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March 3, 2023 8:57 AM Subscribe
Ask A Music Critic: Why Aren’t There More Negative Album Reviews? A viral takedown of the Italian band Måneskin prompted a reader to ask music critic Steven Hyden why there aren’t more negative album reviews. "What’s going on here? ...Don’t tell me that music is better than ever!" Hyden responds with his own theory: no, it’s not really all about access, or fanbases, or poptimism, but rather about "the decline of the general-interest music critic".
"Decline of the general-interest music critic" is a really weird way of saying "white, cis-het male music critic."
posted by urbanlenny at 9:07 AM on March 3, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by urbanlenny at 9:07 AM on March 3, 2023 [6 favorites]
Are people from other groups being hired to review albums instead, now?
posted by Selena777 at 9:10 AM on March 3, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by Selena777 at 9:10 AM on March 3, 2023 [12 favorites]
I seem to recall reading New Music Express in the 1990s, and it was full of brief, mean-spritied reviews. Have they mellowed (possibly by going out of print)?
posted by wenestvedt at 9:19 AM on March 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by wenestvedt at 9:19 AM on March 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
Decline of the general-interest music critic" is a really weird way of saying "white, cis-het male music critic."
Did you mean to drop a hot take that implied that straight white cis men were the only people capable of disliking music, and presumably all other demographics are tasteless credulous fools? Because that sounds like nonsense to me.
posted by Superilla at 9:19 AM on March 3, 2023 [12 favorites]
Did you mean to drop a hot take that implied that straight white cis men were the only people capable of disliking music, and presumably all other demographics are tasteless credulous fools? Because that sounds like nonsense to me.
posted by Superilla at 9:19 AM on March 3, 2023 [12 favorites]
"Decline of the general-interest music critic" is a really weird way of saying "white, cis-het male music critic."
I loved early Pitchfork reviews, but they definitely catered more to my specific demographic. The early writers (mostly young white dudes) were unafraid of taking stances against broadly popular music / the bad music of the past / etc. It seems like a natural consequence/cause of broad success must be a softening and an ability to talk to people who actually like those genres you’ve been hating on. Better to ignore than to slam, and Pitchfork is increasingly not ignoring but sincerely covering.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:20 AM on March 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
I loved early Pitchfork reviews, but they definitely catered more to my specific demographic. The early writers (mostly young white dudes) were unafraid of taking stances against broadly popular music / the bad music of the past / etc. It seems like a natural consequence/cause of broad success must be a softening and an ability to talk to people who actually like those genres you’ve been hating on. Better to ignore than to slam, and Pitchfork is increasingly not ignoring but sincerely covering.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:20 AM on March 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
(Time to read the article!)
posted by Going To Maine at 9:20 AM on March 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Going To Maine at 9:20 AM on March 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
Did you mean to drop a hot take that implied that straight white cis men were the only people capable of disliking music, and presumably all other demographics are tasteless credulous fools? Because that sounds like nonsense to me.
No I mean that a lot of the negative reviews - and straight up neglect - were of music that critics deemed to be below them, not worthy of comment, which almost always meant non-white men. For instance, the article mentions Robert Christgau having blind spots and one of the major ones was for music made by women, particulary rock music, which he often summarily dismissed as being basically teeny-bopper pretend music and not like the Real Rock Music men made. There is a specific example of this that I'm thinking of that I can't find right now - I swore it was a Joan Jett/Blackhearts album, but I can't find it. At any rate, this type of viewpoint and approach persisted well into the 10s - and was very much what Pitchfork used to be all about - when a more diverse array of music critics has come to the fore who see the value in more diverse musical contributions by previously ignored and deliberately sidelined groups of people.
posted by urbanlenny at 9:30 AM on March 3, 2023 [10 favorites]
No I mean that a lot of the negative reviews - and straight up neglect - were of music that critics deemed to be below them, not worthy of comment, which almost always meant non-white men. For instance, the article mentions Robert Christgau having blind spots and one of the major ones was for music made by women, particulary rock music, which he often summarily dismissed as being basically teeny-bopper pretend music and not like the Real Rock Music men made. There is a specific example of this that I'm thinking of that I can't find right now - I swore it was a Joan Jett/Blackhearts album, but I can't find it. At any rate, this type of viewpoint and approach persisted well into the 10s - and was very much what Pitchfork used to be all about - when a more diverse array of music critics has come to the fore who see the value in more diverse musical contributions by previously ignored and deliberately sidelined groups of people.
posted by urbanlenny at 9:30 AM on March 3, 2023 [10 favorites]
Better to ignore than to slam, and Pitchfork is increasingly not ignoring but sincerely covering.
Absolutely. They've gotten much better and this is reflected in their bylines, which are much more increasingly women and BIPOC and the content of their year-end lists, which rarely are topped by the music of straight cis het white men in recent years, unlike the 00s.
posted by urbanlenny at 9:31 AM on March 3, 2023
Absolutely. They've gotten much better and this is reflected in their bylines, which are much more increasingly women and BIPOC and the content of their year-end lists, which rarely are topped by the music of straight cis het white men in recent years, unlike the 00s.
posted by urbanlenny at 9:31 AM on March 3, 2023
And actually building on that, it's all part of the Same Old Story that Straight Cis White Men ie Default Humans are the only ones "capable" of being "un-biased" because everyone else is a Special Interest Group. I very much mean the opposite of what you're interpreting my take to be: that more music gets its due now because the concept of Default Human General Interest Music Critic is blissfully largely gone. It never existed to begin with, there was just a long-standing pretense that it did or should.
posted by urbanlenny at 9:35 AM on March 3, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by urbanlenny at 9:35 AM on March 3, 2023 [6 favorites]
At first I was a little skeptical, cause it kind of seemed like the negative review could have been written 25 years ago about some really dope bands.
