pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

I wonder if it's going to serve anyone's needs. I don't think a web- only publication can attract readers interested in Alanis Morissette and Kylie Minogue. To my knowledge, no one actually hunts down information about such artists. People just hear about it on tv and that's it. Let's give Pitchfork a few months, until the corporate contributors pull the plug.

QUOTE OF THE YEAR.

the first thing i thought (after, well, this is no all cure all the time) was that i wished they really had "sold out" (what the fuck, is this 93?), because maybe it would mean LESS GODDAMN PROG.

Well, the Albini thing practically is...

Makes sense, really.

Well, the Albini thing practically is... huh???

You have completed your learning of life's lessons. Now, you suck ass just like all the other bores before you. Kylie, Alanis? Whatever, bitch. I am sure you already have the defense mechanisms in place so, this will mean nothing but, another exercise in...oh, who cares. Looking elsewhere for reality...or maybe I can pretend to be a rubber worm like pitchwhore.com...here big fishie, look, I rounded 'em up for you in a arrel. A whole demographic!

Not Funny

Y'know sometimes they really are asking for it:

"White Williams issues a debut album layered with impeccable influences-- including Roxy Music, Beck, and T. Rex-- and a sense of calculated disaffection."

Well shit SIGN ME UP.

Yeah, that was a bit of a repellant blurb if I ever saw one.

Wait, are you saying that doesn't seem accurate?

I read 'White' as 'While' and thought "The Saul Williams album sounds like that?"

it's more that they used that as their _hook_

x-post

The front blurbs are always stripped/condensed summary descriptions from the review inside -- in this case

His songs are thin and languorous, with impeccable influences and the sort of calculated disaffection that comes from an MFA in design and a good weed connection.

omg that is horrorshow

The blurb >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the article quote

I assume that's an article quote; nabisco, if you just made that up then SHAME ON YOU.

why would a critic ever try to guess where a song comes from?

I'm more bothered by beck as impeccable influence

Wait, are you saying that doesn't seem accurate?

The description of "a sense of calculated disaffection", a combination of words that makes me imagine the shittiest band of all time, followed by "recommended" was repellant for me. I guess I like my disaffection to be natural, not carefully planned, so I would never recommend something like that.

Then again, I've never heard it so what do I know and so on.

b-but someone at pfork said "hm, how can we get people to read this review? I know! we'll mention the artist's impeccable influences and calculated disaffection! that'll reel 'em in!"

RIP satire etc

they could have collaged+mis-used _anything_ from the article, and they collaged+mis-used that

The White Williams album reminds me much more of late 10cc and Bread than of Roxy Music. That bit was like the classic "Let's over-hip our influences" review.

The description of "a sense of calculated disaffection", a combination of words that makes me imagine the shittiest band of all time, followed by "recommended" was repellant for me.

See, this sounds like the blurb WORKED for you -- i.e., efficiently let you know you would probably not like this act.

I agree, though, it looks kind of weird to have such a neutral-to-disparaging summary blurb on a recommended album.

I like how they gave the new Babyshambles, which is actually tuneful and a good all around album, a 4.0, but gave the first one, which is dreadful and hard to listen to / bloated, a 7.3,

Yeah, it was definitely TWICE as good as the new one. Fuckin' morons.

ugh, "impeccable influences" is really repulsive.

(xpost) was that a parody or are you really getting worked up about an internet score for babyshambles

He was worked up?

wait, i thought the grading scale was logarithmic. like 5 is twice as good as 4. somebody email ryan schreiber to find out.

shit, now i need to reevaluate all my purchases of the last five years.

It's actually modelled after the Richter Scale, hence the superlative designations of various well-reviewed albums as either "Reccomended," "Best New Music," or "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On."

> I just assume that most of their readers are old farts like me that check it a couple times a day for headlines and the occasional review.
> It has meant less and less to me over the years and if the content becomes difficult to access I just won’t bother.
> I can’t believe that youngsters know a pitchfork from a shovel.

When I was young, Rolling Stone was THE source for music criticism (there were plenty of others, many very good, but Rolling Stone was definitive). Pitchfork became the next generation's Rolling Stone. If "youngsters [don't] know ... pitchfork," then what is THE source for music criticism these days (or is there any at all)?

https://media.gq.com/photos/690b8ab2779939817f3463e8/master/w_1920,c_limit/RLD%20Anthony%20Fantano%20Web.jpg

xp to corrs - I don't necessarily have an issue with them figuring out a paywall, I get that it's probably coming at some point. but 1) the shady way they buried the lede re: only getting 4 reviews a month; 2) the focus on trying to turn it into a social media site annoys me; and 3) it's just harder to swallow paying for a corporation like Conde Nast than to a truly independent site like Aquarium Drunkard, Quietus or Stereogum.

