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

it appears I misquoted, the actual quote is "the double indignity of a law degree and a failed career in music journalism." She was 26.

Well, if I was at risk of consuming art made by a fucking lawyer, I'd want advance warning, so that's a valuable description.

More seriously, I understand the fear that if you're not constantly "on" you'll disappear - I used to feel that way. But you know, I managed to carve out a 20 year "career" without writing about any big pop records, so when I see people who only seem to do that, and then worry about falling out of "the conversation," I feel like it shows a lack of imagination on their part. There's a whole world of music out there, and it's my belief that it's actually a better strategy to be the only person pitching the story you're pitching than to be one of 1000 writers pitching an insta-review of the album "everyone" is talking about that week.

being in "the conversation" isn't even a necessary condition of being a functional journalist, never mind a functional writer

"More seriously, I understand the fear that if you're not constantly "on" you'll disappear - I used to feel that way. But you know, I managed to carve out a 20 year "career" without writing about any big pop records, so when I see people who only seem to do that, and then worry about falling out of "the conversation," I feel like it shows a lack of imagination on their part. There's a whole world of music out there, and it's my belief that it's actually a better strategy to be the only person pitching the story you're pitching than to be one of 1000 writers pitching an insta-review of the album "everyone" is talking about that week.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Thursday, March 10, 2016 7:44 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sure, if it's 20 years ago

I think in the current environment katherine's right - you are unlikely to get read at all if you're not established and your beat is anything other than what everybody else is talking about

sure, if it's 20 years ago

I still do it! It can still be done! I did it in 2015, for editors I'd never written for before!

I'd feel really sad if I thought you two were right—but that's mostly because I don't think of myself as "established." I think of myself as "old." Which actually puts me at a disadvantage in the market. There are writers I think of as established—Chuck Eddy, Rob Harvilla, Maura, Weingarten, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Jessica Hopper, plenty of others—but I definitely don't count myself among them.

And here's the other thing: If you're writing about the exact same thing everybody else is writing about (worst of all if you're one voice in a "critical roundtable" convened for the purpose of saying "Wow, Beyoncé's awesome!" six different ways), nobody's reading you for you—they're reading you because yours is the first link they came across covering the subject they're interested in. And that's not a path to getting "established"; that's a way to make sure you're 100% replaceable. It's like having no voice at all. Which makes me wonder, why do it? Do you have so little pride, as a writer, that you're willing to just anonymously fill a content hole? For $20, or $50, or whatever people are paying for blog posts now?

I would not necessarily say that's true but I do think the idea of "reading you for you" and "having a voice" is different than what you're saying. plenty of writers have people who read them for them, but largely on the strength of their online brand; what they write is secondary. in a way this is great, but not every voice is easily translatable to a demographically targeted brand, nor every person good at this sort of self-promotion

also, it's a little strange to say people are only writing about pop music because that's where the conversation is. those people do exist, but they're generally very easy to tell by their tone of barely concealed disdain (which isn't criticism) and faulty assumptions

jimmywine dyspeptic describes things as they are

― HYPERLINK TO RAP GENIUS (BradNelson), Thursday, March 10, 2016 1:34 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sorry, been away all day, just wanted to briefly address this: I will admit that I retain some pretty traditional, Strunk & White-y ideas about grammar, but I remember being taught that it is important to understand the literal definition of (metaphor) words before using them in a sentence. This helps to avoid nonsense like "grave-scented choral blast." If the writer had thought about it for even a second, he'd remember that sounds do not have an odor.

My problem is not with figurative speech. Obviously, when you write that a person "threw the gauntlet" (and my using this example should by no means suggest that I approve of this phrase), you aren't actually imagining someone throwing an armored glove at someone's feet, but it helps to recognize that a "gauntlet" is, in fact, something that can be "thrown." That's all I was trying to say. The above review is, to me, a perfect example of thoughtless writing.

Totally agree with Jimmywine on this.

the literal definition of "blast" is a strong breath or gust of air, though

A choral gust of air? That smells like a grave? I guess that could describe a scene from Evil Dead 2 or something!

also, it's a little strange to say people are only writing about pop music because that's where the conversation is.
― a self-reinforcing downward spiral of male-centric indie (katherine), Thursday, March 10, 2016 9:42 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What's strange about this? The writers who used to make money writing about Robert Pollard and Sebadoh are, for better or worse, no longer able to do that, so they either adapt (become poptimists, write about Lana Del Rey and hip hop mixtapes) or they quit writing about music professionally. If you want proof, email NPR tomorrow and pitch an interview with the Bottle Rockets. I'm not saying you can't make a good living writing for, I don't know, Downbeat or something, but I don't think that would make you part of the "conversation" as we are defining it.

