pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

btw - thanks to J0rdan et al. for explaining how the process works at Pfork (and elsewhere). As a reader, I guess I assumed (maybe naively) that the reviewer assigned the rating, maybe with some editorial "oversight" to make sure not every album is either a 6 or a 9, etc.

or a 6.9 -- nice

I've found Pitchfork no more score-centric when assigning reviews than other publications for whom scores matter. The subtleties of decimal points are lost on me, though.

Katherine’s quality in my book

it just makes it look more authoritative

the decimal points

this is the computer age, you can't do any art justice with a paltry array of stars and half stars, that's medieval

thumbs. thumbs! monkeys could review with thumb gestures

certain combinations of digits are just really satisfying. 8.9, 3.5, 6.6.. ah man

Katherine’s quality in my book

― done and dusted (Ross), Tuesday, May 1, 2018 4:08 PM (twenty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Same.

Thanks, katherine. It does mean quite a lot. It's a bit frustrating that you still don't get it, but still. I guess I was wrong to call you 'fake outraged', because there does not seem to be anything fake about it. But you kept on misrepresenting everything I wrote to the point that it seemed like you were trolling. I quite simply never wrote nor implied that Pitchfork hired Rahawa Haile because she was a black woman and you got mad at me for hours about it. And it could have been my lack of English skills that made it seem as if I wrote something I didn't mean to write, but even when I explained that I didn't do it, you kept on. Even when I proved you got the context wrong, you kept on. You literally wrote to me 'your exact words are' then got the wording wrong. I wrote that you 'can't/won't read' what I write, and you replied as if I just wrote that you cannot read: You literally misrepresented what I wrote about you misrepresenting what I write. I feel like that moment in The Wire where that guy is trying to tell Scott Templeton that he makes shit up, and in the end he just collapses and goes 'WE HAD CHOCOLATE MILK'

And honestly, this isn't the first time this has happened when people are discussing pitchfork. I was opening the entire thread and ctrl-f'ing so that I could get the exact wording correct on your line about my exact wordking (glad I did, I thought you wrote 'were' instead of 'are') and came across this other time you apologized from four years back, from a discussion on how much Pitchfork pays writers:

I'm sorry. I really don't understand what I did wrong, but whatever it is, I'm sorry for it. (For what it's worth, I know the person who runs the site and trust her -- a site that isn't even a "fucking Tumblr" anymore, even if that means anything at all and even if the submission process was truly anonymous, which it isn't -- but I'm sorry anyway. I don't understand why I couldn't have been emailed or DMed instead of being called out by name in public for posting here, but whatever it is was, I suppose I did something wrong there too, so I apologize for that too.)

― katherine, 24. oktober 2013 22:33 (four years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(upon rereading I can see how the above can be construed as sarcastic. it's not, I genuinely don't understand how point A got to point B here and it's distressing because this isn't something I wanted to happen at all. whatever happened is a thing I am genuinely sorry for.)

― katherine, 24. oktober 2013 22:55 (four years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's like there's a switch that goes off when someone goes in on pitchfork, and you just can't see what's being said. And I shouldn't have called you an idiot, because you mostly seem passionate, but it's pretty fucking frustrating. Ums and komrulez kept on shitting on me as late as an hour ago, over something you accused me of that I quite simply didn't do. So yeah, it's nice of you to apologize, and I'd just wish the rest of the board would accept that as well.

.b derf

.b derf

The joke so funny, he made it four times.

b derf

im looking at this afternoon's conversation. katherine seems super genuine in her replies, brings up her experience in this very field, the way things work, meanwhile Fred is continually nasty and personal towards her, constantly centering the conversation on himself. most of his posts are "woe is me" and "here you go again" wtf. and now digging up posts from 5 years ago.

fp'd many times over.

my only question: do you even comprehend the irony here of you talking down to a woman so that you can make your point about a woman being ignored?

Hoping this discussion is the thing to finally, irrevocably splinter the ilx community so I can stop pretending to have dishy inside access to the thoughts of music writers and just occasionally check katherine’s twitter profile like a normal person

This was a clusterfuck for the ages. Don't think any of us will be recovering any time soon.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/01/2e/89/012e89bc58baecd630892ee817bfc3ff.jpg

everyone now just sitting at their computers with a 7.7 yard stare

^
Comment edited by Pitchfork staff for decimal precision and fake wokeness.

more than the score/review disconnect (which is certainly an issue here but i understand what produces that even if i think that's a strange practice) i guess my issue with the review is more that i didn't really get a strong sense of what the writer felt about the album at all. it mostly just describes the album and its context but doesn't go much further? like what did they like/dislike about the album? the score disconnect only makes this stand out more

I didn't get much clue about the sound of the record from it either. There are 14 tracks but she only briefly describes four of them, and two of those are the big singles that people already know. A lot of the review just seems to be praising Janelle Monae for existing at all.

