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Winning Critical Acclaim
Alex Reynolds writes "'Are pop critics doing a good job? What does it mean to do a good job as a pop music critic? What is the difference between good and bad pop music criticism?' Loren Jan Wilson's innovative Pitchformula project takes the archives of music criticism and journalism from the popular Pitchfork web site and analyses them for commonalities in content, determining what attributes make for a 'good' or 'bad' evaluation. From this data, Wilson sculpted his compositional and performance technique to write rock music that should win critical acclaim."
Ok, now i have to say, who cares?
thisnukes4u.net
she bangs, she bangs
and
Pretty mediocre. I'll throw up a mirror as a reply to this post if this one dies.
MORE freaking Radiohead knockoffs.
sulli
RTFJ.
Good pop music: De/Vision Bad pop music: Briteny spears
However, there's only 1 kind of pop critic, the payed-for pop critic.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Critics now criticizing music critics, what's next? ..wait, I'm criticizing the critics who are criticizing the music critics. If anyone replies to this, you will just be another link in the chain!
I always read album reviews with a grain of salt. I've never been able to identify as to why, but I have never found popular music reviews to be very helpful to me. There are only so many ways that you can describe a particular song or expression of a genre and none of them adequately convey the way that I react to music. It's weird because I can read movie and book reviews and understand (and possibly agree on) what the writer is trying to say about the overall quality and purpose of the work.
But when a music review comes along, it just doesn't work. Is it because it's very difficult to describe the collaboration of multiple instruments in a linear and narrow format (i.e., the sentence)?
Along the same lines I've found that I have a very hard time describing music adequately to others. The only thing that occasionally succeeds (and happens to get used in music reviews all the time) is to compare the work to something that went before (like saying Limp Bizkit is a combination of funk and metal, or Britney is bubble gum sex pop). But then that's just a generic description, and not so much a statement on subjective quality.
I don't think I've ever bought an album where I thought a reviewer captured how I felt about the music after I listened to it. It will be interesting to see if this can be accomplished using what sounds like some sort of data mining exercise.
Thank God for try before you buy. This is the one thing that has me buying more music over the last year than the previous four or five.
What is the difference between good and bad pop music criticism? ... From this data, Wilson sculpted his compositional and performance technique to write rock music that should win critical acclaim.
Anyone else see the problem here?
As a freelance music writer, I care to some degree that my kind of writing can be reduced to this. His work provides some perspective, something I can use to step back and evaluate what I do. Am I a shill or doing something useful?
Outside of this, I find his work is a funny and insightful commentary on how the whole flow of media and information can fold back in on itself in an unexpected way. Metameta, baby.
Could this technique be used to construct Slashdot posts guaranteed to garner critical acclaim?
I've started a website to track the way that comments are moderated on web forums. The patterns jumped out immediately with even the most cursory examination - say good things about Linux, Apple or socialism, get moderated up. Say good things about Microsoft or the US, get moderated down. "Truth" had absolutely no effect on the moderation.
Let me gaze into my crystal ball and see how this comment will be moderated..... Hmmm.....
Mod me down if you will, I know it is slightly offtopic, but I think the majority of people involved with the music business do a much much worse job than they could.
They are driven (not that I can really blame them) by profit.
The artists themselves write terrible songs (look at 'Frankee's song in reply to Eamon's song - how many of us could write lyrics to another song? Exactly, pretty much everyone - It's not challenging, and her lyrics are pretty damn bad too). The critics don't really care who ends up number one, or who doesn't even enter the charts, they care about money. Just like Microsoft, and look where that got them (yeah, they may be rich, but they're hated by a lot of people).
Musicians, Footballers, Actors, etc. They all make massive amounts of money for things which contribute almost nothing to the evolution and development of mankind. Now look at people like nurses, firemen, teachers, etc. We (at least here in britain) often hear about them going on stike because of low pay, yet they contribute a great deal to mankind.
The whole monetary system is really messed up.
If we sorted it out, we might see some musicians and critics who work hard at their job.
Disclaimer: I love music, couldn't live without it, and I think a lot of artists do a great job, but I stand by my point. They should get paid the same, if not less than people who actually do the world good.
I have found metal reviews a lot more interesting to read. Especially the reviews at Gothmetal.net has been good reading. It might just be because of the VARIATION that metal has brought with it. Pop music, rap, dance, techno, whatever you call it, has allways had a bit of repetition in my eyes.
Simon Cowell??
If you actually read pitchforkmedia.com, you'll see that the highest rated albums are the ones that innovate the most, that bend old genres, create new ones, and break all formulas. The lowest rated records are those that knock off established artists and pander to the general public (i.e. not critics)
can kiss my shiny metal ass.
bling bling
This guy is saying for the most part society in general is pretty damn predictable and if you know how you can produce something that is "pleasant". i.e. it fits well within the mainstream and can be said to have some mildly controversial elements (ha! controversational) while not really offending anybody.
Essentially you can bank on being able to sell something if you're prepared to make pap. Is it any sort of news that tastes in music can be estimated as easily as tastes in food?
McDonalds anyone?
"I don't know art, but I know what I like."
I never really pay attention to music critics because of this, with the only exception being if an artist is favorably compared to an artist I already like.
..Two thumbs up!
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
1. Rock band
2. Pitchformula review
3. ???
4. Profit!
So much easier than actually making a comment.
Cozinha para as massas (e para geeks)
Karma be damned.
