Who Are The Worst Pop Journalists?

Nigel Williamson (Uncut mainly) can be embarrassing - his Shelby Lynne articles and reviews were especially fawning - but I get the feeling his heart is in the right place.

Charles Shaar Murray is someone I've always felt is fairly dismal - clearly living in the past.

Music that was crafted to be popular, similar to Aerosmith's constant releasing of the same monster ballad song under a different title, bores me. Radiohead bores me. Smashing Pumpkins bore me. Pearl Jam bores me (well, I kinda liked that "wish I was a christmas tree" song for some reason). Bands (or should I call them "productions"? Or possibly "brands"?) like this are so polished and calculated, whatever spark of sincerity the songs might have started out with are ironed out like wrinkles. I hear more of interest in certain midi files.

Dave Marsh always gets on my nerves with his Bruce Springsteen worship and ranting. Far too obsessed with meat and potatoes American rock and music being authentic. Take a chill pill, grandad.

Paolo Hewitt is obsessed with the rock and roll mythology of his subjects, and has a pathetic urge to prove to readers how good a friend he is with his subjects (see any of his articles on Oasis, Weller, etc.). And of course, anyone who has ever called themselves the Cappucino Kid (even in jest) deserves to be dragged through the streets.

Gerry Thackray/the Legend!/Everett True: No matter what name he goes by, his writing is and has always been uniformly awful. His single- minded obsession with old school indie schmindie c86 stuff was sad enough, but his writing got *even worse* when he "discovered" grunge and started pretending to be American. A particularly sad artefact pretending to be relevant in his current writing.

The entire staff of the Melody Maker, late 90's - 2001: No kids, the Offspring and Limp Bizkit were not "the coolest thing ever, duuudes!". Whether they sincerely believed the sychophantic nonsense they were writing about boring rock bands or whether it was a cynical attempt to pander to The Kids, the fact remains that it was worst rock writing EVER. Dumb and patronizing, without even the slightest clue about coming up with original ideas or opinions. Even Kerrang came off as witty and acerbic in comparison (especially since they were covering the same bands). Melody Maker coming to an end is not enough: these writers need to come up before some kind of writing crimes tribunal.

I might add more later...

Very few journos annoy me. But to pick one in each category:

Tom Cox - The last 20 years of music are worthless; 70s power pop and the Wondermints is where it's at. Like Ian MacDonald minus brains, insight, taste and excuses. This type of journo is at least fun to dislike.

Steve Sutherland - Want a predictable angle on pop? Uncle Steve will provide.

Nick Duerden - obscure Q journalist and the very definition of 'plodder'.

2. 1970s - Charlie Shaar Murray. Fuck OFF grandad! pube headed public school nonce dresses in black leathers, affects sardonic, knowing grin and keeps whispering to you that Jimi was the best musician of the 20th century. He must die an agonising death.

3. now - Stephen Jelbert. Independent music critic and ex-member of hopeless indie bodgers the Family Cat. His life is virtually a textbook of how to choose the lame option. Plus he has no taste.

Feels good to have got those off my chest! David

Well, aside from that smug fool who writes for the AMG and pretends to know everything about anything -- "Neg Rasbett," I think the name is -- I would have to say that the world could function quite well without a local critic of note here in Orange County, Rich Kane. To his credit, he keeps an eye out for local bands at least trying to do something -- to his spectacular *non*-credit, if you are trying to do anything that isn't somehow grassroots punk/with the kids, you are a head-in-the-sand go-nowhere idiot. The type of man who rips into anyone exhibiting, say, shoegaze tendencies with the slam about 'how old that stuff is' without reflecting on how reliving 77 to 82 again and again just possibly might be a bit older. I oversimplify, but you can understand my frustration with his writings. Then there's Buddy Seigal, but he doesn't even try -- if it's a form of music created past 1975, it is not worth talking about in his universe, so he's easy enough to ignore.

I also agree with Nicole, MM when it turned into a colour A4 mag, was a hideous magazine, full of writers that had no idea about creative music. Indeed some of the most challenging releases scored 1 out of 5, whilst the music they championed was boring, safe and conformist scored over 4. There was no purpose to the magazine, no direction, no quality control, no effort in highlighting interesting music that an informed writer believed in that you follow from week to week.

One of the mistakes that both MM and NME is still making, is that they are not making enough effort to give writers space to promote, enthuse and build up their own perspectives on music. Instead we have isolated reviews, there is little to latch on to particular writer. I cant think of any current NME writer that I believe in, I noticed that Keith Cameron has defected to rival publishers EMAP at Mojo. He was probably fed up with NME.

