Freddie, the second paragraph you wrote here is a banger. It's one of the best observations I've ever seen on this phenomenon, and the way you noted it was exceptional.
"I can’t find where now, but Rich Juzwiak once derided people who prefer music made by actual musicians playing actual instruments to music made entirely by computers. He called this a rockist attitude."
I remember being similarly harangued about this in the early 2000s. Virtuosity with instruments was seen as self-indulgent and a result of privilege and only DJing was legitimate in comparison. Actually playing guitars was seen as a phallic, galumphing imposition, really an aggression. I was utterly shocked to hear this, having never even thought in those terms before, and while it's obviously horseshit it did stick with me through to today.
It's not even that music *can't* be more than the sounds in themselves. Going to an ICP show is going to be a very different environment to a classical recital, and the subculture that surrounds the former simply cannot be divorced from the recordings, at least not easily. I never got into Phish or The Grateful Dead in any serious way, beyond a vague, nodding appreciation, but presumably having been present for their live shows is a prerequisite for really loving them. But there are limits to this, and eventually you have to reckon with the sounds themselves, divorced from context - and this is really where music criticism should step in, but largely fails to do so.
"And this is wild, to me, because Pitchfork is not a site about music at all, but rather about the constant delicate servicing of these unconscious needs. Pitchfork stopped being a music site long ago and became instead a series of instructions for how to carefully position yourself in contrast or complement to the people around you in a way that maximizes your personal brand and demonstrates that you’re the most specialist boy or girl of all. It just so happens that, for reasons of inertia and convenience, talking about music is the ostensible subject matter through which this careful arrangement takes place. "
Was it not ever always thus, only now amplified by internet and social media?
There's a reason that the typical icebreaker humans used at parties when I was younger was "What kind of music do you like?" The answer usually told the questioner a good deal about the speaker, what sort of human she was likely to be and whether it would be worth pursuing her further.
I also don't get the obsession with Maneskin dressing vampy as meaningful. They're a rock band, rock has been theatric and deliberately ridiculous since at least hair metal 40 years ago.
That's really a lot of the fun of rock/metal as an aesthetic, it's over the top stupid camp for boring normal straight people. You know, like me.
Not sure Pitchfork ever really did the new very well either, though maybe you're not saying otherwise.
As a European, my memory of the old Pitchfork, before electronic music became something indie people in America have to like to be cool, was a lot of incredibly dumb reviews. For example reviewing house or techno music and making fun of the fact the "lyrics" were "move your body" or something rather than the 'deeply meaningful' faux-poetry of whatever indie rock band.
In recent years I've sometimes found interesting articles on there in a sort of older person broadsheet way, the long lists of something like ambient music albums, the classic album articles, for instance. Or Phil Sherburne's work. But I completely agree a lot of poptimist writing is terrible and it has plenty of that too.
In general, and it's not just on massive sites like Pitchfork, I tend to think a lot of today's bad music writers pad out their inability to talk about sound or subcultures and their lack of budget/energy to really find out about scenes or leave their desk with the kind of barely political academic bromides about bodies and spaces that everyone who reads this blog is probably sick of by now, regardless of our respective politics.
This is particularly rife in electronic music where at the best of times it's hard to say why this person turned the dials in a way that sounds amazing and this person didn't, but I see it in most arts journalism and it is dispiriting.
No surprise really, since the arts degrees which prepared these writers for the unenviable life of freelance music journalism also pad out their lack of substance with shitty academic cliches masquerading as meaningful analysis.
"...that the music is utter dogshit that causes the listener to question their existing affection for her earlier work..."
I don't doubt that this is a genuine component of human psychology but it is a regrettable one. There are plenty of artists who till the same soil over and over again for the entirety of their careers but there are also those who constantly seek to experiment and evolve. The inevitable result of radical experimentation is that sometimes you fail. Those failures shouldn't tarnish the rest of an artist's body of work.
Also, the flip side of enforced taste is mind numbing conformity. I can't think of many things that are more predictable and boring.
When I was a lonely teenager, I used to read music review publications and track their end of year lists religiously. I grew comfortable with the fact that Rolling Stone embodied some sort of "establishment" canonical view, where their #1 song of all time was Like a Rolling Stone and their #1 album was Sgt. Pepper. Meanwhile, I got used to Pitchfork being the slightly more "alt" option, putting something like Daydream Nation atop their 80s list (the first time they did one). Basically, I had a very fixed view on these publications and what their preferences were, and even if I disagreed, I tended to respect them and take them at face value.
