pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

i think writing about the lyrics - most lyrics - is SO much harder than writing about the music. i don't know why anyone would ever do, for example, that ^

really? lyrics are the biggest part of Jackson browne’s songs (besides his voice). The backing is tight and the music is fine, but his records are just like “here i am, Jackson Browne”.it’s not like Joni or something with weird chords and thangs

writing about lyrics isn’t this just literary critical? seems way more valuable then whatever the hell most record reviews are trying to do.

criticism not critical

maybe i shouldn't have written my second sentence ... i don't really know Jackson Browne's music, so maybe it makes perfect sense.

i just find writing about lyrics harder than writing about music.

I gotcha

I don't think it's a pitchfork-specific problem -- I haven't read Rolling Stone in years, but I gave up on it largely because they were always reviewing the lyrics rather than the music. Unless you're David Berman or Bill Callahan or something, I'm just not that focused on the lyrics.

For me it comes off like — you didn’t have anything interesting or insightful to say about this as music, or you weren’t critically equipped to write about it as music*, so you took the easy way out and mostly talked about what’s on the lyric sheet.

*again, not the case for Sherburne

Sherburne is mostly a dance writer!

When I wrote my book about Slint, all my research and interviews screamed that they thought of themselves as an instrumental band and that the words came at the last minute, usually revealed to the rest of the band right there in the studio. And yet on my first pass of trying to analyze the album, I wrote pages and pages dissecting the words--especially because they come off as little short stories. Thankfully my editor told me to cut most of it out. And, while I ultimately didn't ignore the words entirely in the final draft, I tried really hard to give them the appropriate amount of emphasis relative to the music. Anyway, yeah it's hard not to default into that mode.

and a question for you: as a pure listener / consumer of music, how much weight / attention do you give to lyrics?

For me, usually about 15%, except for those artists that are all about sharp lyrics, when the weighting goes way up.

But bad lyrics rarely interfere with my enjoyment of a good tune.

and a question for you: as a pure listener / consumer of music, how much weight / attention do you give to lyrics?

At this point in my life I mostly listen to instrumental music, music in languages I don't speak, or music with indecipherable vocals (death metal). When I'm stuck listening to mainstream pop/rock, where the vocals and lyrics are given prime space in the mix and basically shoved at the listener, I do what I can to ignore them. Consequently, they almost never sink in, unless they're really terrible. There are songs and albums that I listened to obsessively in high school to which I still have the words memorized (most of Double Nickels On The Dime, Big Daddy Kane's "Raw") but nothing new sticks with me that way.

good post

I'm always trying to change the lyrics of songs I really like in my mind to better suit me, it's been a strategy for staying interested in popular music

and a question for you: as a pure listener / consumer of music, how much weight / attention do you give to lyrics?

― alpine static, Monday, July 15, 2019

I don't actively read lyric sheets, but I love to sing along with songs if I can. I just sort of absorb the words over time. So as a listener/consumer of music, my bar is set to "not hopelessly stupid". If they can surpass that then I'm good. If they truly are great lyrics, then I tend to love the album/song even more.

Digression: about ten years ago my dad was dying, and then he died. At the time I was obsessively listening to Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production of Eggs; it was like a little burrow I would go into by myself, just putting on my headphones and taking long walks, never playing the record around anyone else in my family. I was just absorbing the lyrics as I listened, never truly trying to understand what Bird was singing about but picking it up in fragments. So I was picking up phrases here and there. Also, Bird is someone who makes weird turns of phrases or invents words just because he wants the sounds to fit just right, and he also doesn't always enunciate. So based on the melancholic nature of the music and the fragments of lyrics I picked up, I ascribed all sorts of meaning to that record--it's all about childhood, mortality, and longing, as far as I'm concerned.

Years have passed and I sometimes suspect that that's not at all what the record is about; like, if I were to meet Andrew Bird and tell him all this he would say "nope I was just riffing on Kafka, Wagner, and BDSM." But I simply can't hear it any other way. His lyrics are just gnarled and elusive enough that I've bonded to it in my own way. As far as I'm concerned I'm not mishearing anything; if Bird intended something else then he just doesn't know his own meanings. It's become too personal for me to be wrong.

<3

Varies wildly - I have a great appreciation for narrative songs but I don't really care about lyrics (beyond 'oh, that's catchy') in other contexts.

Like Jason Isbell would be pretty much unlistenable to me without the narrative, so in that case it matters 85-90%. Golden age rap is generally somewhere around 50/50 on what makes me love it (lyrics/sound). Angel Olsen has some sharp writing but I don't realy like her acoustic stuff and love the full band/rock songs so I don't know where that puts the split.

tumbleweeds on the Torche thread I bumped so I'll put this here:

The metal band’s latest album retains the sludgy ferocity of its best work while opening up to include elements of shoegaze and dream pop

Umm...they've been doing this for at least a decade?

