Rolling Music Writers' Thread

Since there's no longer (and hardly ever was) an I Love Writing board, and since there are a quite a few pro and amateur hacks here, I thought it might be worth starting a general purpose thread for the dark art.

I don't really consider myself a journo, having only had a couple of things published here and there (mostly for free might I add), but it would be good to get more stuff in print I admit. It would be interesting to hear more from people who've been doing it for longer than I have.

To get things rolling, I thought I'd ask a staple question that I think may have been toiled over before on ILX, regarding use of the first person in gig and LP reviews. Is this generally considered unacceptable in anything less than the most stylistic circumstances? Or does it really not matter too much? What about the use of "this writer" (don't really like this myself, I'd rather use "I/me" than "this writer", but that's just a personal thing).

Anyway, feel free to discuss whatever you like about music writing and journalism here.

I've said before about how I always hated that "The NME was told by Morrissey'" which is fine on the news page, but when it's "Morrissey bought the NME a drink and began .." on an interview, it's dumb.

Wrt first person: depends on who you're writing for and what kind of piece it is. Personally speaking, I've often had issues with the idea of "objective" criticism, so pretty much everything I've written, music-wise, has used the "I." But I've also avoided writing album reviews for publication, preferring to keep to autobiographical essays, short takes on singles, and blog posts, and in those contexts, no one's had an issue with it.

I often use first person, though rarely in a particularly deliberate way. It doesn't seem like that big a deal to me.

Something I've noticed that crops up in features like that, something that isn't necessarily wrong per se, but I feel is one helluva boring way to start one of these goes along the lines of: "It is 3:17pm on a rainy Monday afternoon. The NME sits in a Harringey spit'n'sawdust boozer sipping a pint of Timothy Landlord..." etc. What I mean here is that the intro seems to tell you more about the time and weather and location of the actual interview than about who is being interviewed. Whenever I read features like this I tend to stop reading much past the first paragraph.

3:17pm on a rainy Monday afternoon. The NME sits in a Harringey spit'n'sawdust boozer sipping a pint of Timothy Landlord

^ very accurate summary of state of british indie rock in the 09, though

"It is 3:17pm on a rainy Monday afternoon. The NME sits in a Harringey spit'n'sawdust boozer sipping a pint of Timothy Landlord..."

if you're gonna "set the scene" like this the best way to do it is to say "[the artist] sits by the swimming pool sipping a mojito" - the i/v is about them after all

i mean all obv dependent on what kind of feature, which publication &c &c &c

"[the artist] sits by the swimming pool sipping a mojito"

The Lex interviews Raygun.

I tend to use first person if my experience is an important part of the total picture. If I'm writing a piece that's based on a phone interview and three listens to the album, I don't do it; but if the publicist has flown me to Ireland to spend three or four days with the band, fuck yes I'm gonna inject myself into the story because I am then part of the story. I never use first person in CD reviews.

there's no i love writing board per se but consider this thread. a not-just-music writers' discussion might be fun.

New: "I Love Writing"

the first person thing is tricky. back when I wrote for the village voice many many years ago it was practically required in music reviews. as time went on many publications took the opposite tack, pretty much banning the "I" these days in the NY Times reporters are required to don this pseudo anonymity which I think reads terribly. instead of "so and so told me that..." it's "so and so told a reporter" waht? was it YOU or just some other random journalist who happened to be in the room?

ha, you *are* the room!

Maybe 5% of music writing in the first person isn't hacky. I see it as a huge red flag. Unless it's absolutely necessary to the story, don't do it, imo.

How is it "hacky"?

Maybe 5% of music writing in the first person isn't hacky.

On second thought:

Maybe 5% of music writing in the first person isn't hacky.

o here we are slagging off writers again, that didn't take long at all

there are different kinds of first-person usage. the kind i can't stand is the showy first-person narrative, where the writer becomes some kind of presence. but there's also just the casual "i" where it can be sensible and unobstrusive. "i love the first two tracks" doesn't seem more objectionable to me than "the first two tracks are great" -- they're both obviously subjective statements of personal preference. but i know some editors who will reflexively remove every "I" from copy, so it's good to know the standards you're writing to.

Just slagging off the hacks. If you'd like to defend bad writing, have at it.

My favourite one, (iirc)

"Kirk Brandon formed Theatre of Hate around the same time as I joined the NME. At the time, we were both unknown..."

