Year-End Critics' Polls 2012

ellie goulding has a formidable pr team too, yes

xp ok PR and marketing departments have *no* effect on any artist's critical or commercial success, tbh i don't understand why they haven't all been fired to cut costs

How do you deduce that others are affected and not yourself?

did i say that? can you read? why are you talking to me again?

Ah come on, saying x band I dislike is successful cos of "marketing" is straight up indie bullshit.

This situation is best observed on a case-by-case basis.

Let's go back to the early aughts and look at Good Charlotte. I can't explain their sudden rise to prominence through any other means besides killer PR. They came from nowhere, looked like a bunch of other bands and had an indistinguishable sound, but trounced their peers. It's either PR, or it's the fact there's a guy in the band named Benji. People love the name Benji.

Not commenting on personal problems, just remember the whole "it's marketing" defence mechanism from arguing with indie friends about pop, when I was about 15. I guess don't mention rockism again.

Where's Tom Ewing when you need some popism/actual understanding of marketing?

i am fairly sure tom ewing would acknowledge that when you have a canny major label marketing strategy behind one artist, and an amateur self-taught team of 5 behind the other, this will have an effect on how well the music does

Let's go back to the early aughts and look at Good Charlotte. I can't explain their sudden rise to prominence through any other means besides killer PR a bunch of hooky, memorable singles.

I agree with Lex that PR clearly makes a difference to the likelihood an artist will find a large fanbase, but I don't accept Johnny Fever's more ambitious argument that certain acts only succeed because of marketing.

Even with Ellie Goulding there's a reason that Kate Bush ish "doo doo doo dooooo" single is all over the radio.

I can't explain their sudden rise to prominence through any other means besides killer PR a bunch of hooky, memorable singles their residence almost daily on TRL.

Sorry but Good Charlotte were a great singles band, you gots to deal.

I like "The River", but they were already in decline by that point.

I don't accept Johnny Fever's more ambitious argument that certain acts only succeed because of marketing.

yes, i'm not arguing this, it's a pretty old chestnut that is admittedly easier to target if one doesn't want to engage with what i am arguing

it is honestly pretty easy to see when other critics are being affected by PR when everyone begins tweeting about an artist, who has been around for a while beforehand, on THE DAY that you get the first PR mailout w/buzz track etc

and as far as me being affected by PR - sure, there are def certain PRs whose new artists i'll make more of an effort to listen to, whether because i trust that PR's taste or because they're a nice person or whatever

Yeah, okay...maybe I just have an axe to grind with Good Charlotte.

I CAN tell you, though, that when Kings of Leon sprung up from nowhere talking about how they paid their Nashville dues that it was a load of shite. They never played the Nashville circuit and nobody in the music community there had a clue who they were. P.R.

but if they had paid their Nashville dues would it have made them a better band or better looking?

No. I was just pointing out that the PR story that got passed around at the time was a bunch of hooey.

"Lights" is a good song

Somewhat related, but ASFAIK, the disparity in reception of iamamiwhoami's Kin between consumers (its #6 on rateyourmusic) and critics (only the US blog Pretty Much Amazing and Spanish blog Jenesaispop rated it at year end) seems to stem from a marketing strategy that entirely bypassed critical filters. Were there no promos?

Oops, it actually ranked #55 amongst all RYM users in all genres (I forgot my usual filters to tame the metal/prog slant of RYM's demographic). Still, huge disparity with the #640 rank from the acclaimed poll of polls.

yeah you could probably make all sorts of observations about various artists if you just compared Rate Your Music rankings to Acclaimed Music rankings

XXP: Razorlight being taken seriously in the UK as front cover stars/fit to play above Slayer on the main stage of Reading Festival, is entirely down to the preternaturally persuasive campaign launched by a husband wife/ manager PR team, so it's skill rather than size I think.

Also with Florence I can confirm her PR team was formidable. We got bollocked by them. One of their own team got threatened with the axe after he publicly endorsed our (slightly snide and misjudged by me) article on her. The whole experience felt like abseiling into a volcano.

PR people in America can be quite bracing especially if you're talking about classic rock but that said, Ken Weinstein at Q Prime for Metallica was a sweetheart. Nothing compares to some German metal labels however, who in past have made anonymous phone calls to me with voice disguising technology in the middle of the night to tell me that my career was over because of a mocking review.

Also, see Django Django, Crystal Castles, Alt J, Everything Everything etc etc. The horse trading you're supposed to indulge in to even get near to these bands is deeply unpleasant.

The majority of PR people in the UK are ace though. I'm sure I've got more social friends who are PRs than journalists. A really good PR is better for the artist than a mediocre writer. IMHO.

haha the multiple stories about florence's heavy-handed PR. i guess editors are on the receiving end of that more than writers, worst i've had to deal with are a few overly stern ones

being nice is a way more effective PR strategy ime (though it's still a PR strategy! i have thought, well, that act that a lot of critics seem to like inexplicably, their PR is a really genuinely lovely guy, hmmm)

Yeah, I don't cover bands if the PR tries to play hardball with us or indulge in horsetrading as a matter of principle but if the PR person is nice/ funny/ whatever, that can persuade me to go back for an extra few listens.

You've got to know what you're doing though. PR is a dark art. A one man, neo nazi punk rock band sent me a fiver with his cassette. I wrote back thanking him and said that I'd passed his details on to the police and a prominent Anti Nazi magazine. He then self released two singles, 'We Hate You John Doran' and 'Why Don't You Stick This Album Up Your Arse You Sarcastic Creep'. When I gave them bad reviews in Metal Hammer he went mad and attacked his neighbour with a Samurai sword, breaking his arm. He remains, to this day in a secure psychiatric ward unfit to plead. But he had phone privileges for the first year. Which is why Metal Hammer received a death threat for me at 9pm every night for over 300 days.