The only way for NME to recover its sliding readership is to get rid of rigid, and uninspiring and stiffling approach to music, journalists and its readers. Loosen up and allow writers to have the space to communicate and connect. At the moment the NME both online and in print - is stiff, false, inpersonal and forced. It is a written as a collective whole brand, we very rarely get behind the thoughts of individual writers, what music are they particularly looking forward? and join- the-dots analytical overview pieces like Simon Reynolds did so well in the Melody Maker.

Who Are The Worst Pop Journalists? turns into the ethos as a whole maybe it is editorial policies and stiffling approach to individual writers - that turns NME journalists into identikit and useless dummies?

I hated Mark Sutherland, the last editor of MM in particular his naff simplistic editorials that each week got worse and daft believe that Oasis were the most relevant band ever. On another messageboard I saw that he has got the editor position at Later, you know that dull lifestyle magazine for 25+ brigade. Later is the grown up brother of lads mag Loaded.

Jim DeRogatis - Pompous, dictatorial motherfucker who used his principled exit from Rolling Stone for all the microscopic credibility it was worth.

Dave Marsh - Don't even get me started. Take a gander at the Deee-triot (techno) purism in his rockcritics.com interview for a concentrated dose of his chickenshittiness. The God that failed.

Joe Carducci -- Quasi-racist butterfly collector.

Actually, I think the signal to noise ratio in rock/pop writing isn't nearly as bad as it is in other journalisms, meaning it approaches about 1% or so, and the good stuff is getting easier and easier to find. BTW, does anyone know whether Joe Carducci is gay? For some reason I've always just assumed it. The best part of his book was his take on this very subject, incidentally.

Chalk me up as a Chuck Eddy hater, too. He writes well enough, but I don't like his con man angle. I'll still read him, unlike Marsh, but only to be my blood pumping.

Dave Marsh - his populist prejudice blinds him to a lot of great music, and his failure to get into punk and what came out of it means that his current tastes are an ugly mix of boomer pop (Sting/Henley/Raitt) and gangsta rap. But ! When he sticks to what he likes, he's thoroughly readable and knowledgeable, and he has written about music and politics better than any other critic I can think of, especially in his Rock & Rap Confidential newsletter. He's also written several of the great books : The Book of Rock Lists, The Heart of Rock & Soul, The Rock & Roll Confidential Report...

Greil Marcus - he does have a rather professorial tone at times, but he's far away from being the all-brains-no-soul type he's always being dismissed as - a lot of his writing, especially on Mystery Train and In The Fascist Bathroom is so vivid and better than anyone else at conveying why a song/performance/artist matters so damn much.

Robert Christgau - your mileage may vary according to your tastes, but for mine, no one is so reliable and so on-the-money, and covers so much musical ground, as well as being so knowledgeable. His writing can get pretty convoluted, but I find that I do get something out of trying to catch the references and meanings. I wish he wasn't so fond of hip buzzwords, though.

Chuck Eddy - something of a conman at times, but a great writer, and I love his 10000-puns-and-references-and-unexpected-connections-a-minute style. His persona is great, the nerdy suburban ex-army-officer family man, the furthest thing from rock criticism's usual hipster poses, and I highly approve of how he's constantly mentioning his friends and kids in his writing. I love his insistence that music should be fun and snappy and should adapt to your life and not the other way around.

Charles Shaar Murray - I don't know all that much about him, but I love that book about Jimi Hendrix - there should be more like it, analytical books that make connections and that are readable even when you don't care that much about the artist being discussed.

All right now, the ones I can't stand :

Anthony DeCurtis - not him in particular really, he's not that important, just the sort of dull lifeless Rolling Stone-type hack that he represents.

James Miller - wrote a book called Flowers In The Dustbin, taken seriously by people who should know better, that tries to make the point that no rock music worth a damn has been made since 1977.

the whole Steve Albini/Forced Exposure emotionally-stunted indie bully-boy school of writing, where penis length is measured by how much music you reject and how offensively you do it, making sure to throw as many insults around as humanly possible in the process.

In case there was any doubt that I'm a music geek ;)

Marsh's politics are his greatest gift and his most irritating limitation. His musings on the intersection of the music world and political life is frequently right on, and Marsh was the first writer to make me realize just how unavoidable issues of race and class are when discussing American culture. But he sometimes writes as if the *sole* reason rock music was put on this planet was to legitimize the experiences of the American underclass. (Now, yes, rock music *does* do this, and it's a good thing, too, but it's not the *only* thing rock is good for.) Any music that can't be described in these terms -- art-rock, David Bowie, techno, techno-pop, gawd, he even says some cryptically smug things about contemporary African music in The Heart of Rock & Soul -- he treats with suspicion when he doesn't actively hate it. Or else he has to perform some hilarious contortions to explain why it appeals to him, like when he says hears the Chicago blues in house music piano lines.

