening up their wallets.

It's totally relevant/interesting to talk about what differentiates the Ronettes from the Crystals!

right, yeah, plus the general darwinistic survival-of-the-absolute-most-fittest nature of the industry (and in ladytron's case specifically, as a reuslt turning to upstart companies like pledgemusic that might end up fucking you over)

rmde sometimes the Ronettes *were* the Crystals!

xps

For that matter, what differentiates the 1920 Fruitgum Company from the 1910 Fruitgum Company?

and sometimes the Crystals were Darlene Love and the Blossoms! My point was the "identity" and the originality thereof of the respective groups were essentially an illusion, a marketing ploy.

xps

10 years, presumably.

xps

this is due to fucked up industry dynamics that are driven by what markets/age groups buy music and pay attention to critical discourse. The grind of pop music in capitalism is attuned to successive generations of youths opening up their wallets.

And further proves that the industry doesn't know anything. If record labels had any fucking brains they'd stop wasting their time on teenagers who stream everything with free Spotify and YouTube accounts, and devote their vast marketing muscle to people in thelr late 30s and early 40s who grew up buying CDs and never broke the habit.

A short Twitter thread:

if I could give other music writers any advice it would be to be as concrete as possible when describing music. I read so much writing that’s super-impressionistic but never contextualizes those impressions

— jes skolnik (@modernistwitch) January 22, 2020

lol @ Ned reply

I do like how I keep turning up examples of artists whose lyrics are totally or near-totally ignored in reviews and yet still can’t convince people the phenomenon exists and is common

I do like how I keep turning up examples of artists whose lyrics are totally or near-totally ignored in reviews and yet still can’t convince people the phenomenon exists and is common

You're absolutely right; that 185-word newspaper blurb didn't mention Ladytron's lyrics at all, which is both surprising and (based on what you've said about their music - I know nothing about them) not good. But, you know, it's 185 words. If the paper wanted serious analysis, maybe they should have given the writer 500 words to sprawl around.

If record labels had any fucking brains they'd stop wasting their time on teenagers who stream everything with free Spotify and YouTube accounts, and devote their vast marketing muscle to people in thelr late 30s and early 40s who grew up buying CDs and never broke the habit.

Passed by this on my mid-morning walk:

https://i.imgur.com/EOk4AtX_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

Despite any issues I have with modern music crit, this discussion - especially Katherine's write-in topics above - really makes me empathize with those in the critical profession.

For most of us on this board, if we ever write anything music-related, it's limited to social media posts (like this, Twitter, or other locale), and always about a song or album with which we have a strong emotional connection, as why else would we be compelled to write about it? Whereas the critic's livelihood is dependent upon their competently crafting a readable, click-inducing description of a record that most likely falls within the "Yeah I like many of these songs" through "Track 3 is pretty good, I guess" realm, with the rare song (and even rarer album) eliciting any intense emotional response (or so I would assume).

It's quite easy to tweet or write a paragraph about a song I really love (or strongly dislike), but pretty damn difficult to say "Featuring several tunes at a consistently-moderate tempo, the decent melodies and in-no-way-overused chord progressions provide a workable backdrop to lyrics that venture into cliché only part of the time", but to not say that, exactly, because you may have written something similar within the mst-recent review you were assigned.

this is due to fucked up industry dynamics that are driven by what markets/age groups buy music and pay attention to critical discourse. The grind of pop music in capitalism is attuned to successive generations of youths opening up their wallets.

