P2K: The Top 200 Albums of the 2000s: 20-1

Bug OTM. I fully endorse the reduction in scope to good arguments about music vs. bad ones.

Short summary seems to = one risks getting music "wrong" when one writes and/or thinks badly. Which seems reasonable to me -- it's true of almost everything. Other than that, though, I don't think there's anything wrong with the interpretive process that necessarily accompanies the movement of art from one cultural context to another. For instance, the way dance music or hip-hop are understood and used by, say, indie/hipster audiences... The latter probably won't understand & use the music in the same way as serious/knowledgeable fans of the genre. As a result, the qualities they value will necessarily seem "wrong" to anyone who really cares about and has spent substantial time with the genre. And that's okay. I don't see anything wrong with this sort of appropriation and reinterpretation.

― from alcoholism to fleshly concerns (contenderizer), Tuesday, October 20, 2009 11:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

its easy to say in rhetorical generalities. but things can easily be lost, & are all the time, when u shift contexts like that

I know at least one friend who expressed dumbfounded amazement that a slew of writers/music fans/etc. out there hadn't seemed to have heard either of the Black Eyed Peas number ones this year, even after having a death grip on the charts for more than half its length.

I want to say this is insane to me but then I remember all of the hair metal that I actively shunned back in the 80s and thus never, for example, heard a Winger song in its entirety until this decade. (ps I want my pretty mind back)

Headed for a headache.

Forgot to link the convo from LiveJournal here.

I think a better comparison wouldn't be hair metal or Winger (though I'd bet you'd at least HEARD of Winger and simply chose not to listen to them), but instead whether or not it was possible to actually avoid hearing or knowing about, say, Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" when it came out.

Oh hey, thanks -- 'anchorlessness' is a good choice of word but the way I've articulated it more to myself is process vs. product, where I am increasingly interested/comfortable with the former not the latter. (This does not just apply to music.) I'll probably have more to say about that in the Stylus piece.

Probably not the thread for this, but damn, looking at "biggest jumps to #1" mostly being within the past 3 years is like looking at the record hot days happening in the past 10 years. (Obvious difference that ruins the metaphor is that this has everything to do with downloading counting toward the charts, and streaming as of 2007.)

* 97-1 - Kelly Clarkson — "My Life Would Suck Without You" (February 7, 2009)[2]
* 96-1 - Britney Spears — "Womanizer" (October 25, 2008)[3]
* 80-1 - T.I. featuring Rihanna — "Live Your Life" (October 18, 2008) [4]
* 78-1 - Eminem, Dr. Dre and 50 Cent - "Crack a Bottle" (February 21, 2009)[5]
* 71-1 - T.I. — "Whatever You Like" (September 6, 2008)[6]
* 64-1 - Maroon 5 — "Makes Me Wonder" (May 12, 2007)
* 58-1 - Flo Rida featuring Ke$ha — "Right Round" (February 28, 2009)[7]
* 53-1 - Rihanna — "Take a Bow" (May 24, 2008)[8]
* 52-1 - Kelly Clarkson — "A Moment Like This" (October 5, 2002)
* 51-1 - Usher featuring Young Jeezy — "Love in This Club" (March 15, 2008)

x-post, Ned I'm actually writing about this now as an IRL project (having to do mostly with media education) -- could email you some of the musings etc. if you like. I think our issues are pretty similar, but that we're probably using different approaches to talk about it.

Sure, I know I have your e-mail around but if I can't dig it up, ned at kuci dot org -- I'm going to be working on the initial draft this weekend.

In fact just e-mail me directly, will be simpler!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYjD8jYfWBI

There's a vision.

Mention that song in your piece, Ned. I'll give you a dollar.

BRIBERY

I know at least one friend who expressed dumbfounded amazement that a slew of writers/music fans/etc. out there hadn't seemed to have heard either of the Black Eyed Peas number ones this year, even after having a death grip on the charts for more than half its length.

I've said this repeatedly, but it's really, really easy to not pay attention to huge mainstream songs like this. I do because I'm interested in What's Going On in Pop Music, but I'll also note that the vast majority of times I've heard "I Gotta Feeling" have been from listening to the radio in my car. If I didn't drive, or even if I just took the top 40 stations off my presets, I might have heard it a couple of times in a public place (or at a wedding or whatever) but not been able to ID it or remember that I'd heard it before.

