What makes for a good music critic in 2010 ?

I have been at this for over 5 years now and I am starting to feel like I am in an echo chamber wrt to my writing on music. I know there are plenty of critics on here and those who actively read music criticism. My question is pragmatic in nature. What do people want to see more of/less of in contemporary music writing ? Look, I know this is ilx, and snark is par for the course here but would really appreciate serious answers. I am at a cross roads and basically want to become better/more effective at what I do and hearing people's opinion on it would be of great help.

cheeba

an ability to pay attention to anything for more than 5 seconds before fidgeting around and losing interest

I've been at it since 1996 and the primary advice I will offer you is this: what makes a good music critic is the ability to get paid for what you do. Period. This is a job. Now, if you want to become a better writer, it's gonna take a lot longer than five years, and you need to read as much as possible...and as little music criticism as possible. I think the key to successful criticism, from an artistic/philosophical standpoint, is to ignore your nominal peers. Journalists of all types are herd animals, so most of them listen to horrible shitty bands - the same horrible shitty bands - anyway. Whatever they're ignoring is what's most worth your time, both from an aesthetic angle and from a find-a-niche-and-fill-it professional angle.

you need to read as much as possible...and as little music criticism as possible

... says the music critic who reads/writes on ILX.

Agree with unperson, btw.

good qualities for a music writer to possess: an encyclopedic knowledge of the genre they write about, an engaging prose style, the ability to describe music in an accurate, compelling way, and, most importantly, a penchant for having something interesting to say, consistently

you need to read as much as possible...and as little music criticism as possible.

genuinely curious, Phil: what would you recommend they read?

i'm not a critic, but fwiw, i'd say: straightforward, clear writing. that seems obvious, but i think it's often a challenge when you're writing about music (or dancing about architecture).

what would you recommend they read?

Anything that inspires them to write for the pleasure of writing. I read a lot of science fiction - I'm currently on a Charles Stross kick, and digging into a couple of books by Iain Banks, and I'll be buying William Gibson's new one on the day of release. I also read a lot of thrillers and crime novels. But whatever you want to read, do it. Just keep reading voraciously, in every spare moment, and steal anything that appeals to you. The reason I suggest avoiding music criticism is the herd-animal thing again: they all read each other, so you'll wind up stealing from the same people they're stealing from (Christgau, Bangs, Eddy, Klosterman, and the big Pitchfork names), which will make you just as boring as them. Plus, if you read things that have nothing to do with music-crit but inspire you to think, you'll wind up thinking about music differently.

Thanks for the responses so far. @ unperson. I think what you are saying wrt to thinking about music differently by reading something other than criticism strikes a chord with me. I think that every critic gets into a rut where he starts to feel like he is repeating himself, or even worse that he is repeating others and that kills the motivation. And in this game, motivation counts for a lot after you have been at it for a good amount of time.

nabisco otm

no such thing

fwiw I prefer it when writer's address the ideas being presented in the music, rather than the musicians' personal lives/career arcs (there are exceptions when the musician's backstory is REALLY compelling, but in general I just don't want to hear this kind of bullshit anymore)

the ability to describe music in an accurate, compelling way

As a reader I'll chime in and say this is key. Specifically, the ability to talk about the music, how it sounds, what it does to you, while avoiding most of the press sheet rhetoric. Too many reviewers spend about 90% of their review talking about shit that's on the press sheet without talking about how the music actually fucking sounds. If I wanted to hear a general discussion of a band's history and influences and talking points, I'll read the damn press sheet for myself.