And further proves that the industry doesn't know anything. If record labels had any fucking brains they'd stop wasting their time on teenagers who stream everything with free Spotify and YouTube accounts, and devote their vast marketing muscle to people in thelr late 30s and early 40s who grew up buying CDs and never broke the habit.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Wednesday, January 22, 2020 1:54 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

unperson beat me to it, but yeah, it's weird that music continues to be marketed to a demographic that, err, doesn't buy anything. Meanwhile you can go to the Steve Hoffman forums and read about people between the ages of 30 and 65--most with disposable income, from the looks of it--still compulsively buying every new Beatles / King Crimson / Zappa / Miles Davis / Grateful Dead reissue / remaster / box set released. I haven't been to RSD in years, but I don't imagine it brings out a lot of people born after 2000. I guess I could be wrong about that, but I'd be interested to hear from RSD participants here (or even store owners and employees?)

xp I don’t necessarily know if the “this record is pretty OK! 6/10” reviews contain many of the egregious things in the poll though, largely because if you’re not doing much you’re not doing much objectionable

Other (All of the above)

re "should reviews talk about lyrics more or less" - important to remember that a lot of pile-on criticism of music reviews in this era is coming from stans who are just looking to complain that the review falls short of 100% hero worship, and will search for any supporting reason for their complaint with about the same level of logic, coherence and credibility as a republican senator.

Whereas the critic's livelihood is dependent upon their competently crafting a readable, click-inducing description of a record that most likely falls within the "Yeah I like many of these songs" through "Track 3 is pretty good, I guess" realm, with the rare song (and even rarer album) eliciting any intense emotional response (or so I would assume).

It's quite easy to tweet or write a paragraph about a song I really love (or strongly dislike), but pretty damn difficult to say "Featuring several tunes at a consistently-moderate tempo, the decent melodies and in-no-way-overused chord progressions provide a workable backdrop to lyrics that venture into cliché only part of the time", but to not say that, exactly, because you may have written something similar within the mst-recent review you were assigned.

I feel like most critics are critics in part because they don't simply categorise their reactions as "passionate like", "passionate dislike" and "bored now".

Most stuff that falls outside of the first two categories reflects some combination of "good" and "flawed" (in varying proportions), and exploring how that combination works is pretty much the bread and butter of music reviewing: "What do I feel like this music is trying to do? What would improve it? How does it fall short of x other thing which it reminds me of? Even if it falls short there, is it doing something interesting or different in some other way that is at least worth noting and could turn into something worthy of passionate like if approached differently?"

Answering these questions (and questions like them) can produce really thoughtful, interesting and well-written reviews, but probably mostly only for people who are into review-writing as review-writing rather than as a consumer guide; near everyone else is going to struggle to see the value of reading that kind of extended discussion, especially if it's preceded by a "5.8" in bold type font four sizes larger.

focusing on lyrics only bugs me if it should be obvious to anyone that lyrics have always played a strictly functional role to the act in question, like that recentish HEALTH pan (unless of course they're so awful that it serves to take you out / detract from listening)

for what its worth, you can put me on the side that felt it was irresponsible & inappropriate to "deplatform" actual critical writing on xxxtentacion. and while hypocrisy abounds from the ppl who propagated that view then proceeded to continue ranking nas albums on twitter even after he was exposed for abusing kelis, id like to focus on the more pertinent issue that i think there should be a tremendous amount of pressure on the critic writing about xxx to do it the 'right way'--is in, a way that contextualizes his crimes and his audience and doesn't let him off the hook and indicts the various ways in which the industry, including the critical press, abdicate their jobs. It should be a situation where critics are in a difficult place bc it is a difficult conversation, but just opting out feels like a cop out, as much as "just write about how the music sounds" is offensive. It might seem like threading an insane needle but i would think anyone who has a beat that includes xxx's music & its fans should feel *some* obligation to inform, contextualize, write for the fucking adults who come into this situation with their 13 year old kid doing his hair like xxx's but have no context or understanding of why their kid is obsessed with this.

a lot of ppl took it to be a kind of uncritical mania around a cult figure, and bc they could out of hand dismiss the music as art (unlike w Nas, who is granted all kinds of respectability and prestige which protects him while he batters someone), the conversation sinks into a kind of condescending audience pathologization. This is not the same as giving those kids a pass; it's about giving them agency. The fact that they choose to support, or to avoid conversations about, this abuse, *should be a critical conversation,* especially between adults on the internet who are supposedly having critical conversations.