even ignoring the obvious connection between "choral" and the concept of breath, english idiomatic and metaphorical language regularly uses the idea of scent to mean "reminiscent of" even w/ things that couldn't possibly smell like anything as in phrases like "conformity has a whiff of the inhuman about it". would take a million bad metaphors over ppl performatively missing the point about language

also, it's a little strange to say people are only writing about pop music because that's where the conversation is.
― a self-reinforcing downward spiral of male-centric indie (katherine), Thursday, March 10, 2016 9:42 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What's strange about this? The writers who used to make money writing about Robert Pollard and Sebadoh are, for better or worse, no longer able to do that, so they either adapt (become poptimists, write about Lana Del Rey and hip hop mixtapes) or they quit writing about music professionally. If you want proof, email NPR tomorrow and pitch an interview with the Bottle Rockets. I'm not saying you can't make a good living writing for, I don't know, Downbeat or something, but I don't think that would make you part of the "conversation" as we are defining it.

― Jimmywine Dyspeptic, Thursday, March 10, 2016 10:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's strange because there are just as many people who are genuinely interested in pop music and want to write things about it, conversation or no. these people can also listen to robert pollard or sebadoh! it's not impossible!

i write about rap and rap mixtapes & pop music, yet only occasionally does the Conversation reflect the scope of what's happening w/in the genre, there's no way to really be on top of the conversation except by chasing it which leads mainly to dispassionate or fake-passionate writing ime

like, the conversation is more driven by memes and vines and what ian connor reblogged on his soundcloud account and what the few publications with $ at a given time think they should care about than it is the actual fundamentals of what is happening in music

Though I once wrote a review of a Derek Bailey album in which I said that since it was improvised music that had only been played once, I was reviewing it after only listening to it once.

conceptually sound.

I hate that thing that went up on the New York Times website today, for example.

Yeah. The huge circle jerk things like that trigger among music writers on social media is really ugly to me. I enjoyed reading music writing a lot more when I didn't know who the writers behind it were.

seeing that Nabisco-curated symposium at NYT reminded me of all his old "OTM" posts that I only skimmed or skipped outright ;)

become poptimists, write about Lana Del Rey and hip hop mixtapes

whoa I've been doing this all wrong

if you are not part of the conversation you and by extension your future and your career (which involves money, and which most people probably have to find some way to keep going for 30+ years) do not exist.

A different point I know, but is "the conversation" ultimately helping to produce good music writing? I feel like it's causing what was already a greatly diminished art to eat itself into redundancy.

I listened to quite a bit of that Rotting Christ album and didn't hear flute #1.

all this "part of the conversation" talk is giving me flashbacks to my first days at art school when the teacher was challenging us to "be socially conscious" with our art and "start a dialog" and i just wanted to paint some cool stuff.

A different point I know, but is "the conversation" ultimately helping to produce good music writing?

i would argue 'sometimes,' although imo those occasions are becoming rarer and rarer as every angle has to have one of the top ten whatever shoehorned into it. especially since those top 10 are not always entirely reflective of what music people outside of the conversation are consuming. (katherine's points made elsewhere about the lack of critical writing on rachel platten, who had one of the biggest songs of last year, are salient here.)

but more importantly it's pushing other writing that might not fit its contours (and be written by its most prominent participants) even further to the sidelines, which is a net negative

otm

see: Pitchfork getting rid of The Out Door

maura otm but what I'm trying to say also is that it's also reshaping those genres which are ostensibly in the center of the conversation by warping what is valued w/in them. this isn't like pre-poptimism where we bemoan that popular stuff is popular or that our tastes are so different from the mainstream; it's more that the Conversation is driven by memes, not music; that what is shared isn't necessarily even what the general public likes as music but what it likes to share and to participate in as a part of this social media 'culture'

i guess people said that about pop stars n stuff like 'why do you care about costumes n music videos shouldn't it be about the music man' but imo that stuff is Cool but a meme saying LOL Norm Says Drake Killed Meek Mill is not cool its goofy

oh and music writing is forced to reflect this online "culture" rather than music or the culture of music

yes totally

happy fifth anniversary of 'friday' btw

it's a weird echo chamber that's only serving to disenfranchise itself

d-40 otm

it also contributes to ageism, where "ageism" is defined on the hollywood scale.

that said I wouldn't necessarily say it has much to do with the top 10 -- "fight song" was itself top 10! (#6, to be exact.) if you look at the exact top 10 right now it only resembles The Conversation in passing. sure you have bieber and rihanna in there, but also twenty-one pilots (the NYT piece was a bit of an outlier here, as otherwise the only people talking about them are to crack yuks), flo rida, g-eazy/bebe rexha, kelly clarkson and GOOD GRIEF WHEN DID LUKAS "STRIP NO MORE" GRAHAM GET IN THERE.