But then I listened to Maneskin and I feel a lot more okay with the review.
posted by entropone at 9:36 AM on March 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
But then I listened to Maneskin and I feel a lot more okay with the review.
posted by entropone at 9:36 AM on March 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
Is it time for me to drop in one of my all-time favorite Metafilter comments here?
https://www.metafilter.com/71003/This-Band-Rips#2089308
posted by cccorlew at 9:41 AM on March 3, 2023 [6 favorites]
https://www.metafilter.com/71003/This-Band-Rips#2089308
posted by cccorlew at 9:41 AM on March 3, 2023 [6 favorites]
I loved early Pitchfork reviews, but they definitely catered more to my specific demographic.
Sure do, and this is also why it's ok for them to ream Måneskin but not Lil Yachty. Måneskin's audience is mostly teenagers, and mostly teenage girls. (For context I really like Måneskin but also thought RUSH was a mediocre album and I also don't love the press treating them as ~saviors of rock~)
posted by capricorn at 9:56 AM on March 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
Sure do, and this is also why it's ok for them to ream Måneskin but not Lil Yachty. Måneskin's audience is mostly teenagers, and mostly teenage girls. (For context I really like Måneskin but also thought RUSH was a mediocre album and I also don't love the press treating them as ~saviors of rock~)
posted by capricorn at 9:56 AM on March 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
It’s been years since I read music criticism primarily for recommendations, let alone a pro/anti buyer’s guide. What I do read it for, then, is entertaining or insightful commentary on music I may or may not listen to anyway. And the hatchet job is a pretty time-tested niche in criticism as entertainment, and it’s not as if being a hater doesn’t still sell pretty well in other contexts. So I feel like there has to be some degree of economic and cultural shift that has made negative reviews less prevalent. An additional cultural factor that hasn’t been mentioned is that the schtick of leaning into “your pop culture artifact sucks” was really big online for a while, to the point that it just got played out. The likes of Anthony Fantano still get plenty of mileage out of hot takes and takedowns, but they are presented as part of a more evenhanded persona which gives them more impact.
And no. 3 [impact of “poptimism”] isn’t true at all (particularly when it comes to butt-rock bands like Måneskin, who have been the lowest hanging fruit for music writers since Grand Funk Railroad).
Doesn’t the idea of poptimism dovetail with his thesis, though? Outlets try to assign reviewers who like the genre to be reviewed partly because the subscribe to the idea that a variety of genres should be respected (and I’m not saying that’s actually a bad thing). And the way he’s talking about Måneskin here pretty much illustrates why they are the exception that proves the rule - they are right at the intersection of “stuff P4K would think is uncool now” and “stuff P4K would think is uncool 20 years ago.”
posted by atoxyl at 9:58 AM on March 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
And no. 3 [impact of “poptimism”] isn’t true at all (particularly when it comes to butt-rock bands like Måneskin, who have been the lowest hanging fruit for music writers since Grand Funk Railroad).
Doesn’t the idea of poptimism dovetail with his thesis, though? Outlets try to assign reviewers who like the genre to be reviewed partly because the subscribe to the idea that a variety of genres should be respected (and I’m not saying that’s actually a bad thing). And the way he’s talking about Måneskin here pretty much illustrates why they are the exception that proves the rule - they are right at the intersection of “stuff P4K would think is uncool now” and “stuff P4K would think is uncool 20 years ago.”
posted by atoxyl at 9:58 AM on March 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
There’s also the “with great power comes great responsibility” aspect. Pitchfork has legitimately wrecked careers for indie bands when it was just the indie scene. It is much easier to write a negative take about a big ol’ Eurovision champion, because the band has scads of fans and isn’t gonna really be hurt by critics thumbing their nose.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:59 AM on March 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 9:59 AM on March 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
Back in the old days, we had to buy albums at record stores, and reviews were theoretically a service. You wouldn't want to spend your hard earned money on a bad album. Obviously, you could listen to the record at the store, but if it wasn't reviewed, you wouldn't know it existed, unless you had an amazing record shop, or an amazing local radio station. I had neither. I also didn't have good newspaper reviews, because all the critics were white men who liked guitar rock. Finding the music I enjoy was an effort. My efforts paid back when a younger generation arrived and came to visit me for the treasures, gathered on travels, but damn.
Today, everyone can access everything so that gatekeeping is not so much of a thing. I don't miss it.
(Since I don't enjoy much rock music, I am not a Måneskin fan, but I respect that they have an intent and a drive).
posted by mumimor at 10:00 AM on March 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
Today, everyone can access everything so that gatekeeping is not so much of a thing. I don't miss it.
(Since I don't enjoy much rock music, I am not a Måneskin fan, but I respect that they have an intent and a drive).
posted by mumimor at 10:00 AM on March 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
Caught a stray from a linked Steve Albini twitter thread slamming Steely Dan:
Hard to pick a favorite from all the injured itt, top marks for the chord counters though, never would have believed you existed.