Now, years later, Rolling Stone's number 1 song of all time is What's Goin' On by Marvin Gaye, and Pitchfork demoted Sonic Youth from the perch of their 80s list in favor of Purple Rain. There is obviously a part of me that leaps to the conclusion that this is more motivated by culture war considerations than an actual assessment of the music (although Purple Rain is a better choice for #1 album of the 80s than What's Goin' On is a better choice for best song of all time). But, that said, I do begin to wonder. Did the old Pitchfork/Rolling Stone really reflect a more sincere aesthetic judgment based on the music itself, or has it always just been status-seeking and differentiation and culture war politics, since the beginning of time? Maybe it just took until the cultural winds shifted for me to appreciate that it's basically always been bullshit. I don't know. Just throwing it out there.
i don't know, i thought it was pretty clear in the full piece that Larson isn't taking issue with people wearing music as a badge per se but rather with the badge in this particular case being, in his estimation, so exceptionally tacky and vapid and goofy as such.
sure, someone else might come along and say, well, Lizzo is also tacky and vapid and goofy, and Pitchfork gave her a 6.4! and that's fair, but i still think that's a different conversation: publications assign different reviewers with different biases and different taste to different things, and faulting one reviewer for another reviewer's writing about Lizzo or Beyonce or whoever is a lost cause in one sense, if also a sensible question, in another sense, about the state of the larger brand employing both those writers.
My favourite Pitchfork pearl-clutch was the review of St Vincent's Daddy's Home which reacted with horror to two mentions of 'call the cops' and 'call 911' – how could she?! In 2021!?
When I read Pitchfork reviews (and music reviews from other progressive-leaning outlets), I often interpret them as critics struggling mightily to resolve the cognitive dissonance borne of the weird presumption that good art must be morally good. In the case of Pitchfork critics, this means that good music must be woke music. So if a critic enjoys an album, they will find themselves straining with every fibre to find some angle by which the album REALLY advances a progressive worldview (even if it's a determinedly apolitical album, or even conservative) - hence the mental gymnastics on display here (https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/my-chemical-romance-three-cheers-for-sweet-revenge/), in which My Chemical Romance are retroactively claimed to promote gender nonconformance. Whereas if they DIDN'T enjoy an album, they instead have to contrive some angle by which the album is crypto-conservative (hence the absurd claims from multiple music critics that the bland, anodyne, inoffensive silly love songs made by the Chainsmokers are somehow the sonic equivalent of the divisive, incendiary, hateful rhetoric of Donald Trump).
If they can't find such an angle, they will just scoff that it's another album made by a bunch of White Dudes (the horror!). They will conspicuously avoid commenting upon the ethnicities and sexes of the musicians who made the album they DID enjoy.
I feel like you're looking at the past with some *extremely* rose-colored glasses here. Hasn't music nearly always been far more about culture than the music itself? Wearing a Korn shirt in the late '90s would have communicated far more about you than a love for chugging guitars and funky bass lines. Professing a love for Bob Dylan in the '60s would have implied far more than an appreciation for acoustic guitar and nasally vocals. When was this magical time that people listened to music only for its sonic uniqueness?
Right on. Like a lot of things, poptimism overshot its original (defensible) target. Which, I think, is the correct view to have - pop music (and pop culture more generally) is worthy of being taken seriously and shouldn't be dismissed out of pocket. I was one of those kids that thought I was cooler than everyone else simply because I didn't like or listen to pop music. I wish I could go back and smack some sense into 14 year old me. That's what the original form of poptimism meant to me, to broaden my horizons and listen to stuff I ordinarily wouldn't touch.
Problem is, we've gotten there, and then several miles beyond the target. Now, it's pop culture is high art which deserves to be placed on a pedestal. Pop music needs to be important and about more than just the music, Pitchfork being a chief offender here. It's how a song which should have just been a club anthem is actually the song of the year, and an important statement in the raging culture war:
Not all music is high art. Not all music needs to be important. Not all pop music is good just because a lot of people listen to it. Find music you love, listen to that, keep an open mind, and you'll be good to go
I don't love the move of saddling a journalist with the whole brand of the venue that's published their piece. It's Larson saying these things, not Pitchfork itself.
Freddie, the second paragraph you wrote here is a banger. It's one of the best observations I've ever seen on this phenomenon, and the way you noted it was exceptional.
More of this, please.