and sure, the hot 100 has a lot of problems with accurately representing reality (it's near-devoid of non-rihanna hip-hop and r&b, for instance), but it does show the extent to which The Conversation doesn't track exactly to what people actually listen to.

also, in almost all these cases, The Conversation could be replaced, "hastily installed chrome extension"-style, with "the twenty or so people I followed on twitter two ears ago"

tbf there is only so much one can write about 21 pilots, flo rida and lukas graham before temping front desk work at a hedge fund starts to look pretty good

and are hedge funds even looking good these days #thanksObama

katherine the 'top 10' i was referring to wasn't the charts necessarily, but the list of 10 artists who get shoehorned into every headline. who often don't have anything on pop radio! (in part because pop radio has become so depressingly white)

and sure, the hot 100 has a lot of problems with accurately representing reality (it's near-devoid of non-rihanna hip-hop and r&b, for instance), but it does show the extent to which The Conversation doesn't track exactly to what people actually listen to.

― a self-reinforcing downward spiral of male-centric indie (katherine), Friday, March 11, 2016 10:24 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbf there is only so much one can write about 21 pilots, flo rida and lukas graham before temping front desk work at a hedge fund starts to look pretty good

― ulysses, Friday, March 11, 2016 10:28 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

both true facts but you can look more closely at the more widely-considered-listenable artists: the 1975 just doubled the sales of macklemore and kendrick lamar but you wouldn't know it by the press response to either. Of course, macklemore did this (intentionally?) by tapping into a conversation subject that is understandably at the forefront of everyone's minds in the current moment (white priv)

lol i didn't mean kendrick lamar! i meant to write ryan lewis! weirdest brain fart ever

fair enough!

(bieber is a good example, because it's easy to simultaneously get caught in the "HOW CAN YOU NOT LIKE BIEBER" rhetoric-blast from writers and "HOW CAN YOU NOT INSTANTLY DISMISS BIEBER" from about 60% of the other people you encounter in the world and the mental effect is a little bit like having two people stand on either side of you and punch you)

also I'm not sure the 1975 is the best example here because a) there's a fuckton of writing on them lately and b) at least some portion of their popularity was from siphoned-away (well, not *away* but still) taylor swift fans

maura otm but what I'm trying to say also is that it's also reshaping those genres which are ostensibly in the center of the conversation by warping what is valued w/in them. this isn't like pre-poptimism where we bemoan that popular stuff is popular or that our tastes are so different from the mainstream; it's more that the Conversation is driven by memes, not music; that what is shared isn't necessarily even what the general public likes as music but what it likes to share and to participate in as a part of this social media 'culture'

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Friday, March 11, 2016 9:06 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i guess people said that about pop stars n stuff like 'why do you care about costumes n music videos shouldn't it be about the music man' but imo that stuff is Cool but a meme saying LOL Norm Says Drake Killed Meek Mill is not cool its goofy

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Friday, March 11, 2016 9:08 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh and music writing is forced to reflect this online "culture" rather than music or the culture of music

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Friday, March 11, 2016 9:09 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'd like to point out that d-40 has been otm in this thread

i think the amount of e-ink spilled on the life of pablo and kanye's weeklong twitter hissyfit and weird release of it is another example of an album that got wrote about more than people actually want to listen to it even now like 2 weeks later

at least some portion of their popularity was from siphoned-away (well, not *away* but still) taylor swift fans

Interested to know more about this. I reviewed the 1975's debut for Alternative Press; have they gotten Taylor Swift's blessing in some way since?

if it bleeds it leads yo

also I'm not sure the 1975 is the best example here because a) there's a fuckton of writing on them lately and b) at least some portion of their popularity was from siphoned-away (well, not *away* but still) taylor swift fans

― a self-reinforcing downward spiral of male-centric indie (katherine), Friday, March 11, 2016 10:40 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

feel like most of this came out after they went no. 1. critics on the edge paid attention but the only publication in the states that gave them a real feature prior was Spin, right? lol

at least some portion of their popularity was from siphoned-away (well, not *away* but still) taylor swift fans

Interested to know more about this. I reviewed the 1975's debut for Alternative Press; have they gotten Taylor Swift's blessing in some way since?

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Friday, March 11, 2016 11:44 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in the tabloid sense, which in music may as well be the same thing

"Even 誤訳侮辱 likes them!" might be a good marketing strategy.

i know someone who was writing about the 1975 in 2013

http://mauramagazine.com/article/554a86c9ada6e2283e75618f/hold_you_tight