Speaking in terms of what I want personally (i.e. I can't guarantee this'll help your career at all!), I like reviews to be clear and direct and, yeah, focussed on the sound of the record - a bit of context can be nice of course. As for more general writing (features and the like), I find the writers I come back to nearly always have unique ways of coming at their subject. A good litmus test is whether someone can find something new to say about really well-worn canon stuff. I'd actually say the fact you're concerned is a positive - another constant with critics I like is that they seem to spend a lot of time thinking (and often writing) about their role; what they want to achieve or why they see the value in criticism or whatever.

xpost

Phil: thanks for the great post, and for the great advice, which is totally solid. i feel inspired to read more often now

(i already read a lot, but i definitely want to read more, especially, you know, offline)

I really agree with the bit about reading as much as possible outside of music criticism -- plus thinking about how it works. Music criticism as a whole has a certain prose style, tone, and way of thinking. If you want to write criticism, it's probably best to understand that style and perspective, but it's probably best to understand other stuff as well. This doesn't even require going far afield: thinking about how any kinds of essays or criticism or longer arguments work -- how people talk about literature or film, or political arguments, or personal narratives, or even just how people structure magazine features and whatnot -- that's useful, right? It's not just about prose style, though that's a big thing (there's a distinct prose style for a lot of music criticism, sorta stylized and dense and flashy with reference/wit/shorthand, and to be honest I think people appreciate seeing something different in that world) -- it's about ways of thinking, too. E.g., the way critical writing on literature works is REALLY different from the way music crit tends to -- it focuses hard on "what is this art doing, what might it mean" and close-reading type stuff, whereas lots of music crit is set up more to talk about "is this art good/worthwhile."

I mean you can poke around the internet right now and read things like Edmund Wilson reviewing Ulysses for the New Republic in 1922 -- and that's gonna help you think about how it works to write about art, surely? PLUS it's not like I think music critics need to get all cultural-studies about everything, but it SERIOUSLY pleases me as a reader when someone can connect ideas not just to music-world arcana but to broad ideas and trends, or maybe even stuff about, you know, life. That stuff can be embarrassing if you try to force it too hard, but really, people think earnestly and constantly about what it's like to be alive and what sort of people they want to be, and explaining how music even tangentially figures into that experience is a cool goal, IMO.

I also agree with the "unique ways of coming at the subject" thing, especially when the writers really know what their way is. Some people are great at thinking about song narratives, others are great at talking about how music fits in with its audience/industry, some people talk well about how music functions in their personal lives, etc. It's probably just good to know which dimensions you want to tackle with any given piece!

(For the record, I'm not blaming music criticism for the difference between it and literary criticism; it's more a structural/timing thing. The kind of lit crit I mean stems from close reading of canonical texts, basically, and music critics do close reading when they talk about canon too -- it's just that a lot more time is spent reviewing everything that comes out NOW, so of course its gonna develop a style that has more to do with evaluating quality. And lit crit can continue to think more about, like, what can I pull from the whole body of literature to advance an idea about literature itself, or life, etc.)

A huge part of what inspired me to write music crit was reading litcrit: Wilson, Kazin, Trilling, Woolf. And lots of novels. I can't stress enough the importance of thoughtful dilettantism. You improve your craft by borrowing tricks from other writers and learning how to adapt them to your own voice.

I can say with some certainty that if all you read is other music criticism your prose will eventually constrict to the point at which you have to squint to read it.

^^ plus your only lens on music will be how it relates to itself (i.e., trends, comparisons, insider/geek talk, etc.)

Reading outside of music criticism is good advice. MFK Fisher's writing about food is often in the back of my mind when writing about music. Seeing how people get at things they find interesting, whatever the subject, has value. I do think there's still a lot of music writing that falls outside of what is often emulated that is useful too, like David Toop's books.

complete nonnegotiable honesty
attentive listening
indifference to hype
not being too much of a cheerleader for your own generation
not ever allowing political correctness, populism, ideology etc etc to seep into your reviews
a fairly good knowledge of classic music regardless of what other genres interest you
a fairly solid knowledge of Western culture in general, particularly aesthetics
developing the so-called aristocratic style: direct, frank, unaffected and concise (also known as the opposite of the way some Pìtchfork reviewers and Robert Christgau write)

obs: item 6- classicAL music, also, this means knowing the basics of music theory, pitch etc

don't know about unaffected, but Christgau is pretty concise most of the time

i really like when you can download the mp3 directly from the blog instead of having to click through to mediafire or whatever