It's almost heartbreakingly hopeless for a person to demand that one's personal musical tastes correspond to one's political convictions so dogmatically, y'know?

Other issues. If you've ever had the perverse pleasure of reading his clueless, mind-bogglingly arrogant posts on rec.music.springsteen from a few years back, you'll see that when Marsh shoots from the hip, he has the unfortunate habit of aiming at his dick. Also, quoted from memory, his line about the Smiths, written circa '84: "You can take all those sad cafe ballads, and I'll take [Lionel Richie's] "Penny Lover." Meet you on the corner of the centuries, and we'll see which one has lasted."

Michael, I can see what you mean about Ian MacDonald's "lifelessness", and certainly his endless analyses of the specific chord sequences in Beatles or Nick Drake songs and his lofty disdain for contemporary music can be fucking ennervating. However, he *has* written well about post-1970 music - his Uncut piece on Chic was as good as anything I've read on Rodgers & Edwards, but I'd ultimately put him down as a great writer when sticking to what he knows, but all too often an excruciating one when he takes on what he doesn't know. Not too different from a great many boomers, then.

And I say good on him. He's one of the good guys.

No other band has had quite 7-dwarves-ish type names.

(Also, the editor of Salon's books section, which is pop culture if not pop music, anyway I forget her name, but I despise her from start to finish. She's pure knee-jerk hipster reaction.)

But I loathe Kathryn Flett. Don't think she writes about music much tho. Luckily

I'll tell you who's really shit, though - Johnny Rogan. Not strictly a journalist, but a shockingly inept writer nonetheless. Much of that Smiths book is toe-curling, and I just read his Wham! biog, which is snide and really, really excruciatingly written. On "Wham! Rap": "Even more irritating was the glee with which the rapper derided his flabbergasted antagonist, whose point of view remained unuttered." Lads throwing water around at The Final concert are variously described as "repugnantly oafish...salivating animals...bestial water-spitting louts..." existing in "the stench- filled sandpit of infantile degeneracy." But if you really want a laugh, read his slim volume on Van Morrison, which ranks alongside Tony Blackburn's autobiography "The Living Legend" as one of the most unintentionally hilarious books ever.

I love that! Tom, I don't know if FT is still looking for a catchphrase but if so I think you'd have a winner with that.

I hadn't even thought of Rogan, but looking back now I remember thinking how shockingly poor the Severed Alliance was. A good writer, no, even an average writer could have gotten a lot more out of the material he had. But he drew the most uninteresting conclusions in the most uninteresting way. But it was funny the way he was affronted by Morrissey's views on religion.

I associate Miranda Sawyer with Select when it was good, with the result that although I can't remember anything she wrote I see this attack on her as an attack on something I like. Bad.

I find it hard to think of music journos I really loathe, though I would be hard-pressed to remember any I particularly like either. Very few of them have writing styles distinctive enough. Back in my hey-day of Melody Maker reading (some vague point in the very early '90s) all the writers merged into each other for me, as with the exception of Everett True (a bad writer) they all seemed to have the same enjoyably pseudy outlook on everything.

I thought you said he WASN'T rock'n'roll! Get yer story straight!

The NME does have a couple of rather entertaining journos - I've always got a soft spot for Victoria Segal's reviews. Plus I could always pick a Johnny Cigarettes piece in the first two lines. Whatever happened to Mr. Cigarettes?

...............then think lower

At Christmas, record buying is at its height while records are at their worst. The top thirty is glutted with fortysomething family faves and re-releases, the album charts bloated with 'best ofs'. It's the least reliable of times to monitor the zeitgeist. But the presence of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit in the singles chart is an indicator of what was really going on this year and a harbinger of what's to come in '92. The fact that Nirvana's untamed, raging punk anthem could get to number seven, while its equally hardcore parent album Nevermind was recently the fourth-best selling album in America, signals a sea change in rock that's been brewing all year: the resurgence of alternative music.

