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.)

There is very little I hate more in arts writing than the critical "we" — "Why We Love Bruce Springsteen," etc. The fuck "we" do...

Wilson points out how early Pitchfork’s rock emphasis was rockist .
― curmudgeon, Thursday, September 25, 2025 7:48 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

No, he doesn't. He says that early 2000s online criticism was dominated by indie rock coverage, with "Pitchfork in its early, snotty all-indie phase" as the paradigm example, and that this was why the wave of mid-2000s pop-focused writing "felt necessary". But he does not say early Pitchfork was rockist--just rock-focused, which isn't supposed to be the same thing, right?

Even in its early days (i.e. pre-Scott as editor), Pitchfork wasn’t a monolith. I’d comfortably describe Ryan’s early writing as rockist but I wouldn’t put Mark Richardson or Joe Tangari or Dominique Leone or Nitsuh in that category.

Although even just writing the above reminds me of how few female writers they (or most publications, really) had at that point.

How can you say that about Schreiber when everyone knows he was a jazz aficionado?

was Kristin Sage Rockermann a rockist woman?

Early Pitchfork's *editorial* decisions were rockist: they passed over tons of pop music (even interesting pop music), implicitly because it was not "authentic" or auteur enough. The rockist presumption there is that only "authentic" music, where that authenticity is conveyed in particular ways, is worthy of serious attention. I was the same way at that time.

implicitly because it was not "authentic" or auteur enough

Where is this implication coming from? It's not like those are the only possible reasons to run an indie-rock-focused publication

how old are you? u don't remember the time when indie rock listeners were supposed to besmirch pop?

I remember this bit (@27:19) from obscure post-Linklater MTV show Austin Stories where the one indie dude buys a Spice Girls CD, champions its timelessness and is roundly trounced by his other indie dude friend.

Poptimism vs rockism argument from 1997:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vz55cGavBO4

how old are you? u don't remember the time when indie rock listeners were supposed to besmirch pop?

― sean gramophone, Friday, September 26, 2025 11:46 AM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm 36. Maybe that's just not old enough. But no, I don't remember a time when indie rock listeners were supposed to besmirch pop. I'm sure some have, and that some of those have even criticized it for not being authentic or whatever. But "rockism" (I thought) was supposed to refer to a major critical tendency, not just some obnoxious people here and there. By that standard, the existence of nutty pop stans on twitter would be enough to vindicate Freddie de Boer's foaming-at-the-mouth anti-poptimism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt17slgnCpU

@2:40

Didn't Pitchfork also do an April's Fools thing where they faked having been bought out and covered Kylie and a bunch of other mainstream releases as a "look how preposterous that would be for us to give this critical attention" joke?

That was the birth of the pitchfork thread that is currently at 23,000+ posts

One of the other albums they reviewed as part of that prank was by Jars of Clay, a white male rock band that writes its own songs and plays its own instruments

xp Yes but they now say that the joke went awry bc Dominique Leone liked the Kylie album and thus gave it a straightforward positive review. https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-history-of-the-pitchfork-reviews-section-in-38-important-reviews/

One of the other albums they reviewed as part of that prank was by Jars of Clay, a white male rock band that writes its own songs and plays its own instruments

Dismissing pop for not featuring artists writing their own songs and playing their own instruments does not mean you can't also disdain other artists who do these things, surely.

Definitely, but it does suggest that the joke wasn't just "wouldn't it be funny if Pitchfork covered pop". It could've been that, but it also could've been about Pitchfork reviewing stuff that's so blatantly outside their usual ambit (but within the ambit of a corporate music magazine)

I'd say the overall joke was "wouldn't it be funny if we covered the mainstream". So that included some Rock bands and excluded others, but at that stage included Pop as a whole (this would change soon thereafter).

I'm 36. Maybe that's just not old enough. But no, I don't remember a time when indie rock listeners were supposed to besmirch pop. I'm sure some have, and that some of those have even criticized it for not being authentic or whatever. But "rockism" (I thought) was supposed to refer to a major critical tendency, not just some obnoxious people here and there. By that standard, the existence of nutty pop stans on twitter would be enough to vindicate Freddie de Boer's foaming-at-the-mouth anti-poptimism

― JRN, Friday, 26 September 2025 17:17 (four hours ago)

The extent of reflexive, casual dismissiveness towards popular music in most “music critic” circles is difficult to imagine now because it changed so quickly and near-completely.

I remember my editor at my local paper being quite astonished in 2001 that I really liked Jay-Z’s The Blueprint - it was an opinion that didn’t make sense to him that someone who was paid (a very small amount) to write about music might hold. He thought I was being deliberately contrarian. This conversation was at a staff Christmas drinks, so he went around to all the other writers to ask whether they thought I was being serious, and the consensus view was that I basically made up my enthusiasm for the album (and my taste in things more generally) in order to have an “angle”.

I choose that example because I in turn was surprised that people would find that opinion odd - even at the time it seemed to me like a pretty milquetoast, even boring, opinion to have - but basically every engagement I had with music critics outside the “ILM bubble” was like that. Everyone assumed my taste was essentially performative.