"I can’t find where now, but Rich Juzwiak once derided people who prefer music made by actual musicians playing actual instruments to music made entirely by computers. He called this a rockist attitude."
I remember being similarly harangued about this in the early 2000s. Virtuosity with instruments was seen as self-indulgent and a result of privilege and only DJing was legitimate in comparison. Actually playing guitars was seen as a phallic, galumphing imposition, really an aggression. I was utterly shocked to hear this, having never even thought in those terms before, and while it's obviously horseshit it did stick with me through to today.
It's not even that music *can't* be more than the sounds in themselves. Going to an ICP show is going to be a very different environment to a classical recital, and the subculture that surrounds the former simply cannot be divorced from the recordings, at least not easily. I never got into Phish or The Grateful Dead in any serious way, beyond a vague, nodding appreciation, but presumably having been present for their live shows is a prerequisite for really loving them. But there are limits to this, and eventually you have to reckon with the sounds themselves, divorced from context - and this is really where music criticism should step in, but largely fails to do so.
I've been WAITING for this piece! Thank you <3
"And this is wild, to me, because Pitchfork is not a site about music at all, but rather about the constant delicate servicing of these unconscious needs. Pitchfork stopped being a music site long ago and became instead a series of instructions for how to carefully position yourself in contrast or complement to the people around you in a way that maximizes your personal brand and demonstrates that you’re the most specialist boy or girl of all. It just so happens that, for reasons of inertia and convenience, talking about music is the ostensible subject matter through which this careful arrangement takes place. "
Was it not ever always thus, only now amplified by internet and social media?
There's a reason that the typical icebreaker humans used at parties when I was younger was "What kind of music do you like?" The answer usually told the questioner a good deal about the speaker, what sort of human she was likely to be and whether it would be worth pursuing her further.
I also don't get the obsession with Maneskin dressing vampy as meaningful. They're a rock band, rock has been theatric and deliberately ridiculous since at least hair metal 40 years ago.
That's really a lot of the fun of rock/metal as an aesthetic, it's over the top stupid camp for boring normal straight people. You know, like me.
Not sure Pitchfork ever really did the new very well either, though maybe you're not saying otherwise.
As a European, my memory of the old Pitchfork, before electronic music became something indie people in America have to like to be cool, was a lot of incredibly dumb reviews. For example reviewing house or techno music and making fun of the fact the "lyrics" were "move your body" or something rather than the 'deeply meaningful' faux-poetry of whatever indie rock band.
In recent years I've sometimes found interesting articles on there in a sort of older person broadsheet way, the long lists of something like ambient music albums, the classic album articles, for instance. Or Phil Sherburne's work. But I completely agree a lot of poptimist writing is terrible and it has plenty of that too.
In general, and it's not just on massive sites like Pitchfork, I tend to think a lot of today's bad music writers pad out their inability to talk about sound or subcultures and their lack of budget/energy to really find out about scenes or leave their desk with the kind of barely political academic bromides about bodies and spaces that everyone who reads this blog is probably sick of by now, regardless of our respective politics.
This is particularly rife in electronic music where at the best of times it's hard to say why this person turned the dials in a way that sounds amazing and this person didn't, but I see it in most arts journalism and it is dispiriting.
No surprise really, since the arts degrees which prepared these writers for the unenviable life of freelance music journalism also pad out their lack of substance with shitty academic cliches masquerading as meaningful analysis.
"...that the music is utter dogshit that causes the listener to question their existing affection for her earlier work..."
I don't doubt that this is a genuine component of human psychology but it is a regrettable one. There are plenty of artists who till the same soil over and over again for the entirety of their careers but there are also those who constantly seek to experiment and evolve. The inevitable result of radical experimentation is that sometimes you fail. Those failures shouldn't tarnish the rest of an artist's body of work.
Also, the flip side of enforced taste is mind numbing conformity. I can't think of many things that are more predictable and boring.
When I was a lonely teenager, I used to read music review publications and track their end of year lists religiously. I grew comfortable with the fact that Rolling Stone embodied some sort of "establishment" canonical view, where their #1 song of all time was Like a Rolling Stone and their #1 album was Sgt. Pepper. Meanwhile, I got used to Pitchfork being the slightly more "alt" option, putting something like Daydream Nation atop their 80s list (the first time they did one). Basically, I had a very fixed view on these publications and what their preferences were, and even if I disagreed, I tended to respect them and take them at face value.
