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

lots of discussion about that on the Pitchfork thread but it belongs here in the HOF

ctrl f trump

she really tried it

https://uproxx.com/music/taylor-swift-reputation-tour-legacy/amp/

Taylor Swift is my culture. Surely, I already knew that to some degree, but I never realized it more than when Reputation dropped late last fall. Unexpectedly in Norway that weekend, I was covering a small European music festival — or, I was supposed to be covering it. Friday morning, attendees kept attempting to communicate with me while I sat ensconced in puffy, pink Beats headphones I couldn’t bring myself to remove, wrapped up in the world of Reptuation.

"Waaahhh! I wrote a piece of sponsored content disguised as a personal essay and people called me an asshole for it - I'm just like Taylor Swift!"

That piece is better if you approach it as a satire of Taylor Swift's writing. i.e., making huge melodramatic emotional narratives out of small personal events that no one else should really give a shit about.

i feel like writing about "small personal events that no one else should really give a shit about" describes a lot of good songwriting, but i'm not sure what that even means really so

@triggercut the author is not that self aware, trust

eric: cf. Annie Dillard: "Write not about what you love most, but about what you alone love at all."

in fact just keep a private journal because nobody else is going to seek out your opinions on the new tram cops record

otm

but i guess they have to submit some type of work to get paid

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/pusha-t-the-story-of-adidon/

what's so bad about that?

"My favorite way to listen to music is out in the world — walking to the grocery store or uphill to class, one earbud in and the other free to hear birds calling and insects buzzing."

this lede is outrageous

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/why-are-nashvilles-brightest-stars-touring-with-the-survivors-of-one-direction/2018/06/25/6d547f80-7890-11e8-93cc-6d3beccdd7a3_story.html?utm_term=.5c9342f325e2

Ooph

https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/zm8dve/the-saxophones-unlikely-journey-out-of-meme-hell

woof

idgi

I would say "Noisey should stick to covering Genre X or Genre Y," but literally 99% of what they publish is hot, wet garbage.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/shawn-mendes-headlines-rolling-stone-relaunch-event-presented-by-youtube-music-699343/

yes i know it's a press release but.

the lede...

On July 26th, Rolling Stone will host 500 music industry insiders, influencers and a select group of fans at a raw industrial space in Brooklyn.

...would actually work pretty well as a mad lib.

An old one. . .

Recurrence suggests an instant replay of the Railway Children's earlier album, and, in fact, it is. While the rhythms are spritely, the songs tend to sound alike -- at times like some of what Spandau Ballet was doing in the '80s, and at other times as though the Railway Children are trying to ape New Order. Recurrence's highlights, "Merciless" and "Over & Over," suggest that they are trying to do something original, only to fall just a bit short each time. Recurrence makes you wish you had a couple of aspirin to dull the effects. (four and half stars out of five)

https://www.allmusic.com/album/recurrence-mw0000200002

More of a case of actual content of the review not matching the score, but still, that's a pretty large jump.

after the resignation of their editor last week, the AV Club apparently has nobody around to tell music writers about this wild new invention called "a single"

Burial released two of the most absorbing, darkly beautiful electronic records ever in 2006 and 2007, but rather than release a follow-up, he has spent the decade-plus since quietly firing off one- to three-track mini-albums.

He goes on to describe a release as a "split" because it has one Burial track on each side of the record.

one- to three-track mini-albums

lol

‘Scuse me while I go ride my two-wheeled, motorless, pedal-powered, one-person car

tbf Burial was covering Burial on each side of that Split

Not long now until we can call it a side again.

"Good, gloomy industrial danceballad. Lacks vocals, but an attractive side all told. Could do some business with exposure" (Nonplus, BMI)

#tbt from dula peep

One of the most funny and embarrassing articles in history. Putting women against each other and speaking way too soon. It’s obvious everyone has room to grow but trying to diminish someones success just because... is a theme that rarely happens with male artists. pic.twitter.com/RTL7UDAmkf

— DUA LIPA (@DUALIPA) August 7, 2018

wait, are we making fun of this *fifteen year old article* or the tweet? Because I can bearly get passed the grammer...in that tweet

I looked up the article and it’s not poorly written (the Lol’z are mainly in the headline, and in retrospect).

