OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

blueski and Matt DC offtm, this is the new web2.0 media era, we're all critics now, user provided content is the new professionally written content.

-- Dom Passantino, Monday, 18 June 2007 12:36 (11 minutes ago) Link

Dom is entirely correct here. I mean, the chuckle factor is diminished by him being a student, but the democratization of criticism basically leaves us with this sort of landscape (coughcoughP.E.W.cough).

also why do nearly all student newspaper writers write in what feels like the same voice? there's certain syntax and word choices that only student newspapers ever seem to have.

Nobody knows how to sub-edit when they're 21, that's why.

^^not unrelated to why writers in the say, New York Times tend to sound the same. for that matter, ever read Blender? Despite the bylines it seems to be written by one many-armed poprockbot.

that really is quite incredible.

New York Times doesn't have sub-editors? That's crazy!

Hey Jonny, your band fucking suck.

Jonny Garrett of Exeter University, that is.

I think you mean <a href="OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?;>Jonny Garrett</a> of Exeter University.

BOO HTML

Kudos on sticking it to Westlife, tho, Jonny Garrett of Exeter University. Those bastards have had it their own way for too long.

Does Westlife even exist anymore?

highlights:

"...bands like westlife who can, quite frankly, go screw themselves with a rusty spoon and get tetanus"

"had nirvana not signed to sub pop... we would probably never have heard one of the most influential artists of our time and dave grohl may have never founded the foo fighters."

the pathos!

but the democratization of criticism basically leaves us with this sort of landscape (coughcoughP.E.W.cough).

democratization of criticism = people slagging this shit off just because they can rather than for any constructive cause. it's just easy target practice, who gives a shit? no-one/nothing is ever going to stop under-grads inheriting these absurd ideas about 'how things should be' in the music industry. surely we've all read this same article many times in the past.

i'm just more relieved than ever my music writing from college days was too soon for blog-era internet heh.

"had nirvana not signed to sub pop... we would probably never have heard of..." Sub Pop.

Was there ever a thread for people to post their own abysmal juvenile music writings from uni days?

Not that I'd post on it, my capsule reviews of Kinesis singles were all fuckin bang-on.

perhaps one day i will post my 8/10 track by track review of 'Be Here Now' from the time.

Yeah, you real writers are all jealous that you've lost the ability to write like that, aren't you?

I wrote a two-part article in my uni paper called "Rhythm & Sound", which basically stated that all rock music that's based on melody or lyrics is boring crap, and that beats and sound are the essential components of good music - hence electronic dance music (and fusion jazz) is the best music there is. I got some angry comments from the indie kids.

Kudos on sticking it to Westlife, tho, Jonny Garrett of Exeter University.

and kudos to you lot for bravely and relentlessly going after such a signifivcant target as jonny garrett. sure showed him!

ts being one of many thick students w/ bad music taste who can't write, vs being someone who actually gives a shit about what said student writes in some minor student rag

or, matt'n'steve otm, u r all losers

but the democratization of criticism basically leaves us with this sort of landscape (coughcoughP.E.W.cough).

student newspapers have nothing to do with the "democratization of criticism"

I can't copy and paste from the Exeter Expose, but if you Google you can find a review where our Jonny talks about "Indy music".

also why do nearly all student newspaper writers write in what feels like the same voice? there's certain syntax and word choices that only student newspapers ever seem to have.

paul please, please tell me you don't actually care about the answer to this

paul please, please tell me you don't actually care about the answer to this

-- lex pretend, Monday, 18 June 2007 13:29 (58 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

http://downloadsimpsons.com/files/malibu_stacy.jpg

"Thinking too much gives you wrinkles"

haaaaaa

come on everyone, geir gives himself away in the final parentheses.

ha. not sure i care as such! a while back i had a job gathering information on universities, i found it kind of funny that you can go anywhere in the country and every student newspapers seems to be written by the same person. it sort of interests me to know who, if anyone, they are imitating. if my current job was more interesting this issue would, i think, seem rather less pressing.

xp

i love the line about nirvana: nirvana's main block to future gold albums was kurt cobain's inability to accept the "popular culture lifestyle he was made to live", nothing about JUNKIE SUICIDE.

I think it's a lot more interesting to analyse and discuss the views of someone like Jonny Garrett than it is, I dunno, Petridish or Reynolds or Chuck Eddy or whoever. ILX falls into a trap of ivory towering itself, qf whoever it was on the purchase of music thread who was all "two and a half CDs a year? Everyone I know buys much more than that!". We gotta embrace the layman here guys.

keep in mind this kid was like 8 when Kurdt committed suicide and has probably been bombarded by Nirvana mythologies since he started showing an interest in altrock

Was there ever a thread for people to post their own abysmal juvenile music writings from uni days?

Heh, this is a great idea. Yeah gotta say though, opinion pieces like this are ten a penny in this strange little further education world

there is thou a difference between "analyse and discuss" and "attack and dismiss"

Maybe in the real world, but on ILM?

I'm still not sure when Cobain was adopted as an indie icon, tbh. When I was a teen, Melody Maker was still all "lol miserable junkie loved by them Kerrang oafs" about him.