If you hate slashdot so much, why exactly do you waste your time explaining why you hate slashdot so much. The source code is available, start your own site. Where you can be the boss, and you will so cool!
Or just stop wasting your time.
if she'd gotten her music reviewed before she revealed how she made it. Now we'll never know how Pitchforkmedia would have reviewed them.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
I don't think taking music and conforming it to critics, good or bad, will net a good song. Isn't that, at least partially, caused the boy band epedemic, Britney Spears impersonaters, ect? I would think the artist that puts themself into their music, has a passion, and some talent is what would make a great song.
The article states - what does it take to be a good POP reviewer? That makes no sense. No serious music critic would define the question that way. A good music critic reviews mnay genres - classical, jazz, rock - and sub-genres, alternative or indy-rock, ska, hip-hop, etc.
These reviewers would tell you the term "pop" means nothing to them. If you are going to confine yourself to reviewing what is on the Billboard charts, you should get out of the business.
His approach is flawed, he is taking written reviews of popular music, and attempting to determine what the critics liked about by de-constructing the review into keywords. Shouldn't he be de-constructing the music itself? If I steal the riff from this song, and combine it this way - I could create a new song that should also be popular. Either way, it's not going to work. No computational analysis, either of written reviews or of the actual notes themselves - will reveal a hidden formula for writing good songs that will be popular.
Well, if the NME had developed it (a music rag in the UK), it would simply go like this:
if (band_name == "The Strokes" || band_name == "The Libertines")
printf("10/10");
else
printf("%d/10", rand()%10);
On an honest note, it annoys me that there should be some generic formula for critically analysing music. It's this kind of thing that makes all music follow a generic pub-rock path like it did in the mid-late 90's (Oasis anyone?). Or generic R&B/Urban path like it does now...
Critics are not static instruments. The whole idea that a critic has standards that don't change is ludicrous. What's popular now and what was popular in the 80s are completely different things. Critics simply reflect the current flavor of what most people like, which is constantly in a state of flux. Trying to tie a formula to their results is a waste of time unless you take into account the influence of modern media, which generally has the most influence over what people think is "good."
Nirvana is a good example. The critical acclaim of Nirvana is tied to the state that society was in at the time. Ten years prior, nobody would have considered the band good. I'm not sure that now they would have gotten the attention they did several years ago.
Here.
"On a related note, the small number of jazz records that are reviewed on Pitchfork have a much higher average rating than the other records. The artificially high ratings of records in a certain genre points to a fear of bashing these records, perhaps due to a lack of skill when criticizing these records. Alternately, maybe Pitchfork only chooses to review known-good jazz records, which makes sense since they aren't a jazz publication and wouldn't feel obliged to review all the new material in that genre."
...lame...
They are mostly wrong, and very few real people pay any attention to them. "Artistic merits" is another way of saying "it's pure crap".
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
With the large volume of bands out there that can be so readily distributed, the value of critics and editors will increase. You find somebody who seems to agree with your tastes and follow their recommendations. Right now, the opinions of certain power brokers determines the fate of bands.
The adventurous listeners can go out there and try all kinds of new things and then bring back what they like to the masses. Word of mouth will become a far more powerful engine for generating popularit than anything else. This is already true for many who've grown sick of pop radio.
I really don't listen to the radio (except for NPR). But I listen to a lot of music that never gets played on the radio. I've got a friend who's in a really good local band, and I've got some friends who are really into music that always point me towards new things. So I get their recommendations, and I find that I like a large portion of what they recommend. Finally I experiment a little, sifting through a lot of crap, but occasionally discovering something new that I like.
That's the future of music. The RIAA is screwed.
is AWFUL.
The whole pop music nowadays is ruled by Disney and their offspring like Brittany,Hillary duff, Timberlake and the boy bands.
It's all damn annoying.
We need to kill off MTV. They are pure capitalistic bullshit. They promote all these 13 year old girl singers that can't carry a note and try to sing black.
The better looking the artist, the worse the music.
Seriously, surfing the music channels I have lately found myself switching channels before hearing the song, if the people in the video are too pretty. Perhaps I'll become classically conditioned to dislike beautiful people.
Hmmm. This is beginning to suggest a Pavlovian psychology study. Also reminds me a little of A Clockwork Orange.
Really, it's all there in the market research...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
If he wanted to compose "original songs" based on a predictable formula, why use pitchfork as a source?
So, look at this scoring system. He says anything over 7.4 is a positive review, and he counts up the words used in it. What happens when they review the latest Radiohead album, give it a 9.3 and whine for 500 words about what wasn't perfect? To me (a daily reader of pfork), they are good at talking about new indie music and getting the word out, but they are pretty arbitrary with whether a 7.9 review was an awesome album (junior senior), or a mild disappointment (modest mouse's latest) in their eyes.
If you want to make a point and say "here's the formula to a good song", why use pitchfork? Why not use Entertainment Weekly or something that is much more mainstream and will follow trends?
Shit, half the time pitchfork doesn't even talk about the album. It could be a guy reminiscing about childhood or how he used to hate/like these guys, and then end with "so that's MY life story. (Album gets a 7.4)".
Metacritic (www.metacritic.com) averages reviews from many sources and weighs the scores as they see fit.
Anyway, I love pitchfork, but I don't see them as the basis of anything even remotely systematic.
It's a single genre - pop. This is e-mail ;)
Now there's good elements to pop - ham
And bad elements to pop - spam
So now using the same method that a spammer would use against you if they had your bayesian datafile to create a ham e-mail, he can create 'good' pop.
