Rolling Music Writers' Thread

Not that there isn't exceptions blah blah blah strawman lol flame etc

What about "I don't know about you but I'm fucking sick of this indie-lite electrodribble that permeates every airwave within earshot"?

Whiney, you do realize you just used the first person yourself five times in two sentences yourself, right?

I'm posting on a message board, not writing for a paycheck!

the mark richardson thing about lovely music in stylus is pretty much verbatim all the first person objections ur spoutin btw but imo its top5 great but I suppose its kinda like how it used to be pretty awesome when Buffy had to make some inspirational speech but in the last series she did it every episode and it was really tiresome?

xp (And I just used "yourself" twice in one sentence, duh.)

Anyway, first person is a tool, like any other tool. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. (As an editor at the Voice, I was frequently known to edit sentences from pitch emails back into submitted reviews in part because the emails did use the first person, and sounded less stiff and stilted and more conversational in the process. I.e., sometimes it helps make for better writing just because that's how people talk. So I've never bought the idea that "writing for a paycheck" required "detaching yourself from the subject.")

Again, i'm not saying that it's always bad, but there's not a lot of writers who can pull it off without sounding like My First Fanzine

"The first time I saw Spoon..."

So why would print them (unless it was a really good fanzine?)

Still, especially when space on the page is at a premium -- which it was even when wordcounts could get away with being ten times higher than they are now -- wasted words are wasted words, "I" included. (Though at least "I" is a fairly short word.)

the mark richardson thing about lovely music in stylus

Think you mean Mike Powell, but Mark Richardson is a good example of someone who uses the first person to excellent effect in his Resonant Frequency column.

oops yeah

If you can write entertainingly, I forgive your first person narrative.

xhuxk on point

xp "So why would print them?", I meant.

Anyway, bottom line is, no fucking way does the the detached pseudo-objective tone used in most glossies and daily newspapers make for better music writing than what I was printing week in and week out in the Voice for ten years (though sure, a few pieces I published may have sounded "Internetty" or whatever. Point was to have lots of different voices, so it'd be a miracle if anybody approved of all of them. I didn't want to ban Internetty writing -- which can be good too, sometimes -- either.)

On the other hand, I like the creativity with which guys like Sanneh at the Times have managed to get around the limitations against first person and swear words. A smart writer can work within those perimeters, too, and make it entertaining anyway.

its funny you mention sanneh--his profile of michael savage in the nyer from a couple weeks ago was very careful about not using "i" (which i think is generally a no-go in the nyer, except in the personal essays they publish every once in a while) but still managed to tell a set of interesting stories about sanneh's own encounters w/ savage that sort of hinged on sannehs own specific experiences trying to set up an interview... in the end, though, i thought it would have been a better piece if they had let him use an authorial I

wow that got convoluted

I thought about that, too.

Over the years, Savage has noticed that his disdain for the mainstream media is widely reciprocated ... So when he received an e-mail from a journalist asking for an interview, he was deeply suspicious. He read the e-mail on the air — he kept the writer anonymous, and didn’t mention that the request came from The New Yorker — and then asked his listeners, “Should I do the interview or not?”…

About a week later, Savage revisited the topic — “my continuing correspondence with a big-shot magazine writer.” He quoted the latest exchanges, along with his tart response, in which he asked, “Why must all of you in the extreme media paint everyone you disagree with as demonic? Why is the homosexual agenda so important to the midstream media?”

...

When he invited the journalist into one of his undisclosed locations, he proved to be a first-rate host, chatty and solicitous. A steady supply of beer refills lubricated the conversation (one of his earliest books was “The Taster’s Guide to Beer,” which was published in 1977), and as the temperature dropped and the sky above Berkeley started to turn orange, he seemed to be working hard to stay suspicious, despite himself. On his next show the next day, a caller asked how the interview had gone, and Savage described his interlocutor: "If I told you he looked like Obama, I wouldn't be far from the truth." Coming from him, this sounded like a deeply twisted compliment.