i do think part of the reason the conversation happened the way it did is because at the time, critical writing was still seen as THE gatekeeper for popular music, post Odd Future, ASAP Rocky, etc., and people didn't yet realize that streaming and YouTube had completely overrun this little NY based music writer fiefdom from the blog era that had previously provided a backstop. I think people are less concerned w someone writing about a popular problematic streaming artist now, bc writers are perceived as having very little power ... although that also unfortunately means they can produce content under much less heavy scrutiny

i should also mention, it doesn't surprise me that very few critical writers took it upon themselves to thread that particular needle re: xxx criticism, and that while i say they "abdicated their responsibility," i can completely understand why: the upside of a few hundred bucks for an xxx thinkpiece is not worth its obvious downside which could ultimately involve marginalizing the writer if they don't handle the particular surgery w complete focus ... the incentives for music writers are completely broken so i don't blame most of the writers who were pitched on writing 'that piece' and turned it down ... i was one of them

one of the conversations that could have happened around it obv would incorporate the uncritical stan discourse tim mentions above

focusing on lyrics only bugs me if it should be obvious to anyone that lyrics have always played a strictly functional role to the act in question, like that recentish HEALTH pan (unless of course they're so awful that it serves to take you out / detract from listening)

― bold caucasian eroticism (Simon H.), Wednesday, January 22, 2020 6:31 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this ... may not have been the biggest problem in a review that said it was insensitive to marginalized people because it used the word "Slaves"?

The problem is that there is so much “discourse”—mostly in the form of low effort social media noise—that critics don’t have the space to properly contextualize things, they’re either “platforming” it or they’re not. This is a very dumb era.

The current situation is only superficially more democratic. Bad faith readings of reviews are just rampant, the space for reflection is narrow, and ultimately the loudest people win. I always had problems with the writing you people did, but with criticism and even blogs as marginalized as they are today, I feel kind of lost—the situation is anarchic.

this ... may not have been the biggest problem in a review that said it was insensitive to marginalized people because it used the word "Slaves"?

lmao fuck I forgot about that

deej you're otm but you're also otm on how insane that thread is to needle, takes a really capable writer

the writing about R Kelly in this regard (from the time between the original tape scandal and before more recent revelations) feels like from forty years ago.

speaking of which, cf. tom ewing's recent popular entry about "ignition (remix)"

yeah that was v good I thought

R kelly and xxx seem different to me. Xxx’s cult status—his “charisma” for his fans—is due to his grandiose self-pity. R kelly’s appeal feels less connected to his crimes

and if anything the disconnect btwn the mirth of the material and the horror of his actions makes it impossible to consider revisiting his stuff at length (to me anyway)

completely disagree treesh. i actually think there's a pretty good parallel there ... r kelly's music and his crimes feel closely twinned, and the fact that so much of society was drawn to that dynamic, a society where calling ppl "daddy" is en vogue, feels like an actually pretty relevant subject. Dont get me started on the r kelly thing! the thing that is wild is that the music was literally *always about what ppl now say they realize it was about*, its not like the music changed! yet no one wants to really think about what that means

i like tom's piece also fwiw although i get the idea that praising an 'r kelly piece' for its complicity many years late, even one as thoughtful & correct (?) as tom's, feels like not enough at some level ? idk i think the conversations about this now lead to this increasingly prominent sense that ppl finally realize maybe contemporary society & its structures are broken

like i think w xxx what was missing post BLM was this sense among a lot of white ppl that, you know, "well the legal system can handle that, ill just do the music," bc there's more awareness that the legal system is not really a rock solid ethical foundation from which to feel like an artist is getting his just due, esp when the artist is who he is, and when the victims are who they are

vs in the r kelly situation where im sure a lot of ppl justified it as like, well the courts should take care of that

basically i guess what im sayng is like, i want, there is an *urgent* need for, smart criticism about these artists, but also if you ask me what writers in music critic world I think can handle those conversations im like oh god

yeah r kelly's victims came from a group of people that for too many fans and writers has been historically easy to ignore.

