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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."
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.
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)
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
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.
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.
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
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.
We don't fear dying or being stupid anymore in this day of extended life and wealth of information.
We fear being bored. And thus, we throw exhorbident amounts of cash and idolation at the shrines of entertainment.
*looks around and realizes he sounds fanatical*
Just the way I've always looked at it. Hell, I admit I do it to.
Can you ping me now? Gooood! | Manhappenin.Net - Things to do
Yeah, that will be nice. And I can't even imagine why somebody would want to smother such a thing in its crib, so I'm sure we'll all be listening to our own private music here real soon.
Is it fascism yet?
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
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.
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.)
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.
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
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. :-)