Yeah, don't read press releases. If you need to get some facts - the credits, recording details, any of that stuff - call the publicist. But don't read the press release. That tells you what they want you to think, and tend to set the terms for a huge number of the reviews. It's much harder to be absorbed into the hive mind of music-crit if you don't allow yourself access to one of the hive mind's props.

know - or learn - about music.

i agree w/nabisco & alfred & unperson about the importance of reading outside sources, that's what I always did, as a music critic in the 80s & 90s my big influence was the literary journalism of martin amis & julian barnes. at the same time I tried to educate myself (a non-musician) in music itself, the recording process and ways of the biz.

in the 2000s the only music crit worth reading is grounded in musical knowledge, alex ross in the ny'er being the prime example. this is my jaded old-guy perspective. but the time-honored "pop music criticism = sociology" equation no longer adds up and lack of interest in the music itself is the achilles heel of the whole christgau/marcus school.

know - or learn - about music....the recording process and ways of the biz.

Agree with this too. I studied audio engineering and it's totally changed the way I listen to music and consequently the way I write about it - not only what I say in reviews etc., but the questions I'm interested in asking artists when I interview them. I'm much more likely now to talk to someone about their drum sound than I am to ask what personal tragedies influenced the lyrics.

To be honest, reading enough of Wilson, Trilling, et al will inoculate you against attempting biographical criticism (writing fiction or music of your own helps too).

i beat phil AND alfred. i've actually read a sci-fi novel by leslie fiedler! (um, noted lit critic, for those of you who only read music reviews.)

Fieldler's sci-fi novel is no doubt superior to Trilling's Alger Hiss-Chambers novel.

these days, i just want to turn people on to good stuff. that's why i still do the little writing that i do. i mean, i've always wanted to do this, but now i'm less concerned about flexing my "creativity" and more concerned with "the facts". sorta. i still write silly stuff when i'm bored. so sue me.

but look i get e-mails like this and my mission is accomplished!

"Hey man, My names David and i'm a huge fan of your Wages of Din article. i read it religiously every month and i try to get everything you review or at least check it out. I recently picked up the releases you mentioned from Utech and they're incredible. I just wanted to say thanks for writing the article and if you got any other tips let me know man. I'm always interested in hearing some new interesting sounds."

I love biographical criticism. Or at least anecdotal criticism--I don't want to know your whole life story, but if you can tell me a funny story that such-and-such a song reminds you of, leading to a good line at the end, I'm a fan.

but that's called having a conversation!

And that be good (which I hope is what you mean).

Anecdotal stuff is okay as "enrichment," I guess. Learning that Paul wrote "Hey Jude" for Julian and "the movement you need is on your shoulder" stayed in at John's behest is cool, but I'd hate to read an interpretation that draws upon these tidbits for ballast.

(I get cranky about this stuff because two weeks ago I graded yet another stack of undergrad lit essays that drew biographical parallels between Hemingway's life and his fiction -- a not-fun game of Connect the Dots).

We had a guy in Toronto who recently got let go after 15 years or so of writing for a weekly. I don't want to name names, so I'll call him Tim Perlich. Knew a ton about music. For 15 years, he was the teacher--I know a lot about this stuff, so pay attention and you'll learn something--and there was no conversation; he dispensed knowledge, and after 15 years, I didn't know a thing about him except that he was a tremendously annoying pedant. I'm not, I better clarify, saying knowledge is a bad thing--it's essential, obviously. (Although I've never been moved from my belief that you can write great music criticism without any formal knowledge of music whatsoever.) But the first job is to engage the reader, and to that end, funny little stories can be a great thing.

Awesome discussion going on. Entirely agree with all that was said about avoiding reading too much of other people's criticism. I read so much popular criticism when I first started dipping into freelancing that it became literally impossible to avoid getting caught up in the endlessly regurgitating hype and attendant backlash surrounding whatever critical darling was releasing LP#whatever and have my reviews be influenced, in some way, by the whole leak narrative leading up to my review copy finally arriving. It's fine when you're already a fan of the band and are genuinely interested, but if you're just going on recommendations from Pitchfork and Stereogum, it can be poison.