But whereas the above kind of thing was a constant for me at that point, by the mid 00s it had totally stopped.

But I dunno maybe Australia was particularly extreme for this kind of thing

I was one of those who reviewed Kylie's Fever and was told I was being ironic.

I'm just joking.

I was enjoying the riffing.

I actually had an argument about a week ago with the editor of a local music monthly, who told me that she realized "Toxic" was a great (i.e., "well-written") song after the Local H cover, but she could never give props to the original version because Britney herself is a "talentless commodity."

"If the songwriter's name is on the cover, if it says 'Toxic' by Laura Perry [sic] or whatever, then that's a different story. But it says Britney Spears on the cover, so I have to review Britney Spears for who she is: someone who's not a good singer and who doesn't write her own songs."

Later in the conversation, I maligned DeRogatis, to which she replied, "Oh you know he's a very good friend of mine." OF COURSE.

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 22 February 2005 17:08 (twenty years ago)

I wouldn't have thought that 36 is too young, but I think you might be? I'm 43, but I started writing about music around 2000, and it was absolutely the air we breathed. "Shiny, fake pop music" was not worthy of attention by serious people. When the Mountain Goats covered R Kelly or Ted Leo covered Kelly Clarkson it was at the beginning of the poptimist changeover - and it was still genuinely transgressive.

I'm clear on the timeline because ILX, FT, Tom Ewing, Marcello Carlin, Carl's book, etc really transformed the way this (then-young) music critic thought about music, taste, etc.

It's amazing how the great rockism/poptimism debate never comes back around to "Hey, remember when everybody loved R. Kelly?" I know a whole bunch of people who rode hard for that guy. Critics, critically beloved singer-songwriters, free jazz drummers... all just whistling past the graveyard (or the prison yard) now.

i'm younger than jrn and have been following music & music criticism for roughly half my life and things have changed an awful lot in that time in terms of broad critical biases and attention, and that's just late 00s onwards.

jrn, you seem to be unwilling to take anything as evidence of 'rockism' being a real tendency unless it is explicitly (not implicitly) taking a position of rock being superior to all other genres? which has never been the argument for what is meant by rockism. you say that merely reviewing a pop album is evidence of an anti-rockist position, but also that publications that didn't cover pop were doing so for simple reasons of genre focus and therefore that also can't be evidence of rockism, so i'm not sure how anything would meet your standards.

I’m on the record as criticising the way in which so much music criticism (pro-pop, anti-pop or indifferent to it) these days is barely distinguishable from an assessment of whether the artist seems like a good or relatable person, but obviously one thing that has changed for the better is that generally speaking attentive listeners and critics (myself included) are much less likely to ignore and minimise awful behaviour than was the norm 20 years ago, in particular awful behaviour by men towards women.

No longer celebrating “Ignition (Remix)” or ‘Last Train to Paris’ or ‘The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me’ is a pretty small price for me to pay.

It would be dishonest to pretend that tendency was limited to a particular type of critic or strand of criticism, in my view.

Unperson maybe missing the point . R Kelly put out great records then , and there were people then like now who don’t want to give credit to Rnb singers . The lack of attention to him now is as Unperson noted due to his off stage behavior, not because he lacked talent and the people talking him up in the past were wrong .

the difference between r kelly and a lot of other cases is that the incredibly serious allegations & evidence were widely reported on during the peak of his career and an awful lot of people who really should have known better just looked past that. i don't think that this has much to do with poptimism or music critics in particular though, it was a much much bigger cultural issue

I am 40 and remember things starting to change with Outkast getting the best album of the year in 03, was it? At least to me, that was an indicator that critical “indie” consensus was moving toward a more friendly attitude to hip-hop and pop music.

the difference between r kelly and a lot of other cases is that the incredibly serious allegations & evidence were widely reported on during the peak of his career and an awful lot of people who really should have known better just looked past that. i don't think that this has much to do with poptimism or music critics in particular though, it was a much much bigger cultural issue

agreed. i remember listening to his records on repeat while smoking black tar and drinking wine in my friend’s apartment in 2006, we even talked about allegations and said “oh well we love listening to this.” ashamed of those moments now!!

jrn, you seem to be unwilling to take anything as evidence of 'rockism' being a real tendency unless it is explicitly (not implicitly) taking a position of rock being superior to all other genres? which has never been the argument for what is meant by rockism. you say that merely reviewing a pop album is evidence of an anti-rockist position, but also that publications that didn't cover pop were doing so for simple reasons of genre focus and therefore that also can't be evidence of rockism, so i'm not sure how anything would meet your standards.
― ufo, Friday, September 26, 2025 6:42 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

One thing that would meet my standards is, yes, at least one prominent critic explicitly affirming that pop music is inferior to rock music, because rock bands write their own songs and play their own instruments and that makes them real and authentic, whereas pop singers don't play instruments and sing other people's songs and that makes them phony and their music bad.