for what its worth, you can put me on the side that felt it was irresponsible & inappropriate to "deplatform" actual critical writing on xxxtentacion. and while hypocrisy abounds from the ppl who propagated that view then proceeded to continue ranking nas albums on twitter even after he was exposed for abusing kelis

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40)

idk this sounds tu quoque af to me

aside from this i think you're pretty otm though. coming back to this thread after hearing about the "american dirt" twitter shitstorm today is interesting!

the American Dirt thing is frustrating because while I agree it is stunningly ill-conceived in concept, exploitativeness, etc. and shouldn’t have seen publication; there is a coalescing consensus that it is also poorly written based on really unconvincing evidence. “it has sentence fragments” — who gives a strunk and fuck, it’s 2019; that review singling out that one quote about fish hooks pulling a face into a pained expression, which is actually a rather striking image by itself

i haven't and won't read the book, which might disqualify me from saying anything meaningful about it, but i don't get the sense that anybody else who is talking about it is letting a little thing like that get in the way.

it's frustrating because everything gets reduced to individual morality, any complaining about what a fucked-up situation it is that this lady gets a million dollars and an oprah book club deal and film options out of the gate while people who have lived through the things she has meticulously researched are kept invisible and silent... somehow, through the magic of The Discourse, that turns into this random woman being a reincarnation of satan. that's all anybody seems to be capable of hearing or understanding, people howling about outrage culture and ya twitter and those ladies in portland who dared to open a taco truck. i feel bad for the shit that writer is getting, but not too bad, because she does, after all, have a million dollar book deal and a lot of people who love her book and an oprah endorsement and people fighting for film options. i probably feel worse for anybody trying to tell their story who isn't being listened to or heard. that's a more relatable problem to me personally.

No idea what u guys are talking about now lol

rhythm is a dancer

idk this sounds tu quoque af to me

Fwiw i get that from one angle but i think it’s also saying something abt who the identity of the fan of the artist is who’s been accused & how that shapes the relative tolerance ppl have for artist x y or z

Wrt Crystals/Ronettes, isn't it really the originality/auteurism of Phil Spector that we celebrate and value there, such that the possible interchangeability of the groups actually supports this?

the fact that hitchcock is praised as an auteur doesn't mean that "the birds" would be unchanged if tippi played rod taylor's role and vice versa -- even if you treat the musicians as "mere instruments", the wrecking crew couldn't have been switched out for idk the shadows

Ethnomusicologists traditionally do not privilege orriginality or distinctive individual greatness but that is not approach that lends itself to criticism and evaluation of individual works at all.

xp

Dont get me started on the r kelly thing! the thing that is wild is that the music was literally *always about what ppl now say they realize it was about*, its not like the music changed!

feeling this, also feeling bad about the impulse to both do a superior dance and shout "FINALLY" whenever someone writes a "maybe I was wrong about R. Kelly" piece

I agree 100%, mark, and I probably would even regard the Wrecking Crew guys as great original artists. I thought Shakey's point was that the paradigm of originality or individualism is useless when considering groups like the Crystals or Ronettes, esp as the former was a bit of a revolving door anyway, although I may not be following everything that's going on here. I have trouble imagining a kind of criticism qua criticism that does not value the originality or distinctiveness of individual artists or works. As I said, an ethnomusicological sort of approach focusing on tradition and culture is the closest thing I can think of

an ethnomusicological sort of approach focusing on tradition and culture is the closest thing I can think of

I would love to read an ethnomusicological/folk-tradition-focused piece on hardcore (the knuckle-walking punk variant, not the techno variant). Sure, there's room for stylistic individuality, but so much of the music is about the community talking to itself (all those songs about brotherhood and "the scene") and enforcing norms, musical and otherwise.

i took shakey's point to be closer to "who exactly is making decisions with regard to the relevant stock company and/or theatrical troupe? and what kinds of decisions are they making?"