Or so the theory goes. After all, when 'good' elements in womens' faces are all combined together to make the theoretically 'perfect' face, the result is something not too attractive.
And besides.. POP = very mainstream = pushed by labels = RIAA milking cow
Just what the world needs, more formula pop music.
Apparently singing in tune doesn't matter to the critics.
Not that this is a surprise.
Kind of original. Far too emo/indy. To call this rock is a ridiculous stretch.
I utterly hate this, which probably means that Starlister will become the bellwether of a whole new generation of schlock. I imagine they will go very far.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
My apologies, Junior Senior was a 7.6
I think the point is still there, though.
It might be more interesting to divide the reviews based on genre and do an analysis of critical features within, for example, just the reviews of indie rock albums. Unfortunately, the author's analysis ends up ignoring the conventions of the various musical genres and the results guide him towards very unsatisfactory compositional guidelines. Quite an interesting read though.
Learn to Play Go
So this is "News for nerds, stuff that matters" how?
The same issue applies to film reviews.
:-)
I'm the producer on an indie film currently in its festival run (shameless plug: http://www.qualityoflife-themovie.com) and it's amazing how much power these reviews have, particular with the industry press (Variety, Hollywood Reporter, etc.).
What's completely messed up is that these industry reviews can make or break a small indie film like ours. The big Hollywood bloatware films can just spend their way into the hearts and minds of American theaters.
We might not even get a chance to be in theaters if the industry reviews are poor. Distributors pay attention -- or not -- based on these reviews.
And why not? Distributor's lives are hectic and who has time to do detailed marketing analyses on thousands of new indie films each year...why not let the industry rags do it for you?
It's so frustrating since so many of these reviewers aren't the target audience for the films.
For instance, our film is a narrative feature about two graffiti writers in San Francisco. It's completely targeted at an underground youth audience...and those people that love that sort of thing. But the Variety reviewer was -- drumroll please -- a middle age dude who actually used the word "louts" in his review....and said the soundtrack was "molar-rattling".
Grandpa obviously woke up on the wrong side of the bed.....
In fact, younger audiences (14-25) generally love the film....but the acquisitions folks may never get the chance to know this. Etc etc.
We're just one example, but in the music industry, the same sort of thing is going on.
During the dotcom years, people talked about disintermediating the system such that people like us (media producers) could reach an audience (film viewer, music lovers, etc.) directly.
Sadly, the only thing that came of this (in a major way) is peer-to-peer, which doesn't exactly pay the rent. Also, filmmaking has a much different $$ structure than music. Musicians can make most of their money on live shows, while filmmakers make it all in the exhibition/distribution. Thus, peer-to-peer directly threatens us in a way it doesn't necessarily hurt musicians....But I'm sure some of our musician (or geek) friends might disagree in one way or another.
But that's a different debate....
- Brant
They are choosing demographics. Music be damned. Until someone in the MEDIA takes on this system by slamming MTV ,the phony music network and the payola that goes on.
Insightful my ass...
"Musicians, Footballers, Actors, etc." do not all make massive amounts of money, only those who have a good grasp of their industry make a living, and of those a few make it to the top. For every Eminem there are hundreds of performers trying (and failing) to get there. How much do the actors at your local theater (assuming you're not living in NYC) make? Probably a free meal and a drink, in most cases.
It isn't the monetary system that's messed up, it's modern life. Twenty years ago every small town had several bands playing in the bars downtown any night. Now, most have one or two clubs or bars that have music on the weekends, and they're lucky if they fill up enough for the musicians to walk away with more than $50.
In a major city you can work your way up to making a living with music, if you have the skills, patience, tenacity and luck.
Many bands who have hit it "big" have wound up with little or no money due to the way the record companys handle things - handing signees a wad of cash that turns out to be a "front" or loan against future sales, charging the band for EVERYTHING (studio time, distribution, everything the record company does they charge the band).
Modern Americans are either too lazy or scared of the potential of getting a DUI to go out to a club to see a live band. Why try when you have hundreds of channels of crap on the TV to choose from?
It's very rare for the average musician to get paid enough to survive - all the "professional" musicians I know (yes I'm one of them) have day-jobs to pay the rent.
All the reviews I've read on pitchforkmedia.com have been explaining how either the author of the review is better than the band being reviewed, or how the author and the band are both much better than you. They don't fall over themselves to praise every band (which is good) but I still don't think I get solid information there (which is bad). My method for finding music still is finding somebody that has tastes sort of close to yours, then getting into whatever they like.
This is not creativity - at best it's 'color by numbers', and sorry, but it reveals the individual in question is devoid of talent.
Show me true artist that even cares what critics say. They don't. They also have good insights into how critics work - they're also lacking in talent, and choose their career precisely for that reason. Legendary jazz critic Leonard Feather had a famous soul-baring essay on precisely this topic.
In summary, this is tripe. Everybody go home and wait for Dotslash to pick a few better articles.
"It Stinks!"
Less look fast, more go fast.
They don't know, they're not relevant, and that's not what their site is about. Intellectually incestuous hipsters, smug in the obscurity of their tastes are their target demographic.
I'd sooner ask Jack Chick what's wrong with America. That answer might at least be entertaining.
Memo to Slash . The moderation is getting to be overboard. http://arstechnica.com/ http://www.kuro5hin.org/
Pht, they didnt write that one with irony in mind!