Moreover, I don't think this is any more true now than it was 10 years ago (especially for me, since I was in college then and very suspect of mainstream pop culture). Is the difference that critics no longer feel an obligation to pay attention to Top 40 because there are so many other stories now?

i think if i heard 'i gotta feeling' on a station i listen to i would remove said station from my regular rotation

I've said this repeatedly, but it's really, really easy to not pay attention to huge mainstream songs like this. I do because I'm interested in What's Going On in Pop Music, but I'll also note that the vast majority of times I've heard "I Gotta Feeling" have been from listening to the radio in my car. If I didn't drive, or even if I just took the top 40 stations off my presets, I might have heard it a couple of times in a public place (or at a wedding or whatever) but not been able to ID it or remember that I'd heard it before.

That particular song (and many other BEP singles) are all over prime-time television ads though, so you're not only actively avoiding mainstream radio but you're also actively avoiding live television.

My personal opinion is that if you are working as a music critic, you should be prepared to write about any type of music; you may have a specialty or comfort zone but you're not doing your job if you actively avoid wide swathes of music.

but you're also actively avoiding live television.

Probably true -- apart from late-night TV (Conan, Oprah, etc.) a couple times a week, most of the TV I watch is online.

I'm wondering if you could find any sort of analogy in, e.g., the film industry in the 60's with declining film attendance and box office versus technical popularity/box office rankings of films overall (lower total sales, so the #1 sells less and non-#1 stuff may be far more popular in other ways). From a sort of armchair vantage, it seems like at this point in American semi-mainstream or mainstream filmmaking the biggest stories, the films with the most cultural resonance, didn't map onto what was most successful in any meaningful way ("The Graduate" is an exception). Problem with finding the data for this from obvious places is that many places counts continuing sales, so Disney product starts to dominate with continued rereleasing through the decades.

Clearly there's a difference here in the cultural clout of the highest-sellers -- I think you'd be hard-pressed to call many of the highest-grossing 60's films historically iconic in the way that you could for the 70's films. Something similar seems to be happening on the charts, except rather than a transitional slump, I imagine there's not much turning back from the lowered sales, unlike the film industry ('course all of this is hand-wavey and not based in nearly enough evidence, and if you can prove it wrong please do so!).

Getting back to the subject at hand, though, I mean, yeah critics should listen to wide swathes of music, but not for any great unifying reason. It just happens to make most people better critics. Tom Ewing, e.g., has insisted that his own musical knowledge is quite narrow -- more narrow than most people assume it is -- and I don't think this makes him any poorer of a critic ('course he's OPEN to wide swathes of music -- if you're really avoiding so much music, a natural question that arises is what the heck you're doing in the whole music critic racket in the first place.)

The question must partially reside with individual circumstance/opportunity, obv. -- consider Tom's full-time work elsewhere, raising a family, etc., so when he speaks of his knowledge being narrow, that background is part of what's at play. Similarly my own full-time work, my multiplicity of other interests and things I like to do -- if I'm spending (as I have done) between one to two hours in the evening working on some sort of new dish in the kitchen, I'm much more likely to be doing comfort listening than anything else! And we all have our own examples at work.

tl;dr guys

In most cases I agree with Dan's statement – it's not a stretch for me because I've loved Top 40 radio since I was knee high to a grasshopper – but I'm loosening up.

Glad ppl finally got round to discussing the merits&drawbacks of music crit by outsiders and taste in music as dialogue, two excellent notions IMO, just what was needed.

contenderizer: "My gut feeling is that the more honest we are with ourselves about our basic tastes, the less rational, coherent and defensible they will come to seem"

Does being less rational, coherent and defensible also make them inexplicable? With yr idea of a basic, core, true taste, I'm wondering how it would come about, especially as apparently people don't have the same basic tastes and the differences often fall along demographic lines. If it's not something evolved in your environment then where does it come from? Are yr sporting allegiances from there too? Also I'm wondering if you mean you have a 'basic', 'true' opinion on every song that you've just got to be honest with yourself to find or if, as I think yr saying, there is a (small) core of stuff which exhibits those traits that you are genetically doomed to find irresistable (snare on the off beat, I-IV-V, converse shoes, cowbell, homophobic lols). If yr going for the latter then there is presumably a huge chunk of music we have no innate opinion of&I'm wondering if that's the natural domain for ppl to intellectually equivocate in, trying on different genres for size as a day out before returning back to their authentic meat and potatoes.