And as a music illiterate, I'd say that having some understanding of music theory is key to transitioning from a hobbyist to a serious critic (there's a good reason, besides the obvious lack of viable opportunities, that I'll never make a living as a critic). Sure, no one's gonna be interested in reading a note-by-note dissection of a Radiohead track, but being able to do that is a valuable asset that will ground you when other critics start recycling each other's adjectives and analogies.

On that note, never, ever use the words "glacial" or "angular."

And yes, your undergrad lit essays sound annoying. But undergrad lit essays and record reviews have different jobs to do.

And at the risk of being obvious...Trying to prescribe what makes for good music criticsm--or at least good pop music criticism--is a dead end. What Marcus does works for Marcus, what Alex Ross does works for him, and my pointless anecdotal stories work for me. Which is not to say I'm not enjoying the thread.

Word.

you can write great music criticism without any formal knowledge of music whatsoever.

there was a point when I bought this notion but half a lifetime of serious listening & reading have thoroughly disabused me.

Fair enough, but I still hold to it. (Somewhat self-servingly, I'll admit.) I approach it from the same angle as something Marcus once wrote: "What is it like to be a listener?" I try to write about what I experience as a listener. And you can do that--and, I believe, do it well--without much more than a basic formal knowledge.

Trying to prescribe what makes for good music criticsm--or at least good pop music criticism--is a dead end.

THANK YOU!!!! Some of the shit that's been said on here is just mind-boggingly moronic. Pauline Kael (not a music critic btw) said there are no hard and fast rules. Listen to her.

"w/o much more that a basic formal knowledge" >>>>>> "w/o any formal knowledge whatsoever"

this is the distinction I was trying to draw: not that every rock critic needs a musicology degree but simply that you've got start somewhere or else you end up like the well-fed restaurant critic who doesn't know anything about food or cooking but knows what tastes good.

More wisdom from Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes: "The Constitution is what we say it is."

With wordcounts under 100 per album in many venues these days

This denies any notion of actually practicing journalism. Even if you're an editor presiding over it at some publication. Then, more accurately, one is a scheduler, a job that more accurately dovetails with
the tight lacing of every single review to release schedules.

Then there's the big quid pro quo thing.

What xhuxk describes about Billboard, rhapsody and emusic (except for the wordcount thing; I can go as long as I want, though I usually wind up in the 200-250 word range because that's how I was trained) is also true of my work for AMG. It's much more about description than rendering a hard-and-fast verdict, and I have to stay away from stuff like "an early contender for Album of the Year" because, in theory, AMG reviews aren't locked to the time they're first published or to street dates - they're supposed to linger there for when someone looks the album up for research or something.

xpost i dunno how light does a check have to be before one considers oneself an amateur?

xp I don't blame Whiney -- I blame Entertainment Weekly, 20 or so years ago. That was the first shot in this war. But sure, people can still write at length, and ages after a record comes out, on their blogs and other websites, just like they could write for fanzines in the old days. They just can't (usually) get paid for it. (And I'm not saying that's entirely bad for music criticism, either. But I dunno, for me personally, a paycheck tends to be a good motivator -- even though some of the writing I'm proudest of has been done for free.)

So much criticism seems to hit the ground running with its ultimate opinion tacitly apparent in its tone while pretending to review. Find good (even if it's a struggle), find bad (ditto), but keep postponing that 'this is good'/'this is bad' moment (if you feel you need it at all.) it is in some ways for the reader the least important part.

This is what Manny Farber (especially in the late reviews co-written with Patricia Patterson) was quite good at.

op: animated .gifs

Remember, you're reviewing the band. not the fans.