(Can't remember the writer)

(many xposts)

I mean, I get into this argument all the time. Generally, I don't CARE about the writer. If the writer was an interesting person, I'd be reading an article on THEM, not the artist I care about. Like wow, the Jesus And Mary Chain helped you get through high school. You and America, buddy.

Generally if a piece of music writing has the word "I" in the first sentence, I usually stop reading, real talk. Save it for your dream journal.

The sad shit is now most mag writing is indistinguishable from internet writing because rates are so low.

Not that there isn't exceptions blah blah blah strawman lol flame etc

What about "I don't know about you but I'm fucking sick of this indie-lite electrodribble that permeates every airwave within earshot"?

Whiney, you do realize you just used the first person yourself five times in two sentences yourself, right?

I'm posting on a message board, not writing for a paycheck!

the mark richardson thing about lovely music in stylus is pretty much verbatim all the first person objections ur spoutin btw but imo its top5 great but I suppose its kinda like how it used to be pretty awesome when Buffy had to make some inspirational speech but in the last series she did it every episode and it was really tiresome?

xp (And I just used "yourself" twice in one sentence, duh.)

Anyway, first person is a tool, like any other tool. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. (As an editor at the Voice, I was frequently known to edit sentences from pitch emails back into submitted reviews in part because the emails did use the first person, and sounded less stiff and stilted and more conversational in the process. I.e., sometimes it helps make for better writing just because that's how people talk. So I've never bought the idea that "writing for a paycheck" required "detaching yourself from the subject.")

Again, i'm not saying that it's always bad, but there's not a lot of writers who can pull it off without sounding like My First Fanzine

"The first time I saw Spoon..."

So why would print them (unless it was a really good fanzine?)

Still, especially when space on the page is at a premium -- which it was even when wordcounts could get away with being ten times higher than they are now -- wasted words are wasted words, "I" included. (Though at least "I" is a fairly short word.)

the mark richardson thing about lovely music in stylus

Think you mean Mike Powell, but Mark Richardson is a good example of someone who uses the first person to excellent effect in his Resonant Frequency column.

oops yeah

If you can write entertainingly, I forgive your first person narrative.

xhuxk on point

xp "So why would print them?", I meant.

Anyway, bottom line is, no fucking way does the the detached pseudo-objective tone used in most glossies and daily newspapers make for better music writing than what I was printing week in and week out in the Voice for ten years (though sure, a few pieces I published may have sounded "Internetty" or whatever. Point was to have lots of different voices, so it'd be a miracle if anybody approved of all of them. I didn't want to ban Internetty writing -- which can be good too, sometimes -- either.)

On the other hand, I like the creativity with which guys like Sanneh at the Times have managed to get around the limitations against first person and swear words. A smart writer can work within those perimeters, too, and make it entertaining anyway.

its funny you mention sanneh--his profile of michael savage in the nyer from a couple weeks ago was very careful about not using "i" (which i think is generally a no-go in the nyer, except in the personal essays they publish every once in a while) but still managed to tell a set of interesting stories about sanneh's own encounters w/ savage that sort of hinged on sannehs own specific experiences trying to set up an interview... in the end, though, i thought it would have been a better piece if they had let him use an authorial I

wow that got convoluted

I thought about that, too.

Over the years, Savage has noticed that his disdain for the mainstream media is widely reciprocated ... So when he received an e-mail from a journalist asking for an interview, he was deeply suspicious. He read the e-mail on the air — he kept the writer anonymous, and didn’t mention that the request came from The New Yorker — and then asked his listeners, “Should I do the interview or not?”…

About a week later, Savage revisited the topic — “my continuing correspondence with a big-shot magazine writer.” He quoted the latest exchanges, along with his tart response, in which he asked, “Why must all of you in the extreme media paint everyone you disagree with as demonic? Why is the homosexual agenda so important to the midstream media?”

...

When he invited the journalist into one of his undisclosed locations, he proved to be a first-rate host, chatty and solicitous. A steady supply of beer refills lubricated the conversation (one of his earliest books was “The Taster’s Guide to Beer,” which was published in 1977), and as the temperature dropped and the sky above Berkeley started to turn orange, he seemed to be working hard to stay suspicious, despite himself. On his next show the next day, a caller asked how the interview had gone, and Savage described his interlocutor: "If I told you he looked like Obama, I wouldn't be far from the truth." Coming from him, this sounded like a deeply twisted compliment.