There's a streak of defensiveness running through this talk of sacrosanct taste that just seems paranoid, like a mob of ethnically diverse critics are going to come stage some indie sucks rally, burn Archers Of Loaf EPs by the dozen and police ipod playlists to ensure everyone's getting their five a day of music-by-womens. First they came for the pitchfork top 20... Yes the fact that you listen to some people's music and not others is politically significant, but as with yr vote it's because ppl see yr value as a listener that they challenge you. Who gets attention, acclaim and a career in music is significant enough to argue over. If you don't want to change your mind then you won't; like voting Tory if you feel guilty about it that's yr responsibility.

Though there's lots of stuff I've read that has changed the way I hear music, it can only happen if you are open to it. 'Getting' music, like all experience, is a creative exercise, (which is one of the reasons yr idea of basic taste is anathema to me) it requires you to break up and organise the sound, to follow and move with it, to focus on certain features, to anticipate and to listen for details&to build a context in which they are significant... these are all things music crit can help with, but it can't listen to it for you, and its criticisms won't have any effect if you don't find some truth in them and tie them into your own experience.

Also I generally agree with this: "My personal opinion is that if you are working as a music critic, you should be prepared to write about any type of music; you may have a specialty or comfort zone but you're not doing your job if you actively avoid wide swathes of music." Though some of the people with the most amazing way of listening to music have very limited tastes. Favourite example always Joe Bussard.

this^^^ especially the second to last paragraph

the "deep taste" contingent isn't giving enough credit to how what you read and think influence your intuitive perception of music and experience in general.

I haven't giving much credit to it because in my observation, it hasn't made much difference to my own experience of music. I stand corrected and accept that it apparently does make a big difference for others (something I should have realized a long time ago just from spending so much time around here).

I think I had the same experience with criticism of poetry, back when I was very interested in poetry (except that I tended to find critical writing on poetry more interesting than most of the music criticism I read). Ultimately I didn't find it have much impact on how I experienced what I read. (An extreme case would be L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry vs. discussion of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. The theory initially made it seem pretty exciting, but then I kept running against the misery of actually reading the stuff.)

'Getting' music, like all experience, is a creative exercise, (which is one of the reasons yr idea of basic taste is anathema to me) it requires you to break up and organise the sound, to follow and move with it, to focus on certain features, to anticipate and to listen for details&to build a context in which they are significant... these are all things music crit can help with, but it can't listen to it for you, and its criticisms won't have any effect if you don't find some truth in them and tie them into your own experience

sure - it's not necessarily incumbent on the listener to do it either, but it is incumbent on critics to do it (point taken re: specialists w/limited tastes being amazing, but from an editorial perspective there should be relatively few of them). as for non-critics who like to discuss these things, ie all non-critics in this thread, i'd like to think you're interested enough to do this creative exercise. eg after deej and i repped for mariah's emancipation of mimi upthread, i'd like to think some people were curious enough to check it out. and yeah, "but i know i don't like mariah, oh noes her vocal technique and ability to sing" - stop and think about how much of her material you're actually familiar with, or whether you're just parroting (indie-)critical consensus!

music crit by outsiders and insiders both valuable. the former is riskier - with the latter, the worst that can happen is dull writing, but even if the critic in question is no wordsmith, the writing will usually be accurate and informative - very helpful to outsiders! thinking of grime here - 100% would take the writers of that period who knew their shit, were on the ground, could bridge the gap between the artists and the mainstream press and report the scene accurately, over the weedy white men who wibbled unhelpfully about critical theory and were all poetic and emo on the internet.

music crit by outsiders can be AMAZING but tim got it absolutely otm upthread - the outsider can't just bring their own unquestioned values and preconceptions to the criticism, you have to approach with an open mind and be respectful to whatever you find. the example i always cite is when the telegraph sent their opera critic to review björk live at covent garden opera house a few years ago - provided a real insight into how she could be perceived outside of her own converted fanbase (and indeed how an opera fan might respond to pop musicians generally). a terrific piece of writing.

tom ewing saying he's not a specialist is a red herring b/c he's a lot more knowledgeable about different genres than he says/thinks he is!! and in any case absolutely typifies the ideal outsider approach of looking at what the artist and the music value, without ever losing sight of what he values. not many outsider critics do this, to put it mildly.

^^ 100% OTM.