a point to be made abt Interchangeable Pop™ is that final decisions aren't *necessarily* being made by anyone directly "musical" at all -- and the musicians (including spector early on?) have to scramble to work around them -- and this is always part of the story. but some label owners were actually very good at making musical decisions (ertegun, clive davis, neil bogart etc) even if they weren't themselves always technically musical, and THIS is also part of the story. the "auteur" is a contested and a moving target, and all these stories are also always a story abt shifting power dynamics in a larger collective, and abt the limits but also the unrealised potential within that collective. (the strands being voted for tend each to privilege a different species of story…)

recall the producer had formerly largely been the guy who hired and fired the orchestra (cf the same-named role in movies), not the guy who wrote the charts and twiddled the knobs: the arranger and the engineers were among those hired and fired, senior perhaps bcz not quite so interchangeable as second fiddle. except around the early 60s producer and arrnager and engineer roles begin to coalesce somewhat, or anyway move around in unexpected ways (probably partly bcz the music no longer always required sheet music, and also bcz programming electoronic instruments was its own specialist area -- think of stevie wonder's projects with the TONTO guys). some extremely musicianly people are also expert business ppl and organisers -- other musicians depend on their respective fixers for all this. there really *isn't* a one-size-fits-all approach -- you respond to the specifics in front of you. "rockism" -- insofar as its a useable word at all any more -- is pointing to a particular family within these various structures and insisting in advance that it's the one the best music always comes out of. a second point to be made abt Interchangeable Pop™ is that as a structure it is entirely capable of (now and then, for a time) delivering music as good as if not better than any of the other structures. until it isn't. in fact any of the structures is (now and then, for a time… maybe). until it isn't.

"Fwiw i get that from one angle but i think it’s also saying something abt who the identity of the fan of the artist is who’s been accused & how that shapes the relative tolerance ppl have for artist x y or z

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40)"

yeah, i agree, but i do also think it's an obstacle to holding anybody at all accountable for their actions, and right _now_ that's my primary concern. it's a situational concern, though, and i might feel differently a couple years from now (or i might not!)

"feeling this, also feeling bad about the impulse to both do a superior dance and shout "FINALLY" whenever someone writes a "maybe I was wrong about R. Kelly" piece

― totally unnecessary bewbz of exploitation (DJP)"

i wouldn't be, it's a fucking miracle whenever somebody changes their mind in this manner

Other: music criticism lol

hey keep it on ile

shit, something is f'd up on my SNA

totally fair brad!

So far: 261 messages and only two Twitter embeds itt. I rest my case.

I would love to read an ethnomusicological/folk-tradition-focused piece on hardcore (the knuckle-walking punk variant, not the techno variant). Sure, there's room for stylistic individuality, but so much of the music is about the community talking to itself (all those songs about brotherhood and "the scene") and enforcing norms, musical and otherwise.

yeah me too - it seems like a beast that never changes, it's hermetically self-perpetuating. individual artists and how "original" they are are sort of irrelevant. I think a similar approach is useful/more interesting for a lot of enduring subgenres and subcultures.

mark s speaking a lot of wisdom upthread as well :)

:0

Yeah, good post.

Sure, there's room for stylistic individuality, but so much of the music is about the community talking to itself (all those songs about brotherhood and "the scene") and enforcing norms, musical and otherwise

digression, but i was chuckling about this recently w/r/t a recent-ish phenomenon of hardcore bands in my area being promoted/advertised as "surf punk" despite being sounding p hardcore-by-the-#s, and realizing it was bc they occasionally played riffs on one string rather than chords, and to many ppl who are just ultra steeped in that sound to the exclusion of all others anytime a hardcore band plays a single notes rather than a chord theyre like "whoa, what is this the ventures? surfs up!"

what if they played riffs... on TWO strings

Whoa there Paganini.