Yeah I saw this somewhere already hmm...[searching]... here it is:
Who Will Save Rock?.
Considering the state of commercial music today, it's hard to believe that anyone *isn't* a critic. The shrink-wrapped cultural cocktail that the entertainment industry shits out daily is more than enough to be critical of.
And no, I *haven't* had my coffee.
The results are hardly suprising.
Critics like Radiohead, Sigur Ros, The Flaming Lips and Wilco.
Critics hate The Vines.
One thing you can't recreate by analyzing databases is sincerity, which is an integral part of the bands that critics like.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
All pop music is garbage... Artificial, sugar-coated garbage.
I am a musician and I've long suffered the indignities of pop music.
RF
Has anyone actually LISTENED to the mp3s? They're godawful. They drone on. Considering that Pitchfork rates on a basis or originality AND execution, they'd definately be under the 2.0 mark. On top of that, he wrote while thinking about the reviews. Not cool.
One wonders if it has anything to do with the child porn allegations?
Pop has a pretty wide definition in some people's minds. He's not even thinking of the Billboard charts -- I take what he was implying as "anything but classical or traditional music". I'm betting that "pop" was a simple way for him to encapsulate ALL genres of music into his study. I have a wide definition of pop too -- just because I can see most music as one entity does not mean that I can't break down the lines, either.
I think you really underestimate what he's getting at.
As-is, I'm impressed by the study because it tweaks the nipples of anyone with a critical eye to music. I hope Pitchfork reviews these songs in their "We Are the World" section, because it'd be interesting to see how close they got. Strangely enough, I believe that Pitchfork is also located in Chicago.
The music itself reminded me of a lot of stuff that's been highly rated in the last few years on Pitchfork including The Postal Service (style-wise) and Wilco (production-wise; very untraditional techniques used). His voice reminds me of Sondre Lerche and Sufjan Stevens, two highly-rated artists on the site. At the same time, there's a couple of unique touches to it.
Who knows, maybe he'll earn a couple of fans out of it.
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
I as well am a freelance music writer, and though I'm tempted to link to my writing, I'd rather not have my editor freak out about her website crashing for "some completely random spike in traffic." mm-hmm.
/. link yet, because it combines everything that I love -- songwriting, music criticism and analysis of language. his database work is really good at nailing reviewer's cliches... in fact, while flipping through his data, I've found a lot of phrases that I gravitate towards that are listed and used here, too. this may mean much more to me than most of the people who read this, but as a guy who writes CD reviews, I have found the holy grail of how NOT to construct a CD review. it's like, "THESE are the cliche phrases - don't use them."
at any rate, this has to be my favorite
what's interesting, though, is that this isn't so much a breakdown of music critism as much as it is a breakdown of human expression. I think if you take a narrow field of ANY sect of criticism, be it paintings, music, or even sports, you're going to run into a very particular style of expression, of phrases, of whatever specifically TARGETS the audience that seeks said narrow field. I mean, I'm not going to review impressionist art and gripe about qualities befitting a lifelike landscape portrait... sure, both forms will have things in common as visual expressions, but the person who wants the Van Gogh and the person who wants the 'happy trees' are going to appreciate their choice for very different reasons. so the fact that his mp3s sound much like what a pitchfork critic loves isn't a surprise at all. it just proves the consistency of the listening audience in question.
now on to the music.
I downloaded the mp3s and was pretty impressed with the instrumental work. sometimes, the drumwork tries so hard to contrast the backing music that it begins to sound TOO uncomfortable, but other times, the contrast is compelling. otherwise, he has picked up the spirit of Pitchfork-style criticism, in which new music fuses analog and digital instrumentation by culling LOTS of older influences and smushing them together. important bands are the ones that do two things: first, they take a step towards doing something new and interesting with musical forms, and second, they root their sounds in pop precedents. you hear both experimentation and catchiness in Wilson's test songs.
those lyrics, on the other hand, don't come off so well, and I'm pretty sure the biggest reason is because a music critic considers lyrics as an integral part of the sound of a song, while Wilson takes the lyrical portion of songwriting and sets it outside the musical portion. Lyrics might be called "poetry," but even the greatest books of lyrics sound much worse when read than when sung with the intended music. Perhaps Pitchfork would eat these emo-sad lyrics up, but I see these lyrics in the same vein as NIN lyrics - sad for sad's sake, cliched, no real metaphoric weight.
I'd be interested to see a similar project used to analyze poetry criticism, and then have those "analyzed" lyrics ported into Wilson's songs. then he might have a computer-created winner.
all in all, you'd expect a totally robotic response to this sort of database study. "a song must have ingredient x and ingredients b, y and q. the computer has fused those ingredients together and here is the result." but one thing Wilson doesn't credit in his study is the ultimate human creation that is necessary. Wilson's statistics merely guided his own brain into composing what he felt matched the criticisms, which means the songs also matched the pop sensibilities that had to have been burrowed in his head for years. He's obviously a music fan and, even if he played "against his will," still applied his years of musical study and play to his final product. I wouldn't expect many other people in his shoes to apply his database results to music and come out in the end with mp3s that sound that listenable.
he hasn't rendered music critics obsolete or
no, my theory (much simpler) would be that less good looking artists have to make better music to get onto MTV. i roughly agree with the sentiment though. i don't think better looking people inherently have any less talent, it's just that the talent and looks are unrelated, and most people are average looking. most people on MTV are not average looking :) some of my favourite artists, I have no idea what they look like, and no desire to know :)
What makes you think teachers are nurses are noble. Many of them seem to take the job simply because it's there and they can do it. My public school years taught me that most teachers were far from noble and the experiene of relatives in hospitals taught me that many nurses are not so noble and just need a job. They aren't necessarily any special than you or I, and at current rates we can fill their posts so what's the big deal.