Sanneh has to resort to speaking of himself in the third person ("the journalist," "his interlocutor") but otherwise does a decent job with passive-ish phrases like "a steady supply of beer refills lubricated the conversation."

no i think you're OTM, that NYer piece was convoluted. it read to me like sanneh had a personal 1 on 1 reaction to savage that was quite different than what he expected and the resulting article would have been more effective and immediate using the "I" but the NYer has always employed a certain lofty distance from its subjects, even in the 70s it wasn't really into the personal/new journalism thing. well apart from pauline kael I guess.

but journalists do have to meet readers half-way. my problem with a lot of the vintage village voice stuff is that it's so personal to the point of being impenetrable or off-putting.

the best first person stuff illustrates how the subject of an interview interacts with other people, rather than "setting the scene"

i'm guessing whiney's not big on fiction as a rule.

I'm not big on fiction as a rule either, and one of the principles that was drilled into me when I started writing was that first-person is something you have to earn--expecting the reader who's never heard of you before to go along with I-I-I-me-me-me instead of saying "So what?" and moving to the next item is not generally a good idea--but I love first person writing even if (despite whatever reputation I may have for it due to the 33 1/3 book) I don't use it all that often professionally.

matos if you don't mind me asking: you're not big on fiction as a journalistic device or (gasp) you don't like reading novels?

I don't write fiction or about music, but first-person is the default in my area of writing (analytic philosophy). Sometimes we resort to the royal "we" if we're feeling nervous about first-person. But it was made clear to me that third-person is to be avoided, as is passive voice.

hang on, you're not big on reading fiction...at all?!

xp!

xp I don't buy the "have to earn" thing. I'm not even sure what it means. If I listen to a song sung in the first person, I might be able to relate to, and be moved by, the song even if I'm unaware of the singer's specific biography. Not sure why reviews are necessarily different. You don't have to be a famous writer to have a life that creates a context.

i thought he meant less that you have to earn it in the sense of being already famous or noteworthy, but in the sense that you have to earn it through your writing--i.e. you have to justify use of the first person in the piece itself, not necc explicitly, but at least in making your "I" of interest to the reader

When it's well done - and it does have to be superbly well done, and yes, generally (but not always) "earnt" - first-person music writing is my favourite of all music writing. (And when it's pointlessly done, the reverse holds true.)

For my own part, I avoid it at least 95% of the time - but then I come from a personal-blogging background, and taking "myself" out of the equation was a deliberate, sought objective.

My first piece at the Voice (when no reader could've had any idea who I was) and a couple soon after were in the first person, fwiw. I seriously doubt they would have improved if the "I"'s had been edited out. (Whether they stunk regardless is another question, but they wouldn't have stunk less.)

Editorial "we" -- first person plural -- bugs the hell out of me no matter what, though. I never buy it, and I've fought editors to keep it out of my own writing (which usually they've been open to).

And btw, I've also edited at Billboard, where first person is almost never allowed. So it's not like I don't know that drill. I just don't like it much.

Of course, at Billboard, the writing tended to be more news and less review-oriented. (So first person would have probably have made no sense anyway.)

And I come from a journalism (and not fancy dancy "new journalism") background too. I came up covering zoning boards and sewage commissions, where objective detachment is strived for. Not saying I don't understand it there, obviously. When I'm defending first person, I'm specifically referring to criticism (though, when it comes to say artist features, I prefer criticism to be part of the deal.)

i thought he meant less that you have to earn it in the sense of being already famous or noteworthy, but in the sense that you have to...justify use of the first person in the piece itself, not necc explicitly, but at least in making your "I" of interest to the reader

Well, obviously I buy this, if that's what Michaelangelo means. But in that sense, you need to earn whatever you put in your writing -- so first person's no different from anything else.

I mean I don't read novels almost at all. Gasp!

xpost: If there's one thing I hate even more than editorial "we", it's the sort of "we" that includes both the writer and his/her presumed readership. ("When did we all fall in love with Kings Of Leon?")

haha please tell me you made that KoL quote up Mike

Really: What do you mean we, kemosabe? (Those ILM threads titled "What Do We Think Of [fill in the blank]?" are almost as bad.)

Tbh, reading good first-person music writing is what made me want to write about music. (Or even reading bad first-person music writing: some Pitchfork stuff from around the turn of the century, though hard to read now, at least made me realize that criticism need not be all neutral/detached/objective.)

