Bingo!
I get what youâre saying but that applies to reading anything, you can read any book to learn how to describe things or learn new ways of thinking/feeling, you donât need someoneâs objective opinion to learn how to express yourself with words.
and Iâm going to quote a part of the pitchfork âreviewâ again, tell me what exactly does anyone learn from it:
Smoke a bowl first if you need to, but nothing short of opium will convince me that there arenât more productive ways to spend 30 minutes trying to fell a redwood with a plastic spoon than listening to this beast.
this is straight up trashing, nothing critical here, canât say Iâve learned too much from this âreviewâ.
Not the best example, I meant actual criticism. I agree that all that does is expose the poor character of the writer.
Sometimes true.
Sometimes not, ask Dylan:
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If anyone wants me to talk shit about their music, hit me up!
Jokes aside, where are my pants?
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I view reviews as recommendations. Iâd rather choose an album after reading a review that has intrigued me than have it jammed down my ears by an algorithm.
Of course I make my own opinion after listening, but a review helps me check what to listen, especially since getting into something that generally isnât your regular genre may require multiple listens.
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Iâm not sure what this means, but itâs a great name for a band.
I wrote criticism for publication (not just music, but film, books, plays, visual art, food) as a sideline starting in high school, so fifty years ago. I only post on social media nowadays, but still rely on criticism to help curate my consumption, though itâs getting increasingly harder. When I started, there was much more gatekeeping (not so much with student publications, but I also wrote for mainstream newspapers). At most, one could get a letter to the editor published in response. I would always get reaction from the people around me, especially if I criticized something they liked, and usually they would not engage with the substance of what I said, even in conversation. It was more âYou are implicitly criticizing me, and I donât like itâ. Now, with the Internet, everyone can express their opinion (or something that passes for an opinion), and there are whole industries devoted to harvesting that urge. Someone offering substantive criticism can get âI donât like itâ not only from the people close to them, but complete strangers halfway around the globe. We are drowning in noise in so many ways; this is just one of them.
So what I want to say is that reaction to criticism has always existed, but the current environment is more hostile to informed and substantive criticism than before, and it is harder to find it and benefit from it.
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well thank god that at least everything else criticism is alive and well.
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I absolutely loved music critics that werenât afraid to takedown a rubbish or disappointing record or artist. When they loved something you knew it was genuine.
The late great Neil Kulkarni was an absolute master of this. I didnât always agree with his opinions but often he was absolutely on the moneyâŚ
Personally, I think much of the best and most justified criticism is for something that doesnât live up to the promise of what it could have been. If something is plain terrible or just not your thing, then it isnât worth wasting your breath over. Save that for the records/books/films that should have been great but somehow conspired to be shit instead.
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Well he was right about everything here imo
âŚand he incidentally described 99.9% of music
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This is a very pragmatic point and I have to agree in the age of Spotify criticism might be less relevant than it was when I was a kid and had a 1 CD per month budget so looked to reviews to help guide my decisions.
However, there is still the aspect of anti-criticism that seems to exist these days which others have given good potential theories about. The cynical side of me agrees with the person who said it doesnât sell, and that corporate marketing and AstroTurf âfansâ simply brigade away any criticism to keep the gravy train going for many acts , cgi movie franchises etc.
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Do you listen to the âchart musicâ podcast that Neil was a regular contributor to?
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Iâm not sure that this is accurate. The blessing thatâs been bestowed on Gen Z is the ability to enjoy without irony, and to accomplish without shame. I am a member of the âguilty pleasureâ generation, they are able to enjoy without guilt. When I was a child to be passionate about something, anything, was lame, it was cool to not care. Theyâre not cursed with this negative mindset.
Critique will always exist, what youâre maybe missing is dismissal or outright complaint, distain. Perhaps a trend to seeking out what we enjoy rather than focussing on what we donât - which is a by-product of how we consume content.
What was it that you said about Fred againâŚ, out of interest?
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The sense of fear when it comes to criticism these days feels much higher, but even when thereâs not much risk in being honest people still seem to give praise more freely to middling work.
Since Iâve started buying records again on Discogs I notice that so many new albums get straight 5 star ratings from users. Looking back at undeniable classics from 20-30 years ago in the same genre user ratings are all over the place and generally lower.
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We are all dead in the end! Why question things you canât control when you can spend more time living!!
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Fair enough. But just imagine youâd read this review and then never gave it a shot:
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I donât know if itâs 10, 15 years, or whatever, but my generation wasnât always able to judge music for themselves in the way people can today. What I mean is, when an album or song came out, I had to wait in front of the radio hoping one track from an album would get played. And even then, one good song didnât necessarily mean the entire album was âgood.â To truly judge for myself, I had to travel to a nearby record store, listen to it there, and then decide to buy it.
In that era, some public criticism was actually helpful; it acted as a form of curation. The number of critics was far less than it is now, so you could probably find âyourâ critic and become familiar with how their taste aligned with your own.
Nowadays, youâre able to perfectly judge music for yourself because every song is just one click away. If you can judge for yourself, why bother sharing your opinion about âbadâ music, especially if the only reason is to express your own emotions? You need an audience that wants to receive those emotions, and criticism often isnât the most positive vibe. Itâs become more of a selfish act. In theory, anyone can just post the phrase: âThereâs a lot of terrible music out there,â and youâd be done and correct at the same time.
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I like his first album, but called his recent stuff âmushyâ , particularly the Brian Eno collab.
I have to ask if music criticism was ever even needed. I ask from the perspective of pre monetizing music. Or even before recorded music. I think about the communal aspect of music in any village on any continent. I just canât imagine someone sitting there as your village siblings express themselves thinking âthis just doesnât move meâ or âI liked this band before the other villages heard themâ.
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