Just think, when was the last time you saw a rich white high school graduate shoot for a career in nursing? Contrast that with a poor minority high school graduate. Walk through any hospital and see which group made which decision. People don't choose noble professions for noble reasons. And people do not necessarily act nobly while working in these professions.
Photos.
Isn't a pop-music critic irrelevant by definition?
Pop Music is an abbrieviation of Popular Music. By definition, the best popular music is simply whatever sells the most. The worst popular music is whatever sells the least.
Certainly, people can have other views. People can have their personal tastes. At the end of the day though, they simply have opinions vs. the simple perfect (by definition) metric of sales.
I'm sure an argument can be made about marketing having an influence on sales. While that's potentially true, recognise what the basic business of a record label is. They want to make as much money as possible. If they believe a record has mass appeal, whether it's good, bad or indifferent, they'll put in as much money as they think will get them a return greater than their investment. OK, they can get that judgment wrong sometimes but their opinion, given their paid highly for it, is more likely to be accurate than most critics. If the critics were so accurate, the record labels would hire them as A and R men.
There is the notion of artistic merit. Then again, seeing as it's relatively rare for anything artistic to get even close to uniform reviews, even that is more personal opinion and personal values than anything else.
At the end of the day, all a critic really does is serve to be someone with an opinion. If you can find one with an opinion close to your own, they can save you time by helping you find things that suit such a shared opinion.
Still, when it comes to pop music, given its basic definition, analysing criticism, as opposed to analysing nothing more complex than sales figures, is probably a mistake.
Dude, it's like totally unreadable
with Konqueror or Mozilla. What are they thinking? Clearly they don't give a rats arse about us geeks.
Originality and actually writing their own music is what makes a band stand out. TOOL is a great example of this. Each member is one of the best in the world at what they do. Add this along with one of their members (Adam) who does their videos, which are very original and visual. Their music can make you very intrigued and want to actually pick their songs apart to find out what they are all about, because there all kinds of subtle or hidden meanings. If you have never heard this band, check out the drumming, it is the most incredible drumming I've heard. They bring together some of the best parts of many different types of music including tabla.
For some more very original music check out anything Mike Patton (Faith No More singer) is involved with (Tomahawk, Fantomas, Mr. Bungle, Faith No More).
Basically anything that sounds different, not most of this generic crap that is played on the radio nowadays.
A 'Loren Ipsum' generator, eh?
Do a search for "nickelbacksucks.mp3" and listen. Its friggen hilarious. I'll let you find out what it is if you don't already know.
That's right. All your base.
Has anyone done a study analyzing Slashdot moderation patterns with the aim of creating a template for the "perfect +5 post"?
Seems like every other critical medium has been vivisected using lame-ass statistical meme-mapping techniques, so why not this one? Go to it, muchachos. There must be a dissertation in there somewhere.
(Or barring that, a pony.)
This was in an Archie Double Digest
Dillon.. or Dilton.. that smart guy with glasses.. he analized all the top 5 music songs of all time and computated a #1 hit for Archie's band.. and they were #1.
ya ya ya.. its only a comic.. but who dosent wanna see Betty and Veronica in a litte #69?
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
Good critics get you to buy things(CDs, DVDs, books etc...) or go to things (movies, concerts etc...). Bad critics tell you that most of everything released by anyone in any genre, whether it's film, music, theater or literature, is crap, which of course it is.
So to reiterate: Good critics(see Roger Ebert and the TV movie review show "Hot Ticket" for examples) tell you that they love most of the mainstream crap that is put out and they get you to spend money on it. Bad critics don't.
Any idiot with a $100 cassette deck could release his/her crap. Sound familiar?
Face it, pop music critics generally find the coolest stuff and pop music is much cooler now than it was 20 years. The latest Beenie Man single is an example.
Anyone with a computer can make a better record than any musician idiot. Musicians suck.
The vast majority of pop music is a cookie-cutter formula. By using music written by a template, lyrics written at a 5th grade level, and vocals preformed by some cute blonde, most pop is made for the lowest common denominator in order to appleal the the highest number of people. That translates into more market saturation and more sales. I'm not saying that all pop music is garbage, but most of it is by default. We can't forget that most of these so called critics are in the industry's pocket also.
You can't have listened to Radiohead much and seen a comparison here. Sure, it's a closer fit than comparing it to, say, GWAR, or Garth Brooks. Sure, Radiohead fits into the sad bastard genre, but within that genre, this stuff is much closer to emo.
Though the lyrics of these songs are terrible, terrible, terrible, the instrumentals, however, show some promise (if underdevelopment). In general, the songs lack any structure or dramatic direction. For all its otherwise competence, the project fails by omitting that quality which makes for repeatably enjoyable music and great albums (and which, btw, Radiohead perhaps does better than anyone).
I could see how someone could argue from that perspective, and I understand that you're advancing this case for the sake of arugment, but such an opinion is easily dismissed:
FDR suffered from polio. Whether he was a good President or bad, he did sit in the White House longer than any President in U.S. history. The docs and nurses who kept him from dying helped America's Commander in Chief stay alive during WW II.