(Which, I should add, was mighty refreshing for someone who just wanted to write about his experiences with music and his reactions to listening to certain songs or albums without the burden of serving as some kind of authority.)

Avoiding first person is a good technique to get beyond the inherent subjectivity of reviewing music- it pushes the writer to find a common ground with the reader, rather than just reporting their personal reaction. I drop it if I start to get grandiose.

lots of reasons here why i generally prefer reading about music on the internet just my personal opinion!

Sanneh has to resort to speaking of himself in the third person ("the journalist," "his interlocutor") but otherwise does a decent job with passive-ish phrases like "a steady supply of beer refills lubricated the conversation."

Re this, exhaustively shat upon by Eric Boehlert.

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200908030038

Related:

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200908110005

"Avoiding first person is a good technique to get beyond the inherent subjectivity of reviewing music- it pushes the writer to find a common ground with the reader, rather than just reporting their personal reaction. I drop it if I start to get grandiose."

I think this is one of the root issues but it also points to the fallacy of avoiding first person - the technique assumes that it's the specific use of "I" that makes music writing solipsistic or uncommunicative. It also suggests that that the choice is between solipsism and objectivity (I accept that specific publications may have other reasons for disliking it).

But it's not hard to write a review that avoids using "I" but still reads like the writer has never thought to question their personal reactions, their prejudices, their assumptions.

Learning to adopt a critical perspective w/r/t those things has a lot to do with how you relate to music generally, how you try to convey what the music is actually doing etc. etc.

Kogan is a good example of a writer who puts himself into the story but still makes the music's potential to affect different people differently the star attraction.

The tendency to lean toward the first person is usually an indicator of a writer being green but not always of self-obsession. A lot of these throw away 'I thinks', 'I feels', 'as I was saying to x' etc come from a nervousness about stating an opinion without a crutch or without reflexively reminding people that, it's just, like, their opinion, man. All reviews and value judgements are obviously the opinion of the writer. We can tell because it's prefixed with a byline. It's just that if a writer is all apologetic and constantly reminding people that it's all subjective innit, they won't get ripped to shreds on the internet. Or not as much anyway.

But it's a writer's job to be authoritative. In, er, my opinion it is anyway.

It's more acceptable in features but then the reasoning still has to be solid behind it. I've been stabbed during or around three interviews. Once accidentally by a member of a band while we were larking about, once purposefully by a band member during a play fight that got out of hand and once after getting so drunk in an interview I got thrown out of the hotel by security and got stabbed randomly outside.

The first piece was written third person with only passing mention of boisterous high spirits. The incident was unremarkable. Barely drew blood. The second time was pertinent. The guy was a loon and this helped to illustrate that. Some of the piece was written in the first person. It was impossible to write it neatly otherwise. The third incident was ignored and the piece was written in the third person. A good pub story perhaps but nothing to do with the band or the story.

Once I got to an interview with Matt C from The Bronx to find out that we'd both broken our noses the night before. That was kind of on the cusp. Could have been written either way. Just about interesting enough as a jumping off point to be worth including.

As a rule you shouldn't do it unless it's an on the road/reportage piece or you have a unique involvement in the story that no one else has (or at least your readers don't). That said - and I'm twisting Eric Arthur Blair to my own ends on this - I'd break any rule about writing I have rather than write something barbaric.

(And house style rules. If you can't write a piece around I said/we said/Rolling Stone said and still make it readable, maybe you shouldn't be writing. It's fairly straightforward after all.)

Co-sign everything that guy said about a variety of voices on a magazine.

Re. "authoritative": should music writers attain a certain level of knowledge of music before setting up as arbiters of taste?

Not necessarily because knowing loads about music doesn't necessarily give you good taste in music and beyond that 'good taste' is a bogus concept on its own.

It's up to the individual writer not to make a fool out of themselves/magazine that's hired them. Canonical thinking is the enemy of good music writing but that doesn't mean you shouldn't know about this stuff anyway. I mean, I hate the Beatles and a lot of other big groups from the 60s and won't write about them as a rule but it doesn't mean I don't have a basic grounding in them.