https://slate.com/culture/2018/05/when-a-negative-pitchfork-review-could-end-a-career.html

Interesting piece.

tbh maybe a really bad review and poor sales would be a good time to reboot your project with a better name than black kids ffs

Very good article, that.

i wish people wouldn't use the word 'infamous' in cases where nobody was murdered

anyway, here's wonderwall http://www.vulture.com/2018/05/rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-artists-ranked-from-best-to-worst.html

between this dork and frank guan, we could really use a vulture is dumb thread around here

"The idea, the legend, of the Velvets is probably better than their actual output. They were pretentious and quite often unlistenable."

jeez that HoF list is bad

so mean to Queen. what did Queen ever do to him? best band.

All the rap blurbs besides Run DMC and Furious Five have a very intense focus on their problematic elements

I read about 10% of the Vulture article and was too annoyed to read any more. His take on ABBA is probably the wrongest part of the 10% I read.

Like imagine being this much of herb to reduce N.W.A to this

I know Ice Cube is a formidable performer; he’s also the author of the dulcet couplet, “You let a Jew / Break up our crew” and an adherent of other anti-Semitic nonsense I don’t recall him ever disassociating himself from, much less apologizing for. I know that Dre is one of music’s most important producers; he’s also a guy who beats up women. And I know “Fuck Tha Police” is a great song; but I also know that its genesis came when Dre and Eazy-E were driving around Compton with a paint gun, shooting at people at bus stops — that is to say, ruining the clothes of working folks going to a crap-paying job to feed their lame kids. N.W.A is more than a footnote in rock history, but there’s not much to the group beyond their first album.

*scans list*

Bill Wyman? more like Bill -- why, man??

IT'S THE WOOOOORLD'S BIGGEST DICK

a dulcet couplet!

Nice how he points out all the bad things the members of NWA have done but puts Chuck Berry at #1 with no mention of any of the stuff he did.

nostalgia is a vaseline-covered motherfucker

kind of an epic troll though. maybe he should get props for that. every rock fan on earth can find something to get pissed about reading that. wait, thumbs up!

oh my fucking god

Her controversies, from “Papa Don’t Preach” onward, have always been more than a bit épater le bourgeois, her proclamations of control manifestations of insecurity. Look closely and you see that she’s never written a hit on her own; and as her career has gone on she seems more and more ridiculous. But that’s not the critical consensus, which says she was a game changer, a master at pop marketing, a postmodern superstar. Whatever.

This sentence will haunt my dreams tonight

Note that, besides the undeniable Bowie and cuddly Elton John, the hall has been very wary of the effete and glam side of rock — no Todd Rundgren, no Dolls, no Mott, no Roxy Music, no Pet Shop, no Marc Bolan, and stretching all the way to the Smiths and Joy Division — while just about every hirsute assemblage of spandexed wankers from that era and every one since have been ushered right in.

like, he isn't just wrong (um, yes, she wrote "Lucky Star" on her own, for one), but he he has to play psychotherapist too

Most bullshit part of that NWA thing is that Niggaz4life is probably a better album than Straight Outta Compton. And wasn't NWA & The Posse the first official release?

it becomes painfully obvious halfway through that he's writing longer blurbs when he thinks he's got something clever to say, and they end up being less insightful than the "I don't know much about this person but they're rightfully ranked highly in my list" blurbs

why is the entry for Solomon Burke entirely about Roxy Music?

180. Solomon Burke (2001)

A happy warrior and another openhearted soul singer. But there are literally dozens of more important artists who are not yet in the hall.

Let’s look at Roxy Music for comparison’s sake. These guys were taking rock into unseen and weird places on their first album, a maelstrom of emotional melodrama and louche sexuality set to blaring art rock and boasting the mischievous contributions of synthesizer innovator Brian Eno. Mixing rock signifiers like teenage-idol hairstyles and ambiguous sexuality, they evolved into more formalized paeans to decadence, ennui, and passing regret, particularly on their early-period masterpiece Siren. Then the band pivoted, and with Bryan Ferry’s pulsing emotions front and center, created two of the deepest and sincere pop-rock releases of all time, Flesh + Blood and Avalon. Roxy is one of the most important and original bands of the 1970s. Again you get the feeling that since the band was confronting and questioning the rock-star postures and practices of the time, the guys in the nominating room get a bit uncomfortable.

gotta fill'em in somewhere

Rush are unique among galumphy prog-rock bands in that they lack a single song (you know, like “Roundabout,” “Court of the Crimson King,” “Freebird,” “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”) you could play for someone to try to convince them of the band’s import.

i totally like roxy music more than solomon burke. that guy otm.

Imagine being so much of a piss-smelling D&D fatty that you think any of those songs are better than "Tom Sawyer"