Were the teachers of Robert Goddard or Margaret Thatcher or Neil Armstrong helping someone who would otherwise have been culled from the gene pool at an earlier age? It seems to me that the contributions of teachers affect everyone who is taught, be they intrinsically capable or otherwise. But all benefit from their teaching.
The term "Darwinian" is often used to justify the notion that "survival of the fittest" means survival of the strongest individuals, when it really refers to the adaptability of an entire species. In this sense, members of a species (humans) that contribute to the overall strength of the species are quite valuable indeed.
I don't disagree that musicians, athletes, and actors can be valuable members of a society and the species as a whole. The notion that an individual can be a representative of an ideal can be a very compelling motivator for those who wish to emulate that individual, as any cyclist who watches the Tour de France can attest.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
NIN releases are routinely bashed on the pitchfork site. Look at a broad base of rock critics however, and you will see NIN being generally praised. It's not just NIN, either. Some of the critics as pitchfork seem to have an agenda against certain bands, and make sure to give said bands poor ratings at every turn. (Though I'm not sure, a cursory look at the site seems to suggests that the one positive NIN review they have up, written by one James P. Wisdom, was the last review written by said reviewer for the site).
my pet machine
TOOL is a great example of this. Each member is one of the best in the world at what they do. Add this along with
Read this
You just made iced tea spray from my nose.
That is all.
One thing that I've noticed lately- and you can take this seriously (it sounds funny, but I mean it). A lot of the porno I've been downloading on p2p lately seems to be 4 or 5 minute commercials for pay sites. Seriously, they cut out the good parts and show the logo for the website.
They say that porno leads the way for technology (think VHS vs Beta, the entire internet, the minitel system in france)- and I think that this is the sort of thing that could still bear fruit for the vision you mention for direct distribution. There's a lot of pressure to have compelling and flashy trailers.
Socially, we're going to have to have a major push toward the moral imperative of purchasing media for the purpose of supporting the artists. In order for this to occur, I'd say that there needs to be a lot more efficiency and honesty in who gets paid and how the money is spent.
that's my two cents.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Tigerbeat? You aren't knocking Tigerbeat6, home of Kid 606, Numbers, Cex, Stars as Eyes, and other talented types, right?
(Having just googled it, I note that there's a shitty teen mag called Tigerbeat - note that there is also an excellent record label called Tigerbeat)
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Let me begin with a disclaimer: I used to work as a jazz journalist. I've written more than a few album reviews and artist interviews, and I've had personal experience with the politics of music criticism. If you want to write off my thoughts as the ravings of a jaded ex-critic, feel free.
Music critics suck. The problem is epitomized by the title, "music critic." I never referred to myself as a critic -- always a "jazz journalist." The difference? Information, as opposed to entertainment.
Music critics labor under the ignorant misperception that their job is to entertain. They confuse themselves with musicians -- often because they are in fact failed musicians. Their job isn't to entertain you. Their job is (or should be) to provide information about entertainment. When you finish reading an album review, you shouldn't say, "Wow, what a great read." You should say, "I learned something, and feel better informed to decide whether I might like this CD."
The following is a recent restaurant review from a Nashua, New Hampshire newspaper. I emailed it to a few friends last week, because it's a perfect example of something I've long bitched about:
Please list the pertinent facts you've learned from this article, which will inform your decision whether to eat at Michael Timothy's. What kind of food do they serve? Is it expensive? Are dungarees appropriate, or should I wear a tie?Aside from (1) bad writing, and (2) "critics" who simply ignore the tenets of journalism, the third problem with music criticism is editorial pressure. (The pressure begins with record labels and publicists, of course -- but the writers usually feel this indirectly, via their editors.)
I won't bore you with details, but I've got a million versions of the same story: Instead of writing about a new album that was terrific, featuring a new musician most readers didn't know, I was ordered to write about something my editor assigned -- which was inevitably a major-label release by an artists our readers already knew. "The other magazine will surely review this major-label release," I was told, "so we have to write about it, too!!" We never had room to educate our readers, but we always had ample space to compete with other publications and to fulfill publicists' requests.
Music criticism isn't treated like journalism. It's treated as publicity by editors, and as entertainment by writers. It's sad, shameful, and ultimately worthless. It's not a far throw from Hollywood journalism, where nary a story is printed without being cleared by numerous agents. On the rare occasions a bad review is printed, it's by design: An editor wants something witty, and he wants something controversial. If he thinks he can avoid pissing off a label, he knows nothing sells magazines like readers buzzing, "Hey, did you read the scathing review in the new issue?!?"
Frankly the most valuable music reviews you'll find nowadays are the customer reviews on Amazon. And that's saying something.
crib
Please don't read my journal
"I'm a capitalist, just like everyone else in this country. I asked for a certain amount of money, and they paid it to me because they know if they didn't, someone else would. If you asked for the same amount of money, they wouldn't have paid it to you, because no one else would."
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Pop music isn't sold on the basis of how good it is, it's sold on the basis of how effectively it's marketed.
Better to spend your time analysing the ways in which millions of people are convinced that the latest trashy teen queen singing her little heart out about how in love she is could possibly be worth buying.
(Long Dark Teatime of the Soul tells us how, too!)
Do you happen to know any of these high-rolling musicians living off the fruit of the labor of hard-working society? I don't mean some dip you saw on the telly. I mean someone you personally know. If you do, ask him where the stations are for the magic gravy train and how I can obtain a ticket. After all, I can play a guitar, and from what I hear a little better than some of those who've had success on the pop charts. Fact is, the vast majority of musicians do it for the enjoyment of the art and could not make enough money playing music alone to support themselves. They are, in fact, part of the regular old work-force themselves as well as being musicians.