Some writers set up this completely false binary of the job being fusty old rock professors with their "facts" and everything and young, free spirited rebels who don't know about the music but who can "feel" it and "live" it. Somehow suggesting that the more you know about music, the less you can actually appreciate it, which is obviously not true.

good for you for fighting the power

i can't believe people are still arguing this stuff.

^^^ probably listens to the beatles

i'll fight you for that.

with a broken copy of rubber soul.

i dont think u have earned the right to fight me

You don't read them to chase status as a sophisticated expert, you read them because they make being deep into the art look fulfilling and exciting and fun.

a lot of people, writers and readers alike, confuse these two things, but of course i agree. and i find writers who are good at making the shallow deep and vice versa fun and exciting to read.

Since this is the thread for the most awesome music writers, re-posting this from my Facebook. in case anyone lives near me. you never know. Peace and rock and lots of -isms to all of you:

Modern medicine and talk therapy means I'm actually excited for this! Yay! Like a person! And I'm so honored that the awesome and amazing Karen Schoemer asked me to read. She is a poet/performer unlike any other. Go see Sky Furrows if you ever get a chance! Best band. Karen used to edit Byron Coley's singles column at Spin once upon a time. Oof! That is the height of grunge. Pretty soon you realize that "with", "of", and "your" are always going to be "w/", "o'", and "yr" and then you find yourself using the word "skree" a lot in your own writing.
Love Feeding Tube and Byron and Ted and Conrad and Battlin' Bob Fay. Love Eric and Ron. Love to all. Come to this and buy the weirdest records on earth and say hi and celebrate Karen's new album.

https://dromedaryrecords.bandcamp.com/album/august

https://scontent-bos5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/559646302_10163853504097137_564899657711875886_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=127cfc&_nc_ohc=bmDh8JSkwdUQ7kNvwFHIgrB&_nc_oc=AdnWMB2ynlWsQTx_zgbWnjwakyuTQ1Ni-oRHQdufS2k95ivAWRPNCbPJ_G86Fhhn1EO5VuLMa_nJZQcgisHszEti&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-bos5-1.xx&_nc_gid=iR9-V7zar8kAKQ5MyueTPA&oh=00_AfeGEKXqgw1HClGawpiyfW185S8DVL1ryZyEn4xVoADCog&oe=68ECAD0F

_You don't read them to chase status as a sophisticated expert, you read them because they make being deep into the art look fulfilling and exciting and fun._

a lot of people, writers and readers alike, confuse these two things, but of course i agree. and i find writers who are good at making the shallow deep and vice versa fun and exciting to read.

This is what I often try to impart to my writing students, particularly poets, when they revolt against poetry that isn’t immediately legible or happens to be more ambiguous in its aims— we do not live in a stable world or engage with a stable language, and isn’t it more interesting to work within that kind of dynamic language environment than to write and read for comfort only? This isn’t a dismissal, but more an invitation, always!!

Which is appropriate for Scott's post as well---gonna read some of your recent stuff, Scott?

x-post-

anyone know if there's someone at the helm of Maggot Brain at the moment?

MM seems to be dealing w/ some significant health issues - enough to start a GoFundMe.

i emailed the address in the magazine and haven't heard anything back - which, of course, is entirely possible even if he's working every day, I get that. just curious if by chance anyone knows if there's someone else working on it or if production kind of pauses if he's out of commission or whatever ...

― alpine static, Monday, September 29, 2025 10:23 PM (two weeks ago

Mike McGonigal's Go-Fund Me for his health related issues hasn't had a status update posted since his August 24th - Lost my job, and could really use some help with upcoming heart/ etc procedures etc. while I sort this out!
Much love--

He also says--I continue to work on my gospel history book for FSG/MCD, and am so grateful to have that opportunity, but that advance was spent long ago. I don’t know if I should do a patreon or substack, or what, but will figure something out. In the meantime, I have really fun gospel reissue projects in the works for other labels, continue to do my weekly gospel radio show for CJAM in Windsor/Detroit and XRAY FM in Portland, I just contributed to a cool new collection of writings on Harry Smith, and I'm extremely proud of the 21 issues of Maggot Brain that have been completed thus far. It’s really weird to beg for $ here, from you my friends, when the world is ending. But just the littlest bit will help a lot, and I don’t know what else to say.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/mike-mcgonigal-further-heart-help?attribution_id=sl:bd31cdba-81e2-4203-89b8-bcbe852f270f&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer

https://tapetrade.io/blog/music-as-community?fbclid=IwZnRzaAN8kBxleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeBxMlLJi0LufoEMfb62fXDIj6izVXp_m-OOqe7IoW3pWKD1WbMjBbHuse5x8_aem_iuT2k9HvLTxdRgkx-qTaPA

