pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Yeah that paragraph of the review was kind of an "unforced error."

really confused by the dirty computer review which makes basically no judgement of the record's quality in any way but gives it a lower than expected score

Well, it uses the word 'we' too much.

Captain Ahab pic.twitter.com/iitgrp6cWs

— popular comedy account “the pixelated boat” (@pixelatedboat) April 28, 2018

I was actually glad it didn't get the instant-classic coronation I was expecting tbh (though it's happened to plenty of worse or less interesting records)

lmao @ that comic

x-post: Yeah, too few songs about the working class. And not a single one on M4A! 7,7.

Adam, does that mean that you haven't heard Perfect from Now On? It's just really good post-Neil Young guitar jams

i will give them a shot again one of these days. this does sound like a good time. mostly i was mad at the guy for a different review he did.

didn't mean to crap so much on BTS, it's just tiring reading what-does-this-mean-for-the-narrative based rock crit. its like the Weekend at Bernies of rockism.

just tell me what the record is like. what it sounds like. yeah provide some context in the intro but don't make the entire thing context. does anyone seriously go back and read articles written in the 90s about the Beach Boys and their place in rock history? no because it is irrelevant to us now. time marches on. in 10 years nobody will care and the entirety of the review will be irrelevant.

really confused by the dirty computer review which makes basically no judgement of the record's quality in any way but gives it a lower than expected score

― ufo, Tuesday, May 1, 2018 12:25 AM (ten hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Of course I wrote about Janelle Monáe's Dirty Computer. Fun fact: Writers don't get to choose the album score or Best New Music, so please keep those grievances out of my mentions. I loved the album and admire Monáe tremendously. https://t.co/DmFbxbtb0f

— Rahawa Haile (@RahawaHaile) May 1, 2018

damn, shout out to rahawa breaking kayfabe

If I were hired to write about an album I loved I would be pretty fucking annoyed if they slapped their own score on top of it, is this a standard practice?

it's always been the practice at pitchfork afaik

which explains all the time the review seems more enthusiastic than the score

I always thought that was the case! Always bothered me when P4k came out with an unambiguously positive review of an album I liked but would then slap a "5.9" on it

wow, that's pretty crazy. I kinda want them to address that, because as an album that specifically deals with being a black queer woman, it seems quite disturbing that it was downgraded by the very white and male p4k editorial staff.

That is hilariously, wtf bonkers as an editorial practice.

Is that how it works at RS, Spin, etc?

not the biggest surprise, people are always saying "p4k gave it a 9.3" not "Jayson Greene gave it a 9.3" anyway

I disapprove of rating albums on a scale from 0 to 100 but I would probably defend the editors' right to choose the rating

xp they have addressed it, in a reddit ama iirc, but didn't exactly specify how many people weigh in on a score. it's bs

I can understand editors wanting to “consult” – so they can balance out the writer’s preferred rating against all other ratings in the mag’s history, or whatever – but not just assign a rating without the writer’s input (if that is in fact how it works).

I want them to address this specific instance. Not the practice in general.

every time this happens i feel like misinfo spreads like wildfire and i'm not sure how much i'm allowed to correct it

yah

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1767/7195/products/SnoopDo_DaGameI_CoverAr_3000DPI300RGB1000139882_1024x1024.jpg?v=1492526929

Rahawa Haile has no other bylines on Pitchfork, so it seems like the site specifically wanted an outside (black, female) perspective on the album. To then not let her decide the score makes the whole thing seem pretty suspect. A lack of trust in her judgment apart from her identity.

do individual writers ever unilaterally decide the score

...I see this is already being discussed

The 10.0’s for Radiohead are handed down on stone tablets by the Lord himself

Rahawa Haile has no other bylines on Pitchfork, so it seems like the site specifically wanted an outside (black, female) perspective on the album. To then not let her decide the score makes the whole thing seem pretty suspect. A lack of trust in her judgment apart from her identity.

uh you do realize she writes a lot A) in general B) about music C) as part of music communities, it's kind of shitty and dismissive to be like "oh it's just an identity thing" jfc

also, whenever pitchfork or anywhere else appoints a new reviews (or anything else) editor, they tend to bring on new and/or returning writers -- just today, to take another example, Brandon Stosuy has his first review in several years

i haven't written for pitchfork in a few years so maybe things have changed but i assume they have not very much (also this process is prob true for most places)

when it comes to big albums, the pitchfork brain trust decides what statement the site is going to make about the record. this opinion is gleaned from discussions among staff/freelancers and whatever other considerations need to be made (ryan's opinion etc). the review is then paired w/ a writer whose personal opinion more or less mirrors what the site is going to say. in that case, there's prob already a narrowly defined window for what the score will be... "low 8s" or something like that. you might say "i'd give this an 8.1" and you might hear back "we're going with 8.0" or whatever... most writers don't care that much about these little decimal points the way the editors have to. but there is def something tricky when an album gets a score in that range that is like "we def like this and want to say we like it, but we're not giving it best new music for whatever reason" bcuz most of the time the writer is prob a fan of the artist and will feel a bit more passionate/less measured than the site. that high 7s range for a big album from an artist the site covers a lot and likes generally is especially in a weird "this album is slightly imperfect to us for often opaque reasons" zone where as a writer you can be a bit disappointed that the score sort of mutes the enthusiasm in your review. but from an editor perspective it can be hard to find someone who is really motivated to thread that needle... generally you're going to lean towards someone w/ expertise on the artist, who is prob a fan etc. unless the process has changed drastically nobody is writing reviews w/o having a pretty specific idea of where the score is landing.