I'd amend this slightly: oftentimes you're reviewing the track or album or mix or performance, rather than the artist themselves. I think that makes a difference (and I'm guessing it's part of what ithappens means anyway), if only because a work doesn't usually add up to a whole. (I keep thinking of Scharpling & Wurster's Rock, Rot & Rule, in which Wurster's clueless book author says that Neil Young rots. "But what about . . ." Scharpling asks, naming the obvious canonical stuff. Wurster, who's only heard the bad '80s records: "That's six albums.")

NB I don't blame Whiney either and I hope that's clear. and I agree -- as with The Death of The Newspaper these forces have been in motion since long before the average home had access to broadband internet. also agreed that paid work today will almost always trump spec work today. which is sort of baked into my crack about In The Future All Music Writers Will Be Amateurs.

at this point I read 33 1/3 more than I read pfork so who knows

It forces me think more about what makes a record singular, and what's actually happening on it, and how I can say that in an interesting way, whether I love the music or don't like it much

I have to admit, my old dream/ideal used to be that one could find a way to describe how a record works that would make everyone who'd dislike the record cringe, and everyone who'd like the record get excited, all without suggesting an opinion either way. (I think I may have gotten close to this once -- a review that got loads of email saying either "you're right, this sucks" or "you're right, this is awesome" -- but this is one of those unreachable ideals, obviously.)

x-post: Totally agree about show don't tell, I was more thinking about how for years I struggled with leads until I remembered that sometimes you just need to start writing about what you're writing about and not worry about a clever way in, especially if your clever way would break the momentum, and always if it would make anyone wonder, "So why is this being written about again"?

So I don't agree that you should avoid reading other criticism, but I would avoid explicitly responding to it in your writing, because there's so much more there, both in the art and in yourself.

True to a point--you'll certainly save yourself a lot of grief, and there's something kind of noble about staying above the fray--but one of the best things for me about reading Kael and all her rivals from the early 60's was the way they'd have at each other. Kael would complain about Sarris, he'd complain about her, Simon would complain about both of them, Macdonald would chime in, etc., etc. I suppose it was quite annoying if you just wanted to know whether or not The Disorderly Orderly was worth seeing, otherwise highly entertaining and instructive. (The nobility of above-the-fray: Stanley Kauffmann, most of the time.) And Kael's "Circles and Squares," her epic diatribe against Sarris, is one of her greatest pieces of writing. (Unless you're a Sarris acolyte, in which case it's just shrill.) Maybe you just mean that stuff shouldn't creep into regular reviews. Mostly, I think that's a good idea.

It's important not to take attacks seriously too. Poor Sarris never forgave Kael, despite several attempts on her part to mend fences.

I'd have to look it up, but as I remember it, there was still lingering bitterness in the piece he wrote after her death.

Yeah, he still hadn't gotten over it.

Here's the piece. "In berths and hard cash, she profited much more than I did--in addition to its prestige, The New Yorker paid better than The Village Voice, and Pauline did stints as a consultant in Hollywood. But she deserved it for her relentless self-promotion and her artful suggestion that she was the ultimate authority on all movies because the opinions of colleagues were worthless."

And, uh, oh yeah--RIP!

hatchet jobs on other critics who are just plain wrong and stupid is so much fun, though. LOVED doing it the one time i got commissioned to do so. still regret that at the time of the taylor wift feminist débâcle i was too tied up with work to have time to eviscerate that autostraddle piece.

It's important not to take attacks seriously too. Poor Sarris never forgave Kael, despite several attempts on her part to mend fences.

idk, publishing a diatribe against someone is as definitively bridge-burning as you get.

(i don't think having a thick skin is necessarily a good thing for a critic!)

Like someone else said upthread, I don't really care too much for historico-contextual screeds about how the album fits within the artist's oeuvre. For me the key is to find words to describe the music in arresting and interesting ways. The master of this is David Keenan, who gets a lot of stick from all quarters but has an unmistakable style based around a more or less unique critical vocabulary. Any of his capsule reviews on VT would serve as examples.