Perhaps the three-month-long annexation of the Number One slot by Bryan Adams's Everything I Do was the last gasp of mainstream pop, of songs that milkmen can whistle. For all year, the charts have been ravaged by an onslaught of hardcore techno and acid house tracks, endlessly spewed out by rave culture, while noisy indie groups have been nibbling away at the edges of the Top Thirty. There were hits for groups like Curve, Ride, Blur, Pixies, Manic Street Preachers, and near-misses of Primal Scream, Chapterhouse, Slowdive, Teenage Fanclub, Lush, St Etienne and more.

1991 was also the year that REM, long-time rulers of college rock, finally crossed over. Their single, Losing My religion and album Out Of Time went top five in America. Thrash metal pioneers Metallica's eponymous album went straight in at Number One on both sides of the Atlantic. In the USA, the mobile rock festival Lollapalooza brought the disparate alternative audience to consciousness of its latent power. A bill of top alternative bands (Nine Inch Nails, Siouxsie, Living Colour, Butthole Surfers, headlined by Jane's addiction (the festival's instigator), drew a combined audience of over half a million kids at 26 shows across America. After its success there are plans for future Lollapaloozas, including a European version.

As underground music has gone overground, there's also been a subliminal pressure on mainstream artists to quit playing safe. Both Prince and Michael Jackson's new albums were recorded with one ear cocked to the harder dance sounds coming out of club culture, and incorporating elements from rap, house and swingbeat with debatable success. U2's Achtung Baby is harder and more experimental than any of their previous albums: according to producer Brian Eno the group were listening to indie avan t-gardists like My Bloody Valentine and The Young Gods while they were recording. David Bowie's Tin Machine is a (sorry) attempt to cop some of the abrasiveness of groups like Pixies and Sonic Youth. After the longest period of mainstream blandness in living memory (a sort of never-ending 1975) it seems that the goalposts have shifted.

All this is coming to a head as support swells within the record industry for the introduction of a chart for alternative music. The problem with the current indie chart is that because the criteria is whether a record is independently distributed it includes a lot of patently non-alternative acts (like Kylie Minogue). The proposed alternative chart would be determined according to genre, not means of distribution, and would include both indie groups and indie-sounding groups who happen to be signed to major labels. The biggest support for an alternative chart comes from major labels, keen to get more visibility for their alternative acts - who don't figure in the indie charts despite their popularity amongst indie consumers, but equally don't sell enough to impact on the pop chart. Many independent labels, however, feel they wouldn't be able to compete with the majors' marketing and distribution muscle, and are afraid their releases would get lower placings in the new chart, or be shunted into oblivion. Worried that they'll lose their only outlet to the public, these labels would prefer to keep the indie chart, despite all its flaws and anomolies.

The real problem with a genre-based chart would be defining 'alternative', a nebulous term at the best of times. This would be the responsibility of a body called Entertainment Research And Analysis, whose musicologists would admit records into the alternative chart when they felt it was appropriate. But there are many grey areas that defy easy codification. What would be the status of acts who are alternative in style, but long-established chart regulars (The Cure, Depeche Mode, Siouxsie, etc)? Would the alternative chart include the techno and house tracks released by indie labels that currently figure heavily in the indie chart? If it excluded these records as dance, how would it deal with indie bands who fused hi-tech dance with rock. The 'one instinctively knows what is alternative' approach depends ultimately on the cabal of experts being hip to the ever-shifting definitions and distractions of the volatile alternative scene.

Despite these quandries, there's a body of opinion that feels that an alternative chart can only give marginal music greater visibility. According to Adrian Wistreich (chairman of the Chart Supervisory Committee, which is currently debating the issue), an alternative chart would be far easier to sell to the media than the current indie chart. Probable licensers of an alternative chart include ITV's The Chart Show, and Radio One's evening slot with Mark Goodier. 'An alternative chart would be a punters' chart, reflecting taste. The current chart is an industry chart. Whether a record is owned by a major or an indie is irrelevant to most fans of this kind of music.'

The future of the British chart system looks set to follow the American model: there will always be a core, Top Of The Pops chart of all the best-selling records in every field, but there will also be more prominence for genre charts that pinpoint particular taste markets (alternative, dance, metal). The only worry is that the new alternative chart will mostly benefit the major labels, while further marginalising the maverick indies (who have traditionally taken risks and acted as unpaid talent scouts for the major labels).

Either way, the fact that there's such strong support for an alternative chart indicates that the major labels reckon there's money in more challenging music. The breakthrough of groups like REM, Nirvana, Jane's Addiction and Metallica suggests they're right. 1992 could be the year that the pop mainstream disappears, under the twin assault of hardcore techno dance and alternative rock.

Prize is a poke in the ribs.