Sleep is futile.
...are artists. If you can't do it, shut up. And if you can, you know better than to try to can it in software.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Y'know, Pitchformula is a much more fitting name for Pitchfork. I find that pitchfork reviews aren't so good for any sort of consumer guidance or artistic criticism, but at least give a snapshot of whatever the consenus indie-rock orthodoxy is at the moment. And the oh-so-precious two significant digit ratings serve as a sort of indie-rock orthodoxy stock report.
For example, let's look at Wilco's last few records: Being There, a "a spinoff of a successful band" that with a score of 6.8, "[h]as its moments, but isn't strong"; Summerteeth, which shot right up to a 9.4 (ratings key: "Amazing"), the review getting bonus points for using the innane phrase "Elvis Costello-by-way-of-Phil Spector", and not mentioning already emerging record-label problems (although I can't help but think that those probably nudged the score up a bit); and then we get the much-ballyhooed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, with record-label troubles so severe that they couldn't go unmentioned in the review, and a perhaps not-uncoincidental 10.0 (ratings key: "Essential") rating. There's no review for A Ghost Is Born yet (although those with up-to-date versions of QuickTime can have a listen at that last link), but past market performance suggests that although the review will be good, you probably should have sold at Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's 10.0.
The formula for "successful" pop music is pretty simple:
a) Whatever crappy song Clear Channel puts in heavy rotation to foist upon their radio-listening hostages
at least the author understands her obsession for popular music reviews is unhealthy. i must applaud the methods and approach used...but the goal makes me uneasy.
i think the concept of this analysis is only useful to monitor the homoginization of creativity. perhaps remotely notable for product marketing purposes, if tied to sales data. the idea suggests an elevated status for critics while cheapening both artists and the most victimized segments of music consumers.
sure, one can have a statistical analysis of what makes certain critics write approvingly. but the question is what is that worth? i think less than nothing. net negative for culture, but perhaps an advance for the ruin of beautiful experiments.
orwell's songwriting machine is born.
The whole reason that we can even have something like popular music (or popular movies, or what have you) is that people's tastes tend to be fairly similar. Call it fashion, call it universal appeal, what it boils down to is that for any medium you can find certain elements that occur frequently in well-liked works of that medium. This observation doesn't seem particularly novel to me - it's an assumption that has to at least be implicitly accepted before you can lend any credibility to reviews, art/music schools and workshops, or mass media (such as the radio).
I'm more inclined to think of this site as a funny and insightful commentary on how you can take an entirely pedestrian meme and make it sound original and thought-provoking if you surround it with a proper arrangement of clever posturing and large words.
If the music is crap, but the critic likes it, the critic is crap.
Later, rinse, repeat.
This is the ever-so-fahsionable world of rock and roll snobbery we're talking about here: if you think it's really coming, let everyone know you're over Wilco before the backlash hits. The cancer stage of this attitude is the intolerable "anything anyone has heard of is crap" obscuritanism that's been prevalent ever since "alternative" became a marketing category.
"Each member is one of the best in the world at what they do"
HA!
I urge you to go find some real musicians and listen to their stuff before making those kinds of statements. Tool is nowhere near "the best in the world".
Pitchfork is shite. They make up half of the articles and don't know what they're talking about for the other half.
Why this is being used for data is beyond me. It's like trying to feed a family with twinkies.
Yr getting there. Two suggestions:
Using your same pseudo-darwinian reasoning, nurses save talent thet helps our species to advance (a disabled or sick person can have some talents that are important to preserve and use for as long as possible),
Ditto for teachers.
As for firefighters I will leave it, I can't contend logiclly with somebody reaching half of his conlussions in an inhebrated state pulling argument out of that part where the sun nevr shines,
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Wilson quantifies, in detail, the patterns that emerge in some rock crit. But it wasn't ever mysterious, was it? The critics are doing what artists and musicians do, which is copy each other. The arts look to the arts. And they xerox endlessly. Yeats wrote, "Nor is there singing school but studying / Monuments of its own magnificence." The Byrds boiled it down to this: "Just get an electric guitar / Then take some time and learn / How to play." We wouldn't remember the Byrds at all today if they hadn't done such nice Dylan covers. . .
The spooky good thing about Wilson is that he's a musician, too. After all his earnest left-brain crunching I was prepared to hoot at his two prefab songs, and in truth, I did snort at the chorus in "I'm Already Dead," which whines: "I'm already dead / I'm blind and deaf." (And the rigor mortis is a complete bitch!) But his "Kissing God" isn't bad. Musically it may lean hard on the critics-pleasing tricks, exactly as he set out to do. But as a mildly original rearrangement of others' techniques, it's pleasing, and that's the bottom line. Lyrically, I rather liked his phrase "I'm kissing God and losing you"--it's a tasty bit of the profane, like something Prince might have dreamed up in one of his weird Jesus-meets-Larry Flynt fits. And the spastic drumming, well, that's a plus, too. :-)
Meshuggah
Arch Enemy
etc
I usually describe Meshuggah as modern jazz played by really fast and brutal death metal musicians... (Their last cd was a bit slow, it could be a good place to start.)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
The arts are probably among the top two or three most important things in the world. And they actually contribute a great deal toward the evolution and development of mankind. Tell me what you most closely associate with the Renaissance, for instance? The names of the firemen? I would venture to say you might remember the music, literature and painting. The arts reflect the times and help us frame our thoughts about what is meaningful in life. God bless firemen, but in the grand scheme of things, a good fireman is a good fireman. How many Shakespeares are there?