What I really like about Tom's writing is that he displays sensitivity to the music in question, even if he doesn't like it much. So when he does introduce unusual or personal stuff to what he's writing about, both sides (the music's "interests", his interests) are illuminated. I thought his piece on "Elanor Rigby" and the forgotten people of the 60s (for Popular) was an excellent example of this.

Even a lot of really enthusiastic criticism often doesn't show that sensitivity, it's more like a mechanistic application of rote critical buzzwords and compliments to prc-conceived qualities in the music.

on a grumpier note i have to say that 90% of the "outsider perspective" criticism i read nowadays is fucking terrible and makes me want to shoot people in the face. ESPECIALLY people who constantly go on about "pop", and constantly whine whenever a song doesn't have a huge galumphing electro beat or immediate one-listen hook or obvious mainstream appeal.

"respectful and open-minded" i think is the main thing here, but that's also edging closer and closer towards just saying "good writing." writing respectfully and open-mindedly well this is how everyone wants to write and it's not until someone more knowledgeable than you is calling you out on some stupid shit that you'd realize you've got it wrong. there's also a balancing act going on, for the outsider, between respectful, honest and interesting. are these pop whiners just being too honest and letting their first impressions on the page? as outsiders they probably just don't get the genre and no amount of respect or open-mindedness will correct that until they do. i can relate to this; in genres i have no knowledge of, often the only songs i can relate to are those with instant hooks. that's just because the majority of it's charms are knit into its generic code which i've yet to figure out.

Yeah kind of think sensitivity is the key, the outsider tag I would only really use for ppl writing about music where there's a pretty distinct core of listeners they don't belong to. Like me writing about Hindustani music. I think most vaguely popular stuff bleeds together a lot more and it's too nebulous to have obvious cores (or they're tiny and yr insider specialism is extremely narrow) and its part of the job of the listener/critic to tie things together&map out connections in useful ways, not nec. always down the usual lines. Someone trying to write authoritatively about an entire area they don't know much about nearly always bad news though.

"the weedy white men who wibbled unhelpfully about critical theory and were all poetic and emo on the internet" < I thought you all liked that kode9 interview?

on a grumpier note i have to say that 90% of the "outsider perspective" criticism i read nowadays is fucking terrible and makes me want to shoot people in the face. ESPECIALLY people who constantly go on about "pop", and constantly whine whenever a song doesn't have a huge galumphing electro beat or immediate one-listen hook or obvious mainstream appeal.

Are these outsiders though or just popjustice/G.A.Y. fans?

There are negative qualities to insider writing just as there are to outsider writing: insularity, the arcane nature of acquired tastes, defensiveness and/or scene boosting, unquestioned aesthetic assumptions, a tendency to take basic familiarity for granted, an attachment to minutia that can occlude the big picture, etc., etc. Nevertheless, all other things being equal, I'll grant that expertise is almost always an asset.

*** *** ***

In response to a few x-posts, I'm not saying that all taste is "deep taste", or that thinking and talking about one's taste has no value. I'm saying that taste is complicated, and it's hard to clearly distinguish between one's ideas about art and one's atavistic responses to it. Therefore, I'm not inclined to question or criticize straightforward expressions of taste on (for instance) political grounds. I happily grant that tastes change over time, and that we can easily expand our tastes simply by being open to new things. But none of that really subverts what I'm trying to say.

I started out defending the indie-centric narrowness of Pitchfork's decade list (not its gender imbalance; see below). I saw the narrowness of the list as an expression of a house aesthetic, an indie aesthetic -- as an expression of Pitchfork's collective taste. Pitchfork's expressions of taste are successful, influential and (to its audience) seemingly useful. They are therefore defensible, even in some sense "good". I don't see the point in arguing that the Pitchfork list should be less indie or more inclusive of other genres. If Pitchfork's taste were markedly different, it would likely be less successful, influential and useful to its audience. That is, I see Pitchfork's success as largely dependent on an audience's interest in and respect for its specific, indie-centric taste.

The idea that taste might be "sacrosanct" came up in response to a different set of complaints about the Pitchfork list. These complaints were more political in nature and revolved around Pitchfork's apparently decided preference for male artists. Personal taste can certainly reflect social conditions, but I don't think that it's appropriate to treat expressions of taste as a form of political speech. This approach only invites reductive reactions, as though we should always be on guard to ensure that our tastes are demographically proportional. Worse yet, if successful, this approach eases a visible symptom in a manner that only camouflages the underlying conditions. Music criticism is boy's club. It isn't the expression of taste that's the problem -- the problem is that we only privilege certain voices to express themselves in this manner.

in genres i have no knowledge of, often the only songs i can relate to are those with instant hooks. that's just because the majority of it's charms are knit into its generic code which i've yet to figure out.