Also, I've listened to Torche off and on over the years and never would I have used the words / phrases "menacing," "punishing," "chugging doom," "brutalizing," "teeth-gnashing," or "grizzled" to describe them; writer also uses some variation of the word 'sludge" at least three times. Was he working from a Words That Should Appear in Every Metal Review checklist?

call me a stick in the mud but I think people who clearly know nothing about metal shouldn't be writing metal reviews

not caring about lyrics is def an ilx core opinion for years

I guess I'd always prefer good lyrics to bad lyrics

but also I don't always agree what makes "good lyrics" is necessarily the sort of post late 60s literary type singer songwriter stuff that is sort of the bedrock of "good lyrics" the concept, i.e I think the Ramones or Migos or whoever have better lyrics than Jackson Browne or whoever

But I mean, it's weird to me when people say they don't care about lyrics esp ppl who make their money with words

They're having a laugh giving that Aaliyah album 9.3, surely? I mean, it's quite decent, two or three really good tracks, but . . . come on.

i've read a lot of wrong things on this board. i'd almost consider suggest banning for this wrong of a statement.

― blue light or electric light (the table is the table), Monday, July 15, 2019 6:26 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

"I don't actively read lyric sheets, but I love to sing along with songs if I can. I just sort of absorb the words over time. So as a listener/consumer of music, my bar is set to "not hopelessly stupid". If they can surpass that then I'm good. If they truly are great lyrics, then I tend to love the album/song even more."

Perfectly describes my experience as well! Sometimes I make fun of myself when I catch myself singing gibberish. Happens when I know a song really well that otherwise has unintelligible lyrics.

from a piece in The Ringer about Sufjan Stevens' 50 states project that never was:

The tipping point came in late July. Pitchfork, the increasingly influential arbiter of indie (full disclosure: I am a contributor there), had given the album a lukewarm review—“a 7.5,” Gill claims, “and it wasn’t Best New Music.” Except the site’s top editor, Ryan Schreiber, had not actually heard it. “We were bugging him to actually listen to it. And then he listened to it and he freaked out and he was like, ‘I can’t believe we gave this album a 7.5,’” Gill says.

That came up when Ryan S. retired, I think a writer complained about the original piece being replaced (there may be discussion above).

I was more amused at the idea of a 7.5 being "lukewarm" but it's all pretty silly.

10: This album is really important, ok? This is a big moment for our culture. Otherwise it's just a reissue of a well known classic.
9.6 - 9.9: Reissues of classic albums
9.0 - 9.5: This album is really important, ok? This is a big moment for our scene. Otherwise it's just a reissue of a little known classic.
8.5 - 8.9: Best New Music, AKA highlight with appeal potential outside of its genre
8.3 - 8.4: Best New Music but ymmv
8.0 - 8.2: Solid genre albums that appeal to only those invested in the genre
6.0 - 7.9: Yawn. Oh did you guys put out an album? Oh, sweet.
5.0 - 5.9: DUD
0.0 - 4.9: Go fuck yourself!!

7.0 - 7.9 is writer thought this should be bnm (the best records are here)

At height of pitchfork dominance - not getting Best New Music or anything much less than an 8 would definitely effect how much some indie stores ordered in, whether any end of rack placement would happen, etc etc. It definitely wrecked more than a few amazing records.

Raw album score
+.05 for each year that has elapsed its since release
+ 1.0 if artist has died
+ 0.5 if this album can stand in for reviewing an entire genre/scene
---------------
= Adjusted score

That mean's Aaliyah's raw score is 7.4

I don't think they did BNM back then did they? 2004?

I think they've done it at least since 2003.

Raw album score
+.05 for each year that has elapsed its since release
+ 1.0 if artist has died
+ 0.5 if this album can stand in for reviewing an entire genre/scene
---------------
= Adjusted score

That mean's Aaliyah's raw score is 7.4

Yeah, that would be about right for that particular effort. Good, but hardly one of the greatest records ever made, which 9.3 would suggest it was.

incorrect

Aaliyah would have to be one of the best mainstream R&B albums of the past twenty years or so (IMO the only albums to rival it would be the respective debuts of Teedra Moses, The-Dream and Electrik Red, off the top of my head) - I'm surprised that P4K gave it a 9.3 but it more than deserves it.

incorrect

Yeah, that's me told, eh?

so is today Stereolab day or something?

i love emperor tomato ketchup and this is a good review but these lines are cringe death

They made dialectics you can dance to, and that was revolution enough.

The song proved that having access to everything only works if you can get it into the groove, and that marching can be dancing if you do it right.

Shuji Terayama’s tiny fascists in Tomato Kecchappu Kôtei might have fallen victim to their self-indulgence, but Stereolab had higher hopes. Pleasure might not bring capitalism down, but it can definitely lift us up.

every day is Stereolab day

when i first got into stereolab and ETK, i had zero idea about their politics and never noticed anything in the lyrics

gettin pretty lackadaisical with that 'experimental' tag these days

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/?genre=experimental

I kind of like those quotes, especially "dialectics you can dance to", I'm more put off by the high rating for Mars Audiac Quintet vs Transient.

xpost Noted avant-garde composer Lou Barlow

^That must have been a metadata error, it's a total meat-and-potatoes rock album.

Btw -- re: the Stereolab reviews (and the earlier discussion above), this Sherburne piece is a terrific example of focusing on music rather than leaning on lyrics (and doing it really well).

I'm not a Stereolab fan but I'm gonna listen to that album ASAP, based on that review. That's what a compelling music review can do!

welcome, comrade!

I hope no one falls for the recent reissue campaign because of this.

Go to Amoeba, everyone. All of these albums can be had for less than the price of one of the reissues.