I know it's not exactly apples to apples, but same reason why I try to buy music direct from an artist/label first, indie record stores second and avoid Amazon. if I'm forking out $$$ for it, I'd like to feel I'm aiding a community instead of a larger business' bottom line.

granted it launched yesterday but none of today's reviews other than the headline one (a three decade old apex twin record) has enough reader reviews to have a reader score. if this was a kind of give in to conde nast to maintain the cost of having multiple reviews a day. you have to wonder if it will backfire and becomes justification for cn to say they should only be reviewing the biggest releases.

idk the ASAP Rocky one has 39 comments already. Even if those people never log in again that's $200. It really will take like one stan army to convince their crew that it's worth spending $5 to tell a writer to fuck themselves

1. absolutely trash the forthcoming BTS album in a review
2. ??
3. profit

now see, when i applauded them last month for the pick that seemed to inspire discourse i didn't realize it was a pay to play scam.

(yes i know the comments section wasn't open at that point, but i have to think it and moves like it will be the standard going forward. jon otm basically.)

Will Challop For $$$

the future Pitchfork "canon" (for whatever that'll be worth) will be littered with 10.0 audience scores for mediocre to shitty albums from pop stars big enough to inspire legions of fans to pony up $5 to pump the score. the more I think about it, the more cynical this approach feels.

I wonder: how many subscriptions need to be sold before the subscriber revenue is greater than the revenue provided by free-with-advertisements visitors (before the pay wall?) like surely somebody did that calculation?

xpost Possibly. However right now the readers score for Life of a Showgirl is 3.8

would be fine with mad stans funding the site if a) as a non subscriber i can still read the reviews and b) as a non subscriber i do not have to see any of the reader generated content.

would be fine with mad stans funding the site if a) as a non subscriber i can still read the reviews and b) as a non subscriber i do not have to see any of the reader generated content.

― devvvine, Wednesday, January 21, 2026 10:47 AM (one hour ago)

If this creates a sytem where stans and haters flood the site with subscriptions (providing writers a better income), solely to fight it out in a parallel universe in which only they can see the results, while the rest of us can read reviews and features like we always did before, except those producing the content will be better paid?

Sounds like a win-win to me!

(providing writers a better income)

* - citation needed

xpost Except we can only read 4 reviews a month.

https://ericdharvey.substack.com/p/i-hear-everybody-that-you-know-is

For those who don't click:

Condé has spent the last few years hollowing out everything that once made Pitchfork unique, which I wrote about two years and three days ago. Jeremy Larson2 and his editorial staff have done a marvelous job keeping the ship afloat for the site’s reviews, but the suits have different aims: turning the site into a social media platform. This differentiates Pitchfork from other paywalled culture sites like Rolling Stone or Slate, and definitely sets it apart from the formerly good sites whose entire archives are torched by new ownership, like Uproxx (recently) and MTV.com (a few years ago). Most of the site’s best editors and contributors have launched Substacks or their own subscription sites, while Pitchfork is doing useless bullshit like publishing a bespoke zine with puffy celebrity interviews and turning its site into some Dr. Moreau-esque hybrid of Rate Your Music + Reddit + Letterboxd + Rotten Tomatoes.

I don’t care about my reviews being paywalled as much as I resent each of them being turned into a tiny public sphere populated by people scaling up from YouTube comments. The ideal version of the scenario is one in which subscribers engage with the ideas that I took months to formulate, push back on some of my claims, and offer their own. Or maybe a version of the tiny colonies that form in the comments of Tom Breihan’s Number Ones column for Stereogum, like they did around Lisa’s tooth. Instead, so far it’s just predictable dross from people who clearly scrolled down quickly to type in a number and offer a few scattered thoughts. Clearly, Condé isn’t interested in music criticism, but in seeing how much more water they can wring out of the sponge by turning each review into its own annotatable Genius URL. About a million people have written about how Pitchfork’s early adopter status in the late 90s positioned it perfectly to supersede the legacy print publications that took forever to create an online presence. A couple decades later, Condé’s turned Pitchfork into another high-visibility, paywalled music platform chasing penny fractions from online randos.

_people scaling up from YouTube comments. The ideal version of the scenario is…_

_Instead, so far it’s just predictable dross from people who clearly scrolled down quickly to type in a number and offer a few scattered thoughts._

I don’t know him but it’s like he wishes folks would pay him to post on ILM. Poor beleaguered music critics. Once you reach the top you’ll find out, pal — you’re on the bottom.

Anyway I can’t access the site at all rn so I dunno

I don’t know him but it’s like he wishes folks would pay him to post on ILM. Poor beleaguered music critics. Once you reach the top you’ll find out, pal — you’re on the bottom.