― samosa gibreel

The appreciation of the hidden charms you speak of, however, can lead to just the sort of insularity I was talking about. It's hard to think of many important, enduring, broadly popular pieces of music that don't display instant hooks. This is true of folk music, children's & holiday songs, classical music, jazz & pop. It's true of almost every pop sub-genre, too. The reason that certain disco and metal songs become widely-known and beloved mainstream classics almost always boils down to a simple combination of easy accessibility and massive hooks. (Plus timing, luck, promo money, etc., but the point still stands.)

If one is primarily interested in this sort of instant accessibility, and if one is speaking to a general audience, then genre-specific expertise becomes much less important, perhaps even a hindrance. One need only understand the genre well enough to know what stands the best chance of succeeding outside its confines.

i don't know, anyone who is satisfied just skimming the tops of genres for their most accessible and insantly affecting hits... kind of a loser imo. do these people also listens to albums once and then delete all the songs they didn't like first shot? but i do know what you mean about these songs being an important bridge to communicating with other uneducated shmoes.

everyone is discussion musicwrite as it pertains to music, but not as it pertains to writing. if the aim is to be funny, provocative, interesting, and true -- i.e. good from the standpoint of writing -- then everything follows. if that gets displaced by another agenda (to promote a genre, to be proper, to be outrageous, to be authoritative, to be inoffensive, to find a big thing, to be smart) then that's where the trouble is. so we shouldn't be fighting over what agenda crits set themselves. we should take issue with the idea that crits need an agenda, and maybe open ourselves to the idea that its having an agenda -- trying to hard to matter -- that makes things the most inconsequential.

xpost to samosa:

There has to be a less sneeringly self-righteous way to put that idea across. I mean, isn't that what pop is and does (both as a genre and as a form of cultural memory)? It just skims the top of everything for the hits, for the good parts. In fact, I think that's what we ALL do with regard to the seemingly infinite mass of music that exists in the world. We trawl through it in search of our own personal "hits", sometimes in an educated fashion, sometimes not. And there's nothing wrong with that, either way, so long as we find value in what we bring home. We could always be more educated, or less.

I mean, I have nothing against you personally, SG, but that post exemplifies everything that bugs me about criticizing other people's taste.

everyone is discussion musicwrite as it pertains to music, but not as it pertains to writing. if the aim is to be funny, provocative, interesting, and true -- i.e. good from the standpoint of writing -- then everything follows. if that gets displaced by another agenda (to promote a genre, to be proper, to be outrageous, to be authoritative, to be inoffensive, to find a big thing, to be smart) then that's where the trouble is. so we shouldn't be fighting over what agenda crits set themselves. we should take issue with the idea that crits need an agenda, and maybe open ourselves to the idea that its having an agenda -- trying to hard to matter -- that makes things the most inconsequential.

Hi Sterling, how are you distinguishing between these two groups of aims? i.e to be provocative w/r/t writing vs to be outrageous w/r/t the music? I mean I can see ho wn article might be one and not the other but in many cases you achieve one through the other. "True" writing about music is synonymous (though not identical) with writing that is "true" to the music, I would have thought?

i don't know, anyone who is satisfied just skimming the tops of genres for their most accessible and insantly affecting hits...

..etc...

To all the 'genres' that you do not care for, but can appreciate parts of.

I mean, I was never much for HMetal, but someone tried to get me into it via 'accessible' stuff like, I dunno, Journey, Styx, um etc.. When I told them I thought Motorhead were OK, he went Oh.

Wow, Ogmor's big post totally OTM.

There's been a lot banging around in my head on this subject in the past few days, but they still haven't percolated into cogent form. Something Contenderizer wrote on this subject on another thread really really REALLY rubbed me the wrong way and I'm trying to get past my kneejerk reaction of ARGH to put it into words.