Sanneh has to resort to speaking of himself in the third person ("the journalist," "his interlocutor") but otherwise does a decent job with passive-ish phrases like "a steady supply of beer refills lubricated the conversation."

no i think you're OTM, that NYer piece was convoluted. it read to me like sanneh had a personal 1 on 1 reaction to savage that was quite different than what he expected and the resulting article would have been more effective and immediate using the "I" but the NYer has always employed a certain lofty distance from its subjects, even in the 70s it wasn't really into the personal/new journalism thing. well apart from pauline kael I guess.

but journalists do have to meet readers half-way. my problem with a lot of the vintage village voice stuff is that it's so personal to the point of being impenetrable or off-putting.

the best first person stuff illustrates how the subject of an interview interacts with other people, rather than "setting the scene"

i'm guessing whiney's not big on fiction as a rule.

I'm not big on fiction as a rule either, and one of the principles that was drilled into me when I started writing was that first-person is something you have to earn--expecting the reader who's never heard of you before to go along with I-I-I-me-me-me instead of saying "So what?" and moving to the next item is not generally a good idea--but I love first person writing even if (despite whatever reputation I may have for it due to the 33 1/3 book) I don't use it all that often professionally.

matos if you don't mind me asking: you're not big on fiction as a journalistic device or (gasp) you don't like reading novels?

I don't write fiction or about music, but first-person is the default in my area of writing (analytic philosophy). Sometimes we resort to the royal "we" if we're feeling nervous about first-person. But it was made clear to me that third-person is to be avoided, as is passive voice.

hang on, you're not big on reading fiction...at all?!

xp!

xp I don't buy the "have to earn" thing. I'm not even sure what it means. If I listen to a song sung in the first person, I might be able to relate to, and be moved by, the song even if I'm unaware of the singer's specific biography. Not sure why reviews are necessarily different. You don't have to be a famous writer to have a life that creates a context.

i thought he meant less that you have to earn it in the sense of being already famous or noteworthy, but in the sense that you have to earn it through your writing--i.e. you have to justify use of the first person in the piece itself, not necc explicitly, but at least in making your "I" of interest to the reader

When it's well done - and it does have to be superbly well done, and yes, generally (but not always) "earnt" - first-person music writing is my favourite of all music writing. (And when it's pointlessly done, the reverse holds true.)

For my own part, I avoid it at least 95% of the time - but then I come from a personal-blogging background, and taking "myself" out of the equation was a deliberate, sought objective.

My first piece at the Voice (when no reader could've had any idea who I was) and a couple soon after were in the first person, fwiw. I seriously doubt they would have improved if the "I"'s had been edited out. (Whether they stunk regardless is another question, but they wouldn't have stunk less.)

Editorial "we" -- first person plural -- bugs the hell out of me no matter what, though. I never buy it, and I've fought editors to keep it out of my own writing (which usually they've been open to).

And btw, I've also edited at Billboard, where first person is almost never allowed. So it's not like I don't know that drill. I just don't like it much.

Of course, at Billboard, the writing tended to be more news and less review-oriented. (So first person would have probably have made no sense anyway.)

lex railing against stuff like Panda Bear for fetishizing childhood in a way that was both creepy and politically regressive

I kind of agree with that tbh. Maybe not the creepy part, but I think what maybe connects the complaints is this idea that there's something pure about wide-eyed wonder at the world, that adulthood introduces layers of rationalization and analysis that suck out the feeling. So, embrace your inner Disney kid/Star Wars fan/comic nerd, that's where the real juice is.

And what that misses are the different real joys of engaging in complex ideas and art about life and the world. Which I think is a fair criticism and doesn't have to come at the cost of also enjoying Marvel movies etc.

I agreed with lex in that the Panda Bear and that year's AnCo album were sung from the POV of adults acting like wide-eyed kids instead of adults who realize kids can be as complex as adults, including wide-eyed.

Yeah well put.

otm Alfred. and I agree, it's not like I think, say, Miyazaki is creepy or regressive.

tipsy: good point! the idea that you shouldn't over-think or over-analyze something is key to the "let people enjoy things" reactionary mind. One of the problems with the guardian piece is she objects to both 1) mindlessly consuming mass-appeal content and 2) treating Taylor Swift and superhero movies as worthy objects of academic inquiry. I suppose that isn't contradictory if your main point is "stop paying attention to 'lowbrow' culture," but it seems confused to me, especially since it's not remotely like you *only* hear about Swift and Marvel in academic cultural discourse.