It took a while to realize that most music I'm not interested in doesn't "suck"; I'm just not interested in it. People are barely interested in what we like; they don't want to hear about what we hate, unless they hate the same thing. Now, with radio dead, you don't have to hear "somebody else's favorite song" (oh hey, Steely Dan) so often*, and you can curate your own stuff. So live and let live. And the idea that only white men knew how to rock: maybe that was a radio thing. It's certainly not true now.
I remember getting into, and back out of, Rolling Stone reviews back in the day, when Dave Marsh et al. really favored down-to-earth authentic insightful lyrics with music sparingly applied. I think I was looking for validation of my tastes (and recommendations for similar) and getting neither. I blew off rock criticism and got back to counting chords.
* except for TikTok on speakerphone
posted by kurumi at 10:02 AM on March 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
Hard to pick a favorite from all the injured itt, top marks for the chord counters though, never would have believed you existed.
It took a while to realize that most music I'm not interested in doesn't "suck"; I'm just not interested in it. People are barely interested in what we like; they don't want to hear about what we hate, unless they hate the same thing. Now, with radio dead, you don't have to hear "somebody else's favorite song" (oh hey, Steely Dan) so often*, and you can curate your own stuff. So live and let live. And the idea that only white men knew how to rock: maybe that was a radio thing. It's certainly not true now.
I remember getting into, and back out of, Rolling Stone reviews back in the day, when Dave Marsh et al. really favored down-to-earth authentic insightful lyrics with music sparingly applied. I think I was looking for validation of my tastes (and recommendations for similar) and getting neither. I blew off rock criticism and got back to counting chords.
* except for TikTok on speakerphone
posted by kurumi at 10:02 AM on March 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
“The review you had on ‘Shark Sandwich,’ which was merely a two-word review, just said ‘Shit sandwich.’”
posted by ianhorse at 10:06 AM on March 3, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by ianhorse at 10:06 AM on March 3, 2023 [7 favorites]
Yeah, the music industry has changed a lot. There is no one unified, accepted "type" of music for these reviewers to comment on like there was in the 80s and 90s. Democratization gives everyone a voice, and that old NME or Pitchfork style of talking shit on a band in some kind of insider baseball way just doesn't work now. Music magazines (hell, magazines in general) are dying. Labels no longer send crates of promos out to everyone in media like they used to. A lot of new music isn't even physically "released" per se.
I used to enjoy snarky music writing, but it just doesn't read right now. Nobody on Bandcamp, who's lucky to get a handful of listens at best, deserves that.
posted by SystematicAbuse at 10:06 AM on March 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
I used to enjoy snarky music writing, but it just doesn't read right now. Nobody on Bandcamp, who's lucky to get a handful of listens at best, deserves that.
posted by SystematicAbuse at 10:06 AM on March 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
I agree with Pat Metheny
Kenny’s talents are too teeny.
posted by whatevernot at 10:09 AM on March 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
Kenny’s talents are too teeny.
posted by whatevernot at 10:09 AM on March 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
So, I spent 10 years forming opinions about and writing reviews for plays on a quasi-professional basis, and do the same for movies now.
What I've come to learn is - the kind of work that would inspire an angry, raging, vitriolic review is actually a lot rarer than you'd think. Same with the kind of work that would inspire a love letter of a rave. I actually came to enjoy both kinds of reviews - the good stuff that blew me away would get me excited about "omigod you have got to hear about this amazing thing I just saw", and the bad stuff would work me up into a whole baroque frenzy of "YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO BELIEVE THIS THING THAT SOME PEOPLE ACTUALLY THOUGHT WAS A GOOD IDEA".
The vast majority of scripts and productions - and the reviews that made up the bulk of what I wrote about - were this huge field of mediocrity in the middle. I hated writing about those - because it was hard to think about what to say about those. They were just sort of there - they didn't inspire joy or hatred, they just provoked this sort of shrug and a whiney sort of "mennnnnnnnnnnnnnh?" out of me, and I hated when that happened, because what the hell do you say other than "mennnnnnnnnnnnnnnh"? (I mean, I did come up with things to say - but it was damn hard to say something more constructive than "it was okay, I guess").
And the more you do this kind of thing, the further from the center your threshhold for "cream of the crop" and "bottom of the barrel" goes. Because after reading plays about things like:
* time traveling aliens kidnapping people throughout history to stock up their zoo, and one of their captives just happens to be a young H.G. Wells - who escapes with the help of a fellow captive Valley Girl, and returns to his present time inspired to write science fiction (oh, and it was a musical)
* A blatant ripoff of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", only it's letters of the alphabet instead of cartoon characters
* experimental mood pieces which combined Alice In Wonderland, the Unabomber Manifesto, and thrash metal
* A work about which I will only say that my colleagues and I nicknamed it "the magic fish baby thing"
* A work in which the only two characters were a living room wall and a dining room wall, which called for full stage sets with holes cut into each of the respective walls and an actor thrusting their heads through each at various moments to monologue about the passage of time
Something that's just, like, a lackluster rom com where one of the characters can only talk via hand puppet doesn't really inspire the same depth of "oh my god this is bad".
So maybe the angry rants are fading because there's just so much mediocre out there.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:10 AM on March 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
What I've come to learn is - the kind of work that would inspire an angry, raging, vitriolic review is actually a lot rarer than you'd think. Same with the kind of work that would inspire a love letter of a rave. I actually came to enjoy both kinds of reviews - the good stuff that blew me away would get me excited about "omigod you have got to hear about this amazing thing I just saw", and the bad stuff would work me up into a whole baroque frenzy of "YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO BELIEVE THIS THING THAT SOME PEOPLE ACTUALLY THOUGHT WAS A GOOD IDEA".