Are these outsiders though or just popjustice/G.A.Y. fans?

it's more the attitude i come across that if you're judging everything as pop, all that matters is how pop it is - there's this stubborn refusal to engage on anything like the music's own terms, because if it doesn't succeed in pop terms, if it's unlikely to be embraced by the general public, it can be dismissed out of hand. (the general public, like magazine readerships, are always underestimated i feel - i don't think casual listeners are anywhere near as conservatively close-minded as is often assumed.)

everyone is discussion musicwrite as it pertains to music, but not as it pertains to writing. if the aim is to be funny, provocative, interesting, and true -- i.e. good from the standpoint of writing -- then everything follows. if that gets displaced by another agenda (to promote a genre, to be proper, to be outrageous, to be authoritative, to be inoffensive, to find a big thing, to be smart) then that's where the trouble is

kinda disagree with this! actually, the biggest problem with the (great) anti-rockism arguments over the past 5 years might have been that they were too focused on arguing about arguing - not arguing about concrete things. framing it as an issue solely about the writing rather than about the music has led to, and will continue to lead to, the same ol' same ol' music getting the coverage. and genre boosterism can be CRUCIAL to nascent genres' development (not to mention individual artists' ability to carry on making music). as per my grime example above - the most important journalists were not the stylists and self-consciously intelligent theorisers on the internet. they were the ones who were on the ground, in both the scene and the press, who maybe weren't great wordsmiths but who knew their shit and communicated it accurately, WITH an agenda in mind.

I'm not saying that all taste is "deep taste", or that thinking and talking about one's taste has no value > So presumably you think we do have that golden area of malleable taste we are allowed to talk hot air about, as well as our tedious core of favourites.

I'm saying that taste is complicated, [MMM!] and it's hard to clearly distinguish between one's ideas about art and one's atavistic responses to it.

It's hard to distinguish because “one's atavistic responses” is a pretty murky notion. Is it too complicated for you to try and unpack? Too complicated to be convincing?

Therefore, I'm not inclined to question or criticize straightforward expressions of taste on (for instance) political grounds.

It'd be like fucking with people's souls (or their human rights, or their genes, or something)

I happily grant that tastes change over time, and that we can easily expand our tastes simply by being open to new things Not deep taste, surely, just the malleable area susceptible to intellectual equivocation.

'Pitchfork's expressions of taste' is a bigger thing than just their range & their narrow range is not the only reason for their success, being smart selling advertising, Brent D-style ridiculous shit getting ppls backs up in a famous fashion and the frequency/quantity of their output are more significant, all more distinctive than being 'an indie-centric site'.

Pfork has always covered lots of shit that their real or imagined conservative hardcore of teenage AC/wilco/radiohead lovers don't care about, from david axelrod, to japanese electro-acoustic improv, to vybez cartel, to igor wakhevitch, and this has been a reason for me reading them in the past. They've gradually started to try and cover more stuff and I'm sure they will continue because it makes complete sense, even if not in the way/at the speed people would like.

Personal taste can certainly reflect social conditions, but I don't think that it's appropriate to treat expressions of taste as a form of political speech. Listening habits/taste are/is not purely passive like a mirror but formed through constant engagement, like browsing certain sections of the record shop and not others. Maybe what ppl here are really calling out it is Sartre-style bad faith in listening habits&it's weird that you'd want to defend ppl's lack of responsibility for what they listen to, playlists cruelly thrust on them by nature.
I genuinely do think yll be a little wiser about the world if you engage w/a wider variety of stuff, it's the goal for everyone, a quest to always improve. Obv not the same thing as allotting a fifth of yr week to Chinese music or whatever.

It isn't the expression of taste that's the problem -- the problem is that we only privilege certain voices to express themselves in this manner. Yr talking to yrself here w/yr royal we? I think everyone agrees more breadth in both critics&scope wld be good, and they think it about pitchfork.

^^^real talk

OK, Ogmor, who are you? You are saying far too sensible things to be a sock. I'm intrigued.

I'm starting to think the taste thing boils down to : people like music that's either made by people they could beat in a fight, or people that might want to sleep with them.

as for critics, there are a lot of good writers out there, but also a lot of people too interested in trying to write "like a music writer" than trying to communicate something interesting about the music. This influences the choice of music too - ie "I enthusiastically want to be a music writer, so I should write enthusiastically about music-writery music, woo Merriweather!"

I'm starting to think the taste thing boils down to : people like music that's either made by people they could beat in a fight, or people that might want to sleep with them.

So all these P4k writers are totally gay for beardy white dudes?

I said "people", not "writers"!

also with pfork and beardies, reckon it's 50% beatup and 50% shackup

WRITERS ARE NOT PEOPLE?!?!? WHAT ARE THEY?!?!? SOYLENT GREEN?!?!?

mmm, tasty.