The problem for me is the implicit idea that content determines mode. What is objectionable is not that the dominance of star wars or marvel fandom allows people to behave like ten year olds, it’s that an environment that encourages people to behave like ten years olds will ultimately reduce all aesthetic enjoyment to the level of marvel fandom.

Fucking "emo night" suck my dick

_You could argue that culture has been on an intellectual downward spiral since the Victorian era_

Said a person who has no idea what was actually popular in the 18th and 19th centuries (and neither do most people, because it's books that are long out of print and forgotten, plays and musicals that nobody performs anymore, songs no one sings anymore, etc., etc.). Human beings love disposable trash entertainment. They always have. Some things last beyond their initial cultural shelf-life (or are revived, almost arbitrarily, decades later), but the vast majority don't. And we have _no idea_ what currently popular music or literature will be the stuff that's picked up as emblematic of our current era a hundred years from now. _None_.

This is true— one of the things my bookseller friend often notes is that most of the books written by the supposed “big names” in poetry get remaindered and pulped, and this has been true for years. Whereas older books written by obscure but influential weirdos who were ignored in their time can often fetch hundreds of dollars.

_You could argue that culture has been on an intellectual downward spiral since the Victorian era_

Said a person who has no idea what was actually popular in the 18th and 19th centuries (and neither do most people, because it's books that are long out of print and forgotten, plays and musicals that nobody performs anymore, songs no one sings anymore, etc., etc.). Human beings love disposable trash entertainment. They always have. Some things last beyond their initial cultural shelf-life (or are revived, almost arbitrarily, decades later), but the vast majority don't. And we have _no idea_ what currently popular music or literature will be the stuff that's picked up as emblematic of our current era a hundred years from now. _None_.

This is true— one of the things my bookseller friend often notes is that most of the books written by the supposed “big names” in poetry get remaindered and pulped, and this has been true for years. Whereas older books written by obscure but influential weirdos who were ignored in their time can often fetch hundreds of dollars.

sorry for double post

One of the best courses I've ever taken was on Victorian women poets. Not the Brownings and Rossettis but crap like Charlotte Mew.

Rolling Stone magazine was a founder of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame that has a handful of separate slots for r& b pioneers, and has in recent years begun inducting more pop, & r& B, and others. There's a long privileging for rock as being more important, with the other stuff acknowledged in the manner that is referenced above regarding indie rock websites .

― curmudgeon, Wednesday, October 1, 2025 1:49 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

something that always confuses me about the discourse around this. is it called ... the Pop Music Hall of Fame? or is it called the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

the other crucial missing piece is, of course, who gives a shit

We live in a world where contempt for culture based on its level of sophistication or intellectual value is considered deeply passé, if not borderline evil.

stopped reading, i've been on the internet recently and this just isn't true

― ivy., Thursday, October 2, 2025 11:35 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

We live in a twilight world

Depth is not a function of a cultural artefact. It is a function of the scrutiny applied to it. What might feel “easily relatable” about a given artefact is not a function of the artefact itself but rather of the (largely shared) framework through which we engage with it.

The article above approaches culture with the same mindset of someone who says “isn’t it an awfully convenient that the popular term for dogs is “dog” given that is what they are called”

lol.

i am being put in mind of this post again
Can a music matter if its fans don't especially want to read about it?

I missed the revive of that question but it’s the much better question to ask - although (and because) the relevant context is so different to when mark s first posed it

I missed the revive of that question but it’s the much better question to ask - although (and because) the relevant context is so different to when mark s first posed it

Just now saw Phil's original Crispell review and the published version---both are clear and appealing enough--but can't resist more tweaks---I'll comment after the paste:

Forest
Marilyn Crispell & Harvey Sorgen (Fundacja Słuchaj)
by Phil Freeman
Cecil Taylor was a major early influence on Marilyn Crispell, and it’s still possible to hear his unique blend of thunder, precision, and romanticism in her playing, though she’s very much her own person. Forest is her third collaboration with Hudson Valley drummer Harvey Sorgen, following two trio albums, 2018’s Dreamstruck and 2021’s With Grace In Mind, that also included bassist Joe Fonda.