The vast majority of scripts and productions - and the reviews that made up the bulk of what I wrote about - were this huge field of mediocrity in the middle. I hated writing about those - because it was hard to think about what to say about those. They were just sort of there - they didn't inspire joy or hatred, they just provoked this sort of shrug and a whiney sort of "mennnnnnnnnnnnnnh?" out of me, and I hated when that happened, because what the hell do you say other than "mennnnnnnnnnnnnnnh"? (I mean, I did come up with things to say - but it was damn hard to say something more constructive than "it was okay, I guess").
And the more you do this kind of thing, the further from the center your threshhold for "cream of the crop" and "bottom of the barrel" goes. Because after reading plays about things like:
* time traveling aliens kidnapping people throughout history to stock up their zoo, and one of their captives just happens to be a young H.G. Wells - who escapes with the help of a fellow captive Valley Girl, and returns to his present time inspired to write science fiction (oh, and it was a musical)
* A blatant ripoff of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", only it's letters of the alphabet instead of cartoon characters
* experimental mood pieces which combined Alice In Wonderland, the Unabomber Manifesto, and thrash metal
* A work about which I will only say that my colleagues and I nicknamed it "the magic fish baby thing"
* A work in which the only two characters were a living room wall and a dining room wall, which called for full stage sets with holes cut into each of the respective walls and an actor thrusting their heads through each at various moments to monologue about the passage of time
Something that's just, like, a lackluster rom com where one of the characters can only talk via hand puppet doesn't really inspire the same depth of "oh my god this is bad".
So maybe the angry rants are fading because there's just so much mediocre out there.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:10 AM on March 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
Oh, and adding on lack of preview:
There’s also the “with great power comes great responsibility” aspect.
Seconding this. I did a good deal of theater reviews for an old Indie theater blog, and one of the things the guy who ran the site stressed was that our criticism had to be constructive. He urged us to always bear in mind that no matter how bad we thought something was, "the people making it did not produce it specifically to annoy you."
...that's actually why I actually have a soft spot for some of the really awful stuff, even if I rant about it - sometimes you can just tell how flat-out convinced the whole team is that they are doing absolutely A+ fantastic boffo jobs, and you just want to hug them for their enthusiasm because you can tell they literally do not know any better. Sometimes you get the sense that they have been told "dude, don't do this" but they have ignored that advice because of their own egos - but others you know that they've only shown their mom and their roommates their stuff and been told it was awesome and so they jumped straight to the big leagues. Those people I love, even if their work blows.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:17 AM on March 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
There’s also the “with great power comes great responsibility” aspect.
Seconding this. I did a good deal of theater reviews for an old Indie theater blog, and one of the things the guy who ran the site stressed was that our criticism had to be constructive. He urged us to always bear in mind that no matter how bad we thought something was, "the people making it did not produce it specifically to annoy you."
...that's actually why I actually have a soft spot for some of the really awful stuff, even if I rant about it - sometimes you can just tell how flat-out convinced the whole team is that they are doing absolutely A+ fantastic boffo jobs, and you just want to hug them for their enthusiasm because you can tell they literally do not know any better. Sometimes you get the sense that they have been told "dude, don't do this" but they have ignored that advice because of their own egos - but others you know that they've only shown their mom and their roommates their stuff and been told it was awesome and so they jumped straight to the big leagues. Those people I love, even if their work blows.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:17 AM on March 3, 2023 [4 favorites]
In a world where people painstakingly review everything for clicks and likes and the vague promise of monetization, the idea of actually getting paid actual money to write any kind of review is kind of sweet.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:33 AM on March 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by aspersioncast at 10:33 AM on March 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
I agree with mumimor's comment, the opportunity cost now to listen to a new song or album is the time it takes for you to listen to it. You aren't out $15 for the price of a CD. At this point if someone wants to listen to a crappy album they're welcome to it. The more important service now is to highlight what good stuff might be out there because so much music is coming out so it is very hard to keep track of everything.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:58 AM on March 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:58 AM on March 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
I also agree -- in the era of disintermediation of music, there aren't as many large gatekeepers able to blast-market a piece of garbage and hoodwink a lot of people into spending money on a piece of crap. It used to be useful to have negative reviews to prevent people from spending their cash on a waste of vinyl or tape or plastic.
This situation still prevails in movies and to a lesser extent in video games, but music has pretty much phase-transitioned, to a first order, to "too cheap to meter" at least on a song by song or album by album basis. There are plenty of things wrong with that, but that discussion is outside the scope of this comment.
Nowadays the most important reviews are to bring a spotlight to the things that otherwise might not have gotten the attention they deserve. Negative reviews, except for major/established artists who extrude a music product that is lazy or otherwise disdainful of the audience, just don't have much utility.
posted by tclark at 11:17 AM on March 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
This situation still prevails in movies and to a lesser extent in video games, but music has pretty much phase-transitioned, to a first order, to "too cheap to meter" at least on a song by song or album by album basis. There are plenty of things wrong with that, but that discussion is outside the scope of this comment.