"prog punk"

but yeah booming post from mark s, great points

mark s is an ever-eloquent and insightful post-boomer. ;)

Too much going on here to respond to everything but Re: Jes Skolnik twitter thread and music theory/terminology.
One of the functions of criticism traditionally has been to circulate ideas and perceptions. And frequently this is realized by inventing new vocabulary and repurposing existing words to define or shape those concepts.
"Hardcore techno" and "hardcore rap" may be seen as 'rockist' in that they draw an implicit comparison to "hardcore punk". Just applying the language of rock criticism effectively subordinates these forms to rock.
I can't really know, but it seems crucial to the trajectory of rap and hip hop that its artists and critics developed a language for discussing it and redefined existing terms.

And actually, quite a few disparate ideas in this thread refer to some dynamic of domination/subordination. I'm not sure I buy into the perception of critics as gatekeepers. The way I see it, they've served really effectively as part of a continuum between artists and their audiences. They put forward theories that help audiences to decode artworks and spur on the creation of new work at the same time. This has afforded them a power to steal autonomy and meaning from artists at times, so quite a few artists have developed acute self-critical reflexes (which shapes the creation of new work, etc).

Maybe I'm out of touch. But the major crisis in criticism I see is that this dynamic has broken down?

"Hardcore techno" and "hardcore rap" may be seen as 'rockist' in that they draw an implicit comparison to "hardcore punk". Just applying the language of rock criticism effectively subordinates these forms to rock.

i don't believe the term "hardcore" for the style of dance music emerging out of the rave culture in the late 80s/early 90s has any relation to hardcore punk

etymology of "hardcore" predates punk considerably - originally referred to unemployables/undesirables/criminals and then to pornography

although tbf he did say implicit and not explicit

Just applying the language of rock criticism effectively subordinates these forms to rock.

best throw out the rest of language then because

good morning!

I wish I'd been participating.

dunno if I've anything to add :(

The number one song in the country features a rapper putting a $10,000 bounty on George Zimmerman, but def keep saying that lyrics or politics have no place in music writing...

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

def keep saying that lyrics or politics have no place in music writing...

Has anyone here said this?

Nope

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

specific user such as imago

Our focus group has spoken. Condé Nast, take heed!

run it with the "I left out ‘this review is in fact about my own, riveting neuroses’ on purpose." in, u coward

I did what I could, Rhonda.

That's a fun thread. I'll answer before reading.
- From the list, socio-political context, hate pitchfork and unknownest of the unknowns.
Others
- Was 2015 a better year for music than 2003 ?
- I like mindless fun and my fascist narrow shit taste is called poptimism
- Tokenism / artifical elitism

the times they are a changing

- Was 2015 a better year for music than 2003 ?

Agree that 'Ain't what it used to be' should've been an option. Extra points when said hot take is expressed by teenagers.

oh for the days before "ain't what it used to be" arrived to harm us

Precisely!

"In Hesiod's version, the Golden Age ended when the Titan Prometheus conferred on mankind the gift of fire and all the other arts"

my personality is that i hate fire and all the other arts

Lol. Raymond Williams to thread!

Tbf the Ancient Greeks were no Mesopotamians and the Neolithic was no Upper Paleolithic.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/21-lY6bp3JL._SX312_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaHEusBG20c

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41ZITqQku7L._SX338_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

paleolithic is made up iirc

https://ancientpatriarchs.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/raiderlostark.jpg?w=672&h=372&crop=1

https://ancientpatriarchs.wordpress.com/

i call this piece "wave goodbye to the good old days"

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/mt/2014/10/cave021_wide_7b07da56ffd96885f75d8750968c5c5eddba8039_s40_c85/lead_720_405.jpg

If you weren't weaned on vulture-bone flutes and rotating cubes, I don't want your opinion on music.

Lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BD1rAzJgzI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKBDVJXNtBY

If you weren't weaned on vulture-bone flutes and rotating cubes, I don't want your opinion on music.

― pomenitul

fez didn't even come out until i was 36!

Pure, pure vulture-bone

That’s a flute I’d like to own