There are some passages of extraordinary physical power here. The opening title piece feels almost like a tribute to Taylor, with Crispell pounding at the keyboard’s low end, but few of his drummers would ever have been permitted to unleash as much whomp as Sorgen (who also plays with blues-rockers Hot Tuna) does. It’s a sustained attack that rolls over the listener like a tank. The next track, “Overtones,” is almost its polar opposite, a sparse and lovely interlude full of delicate single notes wrapped in subtle reverb, and drums used as gentle accents. Throughout the album, there are just as many moments of contemplative quiet, drawing the listener in close, as there are rampages. The nearly nine-minute “Woolf Moon” ends with a drum solo that could bring an arena full of metal fans to their feet, but “Sandscape” centers hand percussion, focusing the mind and soothing the heart.

Ultimately, the similarities between Crispell and Taylor have mostly to do with the force she brings to bear on the keyboard (though her heaviest playing here could just as easily be interpreted as a tribute to the Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya, whose jackhammering music was inspired by deep religious beliefs which she never shared with interviewers or the public). But the countervailing passages of quietude and sparse beauty—for instance, when she plucks the piano’s
strings and creates drones like an underwater earthquake as Sorgen rattles across his kit, in “Air Dissolves” --represent something no other performer offers--they are uniquely Crispell and bring this beautifully recorded studio album into the realm of things which simply must be heard to be truly understood.

The reference to Galina Ustvolskaya,though informative and intriguing, does seem injected, parenthetical, so I put it in paren. References to
watching quiet birds and being in spiritual spaces seem superfluous at the end of those sentences, also a kind of imagery familiar enough in jazz writing, to remind me that I'd ask, before final edit, if you really think "quietude and sparse beauty" aren't what a lot of ECM artists, for instance, have been offering for a long, long time (also, an "underwater earthquake" isn't something I associate with quietude)---or do you mean the range, the dynamics of her loud to quiet ect. music is a combinaton that no other artist offers?
The long rolling sentences of the last graf def go w much of Crispell's more Tayloresque side, and the whole thing makes me want to hear the album, thanks.

Oops, I should have spotted "sparse" being in there twice---and don't need "sparse and lovely" along with "delicate single notes"---also,if if the interlude is full of these, is the beauty really so sparse (and would "spare" be better when you do use one of those, later on)--"full of delicate single notes" gives us enough of the sense of space and how it's used by the artist (once again, v. appealing take).

or do you mean the range, the dynamics of her loud to quiet ect. music is a combinaton that no other artist offers?

So maybe more like the following ending (but if I did it like this, would be only after discussion with you, and then maybe letting the original stand, if I came to understand it differently---or maybe there's a third way?)

But the countervailing passages of quietude and sparse beauty—for instance, when she plucks the piano’s
strings and creates drones as Sorgen rattles across his kit, in “Air Dissolves” --bring this beautifully recorded studio album into the realm of things which simply must be heard to be truly understood.

I don’t hear Ustvolskaya bc my personal defining feature of Galina’s style isn’t just “piano banging” but the manifestation of asceticism and worship via paucity of material and repetition— it sounds like flagellation, not just percussiveness. Also I wasn’t aware that she kept her religious outlook to herself, in addition to giving her pieces bluntly religious titles (“Dona Nobis Pacem”) I seem to recall her speaking about sitting on a bench behind her house looking for the face of God in the birch trees as being an inspiration for one of her symphonies but maybe I made that up or something

A quick perusal of her Wikipedia suggests that I probably didn’t make that up, she was interviewed infrequently but was frank about the fact that she considered her creative state to be connected to an act of worship

As the 00s went on artfully curated eclecticism triumphed over 90s-rooted hipster purism (cf. the death of "selling out")

rob, could you say a bit more abt this? i'm intrigued by how gen z seems to have no idea what selling out means

I'm not rob but there was definitely a shift as it became harder to make a living in the arts in general, leading to a resigned "whatever you have to do to keep afloat" attitude.

I think ultimately it's just about semantics now tho, gen z may not know what selling out means but when those comedians went to Saudi Arabia, or when an artist plays Israel, the anger at that is kinda the same thing no?

Yes, I think the above point is important. The primacy of the construct of independent / selling out made sense in an era when western popular music was broadly seen as disconnected from global affairs - obviously there were crossovers like the big Free Tibet concerts, but the extent of fusion of the personal, political and artistic was less total. There was basically zero-to-minimal risk for an artist in failing to articulate and practice a coherent position on contemporary political or social disputes.