Nowadays the most important reviews are to bring a spotlight to the things that otherwise might not have gotten the attention they deserve. Negative reviews, except for major/established artists who extrude a music product that is lazy or otherwise disdainful of the audience, just don't have much utility.
posted by tclark at 11:17 AM on March 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
The department of the library I work in has a bunch of old (late 60s/early 70s) alt-mags, and the album reviews are generally unreadable because they're almost entirely written by (presumably white) dudes trying to emulate Hunter S. Thompson and/or Lester Bangs and the casual/"ironic" sexism (and sometimes racism) is off the charts by today's standards. Generally you learn more about how clever the reviewer believes himself to be than the music being reviewed, doubly so if it's a negative review where the writer really feels like they can tee off on it, safe in the belief that their intended readers will share their scorn for the subject.
I'm not against negative reviews per se, but as others have pointed out in this thread most of them boil seem to boil down to "I don't like this because it's not aimed at me" and as such these kinds of reviews are more about cred-bolstering or turf-staking than genuine good faith music criticism.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:20 AM on March 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'm not against negative reviews per se, but as others have pointed out in this thread most of them boil seem to boil down to "I don't like this because it's not aimed at me" and as such these kinds of reviews are more about cred-bolstering or turf-staking than genuine good faith music criticism.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:20 AM on March 3, 2023 [5 favorites]
Pitchfork has legitimately wrecked careers for indie bands when it was just the indie scene
So I've mentioned this here before, but I pretty much got hired by Pitchfork because I wrote nasty reviews (I got hired off a testy Ryan Adams review in which I suggested--among other things-- that he was kind of a creep, they didn't run it, but I gotta be honest, history has 100% vindicated me on that one). Then I increasingly became the writer they sent albums by women they didn't like to because they thought I, a woman, would be able to review them negatively without as much blowback. I didn't love that role. I still feel a twinge every now and then. And for the record, I'm still (see below) getting blowback.
For what it's worth, most of the bands I panned did okay. Even if Pitchfork felt compelled to go back and change the old reviews (without mentioning it any of us long-since moved on from early Pitchfork reviewers).Or to put another way, I think Rilo Kiley did just fine in spite of my pan. And I figured they would when I wrote the pan, which I kinda why I didn't feel bad about writing the pan, which is, in part, sort of of what the pan was about. Anyway. It's all water under the bridge now. I am not a rock star or a Conde-Nast associated. I am small town ex-record store employee whose record store was sold and I now spend of most of my words writing ad campaigns for non-profits.
You couldn't pay me to be a rock critic these days (and let me be clear: they barely did then). I have close friends that have accused me of being a poster girl for internalized misogyny just because I once admitted, aloud that I think Taylor Swift songs are pretty boring and I don't get it. This is kind of opinion that, in the wild, might get me doxxed and death-threated. So, no thanks.
The best part about writing record reviews (and working in a record store) was always figuring out a way to connect people with stuff that they will love. And I will say, to the author's point, there is something about the current mode of "everyone is expected to like everything all the time" that may be good for streaming profits, but it makes it hard to recommend stuff. Writing for a niche publication (and Pitchfork in 2001 was definitely a niche publication) you know your audience. You didn't write with the expectation that a Silver Jews fan would naturally love Britney Spears or vice-versa (though I do, in fact, like both). We don't all listen to music the same way. We don't all hear the same things. I think people's connections to songs, albums, artists they love (or hate) are extremely personal. Music, as art form, hits us a place that is pretty close to ineffable. We're all fools to try and capture that in qualifiers.
I miss a a good rant, but don't mind the lack of nasty record reviews. If you need a fix, though, there are still plenty of sublime pans in the world of literary fiction, which, by its very nature, is much easier to write about than songs anyway.
posted by thivaia at 11:22 AM on March 3, 2023 [19 favorites]
So I've mentioned this here before, but I pretty much got hired by Pitchfork because I wrote nasty reviews (I got hired off a testy Ryan Adams review in which I suggested--among other things-- that he was kind of a creep, they didn't run it, but I gotta be honest, history has 100% vindicated me on that one). Then I increasingly became the writer they sent albums by women they didn't like to because they thought I, a woman, would be able to review them negatively without as much blowback. I didn't love that role. I still feel a twinge every now and then. And for the record, I'm still (see below) getting blowback.
For what it's worth, most of the bands I panned did okay. Even if Pitchfork felt compelled to go back and change the old reviews (without mentioning it any of us long-since moved on from early Pitchfork reviewers).Or to put another way, I think Rilo Kiley did just fine in spite of my pan. And I figured they would when I wrote the pan, which I kinda why I didn't feel bad about writing the pan, which is, in part, sort of of what the pan was about. Anyway. It's all water under the bridge now. I am not a rock star or a Conde-Nast associated. I am small town ex-record store employee whose record store was sold and I now spend of most of my words writing ad campaigns for non-profits.
You couldn't pay me to be a rock critic these days (and let me be clear: they barely did then). I have close friends that have accused me of being a poster girl for internalized misogyny just because I once admitted, aloud that I think Taylor Swift songs are pretty boring and I don't get it. This is kind of opinion that, in the wild, might get me doxxed and death-threated. So, no thanks.
The best part about writing record reviews (and working in a record store) was always figuring out a way to connect people with stuff that they will love. And I will say, to the author's point, there is something about the current mode of "everyone is expected to like everything all the time" that may be good for streaming profits, but it makes it hard to recommend stuff. Writing for a niche publication (and Pitchfork in 2001 was definitely a niche publication) you know your audience. You didn't write with the expectation that a Silver Jews fan would naturally love Britney Spears or vice-versa (though I do, in fact, like both). We don't all listen to music the same way. We don't all hear the same things. I think people's connections to songs, albums, artists they love (or hate) are extremely personal. Music, as art form, hits us a place that is pretty close to ineffable. We're all fools to try and capture that in qualifiers.