As for pitting two female artists against each other... I feel like this was a standard thing the NYT did — reviewing two albums at once and comparing/contrasting — but maybe it’s true they didn’t do it as often w/male artists (or didn’t make the contrast as stark or critical, etc.)

if you dorks don't think "The Solo Beyoncé: She's No Ashanti" is funny, idk what to say

The solo Paul Simon: he's no Leonard Cohen

xp I said the headline was funny, dude

Senator, you are no Ashanti

Investigating Beyoncé, NY Times Sees No Clear Link to Ashanti

Xgau stays weird about women:

Amanda Shires: To the Sunset (Silver Knife) Although premier violinist and respected singer-songwriter Shires comes by most of her current swell of fame as Jason Isbell's wife, bedrock, and babymama, you wouldn't guess it from the advances she's made in these 10 coolly autonomous, acutely turned, observantly experienced songs. Her soprano incisive over arrangements longer on echo and electronics than you'd expect from tradmaster Dave Cobb, she deals more candidly with attraction ("Parking Lot Pirouette"), lust ("Leave It Alone"), personal rivalry ("Break Out the Champagne"), and even suicide ("Wasn't I Paying Attention?") than supportive domestic partners are expected to, and hardly plays her violin at all. That's how you end up with an album that takes some getting used to not just because it's unexpected but because it's halfway to sui generis. A MINUS

jesus christ how is he still getting work?

uhh wtf

goddamn, this guy

dang brother, it's tough to even see you up on that high horse from this here ditch. and i'm fresh outta fucks.

— sarahshook (@sarahshook) August 11, 2018

Re:

Sarah Shook & the Disarmers: Years (Bloodshot) If only she could light up the melancholy of "Good as Gold" with the dawning consciousness of "What It Takes," she might be able to figure out how to duck men's meanness without drinking herself into the ditch ("Parting Words," "Lesson") **

this fucking gau

He's clearly not gonna change, I blame anybody paying him for it nowadays

Why would he write that blurb as his “review”? Besides being very difficult to parse, it’s meaningless to the uninitiated reader (...never mind how it strikes the artist, as nicely illustrated by the above pushback).

xpost
Like, yeah, imagine a “newcomer” in the rock crit game turning in reviews like this, and expecting to be published

difficult to parse, meaningless to the initiated reader is pretty much his mission statement afaikt

^^^

Exactly. I couldn't pinpoint the specific moment when he disappeared completely up his own ass, but it was definitely sometime last century.

i remember reading defenses of that indecipherability on ilx lol

not that it wasn't an interesting challop but this guys stuff has always been like this!

he's not difficult to parse lol

(a lot of the parsing xgau thread seems to be me proving that momus was misreading something: This is the thread where you ask for help in parsing one of Robert Christgau's sentences. )

If you were able to understand the above “review” (on just a syntactical level — never mind the content, which seems pretty useless in the context of a “consumer guide”) without slowly reading it four times, then you’re a better Xgau reader than I.

(^I deliberately tried to make this sentence as confusing as his, and don’t think I even succeeded)

Although premier violinist and respected singer-songwriter Shires comes by most of her current swell of fame as Jason Isbell's wife, bedrock, and babymama,

Even though Shires is famous now mostly because she's married to this guy [I've never heard of]

you wouldn't guess it from the advances she's made in these 10 coolly autonomous, acutely turned, observantly experienced songs.

you might think listening to this album that she's famous because she makes good music.

Her soprano incisive over arrangements longer on echo and electronics than you'd expect from tradmaster Dave Cobb,

She has a soprano singing voice and uses it in more inventive ways than you'd expect from a Dave Cobb production. Also Xgau thinks that incisive is a verb.

she deals more candidly with attraction ("Parking Lot Pirouette"), lust ("Leave It Alone"), personal rivalry ("Break Out the Champagne"), and even suicide ("Wasn't I Paying Attention?") than supportive domestic partners are expected to,

Good domestic partners don't often have much interesting things to say about hot button issues like attraction, lust, personal rivalry and suicide

and hardly plays her violin at all.

she only plays her violin a little bit on this album.

That's how you end up with an album that takes some getting used to not just because it's unexpected but because it's halfway to sui generis.

So it's an unusual album because it's so candid and she doesn't play violin much and because you wouldn't expect it from someone most famous [to Xgau] for being married to someone else and that makes it halfway unique, a thing you can apparently be in percentages.