Evan Minsker was a staffer at Pitchfork for awhile. Got laid off via zoom he writes. Now he’s doing something else to pay the bills it seems , and is happily writing about punk bands and seeing them now for fun and not as a job

Changes at Stereogum

https://stereogum.com/2478838/stereogum-relaunch/news

God damn, they are trying, aren't they? I have nothing but respect and admiration for the 'Gum for continuing to fight on a battlefield that is increasingly uphill.

And it's true: they pay no more than a week after publication. Unheard of.

I love writing for them. It took a couple of years for jazz publicists to recognize the reach my column has (not just the number of people who read it, but the fact that they are readers previously unavailable to jazz artists), but now I am at the top of promo lists.

i'm sad i won't be able to read the comments anymore but good for them

nitpicking, but wish the redesign would tackle the content/image presentation a bit. one thing about stereogum (and most niche/specific publications) is that it's a bit hard to get engaged/past a generic image/funny-nondescriptive hed sometimes. I know budget is so small, but I really think there could be smart ways to do it, separate small news items, reviews, historical pieces, interviews, original content a bit. Idk. It's also the bane of CMS and dev/coding/product leading these projects, everything looks the same, and to me, it kinda loses a pov almost a bit.

(I know how stupid I sound writing this in the Writers' thread, but I wish all of this so all good music writing can be read more, have more attention and care to it, and have a presentation that uplifts/works together/is a bit different.)

No it's true - they need a 1-2 sentence subhead/intro in small type to give you a flavour

I’m gonna subscribe once my financial world feels a bit more settled but man is it weird to not be able to check the site for news several times a day

Penske Media site Rolling Stone has just laid off writer Brittany Spanos after 11 years; and writer Andre Gee after 3 years. Spanos had done profiles of Taylor Swift and Harry Styles; Gee, who also has a substack had done interviews with Lil Wayne and billy woods. Saw this news on X

Jeff Bezos & his hired right wing Brit publisher horribly slashed from the Washington Post today much of the arts coverage including editor Jon Fischer ( who was once a great Washington City Paper writer & editor), Classical music critic Michael Andor Brodeur, and pop music critic Chris Richards. Also the book section, the sports section, & overseas writers and more. They laid off 1/3 of the Washington Post staff (The Post had already shrunk in size from earlier buyouts). Richards is starting a substack now he announced on IG.

Marc Masters has posted on his social media that Bandcamp Daily is dropping his Experimental Music monthly column as they restructure the site. Masters had been doing the column there for 7 years

Shit. I was planning to send in my next album.

That really sucks. "Restructuring" for what?

That sucks. :(

where did you see this, curmudgeon? i can't find him on Bluesky anymore.

Facebook post:

Bandcamp Daily is retiring my Experimental Music Column. I have two more to do (March and April) before it's gone for good. Bummed but it lasted 7 years so I can't really complain, that's like 100 in internet-writing years.

He also put it in an Instagram story where he did a follow up saying that 80% of the experimental music he covered is not really covered anywhere else .

Masters is not on Bluesky anymore. He does a Music Books podcast, and the Spindle - a podcast about 7” singles ( mostly old punk I think)

from Bluesky: "I guess the only thing I can add to the recent BC discourse is that the writing on the site has not been good since the union folks were laid off"

people just write anything that pops into their head on the internet, man

I mean Marc M is absolutely a killer writer but I'd like to think that when various folks no longer wanted to write for them after that layoff the overall quality suffered no matter what. (Obv. I was one of said folks, granted.)

Franz from The Hold Steady's Substack

https://pianofighter.substack.com/p/more-like-cut-and-paste-magazine

NY Times pop music editor for 11 years Caryn Ganz announced on her socials that she is quitting the Times. I didn't see any details on why, just her posts about what she is proud of over her time there.