pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849495 in a series.)

This really brings us full circle to the beginning of the first p is dumb thread:

Donald
Oh my God, what just happened at P-Fork
Mon Apr 1 07:08:25 2002
63.167.209.146

I'm not going to spew any elitist bullshit, but Alanis Morrissette, Kylie Minogue? Oh my fucking God. I'll stay for a little while to see if P-Fork still serves my needs, but with today's front page, I'm not counting on it. I understand the career move, but I just don't think it's going to serve me any more.

I don't think I've ever heard Black Pumas, but it does seem off-brand. My impression has been that they're a band that exists to get Grammy nominations.

a harbinger of terrible things to come after the GQ merger announcement

are the ppl who book the festival beholden to gq/condé

a friend was musing that that spot was prob originally for r**** m*****

red hot chili meppers?

i mean it’s just speculation, the world may never know

Robert Mugabe

My impression has been that they're a band that exists to get Grammy nominations.

They were nominated for three years in a row for the material from their first album - 2019 as Best New Artist, 2020 Album of the Year for the deluxe version of the same album, 2021 for a "Live from Studio A" performance of the songs from the first album.

They also appear to exist to keep pressing plants in business, not counting represses or just ones pressed at different plants, I counted over 28 different pressings of the debut record in different colors and formats (45" versions). It's kind of insane.

"more than a love song" from last year was cute (re: black pumas) but yes very much a grammybait noncommercial radio kind of act

rivers muomo

my black pumas opinion: i like the song "colors," but not enough for me to seek out any of their other songs

I was going to guess Roisin Murphy but the letters don't match the the ***

i counted wrong

rivers muomo

― the defenestration of prog (voodoo chili), Wednesday, March 13, 2024 1:52 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lmao

Black Pumas headlines festivals literally around the world. They are in a similar zone to Mumford of being super popular but people don't actually register them as popular. This is kind of the most desirable zone to be in, everybody makes a ton of money and the Internet routinely does the "Who???" thing with you and you just cash checks and do half the promo work at most.

no way, mumford & sons have had huge chart success and have been playing arenas for years, they're very popular and very visibly so - no one does the "who???" routine with them. i have never heard of black pumas before and they don't seem to be anywhere near that sort of successful. they seem to just exist in that niche where aaa radio and the grammys love them, which doesn't seem like a terrible place to be, but it does mean they have very little visibility outside that? it is a very off-brand headliner when they're not an act that p4k has ever remotely cared about.

it also doesn't help when the other two headliners also seem underwhelming/weird in their own way

i don't think murphy would have been lined up as a potential p4k headliner when jessie ware is only third on the saturday bill.

are the ppl who book the festival beholden to gq/condé

well we do know that conde wanted to have more influence over it and were pushing for nonsense like trying to attract a reunited oasis or white stripes

The oral history.

It would be cool to see this expanded into a book, one with a LOT more voices

lol guess what band

Howe: I genuinely was enthusiastic about that band. But the message I took from whatever Ryan said to me was, like, “Yeah, we’re going to blow this band up. Do you want to be the guy?”

so I will say....so far Pitchfork hasn't been that much different than it was before

Tapes n' Tapes?
xpost

super close

I was going to guess Black Kids.

I was wrong, but they do talk about Black Kids.

I saw a double bill of Black Kids and Cut Copy right around that review (may have gone with Amy P. and a friend?), and Cut Copy was sooooo good and Black Kids was sooooo not. See also: the famous Clap Your Hands/National show here, where Clap went on first, 95% of the crowd left, and the National tore shit up.

Richardson: I spent a lot of time on a message board called I Love Music, and I noticed early on just how much ire Pitchfork inspired.

Surely not.

The Conde sale seems to have been handled naively by everyone concerned.

Also, big eyebrow raise at this considering the low the salaries of the editorial staff:

We went along for a few years there doing our thing, and YouTube was obviously growing immensely, and we went out to L.A. and managed to convince them to give us a few million dollars to start a YouTube channel.

It feels to me like Schreiber and Kaskie (maybe others too?) were hoovering up the money and probably also got big payouts when they sold up?

the famous Clap Your Hands/National show here, where Clap went on first, 95% of the crowd left, and the National tore shit up.

haha, I was there! It was nuts and my first time seeing The National, who were amazing.

Richardson: I spent a lot of time on a message board called I Love Music, and I noticed early on just how much ire Pitchfork inspired. It felt like having an opinion on one of Pitchfork’s opinions was an important part of keeping track of what was going on in music.

https://slate.com/culture/2024/03/pitchfork-oral-history-music-festival-conde-nast-review.html

D'oh - scanned for mention of Slate but missed Alfred's post

#slatepitch...fork

some interesting ruminations on the marketability of a music website including demographics and the disjoint advertising that currently pops up in this article on The Verge by Elizabeth Lopatto: https://www.theverge.com/24070565/pitchfork-gq-conde-nast-music-industry-change

I appreciate that Al got a mention of the Coltrane review into that Slate oral history

Thanks for that Verge story; it complements the Slate one.

shit, cat

Some richness, daddy.