I disagree that student writing is exempt from criticism. One's worldview may not be fully formed by the age of 20, but a journalistic voice should be.

Plus, this is just too awful to leave it alone. A phrase like "There has been a movement against corporate music, labels and magazines, which is thankfully disappearing, probably ever since Bob Dylan's move from acoustic to electric" is a jaw-dropper in any context.

I think it's a lot more interesting to analyse and discuss the views of someone like Jonny Garrett than it is, I dunno, Petridish or Reynolds or Chuck Eddy or whoever. ILX falls into a trap of ivory towering itself, qf whoever it was on the purchase of music thread who was all "two and a half CDs a year? Everyone I know buys much more than that!". We gotta embrace the layman here guys.

This, totally; what kind of culture are we propagating where these attitudes develop? Why does this guy think this? He's in a band, he's at university, he'd self-identify as 'loving music', he obviously has journalistic ambitions at the same time, and he writes this? Yes, he's young, but not all young people are writing stuff like this, are they?

young aspiring music journalists should go to ILM training camp

http://duckdown.downloadcentric.com/content/Duck%20Down%20Records/Products/Audio%20Downloads/Boot%20Camp%20Clik/The%20Last%20Stand/DDM%20CD%202035%7B0%7D_large.jpg

more liek:

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0001Y9YAW.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Yes, he's young, but not all young people are writing stuff like this, are they?

most of them are, most of them always have, some of them get better as they, you know, grow up - i'm not denying that it's awful writing but i guess the question for me is, do you not feel your life ebbing away from you with every second you spend contemplating this rote and in no way unusual piece of student hackery? do you have this much spare time?? at this point i'mma take my own advice and exit thread stage left.

Our dominant myths about Art are still Romantic ones: the Artwork is a self-sufficient object, expressing universal truths and the personality of the artist, and has to be grounded in sincere, authentic feelings. Those ideas are still so fundamental (amongst people who think about aesthetics) that most critics have to unlearn them or react against them before they can think about other ways of apprehending music/literature/TV comedy. This isn't exactly a mystery, it's been going on for 200 years.

(b/c you know, if dude ever actually finds this thread, he's just gonna go HURRAH 100-POST THREAD TALKING ABOUT MEEEEE, I HAVE SUCCEEDED)

(ok that's it)

This, totally; what kind of culture are we propagating where these attitudes develop? Why does this guy think this? He's in a band, he's at university, he'd self-identify as 'loving music', he obviously has journalistic ambitions at the same time, and he writes this? Yes, he's young, but not all young people are writing stuff like this, are they?

I don't know if the age of the writer is that important. There are plenty of people twice his age out there who would write/argue the same things so you might as well be arguing with them on the same basis. Expecting all young writers to reject rockism is too (p)optimistic.

<i>I'm still not sure when Cobain was adopted as an indie icon, tbh. When I was a teen, Melody Maker was still all "lol miserable junkie loved by them Kerrang oafs" about him.</i>

Dom, MM *was* pretty much behind early Sub Pop what with all Everett True's coverage and whatnot. I reckon Nirvana were an initially an indie kid thing here before the whole grunge pandemic hit (but I guess you're talking about the period after that).

Oh fuck<i>ng tags.

some of that piece is kind of chuck eddy like

Garrett doesn't call Westlife a bhangra act though, so there are differences.

I'm talking about bands like Feeder, Coldplay and the Stereophonics who have (over time) offered more to music than many of the bands that the NME claim will change your life.

didn't the NME claim that Feeder/Coldplay/Stereophonics will change your life?

i'm drunk, but this guy should be sacked.

That's the kind of management technique that'll see you running in JP Morgan by the time your 31.

The Strokes strike me as, if not the absolute worst indie rock band to choose as your standard bearer against poptimism, then pretty close to it.

(To be clear, I like the Strokes)

The Strokes strike me as, if not the absolute worst indie rock band to choose as your standard bearer against poptimism, then pretty close to it.

(To be clear, I like the Strokes)

well exactly

He apparently is a prof at Temple

fwiw, Temple is enormous and i haven’t knowingly seen a colleague from the English department who isn’t a friend since January— they removed the computer from my office and so i had no reason to go there and just held my office hours in one of the cafes on campus.

it's a minor element in the overall mess, but citing Mark Fisher in defence of these particular aesthetic choices is somewhere between bizarre and repugnant and I'm not even a big Fisher guy

Lot of anti-woke left types in love to cite Vampire's Castle as their bible, overlooking the context in which it was written (i.e. London intra-left beef) or Fisher's wider intellectual project, which was very much feminist, pro trans rights and all the other liberatory causes these reactionary idiots dismiss as lib idpol.

It's notable how poor Jacobin's cultural coverage is compared to its UK sister, Tribune. I've skin in the game as an occasional contributor, but you've got folks there like Alex Niven, Owen Hatherley et al who were very much in with Fisher and are well-versed in UK cultural studies, so they have the language and frameworks for analysing popular culture from the left. Not that there aren't US equivalents, but Jacobin seems to draw on a more reactionary current.