Miranda Sawyer is however, poop. THE BESTEST, above everyone that j00 have mentioned is the person who writes the PITCHER CAPTIONS in Smash Hits. Arf!

Re: competition. mark s is right but can anyone be any righter?

Oh, and good call to Stevo on Paul Mathur, who by 1995 had possibly the worst taste on Melody Maker. Sadly I'm too young to remember him being as good as you mention.

On a slightly more slanderous note, scuttlebutt from a friend at an LA record company -- one of the Big Ones -- is that a few years back he tried to leverage said company to sign either his son or his nephew, I forget which, to a recording contract. Let us thank our lucky stars that disaster never occurred.

I wanted to punch Hilburn's face in after Joey Ramone died, his obituary was so stupid and mean-spirited and dismissive. Something like "U2 and R.E.M. and Pearl Jam liked Joey Ramone and for that reason alone we must acknowledge his importance in the grand scheme of things..."

He's even more square than Dave Marsh. Pathetic.

sarah vowell's attempts to write about pop music always grated on me for their 'all snark, no substance' ethos, although i don't know if she's doing music writing so much now.

i don't really get the appeal of ben greenman, who's a favorite son over at mcsweeney's and who writes about pop music for the new yorker. i find his writing uninspired and his insights pedestrian at best.

most of the 'mainstream indie' pubs - pitchfork, magnet, et al - are for the most part horrid, proof that once you give the former strivers outside of the mainstream any sort of respect they'll take liberties in wankery/establishments of canons that they'd decry if taken by those in that oh-so-despised middle of the road.

He loved Prince from "Controversy" and maybe even "Dirty Mind," though. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

No indeed.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

There's a concept, Hilburn and I. Bound to be better than My Dinner With Robert.

I don't know. Does she? Does anyone? Plese tell!

Rob Sheffield (a fine writer) manages to irk me every time I read anything he's written - just a turn of phrase, some snarky comment, SOMETHING. Even when I agree with him, he pisses me off. Eric Weisbard, especially during his "the end of Nirvana = the end of everything" phase, managed to push my buttons. I seem to have a pet peeve for folks who A) write end-of-year synopses for Spin (promoting their own agenda) or B) appear on VH1 & MTV specials (again, promoting their own agenda). (I exclude Mr. Douglas Wolk, of course, being the exception for his appearance on some long-forgotten VH1 show discussing Skip Spence. I think I even saw Sasha Frere-Jones on some show once as well. But Alan Light, Joe Levy, Ms. Powers, Mr. John Farley, Ms. Ali, anyone appearing on those VH1 "heavy metal" specials telling me what "rocks" - dear God, STOP IT!) (I think they are, actually - here's hoping.)

I will ask this question until someone brands my tongue with a hot rivet - why do you ask MUSIC JOURNALISTS about what constitutes ROCK STARDOM? You don't ask Alice Cooper about Stockhausen, do you?

You mean you've not gone into print elsewhere on the web with that very para? If not, it genuinely was deja vu and the very strongest case of it I've had in a while. Weird.

Hey, that sentence has now appeared at least twice in the last four posts. Or am I getting deja vu too?

i wonder, too, how much of a role editing and directives from above plays into some critics' brain-deadness. i know many people whose places of work have 'suggested' that they take a more 'populist' (spit ptui) angle -- ann powers was actually saying during interviews for her (terrible) book that she felt lucky at the times because she rarely had to dumb down.

I wondered what on earth Mark S was doing pressing Oasis's canonical Brit claims in 1988.

I wonder what the relevant text is?

(it wz called "look back in anguish" but that title wasn't my idea)

it wz a good idea badly realised, i think: god knows there wz enough rubbishy "celtic soul" polemic in the mag at that time, so i possibly veered against that deliberately

And anyone who works at NME, obviously.

give or take a decade or so of music journalism behind her... hse is pretty bad though...

funny to see the hate poured on hilburn and powers, not so funny to have one replace the other : (

oh wow look at sterling going at juzwiak! how strange.

(so long ago, though)

http://www.fuse.tv/contributors/david-shapiro

not clicking on that but i am glad this is now the thread for updates on this guy

i don't think david shapiro would claim to be a "Pop Journalist"

Just read the new shindig's article on Strawberry Alarm Clock and have just been rereminded why I can't stand that writer. There is just way too much self-regarding noise in the piece.
Tend to find that any time I bother reading that guy. Used to annoy me that he'd get given items I wanted to find out about to review in various psych mags and I'd just be reminded that the guy was in love with himself instead of finding out about the product.

Thank me very much oh wait.

what an odd thread to read over a decade (!) on