I think it's good to have an exit strategy when you decide to take a more unorthodox angry PR style with people.

I realize Germany and Japan were allies and all, but is a samurai sword really an appropriate weapon for a neo-nazi?

He didn't strike me as particularly bright - or like a man who had aesthetic criteria when it came to choosing weaponry. I kept some of the death threats he sent to me on cassette... he raps on some of them. I found them dead funny until the sword business. Then it was like, 'Right then Mr Fancy Pants media guy in Chattering Class London, taking on the authentic voice of the streets of Portsmouth are we? Not on my watch.'

how so?

tbh it seems like britishers are always the most vocal to boost female rappers like that lately. i was in england for a couple months earlier this year and it seemed like folks were way more jazzed about, like, azealia banks there than here, even years ago trina's singles seemed to pop more over there than america. feel free to prove me wrong on this, i don't know shit

america is pretty sexist about female rappers

yup

Fuck "lately", wasn't the UK the place where like Monie Love and Wee Papa Girls got started?

Doran, did this guy have a strong Cornish accent by any chance? This is very reminiscent of someone who used to pester my mate's old band by phone and mail.

tbh it seems like britishers are always the most vocal to boost female rappers like that lately. i was in england for a couple months earlier this year and it seemed like folks were way more jazzed about, like, azealia banks there than here, even years ago trina's singles seemed to pop more over there than america. feel free to prove me wrong on this, i don't know shit

― one bish two bish red bish blue bish (fadanuf4erybody), Saturday, December 22, 2012 10:06 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

plausible, i always thought kim and trina were huge in the US though. oh well score one for us

kim was a big deal in her time, trina was kind of a mid level star

Yeah, Trina was popular but never huge. The difference between Kim's time and now is more than one female rapper was allowed to be on the radio.

uh, doesn't look like Trina's any bigger in the UK than here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trina_discography

i'm a liar, a filthy liar

(i actually have no idea where that idea came from)

trina's uk chart positions are very kind to her if anything, i don't remember her being a thing here at any point outside of my own immediate orbit

as for kim i think a lot more people in the uk know who she is than could name or sing any of her songs ("lighters up" is oddly the one people always seem to hit on first)

The difference between Kim's time and now is more than one female rapper was allowed to be on the radio.

this one-female-rapper-at-a-time thing is a bit of a myth imo (one designed to KEEP FEMALE RAPPERS DOWN) - i was talking to iggy azalea the other week and we were both like, hang on, this has never actually been true, missy/eve/kim/trina/remy ma and prob a few more were all concurrent-to-overlapping

thankfully for iggy there are no other slave masters on the radio right now, so she has that lane clear to herself

Let's go back to the early aughts and look at Good Charlotte. I can't explain their sudden rise to prominence through any other means besides [killer PR] a bunch of hooky, memorable singles.

True for anyone. Nobody is going to say something is good unless they personally like it.

The sense of value judgement about acts who have bigger PR teams is just ancient bullshit IMO. It's not a dark art of mind control or some shit.

A one man, neo nazi punk rock band sent me a fiver with his cassette. I wrote back thanking him and said that I'd passed his details on to the police and a prominent Anti Nazi magazine. He then self released two singles, 'We Hate You John Doran' and 'Why Don't You Stick This Album Up Your Arse You Sarcastic Creep'.

Wtf, btw.

Razorlight being taken seriously in the UK as front cover stars/fit to play above Slayer on the main stage of Reading Festival

lol at 'fit to play'

reading festival promoters failing to uphold objective standards of musical integrity and quality and just bowing to corporate propoganda ;_;

The sense of value judgement about acts who have bigger PR teams is just ancient bullshit IMO. It's not a dark art of mind control or some shit.

who was arguing this? and what, precisely, do you think PR teams are paid for?

this one-female-rapper-at-a-time thing is a bit of a myth imo (one designed to KEEP FEMALE RAPPERS DOWN) - i was talking to iggy azalea the other week and we were both like, hang on, this has never actually been true, missy/eve/kim/trina/remy ma and prob a few more were all concurrent-to-overlapping

― lex pretend, Sunday, December 23, 2012 3:38 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nah Rev was saying that there USED to be more than one female rapper in the mainstream spotlight at once in the days of Missy and Kim and Eve and so on, but in the era of Nicki (and the 5 years before her that nobody female was really poppin') it feels like there's not as much room being made for multiple stars.

Music industry economics really, why bother with multiple stars, who are expensive and risky, when you can take one surefire bankable one and throw all your ideas at them? See also Rihanna. And I don't think anyone from the late 90s/early 00s had the sort of ridiculous workrate of those two.

well there are still as many rap stars as ever, this is about all but one being male instead of all but a handful

Well yeah there's the institutional sexism thing as well, in that the music business is prepared to invest and support multiple male rappers and even let some of them do it on their own terms. But I can't envisage them really bothering with a female rapper who they couldn't simultaneously push as a mainstream pop star, and Nicki is really canny and supremely good at her own positioning. But it's virtually impossible to imagine a female Rick Ross existing or succeeding.

true. a lot of the female rappers trying to get in the door have pop star ambitions just as overt as Nicki's though. a "female Rick Ross" (has any phrase ever had such disturbing connotations?) could happen, but gangsta type female MCs never had a big presence to begin with.