Slate, cat

This bit made me laugh, idk why

Drake: In college in the early 2000s, I remember meeting a guy who seemed like the kind of guy who would read Pitchfork. I was like, “Do you read Pitchfork?” and he was like, “Yeah.” That was Pitchfork becoming real to me.

I met this guy … and he looked like he might have been a hat check clerk at an ice rink. Which - in fact - he turned out to be. And I said: "Oh boy, right … again.”

Lol

Haven't read through all this yet, but one thing I always wish about this type of project is that instead of having someone say "IDK, there didn't seem to be a lot of women early on," they would get in touch with Kristin Sage Rockermann or Meg Zamula or somebody and ask what their experience was! A lot of descriptions of the early years make me want to see more credit for various forgotten writers, but Kristin especially

I've had that same thought about KSR

👀

it’s telling that the discourse around *recent events* in music journalism has been so focused on eulogizing/remembering things that happened 10-20 years ago instead of the people, writing, and necessary change that has kept it alive and relevant in contemporary culture

— Puja Patel (@senari) March 19, 2024

^^^

ha ha I liked this from Alphonse Pierre

Rap beef is just not for J. Cole. He doesn’t have the heart for the lying, disrespect, and animosity it requires to make an effective diss track. A memorable diss feels like the equivalent of someone getting their grave spit on. J. Cole’s are like your camp counselor pulling you to the side, putting their hand on your shoulder, and advising you to stop belly-flopping in the pool or else you might get hurt. That was made clear on “Snow on tha Bluff,” the time he finger-wagged at Noname for being mean and reading too many books.

got 'em

Belated shout-out to Philip Sherburne's very good Sunday review of Photek's Motus Operandi (an album I had totally forgotten about).

https://condenast.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/CondeCareers/details/Site-Director--Pitchfork_R-15910-1?jobFamilyGroup=d37c103a5736011b93d8774367016950&jobFamilyGroup=f59396a85ff3018de253b8f6660155de&jobFamilyGroup=f59396a85ff301914ce095f6660153de&locationCountry=bc33aa3152ec42d4995f4791a106ed09

The ~vibe~ I'm getting from job listings these days is gigs like this aren't going to anyone who spent the last 10 years as an "editor" or a "writer" at your fave media properties, but the anonymous white guys who were like "chief content officer" or "social marketing lead."

maybe they will pivot to video

xp Yeah, that's sort of what I gather from the role being called "Site Director" instead of "Editor-in-Chief."

https://pitchfork.com/artists/still-house-plants/

We didn't find any recipes, articles or videos for "".

really good article on a very deserving subject!

https://pitchfork.com/features/how-jeff-parker-changed-the-sound-of-jazz/

xpost MOG has had its cutesy moment in culture but it still stands for (alpha) Male Of Group.

also feel weird that they're platforming this weird anti-trans diss song by a streamer that p4k's audience more than likely would never have heard of

which song?

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/young-dabo-bleed-jane-remover-diss/

^^ this article

Yeah and linking the video prominently giving it further views.

I think you guys have misapprehended the dynamic here if you think pitchfork is some huge platform for brainrot instead of the brainrot ecosystem being something pitchfork should comment on rather than allowing to flourish without critique

I think you guys have misapprehended the dynamic here if you think pitchfork is some huge platform for brainrot instead of the brainrot ecosystem being something pitchfork should comment on rather than allowing to flourish without critique

like in the 2010s when pitchfork was the place ppl went To Find Music its a different story. now critique is kind of all they have

nice to see GHC writing about something other than how much he loves Phish

xp i get that, and i understand commenting on the brainrot ecosystem (like in kieran press-reynolds' columns) but does an article like that really need a tweet and an ig grid post, etc.?

like, i get that it is important for people putatively in the underground rap community to say, "it sucks that so many people in this community are sexist and transphobic," but they use dabo's press photo and link to the video and are pretty value-neutral in the headline ("evil" and "pure evil" has been used plenty of times by the website as a positive word)

it is definitely a change from the old era of pitchfork where massive massive artists like xxxtentacion would get mostly ignored because of character issues

I reflexively ignore rap music that scans as “internet shit” and let me tell you, that has never proven me wrong

Like it’s genuinely weird watching shit like phonk and Bladee and Haunted Mound and brainrot music break containment into mainstream media when it’s been so reliable to just dismiss this stuff out of hand as “internet shit”