I generally quite like Keenan's turn of phrase but it strikes me as heavily cribbed from Byron Coley (who I guess is pretty in thrall to Beat-ish vocab himself)

xpost Thanks for that Sarris piece, so much there.

Keenan is like a humourless, arid & v. pompous mystic version of Byron Coley.

I'm a longtime reader of the bimonthly classical review Fanfare, and once in awhile its critics just eviscerate each other in a special section in the back of the mag. Last time it was a dude whose reviews are really useful to me sonning a dude whose reviews don't do shit, but it was so harsh I felt bad for the vic.

that sounds like an awesome idea for a section though

Yeah, not on topic for music but the letters section of The Comics Journal in the mid-late 80s was a war zone, you'd have these critic vs critic flame wars that went on for issue after issue. Not like that any more sadly.

[i]idk, publishing a diatribe against someone is as definitively bridge-burning as you get[i]

Those confounded bridges. I'm good at burning them. Finding or building them, less so.

Ha, Clemenza and I have been burning each others' bridges for years (his diatribe against me is definitive), and we're still friends!

what diatribe? can i read it? is clemenza jo jo dancer?

Pretty sure it's findable at rockcritics.com somewhere, Scott. (And nah, Jo Jo Dancer was pretty easy on me, in comparison!)

I have often been tempted to definitively eviscerate my own critical writing under a pseudonym, but then I re-read my own reviews and I'm like "wow this stuff eviscerates itself WITHOUT ANYONE HAVING TO LIFT A FINGER."

I just remember Clemenza (on the Rock Hall Of Fame clusterfuck poll thread) saying 'if I told you my name you probably wouldn't recognize it anyway'...

As above, but without the qualifier. Anyway, I'm glad xhuck still counts me as a friend--we're doing better than Kael and Sarris.

John Lennon knows your name, and I've seen him.

ROCK!

sorry, t rex moment for the day.

http://rockcriticsarchives.com/features/phildellio/accidentaltheorist.html

Nice CIUT shirt. I have fond memories of "Introspective Guy Town". And in regards to the firing of TP mentioned upthread, about freakin' time.

http://rockcriticsarchives.com/features/phildellio/accidentaltheorist.html

― jaymc

Posts very much in character. :)

ρεμπετις (hope I didn't mispronounce that): Wow--don't know who you are, but I'm flabbergasted and thrilled beyond words that someone remembers "Introspective Guy Town." I'm starting to feel self-conscious, like I've accidentally hijacked this thread, but I'll just say quickly that I'm on CKLN these days. Now back to word-counts and Chief Justices and the aristrocratic style, please.

now i remember that thing. highly entertaining. and long. and kinda crazy! in a good way. i think.

i thought of one of these today: just being brutally honest about how good something is/how much pleasure it evokes upon listening. i really appreciate critics/people who separate the wheat from seas of chaff and maintain a high standard of quality, even if that means passing up loads of worthwhile bands. i've picked up albums that were all "four stars rilly good cool band ye," but there's only one or two great songs on it. like obviously we listened to the same album, you could've just told the truth in the first place and saved me being dissapointed.

*even if that means passing up loads of semi-worthwhile bands

Yet another reminder: concentrate your efforts wisely. Trying to become some sort of idiot savant when it comes to recognizing every single track from every single band that ever was is something record store clerks and DJs do (absolutely nothing wrong w/ that, but professionally it's much more useful to them; for a music critic it's nice but often not really essential).

It's a good idea to focus on music itself instead of the flippant music scene du jour or the social context where a specific genre was born-- both can turn into distractions that can make you lose your edge and cave in to cronyism, charity criticism etc etc.

So basically you should beware of the dilettante zone and aim for a kind of "new criticism" ethos applied to music: listen closely and often to the kind of music that is meaningful to you and translate that experience into words. One of the problems with music criticism these days is succumbing to the sheer weight of information and the endless search for the latest track/remix/album/band etc. Avoid both information overload and superficial value judgement; read Northop Frye's "Polemical Introoduction" on the "Anatomy of Criticism".

Can we read Althusser too?