Now, years later, Rolling Stone's number 1 song of all time is What's Goin' On by Marvin Gaye, and Pitchfork demoted Sonic Youth from the perch of their 80s list in favor of Purple Rain. There is obviously a part of me that leaps to the conclusion that this is more motivated by culture war considerations than an actual assessment of the music (although Purple Rain is a better choice for #1 album of the 80s than What's Goin' On is a better choice for best song of all time). But, that said, I do begin to wonder. Did the old Pitchfork/Rolling Stone really reflect a more sincere aesthetic judgment based on the music itself, or has it always just been status-seeking and differentiation and culture war politics, since the beginning of time? Maybe it just took until the cultural winds shifted for me to appreciate that it's basically always been bullshit. I don't know. Just throwing it out there.
i don't know, i thought it was pretty clear in the full piece that Larson isn't taking issue with people wearing music as a badge per se but rather with the badge in this particular case being, in his estimation, so exceptionally tacky and vapid and goofy as such.
sure, someone else might come along and say, well, Lizzo is also tacky and vapid and goofy, and Pitchfork gave her a 6.4! and that's fair, but i still think that's a different conversation: publications assign different reviewers with different biases and different taste to different things, and faulting one reviewer for another reviewer's writing about Lizzo or Beyonce or whoever is a lost cause in one sense, if also a sensible question, in another sense, about the state of the larger brand employing both those writers.
My favourite Pitchfork pearl-clutch was the review of St Vincent's Daddy's Home which reacted with horror to two mentions of 'call the cops' and 'call 911' – how could she?! In 2021!?
When I read Pitchfork reviews (and music reviews from other progressive-leaning outlets), I often interpret them as critics struggling mightily to resolve the cognitive dissonance borne of the weird presumption that good art must be morally good. In the case of Pitchfork critics, this means that good music must be woke music. So if a critic enjoys an album, they will find themselves straining with every fibre to find some angle by which the album REALLY advances a progressive worldview (even if it's a determinedly apolitical album, or even conservative) - hence the mental gymnastics on display here (https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/my-chemical-romance-three-cheers-for-sweet-revenge/), in which My Chemical Romance are retroactively claimed to promote gender nonconformance. Whereas if they DIDN'T enjoy an album, they instead have to contrive some angle by which the album is crypto-conservative (hence the absurd claims from multiple music critics that the bland, anodyne, inoffensive silly love songs made by the Chainsmokers are somehow the sonic equivalent of the divisive, incendiary, hateful rhetoric of Donald Trump).
See here: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/apr/09/chainsmokers-memories-do-not-open-cd-pop-review-columbia; https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23148-memoriesdo-not-open/
If they can't find such an angle, they will just scoff that it's another album made by a bunch of White Dudes (the horror!). They will conspicuously avoid commenting upon the ethnicities and sexes of the musicians who made the album they DID enjoy.
Freddie if you want a three-day posturing nightmare come to Chicago for their yearly music festival.
We must retvrn to RYM
I feel like you're looking at the past with some *extremely* rose-colored glasses here. Hasn't music nearly always been far more about culture than the music itself? Wearing a Korn shirt in the late '90s would have communicated far more about you than a love for chugging guitars and funky bass lines. Professing a love for Bob Dylan in the '60s would have implied far more than an appreciation for acoustic guitar and nasally vocals. When was this magical time that people listened to music only for its sonic uniqueness?
Right on. Like a lot of things, poptimism overshot its original (defensible) target. Which, I think, is the correct view to have - pop music (and pop culture more generally) is worthy of being taken seriously and shouldn't be dismissed out of pocket. I was one of those kids that thought I was cooler than everyone else simply because I didn't like or listen to pop music. I wish I could go back and smack some sense into 14 year old me. That's what the original form of poptimism meant to me, to broaden my horizons and listen to stuff I ordinarily wouldn't touch.
Problem is, we've gotten there, and then several miles beyond the target. Now, it's pop culture is high art which deserves to be placed on a pedestal. Pop music needs to be important and about more than just the music, Pitchfork being a chief offender here. It's how a song which should have just been a club anthem is actually the song of the year, and an important statement in the raging culture war:
https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-100-best-songs-of-2017/?page=10
Not all music is high art. Not all music needs to be important. Not all pop music is good just because a lot of people listen to it. Find music you love, listen to that, keep an open mind, and you'll be good to go
I don't love the move of saddling a journalist with the whole brand of the venue that's published their piece. It's Larson saying these things, not Pitchfork itself.