Sorry, some typos in the above! "love to cite" not "in love to"

otm

Xp table — I was asking as a means of acknowledging that you are also a leftist academic in Philly who could have written a much better article about music trends and politics than this clown lol.

Lot of anti-woke left types in love to cite Vampire's Castle as their bible, overlooking the context in which it was written (i.e. London intra-left beef) or Fisher's wider intellectual project, which was very much feminist, pro trans rights and all the other liberatory causes these reactionary idiots dismiss as lib idpol.

It's notable how poor Jacobin's cultural coverage is compared to its UK sister, Tribune. I've skin in the game as an occasional contributor, but you've got folks there like Alex Niven, Owen Hatherley et al who were very much in with Fisher and are well-versed in UK cultural studies, so they have the language and frameworks for analysing popular culture from the left. Not that there aren't US equivalents, but Jacobin seems to draw on a more reactionary current.

I agree Fisher has been badly appropriated by antiwoke voices who understand very little of his work.

VC isn't one of his better efforts, but yes, it's absolutely maddening. Em Colquhoun's work has been a necessary corrective to this.

An interesting note from Eric Weisbard on FB:

Jarek Ervin, who wrote that Jacobin piece on rock and poptimism, is my Facebook friend and was an absolute pleasure to work with when he was IASPM-US secretary back in the day. Jack Hamilton and Karl Miller were two of his dissertation readers (topic: New York punk) at the University of Virginia music department a decade ago, with Amy Coddington and I think Vic Szabo among his cohort. Did none of that history and pedagogy register? Did the shitty job market change Jarek's perspectives, to an extent? Most of the people I have read commenting on all this are far outside the micro world I am sketching, but that -- and the bigger question of punk's relationship to pop, which I can't tackle just now -- is what sprang to mind for me when all of this came up.

I had to google IASPM … I am more familiar with IAPMO

Another frustrating aspect is that Ervin is squarely focused on the mainstream, when there is plenty of forward-looking and politically radical rock music going on underground. I mean, Guttersnipe have just dropped the wildest sci-fi noise rock album of the year and they're talking about xenofeminism and queer liberation, but they're not cishet dudes making classic rock, so don't fit in with Jacobin's reactionary populist agenda.

I guess Ervin would say that underground acts are largely preaching to the converted, whereas mainstream acts who use their platforms to push progressive ideas will have a bigger impact, but you need both. And what the underground does have over the mainstream music industry is models of community, ways of organising etc that the left can learn from.
I've never got the sense that Fisher, Jeremy Gilbert, Simon Reynolds et al are particularly interested in contemporary weirdo rock, noise, improvised music etc. Fair enough, it's not their thing, but they do offer some potent examples of the left modernist aesthetics they're interested in. I also think the stylistic fluidity of the contemporary underground, where genre boundaries are being torn up, really helps us get beyond the boring and reductive binaries the Jacobin piece trades in.

the site that counts Richard Hanania, Sohrab Ahmari, and Julie Bindel has thoughts about music criticism: https://unherd.com/2026/05/the-day-the-music-critic-died/

(I didn't read the whole thing bc obv I'm not paying for that shit)

https://archive.ph/3pO8j

Xp - that’s the odd thing about a lot of those writers imo — there isn’t the examination I would want to see about the structural aspects of what becomes mainstream and why.

Though perhaps they consider that “subculture studies” or some other term that removes them as writers from thinking that they have “the right” to write about such music? … Maybe it’s an intellectual factionalism in re the Birmingham School? Idk … There definitely is a faction of left/Marxist criticism that just avoids discussion of subcultures and the aspects of “protest” involved because the writers prefer to look at the “bigger picture” which is the mainstream. I think it also reflects older Marxist ideas about “the revolution” and “the proletariat” and vanguardism that have evolved into ~this~

For some reason this makes me think about anthropology as an academic practice… like perhaps writing about the Miami noise scene would be the equivalent of studying hierarchies in a remote island in the Indian Ocean … as in, how significant is this subject to “our reality”?

In 2002, the site had declared the great cult band Pavement’s yearning slacker classic “Gold Soundz” the best song of the Nineties: in 2022, it was now Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” — and not even the original but, inexplicably, the even duller, inferior Remix version. Between the tops of these two lists lies the whole silly history of music criticism in the 21st century so far.

I absolutely agree with this insight on its surface and absolutely serves as a great synecdoche of music crit writ large for the last 20 years. The real caveat that this guy is too blinkered to see is that it really was just moving from one bad decision to another bad decision

Damn, Pitchfork went from one corny way of thinking about music to a different corny way of thinking about music

Anyone who thinks that the worth of a music criticism site can be judged by the choice of best song of a decade alone doesn’t really understand music criticism IMO, and perhaps shouldn’t try to write about music professionally.

Which isn’t to say these choices aren’t corny, but this isn’t the QED the writer thinks it is.

Complaining about a publication becoming broadly popular and then growing into a generalist platform you no longer have an interest in is pretty much cultural criticism 101.

Article would have been much shorter if he just wrote “I liked their earlier stuff better”

Was never a fan of Pitchfork, but I do not see any problem with niche music websites when there are already plenty of generalist sites out there.