It's a good idea to focus on music itself instead of the flippant music scene du jour or the social context where a specific genre was born-- both can turn into distractions

Agreed but with the same qualification I'd add to my thing about not generalizing about audiences, which was maybe too hasty: The history of popular music is a history of audiences, and audiences define genres, which are nothing other than social context--we're all just record-store clerks seeing who walks in and to which section to buy what, and doing guesswork accordingly. (And don't take that metaphor literally: People at shows and in stores and online for the same artist are often entirely different crowds, each more diverse and complex than we usually admit.)

Audiences shape the music too, especially in scenes. And a band's live show is just more context to draw on. So I guess I'd just recommend caution and actually talking with people at shows, and developing a way of thinking about music where there's some diversity of experience behind your shorthand. I.e.: You don't know, you better ask somebody.

And I'd say listening closely and often to what moves you includes learning about that context out in the world--I'm saying this after hanging out with a Parisian staying in Minneapolis for a few months who's been going to North Side hip-hop shows and interviewing rappers for a paper.

I went to see Factory Floor and Fuck Buttons two nights ago at a London gig venue and it was weird being in an audience of ATP beards/indie types all stood stock still, stroking beards real and metaphorical - looking at me like it was somehow gauche to be dancing. Saw FF two weeks earlier at an arts venue but everyone there (motley collection of industrial fans, acid house guys, metallers, goths and patrons of the arts all getting down - but in totally different styles. I guess it's interesting seeing in practice how seemingly functional music gets used in completely different ways.

But the hipster thing is just a red herring. I wish there was a ban on mentioning 'them'.

I grew up dancing at shows. I tend to think of it as a small-town thing, but it could just be my town/era. It's a critical mass thing.

Can we read Althusser too?
― Kevin John Bozelka, Friday, 23 April 2010 09:44 (Yesterday) Bookmark

You could, but be sure to read his critics too, and for the love of God do not take anything whatsoever from his writing style and research methods if you ever want to land a job.

The history of popular music is a history of audiences, and audiences define genres, which are nothing other than social context- Pete Scholtes

I'd say that the popular history of popular music is a history of audiences if that's the angle you choose, and that doesn't even apply exclusively to music or culture: you can get a demographic profile out of any consumer product from lawnmowers to yoghurt.

At this day and age, I'd rather focus on the historically recent facts that people 1)often isolate and create personal spaces for themselves through music(ipods, home theaters etc), and 2) somewhat paradoxically, are also more willing to listen to certain genres and artists outside of their natural social settings (like metalheads who like Stravinsky or housewives who listen to Lady Gaga). If you want to communicate with as many intelligent readers as possible, think twice before writing with a specific audience in mind; do not alienate anyone.

Finally, music like all art is created from an individualistic, solipsistic (and ocasionally misanthropic) POV. I'd rather try to assess the motivations and talent of the artist as an individual or a specific group of individuals because this is how you honour their craft and efforts, and this kind of commitment at the same time turns you into an author and thinker with a distinguishable and therefore more marketable voice.

Will.i.am has some wisdom for this thread in the cover story of the latest Rolling Stone. This is in response to the question of whether The Black Eyed Peas make songs or jingles:

"Since the 1960's, it's been a taboo for bands to fuck with brands, like they should only sell music. But music was never the product. When you played in a bar, music drew people in to sell a ticket and drinks. The first music industry was publishing, because they sold sheet music." Beethoven? Verdi? "They were selling aggregation, the ability to bring people to a concert hall."

Very interesting thread. Thanks, people.

Consumers of mass-produced products can often find an identity based around buying that product, but I trust you're not saying these identities all operate the same way, or exert the same amount of influence over their product. And is thinking about the history of popular music as a history of audiences (including individuals making space for themselves out of category) really all that popular? Books like The Sound of the City and England's Dreaming and Triksta: Life and Death and New Orleans Rap strike me as the exception rather than the rule.

yeah frankly the popular histories are usually ones obsessed w/ the auteur, not the other way around