― recovering internet addict/shitposter (viborg), Wednesday, January 21, 2026 6:03 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

why are you so gleeful about this?

viborg, tell us how much you hate reddit again

Eric regularly posts for free on Bluesky, so I think he understands the difference between tossed-off social media/message board posts and more thoughtful (and his case deeply researched) essays/reviews.

yeah I think many of us do!

I don’t know him but it’s like he wishes folks would pay him to post on ILM. Poor beleaguered music critics.

Eric is a college professor who occasionally writes (very intelligently) about music.

Can we please keep the pointless personal snipes out of this, im trying to.

Anyway I was just being snide I’m sorry if that frowned upon in these quarters.

My point was simply that, having first encountered his rant on that other app then seeing it here, as someone on the outside there’s nothing I read there that rises above the level of a middling ILM effort post or inspires me at all to pay to see more of his writing. “Social media, duh hurr” yeah ok the irony that I do often enough point out how reddit specifically has been very fascist-friendly basically since its inception and now thanks to the parent corp (I forget which conglomerate) has mastered SEO to finally after decades rise to the IPO level

I had a drink so I should probably pause here.

(Social media duh hurr referring to “some Dr. Moreau-esque hybrid of Rate Your Music + Reddit + Letterboxd + Rotten Tomatoes” if that wasn’t clear)

You got from that measured response a middling ILM effort/rant? Yeah, step aside.

yeah, i’m with alfred here

It’s just the wrong dude to lay into, viborg, Eric is a one-time poster, a friend/acquaintance of many of ours, a fantastic hang, a terrific writer— well worth it to you to use one of your four free pitchforks to read his Bob Marley piece from just days ago. The “thing” about that post is that he’s a fairly frequent contributor to Pitchfork and for him to speak out in opposition to a paywall puts him in conflict with his fairly frequent employers (and curators of decades of his writing on music)

I love that he called out Marley’s infidelities. A lot of those dudes get a pass for being shitty to their spouses

Social media duh hurr referring to “some Dr. Moreau-esque hybrid of Rate Your Music + Reddit + Letterboxd + Rotten Tomatoes” if that wasn’t clear

fyi tomorrow this absolutely wasn’t clear! (bcz his critique has absolutely nothing to do with social media)

I might subscribe. I wish I had confidence that the new revenue would go toward better pay for their music critics. Still, I really liked skimming pitchfork's reviews every morning, I love the Sunday reviews, and — though I haven't had time to look around for alternatives — I'm not sure there are other options that cover that range of music (and do it so well). Eh.

I think the thing viborg missed is that what seems obvious or banal to people who regularly post on music message boards and read a lot of reviews may not be to the majority of people who are casual, if not occasional, readers. I've made that mistake myself in conversation, and it's grounding to hear someone say "I've never heard of any of that"

^^ this. Not every one who loves music's on ILM.

thank god

anyone here ever read Who Got the Camera? I always thought that looked super interesting

yeah I've read it. it's very good!

Eric and I are about the same age (think he's a year or two older) and I have sometimes thought that he has the kind of career that I might have had (or would've liked to have had) if I were more talented/ambitious/disciplined.

yeah straddling popular writing & academia like that is rare and difficult

Yes, Who Got the Camera? is super interesting albeit academic and as such can be a bit dense.

chiming in to say that Eric's Bob Marley piece is one of the best things I've read on pfork in a minute

Who Got The Camera? is one of the best music books I've read in years.

I love that he called out Marley’s infidelities. A lot of those dudes get a pass for being shitty to their spouses

― Heez, Wednesday, January 21, 2026 10:42 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

The book Natural Mystics: Marley, Tosh, and Wailer goes into how piggish Rastas were in general with women...I didn't know that Aston "Family Man" Barrett's nickname was ironic because he'd fathered 52 (!!) children with a bunch of different women

book is highly recommended as a history of that era

FYI for further reading, here's Harvey's Substack post on his Legend review:

https://ericdharvey.substack.com/p/print-the-legend?

Gives a peak into how he approaches these:

I consider these to be mini-33 1/3 style pieces, challenging myself to research and write a condensed cultural history of the culture, media and politics of an era that spawned collections of music that we now deem “classic” for varying reasons.

One more hell yes for Who Got The Camera?, which I need to re read at some point.

Eric's Anita Baker and Sugar essays are some of the best criticism those artists I've gotten.

Pitchfork's editors are at their best with longform pieces. I've weaned myself from certain tics thanks to them.

as someone on the outside there’s nothing I read there that rises above the level of a middling ILM effort post or inspires me at all to pay to see more of his writing.

god, this is hilariously embarrassing, given the target

Yeah, Eric's great people and a sharp thinker, so I don't get what the original criticism was even about?

I think Viborg has a beef with Substack in general