At the same time, that fusion also means that in recent history people have focused more on attributes and actions that can readily be framed as personal - playing Israel or not, an artist’s private jet miles, what they say on their social media accounts, etc. - rather than thinking of things structurally or systemically (e.g. major label vs independent).

It’s possible we’re in the middle of a swing back in the other direction as people become more aware and deliberate with respect to the politics and economics of streaming services, which issue is reproducing a faint echo of the major versus independent label dichotomy of the past.

I'm thinking also of something as simple as accepting a sponsorship from a soft drink company. That would not have been cool in the local independent scene when I was growing up, now it's #goals

when those comedians went to Saudi Arabia, or when an artist plays Israel, the anger at that is kinda the same thing no?

i think these are slightly different in that saudi arabia is offering gigantic money for those comedians and its reputation is broadly terrible, so there's a very blatant trading morals for money that fits with the old school notion of 'selling out', just a particularly extreme example. artists playing israel has historically been more about them going along with the former broad western pro-israel consensus, but no one was really touring there because the money was simply too good to turn down despite their concerns. it was more just revealing of poor politics whether that be sincere support for israel or total ignorance.

It's less immediate, yes, though I think you could still make a case for playing Israel from a careerist pov (also could make a careerist one for not doing so, tbf).

But I think it should be noted accusations of selling out always centered around a sense of motivation that might not actually be there, i.e. fans assumed artists shared their hatred of major labels, commercialism, slick producers, etc. In some cases you could actually point to artists who decried that stuff and then went for it anyway, but more often this ideology was assumed of any independent artist, whatever their actual beliefs.

Good answers already, but just to address your question corrs (warning: this is all very broad strokes):

I was responding to nabisco's post and trying to describe a shift in "indie" culture — this is from a US perspective btw — from the purism of the 90s when signing with a major label or, yes, doing a commercial/sponsorship was a cause for scorn and fan backlash. This also reflected onto indie fans who largely assumed anything mainstream/commercial/etc was not just bad cuz of capitalism's sticky tendrils but bad artistically, fatally compromised by appealing to the mass market.

This changed across the 00s as being "cool" started to require not holding such rigid standards: a genuinely hip music fan in the late 00s didn't just listen to indie rock, they also liked a careful selection of popular music — part of the hipster game became figuring out which popular artists were on the list or not, or proudly broadcasting your fearlessly eclectic taste by endorsing "surprising" mainstream acts — sort of the opposite of a "guilty" pleasure.

People like to blame this shift on poptimism, but I think that's pretty silly. Daniel is right that increasing economic pressure on musicians made it seem heartless to demand your favourite artists starve. But I think there was also a much broader value shift (caused by neoliberalism? a sharply more conservative post-9/11 political climate? increasing monopoly capitalism?), and your soft drink sponsorship example is quite right — getting paid by big business, as opposed to malicious foreign regimes, no longer held any stigma.

I don't spend any time with GenAlpha and all the elder GenZs I know are fairly committed leftists, but I do wonder if this is swinging back around now that we are ruled by oligarchs and, as Tim was getting at, the music "industry" has been subsumed into the tech industry, the home of many of those oligarchs. (A small factor in this possible change: I didn't know who the CEOs of music companies were in the 90s, but I know who Daniel Ek is and what AI military tech he is investing in).

Like a lot of cultural shifts, maybe "get the bag" culture simply went too far. Plus there's the problem of combining two elements of the shift: economic pressure on fans + permission to make as much money as possible for artists. If it feels like big pop acts are trying to scam you / are only interested in the money, that is going to erode fans' good will. It's one thing to take money from Pepsi and become a marketing shill, it's another thing entirely to milk your fans by re-releasing records & vinyl variants & tour packages etc. Here's an interesting example of how a revived critique of "selling out" could be articulated:
https://defector.com/taylor-swift-life-of-a-showgirl-bad-greed

Attacking it as personal greed is interesting. It ignores the structural critique that Tim and Daniel brought up, but making it personal like this is congruent with modern fandom. It's not about TS selling out to the Man, it's about her treating people as a resource for extraction, just like any other oligarch.

culture has been on an intellectual downward spiral since the Victorian era, when mass-market literature lowered the collective brow

England spent the Victorian era raising its literacy rate from like 55% to nearly everyone. The average person today is very obviously more culturally sophisticated than before, and would be even if all that had been accomplished was making it so more than half of women learn how to read. The ongoing change is that we keep inventing mechanisms that push cultural production and conversation toward being driven by that average person, rather than a narrower class of initiates, enthusiasts, and adepts. (Not that the writer seems to realize it, but this is literally what the phrase "mass-market literature lowered the collective brow" is describing.)