I miss a a good rant, but don't mind the lack of nasty record reviews. If you need a fix, though, there are still plenty of sublime pans in the world of literary fiction, which, by its very nature, is much easier to write about than songs anyway.
posted by thivaia at 11:22 AM on March 3, 2023 [19 favorites]
Yeah, there's a lot less value in music reviews positive or negative today because you can just go listen to the music and everything is much less mediated.
But I also can't help but notice that critique, criticism and analysis in general whether it's in the arts or not seems to be a lost, dying or totally unappreciated art.
I don't think this is just a younger demographic change or what, but I've definitely noticed a trend where any kind of outright criticism of things is increasingly a minefield of emotional responses and/or taken as a personal attack in ways - particularly by younger people, but it's not just younger people - that seem new to me.
It doesn't even have to be about art or music. It could be critique about a piece of technology, or camping gear, or a car or bicycle and people get all kinds of upset like you just insulted them and all of their ancestors directly and it just feels like any kind of criticism or critique at all is a major faux pax.
I run into this a lot when criticizing bicycle and ebike stuff and these days almost every time I get some kind of weird emotional pushback like I just kicked someone's dog and if I don't have anything nice to say about some crappy consumer good I shouldn't say anything at all, or that I'm just salty or jealous of their shiny new consumer goods, or that my life needs to be totally and completely perfect before I'm allowed to critique an inanimate object.
It's like people lost the ability to differentiate between themselves and their consumer or purchasing choices, IE, if I say I think Tesla cars suck, or I think Elon Musk sucks, someone who owns a Tesla reads that as I'm saying that they also suck and they take it way, way too personally as an identity.
And I really don't understand this because this is how we end up racing towards mediocrity and some kind of milquetoast and tepid consumerism where people identify way too much with their belongings and consumer choices and no one is allowed to criticize anything at all.
posted by loquacious at 11:44 AM on March 3, 2023 [13 favorites]
But I also can't help but notice that critique, criticism and analysis in general whether it's in the arts or not seems to be a lost, dying or totally unappreciated art.
I don't think this is just a younger demographic change or what, but I've definitely noticed a trend where any kind of outright criticism of things is increasingly a minefield of emotional responses and/or taken as a personal attack in ways - particularly by younger people, but it's not just younger people - that seem new to me.
It doesn't even have to be about art or music. It could be critique about a piece of technology, or camping gear, or a car or bicycle and people get all kinds of upset like you just insulted them and all of their ancestors directly and it just feels like any kind of criticism or critique at all is a major faux pax.
I run into this a lot when criticizing bicycle and ebike stuff and these days almost every time I get some kind of weird emotional pushback like I just kicked someone's dog and if I don't have anything nice to say about some crappy consumer good I shouldn't say anything at all, or that I'm just salty or jealous of their shiny new consumer goods, or that my life needs to be totally and completely perfect before I'm allowed to critique an inanimate object.
It's like people lost the ability to differentiate between themselves and their consumer or purchasing choices, IE, if I say I think Tesla cars suck, or I think Elon Musk sucks, someone who owns a Tesla reads that as I'm saying that they also suck and they take it way, way too personally as an identity.
And I really don't understand this because this is how we end up racing towards mediocrity and some kind of milquetoast and tepid consumerism where people identify way too much with their belongings and consumer choices and no one is allowed to criticize anything at all.
posted by loquacious at 11:44 AM on March 3, 2023 [13 favorites]
I agree with Pat Metheny
Kenny’s talents are too teeny.
Yet Louis Armstrong shills for a doll
And Pat's take is not "appall"
posted by pyramid termite at 12:54 PM on March 3, 2023
MetaFilter: I miss a good rant.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:07 PM on March 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by wenestvedt at 1:07 PM on March 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
So maybe the angry rants are fading because there's just so much mediocre out there.
It's not exactly that there's so much mediocre out there, it's that there's so much fairly good out there. I'd say that music - and fiction, actually, and probably movies, and definitely television - are on average much better than in the eighties and nineties. This is partly because of the internet, partly because society has been - maybe for a brief and flickering instant - somewhat less racist/misogynist/homophobic, partly because marketers got a lot, lot smarter in the nineties, partly a bunch of other stuff.
So the average review is really "this is moderately good, moderately intelligent, moderately humane and very much like a lot like a bunch of other moderately good, moderately intelligent, moderately humane stuff out there". It's like traveling across this great nation and everywhere you go there's a "good" coffee shop that could have been airdropped in from Good Coffeeshop Central. The coffee is perfectly good even if it isn't apparent whether you're in Beloit, Cleveland or Salem, and if you remember the godawful coffee of your youth, well, hands up for standardization!
it's all good, but the overall proportion of greatness hasn't increased. So you can consume and consume and consume and it's more fun than consuming a lot of eighties dreck but it also dulls the sensibilities.
posted by Frowner at 1:57 PM on March 3, 2023 [11 favorites]
It's not exactly that there's so much mediocre out there, it's that there's so much fairly good out there. I'd say that music - and fiction, actually, and probably movies, and definitely television - are on average much better than in the eighties and nineties. This is partly because of the internet, partly because society has been - maybe for a brief and flickering instant - somewhat less racist/misogynist/homophobic, partly because marketers got a lot, lot smarter in the nineties, partly a bunch of other stuff.