I understand that this is supposed to be an implicit standard, for the most part. No one accused rock critics of reciting this like a mantra in every review. But it's also supposed to have been the dominant tendency in popular music criticism for what, thirty years? Is it so unreasonable to think that someone would have come right out and said it? Writers do tend to say the things they believe now and again, even when they consider them common sense. At least a handful of times per decade.

If your gut reaction to that is "but that opinion is so blatantly unreasonable that no one would say it", then you're starting to come over to my side.

Another thing that would meet my standards is an example of a prominent critic expressing that view can't be reasonably explained as stemming from any critical perspective other than stereotypical rockism. But every example I've seen so far is at least equally consistent, and sometimes much more consistent, with a perspective that fits Carl Wilson's definition of poptimism: "all kinds of music have the potential to be rewarding and are worthy of serious critical attention, including the music on the pop charts".

A third thing that would meet my standards would be a broader trend within music criticism that can't be reasonably explained as stemming from anything other than endemic rockism. But I don't know of any such trend that can't be explained equally well, or better, by reference to innocent differences in taste, economic factors, or indie rock in particular having a natural constituency among the sorts of dweebs who start and/or write for online music publications.

This tangent began with me saying that I think rockism and poptimism both largely serve as strawmen. And my reasons for believing that the poptimist stereotype is a strawman are exactly equivalent. People seethe at poptimists for supposedly believing that popularity equals musical quality, or that disliking pop music is a sign of moral deficiency. Maybe some people out there believe things like that, but I don't think there's a movement of working music critics who do. Because, again, if critics did believe this, I see no reason to think they'd be shy about saying so. And meanwhile, the things they actually say are just as consistent, if not more consistent, with a far more reasonable perspective.

And of course I didn't say that merely reviewing a pop album is a sign of an anti-rockist disposition. If someone reviewed a Kylie Minogue album with a 0.0 score and a gif of a monkey peeing in its own mouth, I wouldn't shrug and say "well, they reviewed her, so they must believe her music has the potential to be rewarding!"

You have many of us telling you we were around at the time, writing at the time, posting at the time.

But what if someone else who was around, writing, and posting at the time disagreed with you? I might have to not just take your word for it. Now there's a scary thought

If your gut reaction to that is "but that opinion is so blatantly unreasonable that no one would say it", then you're starting to come over to my side.

Rock And The Pop Narcotic is 629 pages long.

You caught me not being literal. But I'll give you Carducci, as long as we can acknowledge (with all due affection) he's a lone weirdo who self-publishes his books. It would be a bit like claiming that mainstream music criticism has long been hostile to the Beatles, and when pressed for an example, pointing to Piero Scaruffi

I had completely forgotten the 1990s/2000/2001 in this regard - yes, indeed, that was the thinking by and large, and I was guilty of it at times myself.

(I’m 48.)

I remember rockism and what a liberation it was to engage with popular music on its own terms, felt like a just a burst of creative energy experienced as a listener

damn u typos

looking back though I'm not too surprised that there are not a lot of explicit examples of rockism in professional criticism, I'm often impressed with the nuance found in actual discourse

I don't understand. You felt prohibited from engaging with pop music before it became the dominant strain of music criticism?

I don't understand. You felt prohibited from engaging with pop music before it became the dominant strain of music criticism?

I understand this. I spent years trying vainly to find anything worthwhile in the music of Lou Reed because so many of my fellow critics worshipped the guy. They had me convinced that I was some kind of dolt because I couldn't perceive the brilliance in his bullshit.

You need to take a walk on the wild side

I understand this. I spent years trying vainly to find anything worthwhile in the music of Lou Reed because so many of my fellow critics worshipped the guy. They had me convinced that I was some kind of dolt because I couldn't perceive the brilliance in his bullshit.

Don't you love technical metal? Talk about nothing worthwhile in the music.

What's the unperson stance on Lulu?

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 ...

What's the unperson stance on Lulu?

Lou, Lou

The first time I heard Lou Reed’s name was as a teen watching That 70s Show, one character was talking about how cool it would be to go to New York and to “meet Lou Reed” and I thought “wow this Lou Reed fella must be pretty cool I guess”

Sorry to jaymc.xls here but we’re about the same age and that show was on TV maybe one month before you turned 20

Less than 2 months, when that episode aired! I was living with my parents and working at a lumber yard

You felt prohibited from engaging with pop music before it became the dominant strain of music criticism?

I wouldn't put it like that. I believed the kind of music that merited attention and study was the stuff reviewed on p4k and canonized on RS lists. This was obv a set of aesthetics I had inherited, not my own. So when I realized that you might take Celine Dion or Backstreet Boys seriously that opened a new avenue for me. Good times. By the time I joined ILM I thought I was pretty openminded. Then I saw Nyan Cat and "Give Me Everything" by Pitbull place on a top 77 and realized... it was possible to go deeper. Lately I've become disillusioned with contemporary pop and the music industry, and I find myself more interested in live performances and niche sounds.