I think the thing your typical disappointed initiate hasn't figured out yet is a warm, modest, and small-d democratic language for saying "look, there are certain well-liked cultural products that I find unsatisfying, boring, obvious, and bad." And: "you absolutely do not have to join me in this, but I do think I have cultivated knowledge/tastes/experience that let me derive types of meaning and satisfaction from this art that are richer than I did before, and this particular thing has none of that richness." That is rhetorically hard-as-hell to pull off! (And the field is not exactly level: it's normal to casually dismiss or mock things we find arcane or pretentious without much being accused of closed-mindedness or anti-intellectualism, but even well-considered criticism of popular things — even just a totally benign lack of interest in them — can get you accused of snobbery.)

Sure, you could just idly root for highbrow snobbery to come back into style and save you the trouble of articulating this. But I'm always really fascinated when I see a piece where you can see that the writer is actually trying to make a persuasive case along these lines, as opposed to that question-begging "everything's getting dumber, maybe snobbery would help" argument. On some level the best critics have always been those who just demonstrate to you, in their thinking and writing, that there are joys and riches and laughs available in serious engagement with the art form! You don't read them to chase status as a sophisticated expert, you read them because they make being deep into the art look fulfilling and exciting and fun.

I think the thing your typical disappointed initiate hasn't figured out yet is a warm, modest, and small-d democratic language for saying "look, there are certain well-liked cultural products that I find unsatisfying, boring, obvious, and bad." And: "you absolutely do not have to join me in this, but I do think I have cultivated knowledge/tastes/experience that let me derive types of meaning and satisfaction from this art that are richer than I did before, and this particular thing has none of that richness." That is rhetorically hard-as-hell to pull off! (And the field is not exactly level: it's normal to casually dismiss or mock things we find arcane or pretentious without much being accused of closed-mindedness or anti-intellectualism, but even well-considered criticism of popular things — even just a totally benign lack of interest in them — can get you accused of snobbery.)

gonna need to boycott you nabisco if you keep dropping bombs like this

You don't read them to chase status as a sophisticated expert, you read them because they make being deep into the art look fulfilling and exciting and fun.

a lot of people, writers and readers alike, confuse these two things, but of course i agree. and i find writers who are good at making the shallow deep and vice versa fun and exciting to read.

Since this is the thread for the most awesome music writers, re-posting this from my Facebook. in case anyone lives near me. you never know. Peace and rock and lots of -isms to all of you:

Modern medicine and talk therapy means I'm actually excited for this! Yay! Like a person! And I'm so honored that the awesome and amazing Karen Schoemer asked me to read. She is a poet/performer unlike any other. Go see Sky Furrows if you ever get a chance! Best band. Karen used to edit Byron Coley's singles column at Spin once upon a time. Oof! That is the height of grunge. Pretty soon you realize that "with", "of", and "your" are always going to be "w/", "o'", and "yr" and then you find yourself using the word "skree" a lot in your own writing.
Love Feeding Tube and Byron and Ted and Conrad and Battlin' Bob Fay. Love Eric and Ron. Love to all. Come to this and buy the weirdest records on earth and say hi and celebrate Karen's new album.

https://dromedaryrecords.bandcamp.com/album/august

https://scontent-bos5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/559646302_10163853504097137_564899657711875886_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=bmDh8JSkwdUQ7kNvwFHIgrB&_nc_oc=AdnWMB2ynlWsQTx_zgbWnjwakyuTQ1Ni-oRHQdufS2k95ivAWRPNCbPJ_G86Fhhn1EO5VuLMa_nJZQcgisHszEti&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-bos5-1.xx&_nc_gid=iR9-V7zar8kAKQ5MyueTPA&oh=00_AfeGEKXqgw1HClGawpiyfW185S8DVL1ryZyEn4xVoADCog&oe=68ECAD0F

_You don't read them to chase status as a sophisticated expert, you read them because they make being deep into the art look fulfilling and exciting and fun._

a lot of people, writers and readers alike, confuse these two things, but of course i agree. and i find writers who are good at making the shallow deep and vice versa fun and exciting to read.