So the average review is really "this is moderately good, moderately intelligent, moderately humane and very much like a lot like a bunch of other moderately good, moderately intelligent, moderately humane stuff out there". It's like traveling across this great nation and everywhere you go there's a "good" coffee shop that could have been airdropped in from Good Coffeeshop Central. The coffee is perfectly good even if it isn't apparent whether you're in Beloit, Cleveland or Salem, and if you remember the godawful coffee of your youth, well, hands up for standardization!
it's all good, but the overall proportion of greatness hasn't increased. So you can consume and consume and consume and it's more fun than consuming a lot of eighties dreck but it also dulls the sensibilities.
posted by Frowner at 1:57 PM on March 3, 2023 [11 favorites]
“The review you had on ‘Shark Sandwich,’ which was merely a two-word review, just said ‘Shit sandwich.’”
My favorite one word review was the "The Fixx: suxx", which I enjoy even though I think The Fixx is fine.
I actually really enjoy scathing reviews of bands and music I like, and I'm pretty happy with the current quality of negative reviews, like Pat Finnerty, who I learned about here. His review of Charlie Puth's Marvin Gaye is awesome.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:34 PM on March 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
My favorite one word review was the "The Fixx: suxx", which I enjoy even though I think The Fixx is fine.
I actually really enjoy scathing reviews of bands and music I like, and I'm pretty happy with the current quality of negative reviews, like Pat Finnerty, who I learned about here. His review of Charlie Puth's Marvin Gaye is awesome.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:34 PM on March 3, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's not exactly that there's so much mediocre out there, it's that there's so much fairly good out there. I'd say that music - and fiction, actually, and probably movies, and definitely television - are on average much better than in the eighties and nineties.
I would agree with this too. Bands are legitimately better now, especially first albums. They used to give record contracts to bands who were still finding their feet with their first album; they don't really do that anymore.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:49 PM on March 3, 2023
I would agree with this too. Bands are legitimately better now, especially first albums. They used to give record contracts to bands who were still finding their feet with their first album; they don't really do that anymore.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:49 PM on March 3, 2023
Oh album reviews most certainly are essential in the streaming age — but mostly for exploring a band’s back catalog. Like, if I hear a song I really like on Pandora and I wanna dig into the band’s catalog on Spotify, first thing I’m gonna do is pop over to Allmusic and see which album I should listen to first, which one second, etc.
Only problem is sometimes there’s … disagreement? … between the critic’s star rating and the text of the review. Like, the album will have a two-star rating, and the review — while copping to some of the album’s weaknesses — will still be generally positive. How exactly does this happen? Are the star ratings relative to the other albums, while the review text is written in absolute terms? No idea. But it’s still a signal. And especially when a band has a catalog of say, greater than three albums, some signal is better than no signal.
posted by panama joe at 2:53 PM on March 3, 2023
Only problem is sometimes there’s … disagreement? … between the critic’s star rating and the text of the review. Like, the album will have a two-star rating, and the review — while copping to some of the album’s weaknesses — will still be generally positive. How exactly does this happen? Are the star ratings relative to the other albums, while the review text is written in absolute terms? No idea. But it’s still a signal. And especially when a band has a catalog of say, greater than three albums, some signal is better than no signal.
posted by panama joe at 2:53 PM on March 3, 2023
“The review you had on ‘Shark Sandwich,’ which was merely a two-word review, just said ‘Shit sandwich.’”
My contribution is from a bin card at the Berkeley Rasputin's back when they were up toward University between Universal Records and the BofA, and across the street from Blondies. I looked it up recently and it was 1984 when Fee Waybill of The Tubes put out his first solo album and the bin card read "Way feeble." This was the peak of wit to my 16 year old self for years.
A sometimes-critic friend of mine once put it like this: "music critics are people who don't like music." There's always something imperfect to write about, and really, coming up with that is how reviews go. But that's been going on for decades in its modern form, so much so that a few years ago when I decided to finally read "Carburetor Dung," I had to put it down because Lester came off as such a tryhard! Like Barry's NoHo Hank says about his colleague wearing a leather apron in order to torture someone: "He's a little much. It's like, OK we get it." And his album, Lester Bangs and the Doof Shits or whatever, is pretty much unlistenable. I feel like it's a comment on the people who become music critics, a group with whom I think I share a great number of traits, so I'm not elevating myself.
As for negative reviews, you can fill your longing with the Lexicon of Musical Invective, an anthology of negative music reviews going back to Beethoven, and back issues of Chunklet magazine (not a fan of the website design, but most of the issues are up and free to read).
posted by rhizome at 4:52 PM on March 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
My contribution is from a bin card at the Berkeley Rasputin's back when they were up toward University between Universal Records and the BofA, and across the street from Blondies. I looked it up recently and it was 1984 when Fee Waybill of The Tubes put out his first solo album and the bin card read "Way feeble." This was the peak of wit to my 16 year old self for years.
A sometimes-critic friend of mine once put it like this: "music critics are people who don't like music." There's always something imperfect to write about, and really, coming up with that is how reviews go. But that's been going on for decades in its modern form, so much so that a few years ago when I decided to finally read "Carburetor Dung," I had to put it down because Lester came off as such a tryhard! Like Barry's NoHo Hank says about his colleague wearing a leather apron in order to torture someone: "He's a little much. It's like, OK we get it." And his album, Lester Bangs and the Doof Shits or whatever, is pretty much unlistenable. I feel like it's a comment on the people who become music critics, a group with whom I think I share a great number of traits, so I'm not elevating myself.