when it comes to smaller albums the scores are driven much more by the writer in my experience, to the point that they're often barely changed. what you pitch the score as/send it in as is usually what goes up.

& again this practice of brand sculpting and writer synergy is pretty standard

@katherine: Oh, spare me your bullshit fake outrage. I'm saying she looks bad in this situation, yeah, but it's because pitchfork has treated her like garbage. So own up to that mistake, instead of clutching your pearls that I dare insinuate that she looks bad. She is on twitter saying her mentions are trash, this is not a good situation she has been put in.

thanks for accusing me of "bullshit fake outrage" about a stranger internet quarterbacking about the reason someone I know was commissioned to review a record

but hey, if it was fake before, it definitely isn't fake anymore, fuck you

You're welcome. I'd happily do it again if you continue to misrepresent what I wrote.

jordan’s summary is correct

(for the record, I have written many reviews for many different sites that have caused my mentions to be trash in many different ways, and if I heard that someone was hand-wringing about how it's just so sad that obviously the only reason anyone wanted me to write about a record was because I was a woman, I would also find that person to be a piece of shit)

Frederik, you're an asshole.

Fuck you right back. I wrote 'it seems like', I was specifically criticizing the appearance that pitchfork has created.

So you can fuck off with this bullshit: someone was hand-wringing about how it's just so sad that obviously the only reason anyone wanted me to write about a record was because I was a woman

why don't you just keep quiet?

shut the fuck up fred

and in my experience it's only white dudes like you who turn into shits when their purported liberalism has been aggrieved

Well, I'm glad the pile-up brigade is here, but I'm right and katherine has continually misunderstood/-represented what I wrote. jfc indeed.

learn to back down and not be a shithead pls

have you considered that another reason someone might have their first byline at a publication is a sudden influx of free time to freelance, like the sudden influx of free time you have after releasing a book

that does not matter at all

i haven't written for pitchfork in a few years so maybe things have changed but i assume they have not very much (also this process is prob true for most places)

when it comes to big albums, the pitchfork brain trust decides what statement the site is going to make about the record. this opinion is gleaned from discussions among staff/freelancers and whatever other considerations need to be made (ryan's opinion etc). the review is then paired w/ a writer whose personal opinion more or less mirrors what the site is going to say. in that case, there's prob already a narrowly defined window for what the score will be... "low 8s" or something like that. you might say "i'd give this an 8.1" and you might hear back "we're going with 8.0" or whatever... most writers don't care that much about these little decimal points the way the editors have to. but there is def something tricky when an album gets a score in that range that is like "we def like this and want to say we like it, but we're not giving it best new music for whatever reason" bcuz most of the time the writer is prob a fan of the artist and will feel a bit more passionate/less measured than the site. that high 7s range for a big album from an artist the site covers a lot and likes generally is especially in a weird "this album is slightly imperfect to us for often opaque reasons" zone where as a writer you can be a bit disappointed that the score sort of mutes the enthusiasm in your review. but from an editor perspective it can be hard to find someone who is really motivated to thread that needle... generally you're going to lean towards someone w/ expertise on the artist, who is prob a fan etc. unless the process has changed drastically nobody is writing reviews w/o having a pretty specific idea of where the score is landing.

when it comes to smaller albums the scores are driven much more by the writer in my experience, to the point that they're often barely changed. what you pitch the score as/send it in as is usually what goes up.

& again this practice of brand sculpting and writer synergy is pretty standard

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, May 1, 2018 1:05 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't mind any of that process, my personal belief is that it might be the correct one. But perhaps it should be transparent with the way it operates the scoring on reviews, considering how powerful a score can be? Like yeah sure it was addressed in a reddit ama but it should be clear on the website that this is how they do it. Because right now, with the nebulous definition of 'pitchfork braintrust' it kind of feels that it is about the marketability of the album and on-site advertising more than opinion, which once again, no problem with that, as long as they are transparent about it.

I believe Rahawa Haile is fully qualified, I want her to be able to choose the grade/bnm tag as well. I criticize the fact that p4k didn't think she was qualified to do that.

anyway the only other thing I will add here is that, score-wise, the 6 range means "this is basically a fine-to-good album" and the 7 range means "this is a very good album that has a good chance of being one of the best of the year"

doubling down on your original sentiment when a couple people who know better chime in makes me nostalgic for my early 20s

nostalgic is not the right word here