This is what I often try to impart to my writing students, particularly poets, when they revolt against poetry that isn’t immediately legible or happens to be more ambiguous in its aims— we do not live in a stable world or engage with a stable language, and isn’t it more interesting to work within that kind of dynamic language environment than to write and read for comfort only? This isn’t a dismissal, but more an invitation, always!!

Which is appropriate for Scott's post as well---gonna read some of your recent stuff, Scott?

x-post-

anyone know if there's someone at the helm of Maggot Brain at the moment?

MM seems to be dealing w/ some significant health issues - enough to start a GoFundMe.

i emailed the address in the magazine and haven't heard anything back - which, of course, is entirely possible even if he's working every day, I get that. just curious if by chance anyone knows if there's someone else working on it or if production kind of pauses if he's out of commission or whatever ...

― alpine static, Monday, September 29, 2025 10:23 PM (two weeks ago

Mike McGonigal's Go-Fund Me for his health related issues hasn't had a status update posted since his August 24th - Lost my job, and could really use some help with upcoming heart/ etc procedures etc. while I sort this out!
Much love--

He also says--I continue to work on my gospel history book for FSG/MCD, and am so grateful to have that opportunity, but that advance was spent long ago. I don’t know if I should do a patreon or substack, or what, but will figure something out. In the meantime, I have really fun gospel reissue projects in the works for other labels, continue to do my weekly gospel radio show for CJAM in Windsor/Detroit and XRAY FM in Portland, I just contributed to a cool new collection of writings on Harry Smith, and I'm extremely proud of the 21 issues of Maggot Brain that have been completed thus far. It’s really weird to beg for $ here, from you my friends, when the world is ending. But just the littlest bit will help a lot, and I don’t know what else to say.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/mike-mcgonigal-further-heart-help?attribution_id=sl:bd31cdba-81e2-4203-89b8-bcbe852f270f&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer

https://tapetrade.io/blog/music-as-community?fbclid=IwZnRzaAN8kBxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeBxMlLJi0LufoEMfb62fXDIj6izVXp_m-OOqe7IoW3pWKD1WbMjBbHuse5x8_aem_iuT2k9HvLTxdRgkx-qTaPA

Evan Minsker was a staffer at Pitchfork for awhile. Got laid off via zoom he writes. Now he’s doing something else to pay the bills it seems , and is happily writing about punk bands and seeing them now for fun and not as a job

Changes at Stereogum

https://stereogum.com/2478838/stereogum-relaunch/news

God damn, they are trying, aren't they? I have nothing but respect and admiration for the 'Gum for continuing to fight on a battlefield that is increasingly uphill.

And it's true: they pay no more than a week after publication. Unheard of.

I love writing for them. It took a couple of years for jazz publicists to recognize the reach my column has (not just the number of people who read it, but the fact that they are readers previously unavailable to jazz artists), but now I am at the top of promo lists.

i'm sad i won't be able to read the comments anymore but good for them

nitpicking, but wish the redesign would tackle the content/image presentation a bit. one thing about stereogum (and most niche/specific publications) is that it's a bit hard to get engaged/past a generic image/funny-nondescriptive hed sometimes. I know budget is so small, but I really think there could be smart ways to do it, separate small news items, reviews, historical pieces, interviews, original content a bit. Idk. It's also the bane of CMS and dev/coding/product leading these projects, everything looks the same, and to me, it kinda loses a pov almost a bit.

(I know how stupid I sound writing this in the Writers' thread, but I wish all of this so all good music writing can be read more, have more attention and care to it, and have a presentation that uplifts/works together/is a bit different.)

No it's true - they need a 1-2 sentence subhead/intro in small type to give you a flavour

I’m gonna subscribe once my financial world feels a bit more settled but man is it weird to not be able to check the site for news several times a day

Penske Media site Rolling Stone has just laid off writer Brittany Spanos after 11 years; and writer Andre Gee after 3 years. Spanos had done profiles of Taylor Swift and Harry Styles; Gee, who also has a substack had done interviews with Lil Wayne and billy woods. Saw this news on X

Jeff Bezos & his hired right wing Brit publisher horribly slashed from the Washington Post today much of the arts coverage including editor Jon Fischer ( who was once a great Washington City Paper writer & editor), Classical music critic Michael Andor Brodeur, and pop music critic Chris Richards. Also the book section, the sports section, & overseas writers and more. They laid off 1/3 of the Washington Post staff (The Post had already shrunk in size from earlier buyouts). Richards is starting a substack now he announced on IG.