As for negative reviews, you can fill your longing with the Lexicon of Musical Invective, an anthology of negative music reviews going back to Beethoven, and back issues of Chunklet magazine (not a fan of the website design, but most of the issues are up and free to read).
posted by rhizome at 4:52 PM on March 3, 2023 [3 favorites]
The likes of Anthony Fantano still get plenty of mileage out of hot takes and takedowns, but they are presented as part of a more evenhanded persona which gives them more impact.I think this is the root issue. In order to effectively land a negative review you have to have a consistent audience that repeatedly comes to you for your music reviews, not a different audience for each review that has turned up to see you review their favourite band.
Fantano still has that general review audience but I don't know anyone else that does.
posted by zymil at 6:39 AM on March 4, 2023
Mmmmmaybe Ann Powers at NPR, or Rob Sheffield at Rolling Stone?
Even those two seem like maybes, and after that it starts dropping off real quick. Steven Hyden? Stephen Thomas Erlewine? Kelefa Sanneh? Michaelangelo Matos? Ted Gioia if you like jazz? Rick Beato? Todd in the Shadows?
posted by box at 9:15 AM on March 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
Even those two seem like maybes, and after that it starts dropping off real quick. Steven Hyden? Stephen Thomas Erlewine? Kelefa Sanneh? Michaelangelo Matos? Ted Gioia if you like jazz? Rick Beato? Todd in the Shadows?
posted by box at 9:15 AM on March 4, 2023 [1 favorite]
Ooh, I found the Robert Christgau review line I was remembering! It was Joan Jett-related, but from her work with The Runaways. This is the line in particular that I remembered: " I'll tell you what kind of street rock and roll these bimbos make--when the title cut came on I thought I was hearing Evita twice in a row. Only I couldn't figure out why the singer wasn't in tune. C"
Bimbos. K Rob. He did not like The Runaways. Seemed it was possibly as much about their producer Kim Fowley (who Christgau wrote some pretty good pans of) as it was The Runaways themselves.
posted by urbanlenny at 9:39 AM on March 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
Bimbos. K Rob. He did not like The Runaways. Seemed it was possibly as much about their producer Kim Fowley (who Christgau wrote some pretty good pans of) as it was The Runaways themselves.
posted by urbanlenny at 9:39 AM on March 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
I used to read a lot of music criticism when I was younger. From when I was 13 to when I was like 24, that was probably the majority of what I read, and I’m a voracious reader who majored in the humanities, so I read a lot. And I definitely developed that snobby “I listen to Pavement so I have better taste than you” persona. But after ten years of intensive reading on the topic, and another twenty years of not-quite-as-intensive reading and listening, a funny thing happened: I actually learned kind of a lot about music. About playing instruments, writing lyrics, arrangement, production, marketing, etc. Now, when I hear something I don’t like, I can generally articulate pretty specifically what I don’t like about it. And it just feels funny to say something like “the chorus effect on the lead guitar is so over-saturated that only a catatonic squirrel could enjoy it”.
posted by kevinbelt at 4:27 PM on March 4, 2023
posted by kevinbelt at 4:27 PM on March 4, 2023
But after ten years of intensive reading on the topic, and another twenty years of not-quite-as-intensive reading and listening, a funny thing happened: I actually learned kind of a lot about music.
I think that's why a lot of people don't like much negative commentary, so much is like The Live thread complaint about them that they do loud/soft/loud derivitatively, like they weren't innovative enough. But people who like rock probably don't mind that much that it sounds like other rock, as long as it sounds good to them. And every critic is trying to find original sounds, like that is the primary category. It's like if every one who reviewed pop music commented that all the singers are over-singing American Idol wannabes who never make it past the first sexual interaction with their partner, when that's what people like about pop music - the big singing and big emotions.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:19 PM on March 4, 2023
I think that's why a lot of people don't like much negative commentary, so much is like The Live thread complaint about them that they do loud/soft/loud derivitatively, like they weren't innovative enough. But people who like rock probably don't mind that much that it sounds like other rock, as long as it sounds good to them. And every critic is trying to find original sounds, like that is the primary category. It's like if every one who reviewed pop music commented that all the singers are over-singing American Idol wannabes who never make it past the first sexual interaction with their partner, when that's what people like about pop music - the big singing and big emotions.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:19 PM on March 4, 2023
Seemed it was possibly as much about their producer Kim Fowley (who Christgau wrote some pretty good pans of) as it was The Runaways themselves.
Can’t say he was wrong about Kim Fowley. Unfair to take it out on the band, though.
posted by atoxyl at 9:17 PM on March 5, 2023
Can’t say he was wrong about Kim Fowley. Unfair to take it out on the band, though.
posted by atoxyl at 9:17 PM on March 5, 2023
But that's exactly one of the problems with arts criticism: eventually the critic tends to learn too much about how the sausage is made, and it becomes less about the pops and buzzes hitting their eardrums. It's not an objectivity thing, it's a taste thing that gets subsumed below politics.
posted by rhizome at 10:57 PM on March 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by rhizome at 10:57 PM on March 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
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This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Also, a bad album by a band nobody has ever heard of is not newsworthy, so there's no reason to write about it.
posted by spilon at 9:07 AM on March 3, 2023 [5 favorites]