Don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but SomethingAwful did a pretty dead-on parody of Pitchfork a few months ago. It should, indoubtedly, be checked out.
I wish I could mod you up 1 more point. This is one of the more Insightful posts I've read on Slashdot in a while.
Klein bottle for rent - inquire within.
I have a book that is a compendium of rock reviews, and while I like the writing, after awhile it gets corrosive. The writing of the review seems to be about what the authors like, about how cool or "alternative" it is, about how the music is too liberal or not liberal enough (the bias seemed mostly left in phase), or about how much of an experience the music is. Music they don't like gets lots of analogies to other things that suck without explaining why the analogies work.
I like reading essays and reviews, but music reviews often seem uninformative and illogical, written by people who think I like reading about music to hear how expansive and cool their musical knowledge is while not imparting any of it. Even political writing, with the overwhelming tendency to use bad analogies, implications, and innuendo, doesn't seem as meaningless as bad music writing. Good music writing rarely gives me useful information about the music it (nominally) describes - perhaps an understanding about the people who make it, or some wit, but that's it.
- Start comment with "I'll be modded down for saying this, but" or end it with "Feel free to mod me down now.". Then take a polarized stance on the subject at hand (or even one of the standard Slashdot subjects -- MS vs. Linux, RIAA vs. everyone, etc., as long as you make some tenuous link to the topic) -- and try to sound defiant about it, as though you're the little guy, standing up to someone lording it over you.
- Make a smart-assed remark and make it pithily (if it wraps, it's too long).
- Write up a long and fascinating/hilarious/frightening personal anecdote, preferably about what a geek you are, preferably somehow linked to the topic.
- Compose a lengthy, in-depth analysis of the topic and end the post with the paragraph: "Oh, and by the way, IAA___." where ___ is replaced with the initials of whatever vocation would be most authoritative on the subject (TL = Tax Lawyer, PP = Particle Physicist, TC = Tugboat Captain, etc.).
If you're feeling lazy, try these:- Subject: "Site slowing, here's article text". Body: Cut and paste the article text.
- Subject "Reg-free link". Body: The Google partnered, Google cached, or otherwise unencumbered link equivalent to the article's link to the New York Times or other soul-sucking registration-required site.
- Subject: "Mirror". Body: Link to a separately-hosted copy of the large media files that are the article's main draw. (If desperate, use freecache.)
Your final score: +5. Rinse and repeat as neccessary."A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
You want to impress the critics? I have one word,
PAYOLA!!!!
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Visit Metal-Sludge for a nice site with a complete no-bullshit attitude. Though you have to be into the music demographic it's targetting, you can't help but appreciate it's complete no-frills approach. They hand out a "Super Balls Award" to people they like.
Check out this review of a Metal Edge issue for a classic example of everything people are talking about here regarding music journalists, and why Metal-Sludge is such a great juxtaposition.
Snippet:
"I sat in the "vinyl" room at a Milford, CT, specialty shop, and thumbing through the goods, I was as excited by the fabric and texture of the merchandise, as I was the potential that it represented. The exhilaration ran through my body like an invigorating rush."
Dude, you need to get fucking laid! If you're that excited about how vinyl feels, just think what a breast is going to feel like. I love a good record store as much as the next guy but come the fuck on!
"And I felt young again, with all the sensibility of an adult who knew even better. I reveled in the spirit of youth, while basking in the glow of maturity."
Seriously, who in their right mind talks like that? If a friend came up to you and said that you'd naturally assume that they were on Xtasy and tell them to go into rehab. The only reason to write like that is to impress yourself or other writers. Normal fans don't want to read that shit and normal people don't talk like that. It's pretentious. It's trying too hard to sound intelligent and deep. This is Metal Fucking Edge, not a Tom Clancy novel. People want to read shit like Maxim, Blender, Metal Sludge, etc. Real stuff, as if you were talking to a friend, not pompous shit like, "I reveled in the spirit of youth, while basking in the glow of maturity."
This is how I would write Paul's story: "I went to a record store and they had like a vinyl section in the back, you know, LPs and stuff, so I checked that shit out and it was cool. Got some good stuff." See, how hard was that? Simple and straight to the point. You got what I was saying. At no point in my 2 sentences did I ever sound like I was playing with my cock while holding albums.
Or their Random Thoughts On VH-1's 100 Most Metal Moments. Hilarious stuff. You can't help realizing how over-seriously music journalists take themselves.
Well, the new record finally dropped, so we can move on to your important question:
And the answer, it seems, is a definite maybe. Our friends at Pitchfork have finally put together a review of the new record, and it's a 6.6 (review key: "Has its moments, but isn't strong"). Notable non-info in the review includes a pointless digression on the relationship between certain songs on their last album and the look of public transit in Chicago, and a prince of a line about how the guitar solos "invite idle speculation about [the guitarist's] prehab pill regimine".The strange thing is, that on the whole, the review is balanced, and seems to find its marks pretty well (shitty guitar playing -- check, lack of song structure -- check), and it even takes aim at obscuritan fans (and songwriters), and "cred-snipers".
So to sum up: good but flawed record, surprisingly good review, still shoulda sold at 10.0.