pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

no, it's not, because this is 2019 and I can easily find out what a record sounds like by, you know, listening to it

It is literally the reviewer's job to inform the reader what the music sounds like! I'm sorry, I'm not buying this idea that all he/she has to do is analyse the lyric sheet and give us his/her take on the artist's philosophical worldview.

Precisely three words of that Georgia Anne Muldrow review are given over to a description of the music. I've heard her music in the past, there's invariably a lot going on in it, she is not exactly an artist about which a critic would quickly run out of things to say. That review was a waste of everybody's time.

also if you're going to criticize someone for "getting lyrics wrong repeatedly" then you should at least do the arduous research of going to his twitter profile, which will tell you that he is a man and not a "creepy girl"

If this is aimed at me, which it seems to be, you are mixing me up with somebody else.

Oops, just seen the "creepy girl" bit earlier in this thread (which is so large it takes ages to load on my machine). Apologies.

It's Brahms vs Wagner all over again.

19th century humorist Bill Nye's comment about Wagner's music ("it's much better than it sounds") set a bar for criticism that few have cleared since.

Heh, I love Wagner but it's a brilliant line indeed. I thought it came from Mark Twain, though – good to know its actual originator.

Also relevant to this whole debate:

https://modernism.coursepress.yale.edu/contre-saint-beuve/

Reading that Why? review and LOL'd at this patronizing line:

There’s also an accompanying visual album, made in partnership with — no joke — a director who randomly DM’d Wolf on Instagram

Whoaa, seriously no joke? This artist made a creative connection on social media? Let me sit down while I process that, how crazy!

this is really so weird in its how-can-i-condescend styling -- conservatively, I'd estimate that I've made at least a dozen work contacts via social media, contacts that result in gig posters & album covers & in one case a commissioned piece featuring an internationally celebrated ensemble that was performed in London, New York & in my home town. literally the one uniformly good thing about social media is that it eases the paths of communication between sympathetically-inclined artists / producers / organizers. "randomly"? no: a director who liked Wolf's work contacted Wolf via instagram -- what's "random?" in any sense of the word about that? "La Clemenza di Tito, composed after -- no joke -- Joseph II randomly reached out to Mozart via courier"

It is literally the reviewer's job to inform the reader what the music sounds like!

not to me? I don't read music criticism to find out what music sounds like. I read it to A)learn whether people think an artist executed their vision well, and B) to read thought-provoking commentary on it, that perhaps makes me think about it differently, or makes me form new, striking, and unexpected associations, and generally just enrich the existence of the song in my world. basically, to turn a solipsistic experience into one that's slightly less.

(and of course, one can do that through discussion of music as well as lyrics, but it is patently ridiculous to call the lyrics off-limits. for what seems like the millionth time, if an artist didn't want to intentionally incorporate words into their vision, for a reason, then they wouldn't include words.)

I think I look at music criticism for the exact same things so I can reinforce my solipsistic experience.

I'm not even joking; I am looking for things that I can absorb and make part of myself, and part of that process involves getting some information about whether what is being discussed sounds like something I'd want to listen to in order to consume its message/content.

I also don't think anyone is saying "lyrics are off-limits"; rather, people are saying "it's odd that people spend a lot of time discussing things tangential to the music but not the music itself". Lyrics are absolutely part of the music but a large part of their impact comes from how they are integrated into the song and it's odd (and often off-putting) to read alleged music criticism that focuses solely on lyrical content in relation to the artist's biography and not at all on delivery or how the musical arrangement reinforces or works against the words.

.hesitating to wade into the fray on this topic, but "universal" and "diaristic" are two asymptotes, there is no way for a songwriter to write a lyric as one without the other, and there is no way for a listener to parse a lyric without both bringing in their personal (i.e. universal) experience as well as what-they-know about the author of the song. (Even a listener will parse a song differently if the author is anonymous, or the authorship is ecumenical.)

Neil Young once answered as to whether his music was autobiographical: "I don't want (the listener) to think about me, I want them to think about themselves"

xp: And yes, oftentimes "tangential" is in the eye of the beholder; if there isn't anything that ties back to what the actual song is doing, well I can't speak for anyone else but I am not really getting anything out of the criticism. At that point, I feel like I'm reading a critique of a person rather than their music; sometimes that's fine (fuck Varg, for instance) and sometimes that's hyper-annoying and useless to me (see that Willow Smith review I linked upthread that gives very little mental image of what the music sounds like but does let you know the reviewer is annoyed that Willow didn't lay her soul bare before the altar of her audience).

"Mental image of what the music sounds like" is accurate, my favorite music writing does this in a way that makes me excited to go hear the music, and shapes my listening when I do. And if I've already heard it, it often makes me go back and listen in a new way.

Speaking for myself and myself only, I'll take printed poetry over lyrics 99% of the time. The non-lyrical facet of music is precisely what I can't get from literature. Exceptions occur when the words and the music are synergized in an unusually eloquent and/or antagonistic manner, but in most instances lyrics are utterly secondary to my enjoyment of a given piece of vocal music. Like unperson, I also tend to favour genres other than pop (broadly speaking), so make of that what you will.

but it is patently ridiculous to call the lyrics off-limits.

yeah no one here said this.

it's the strong implication when people single out lyric-focused reviews as being bad (by comparison, no one blinks when a review of non-instrumental music doesn't discuss the lyrics at all)

that's what rap is for

and country

xp -- conversely, I tend to gravitate toward singer-songwriters

It's not even "lyric-focused" reviews, it's reviews that literally don't mention the music at all (or do so only in passing). No one said lyrics should never be mentioned, or even discussed at length if interesting/useful/etc.

FWIW, I would consider it weird if a review of music with lots of lyrics never mentioned them.

Fwiw if I were reviewing an album that prominently features lyrical material I'd strive to do justice to both aspects, and ideally convey a sense of how they interact in the process. Not an easy task, I assume.

I mean, with some artists, like to use Berman as an example we've been talking about a lot, how do you not prominently discuss lyrics?? Or Mountain Goats or Leonard Cohen or Phoebe Bridgers/Oberst etc etc

Btw katherine, I don't feel like your review of Immunity (to take a much-discussed recent example) disregards the music. If anything, it seemed balanced to me. I'm speaking in hypotheticals here.

maybe this is thuddingly obvious but just speaking from my own personal experience it's a combination of A) it's just easier to write about lyrics because the words are already there, you just have to interpret them, and B) most (not all) music critics are not serious musicians, in fact I would wager far more spend their free time reading or doing other kinds of writing compared to those who spend their free time playing music. in other words, probably significantly more critics who were English majors than music majors.

Very much agreed, ums. When I speak of 'balance' I don't think it needs to be 50/50 if that's not what the artists themselves were going for.

Here's a review posted today that seems to mention music, in passing, three times — (a) calling the songs "spiky"; (b) describing one track as "a sing-song tribute" (though this is pushing it); and (c) mentioning that another track features "spirals of guitar that conjure memories of the Raincoats or the B-52’s." I guess this passes muster...

Btw, I don't think of the guitar in the Raincoats and B-52s as sounding very similar(?) Guess I'll have to listen, and see if I agree!

Not entirely fair; it also mentions the instrument lineup

also the "punk" positioning fills in a lot of shorthand; even if it's using two somewhat disparate bands as signposts, you at least get a sense of what time period it feels like the music could exist in

Fair enough — I concede the review makes clear this is a "punk quartet" featuring a guitarist, a bassist, a drummer, and a singer.

Here's a review that strikes a good "balance," IMO; talking a lot about both — https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/oso-oso-basking-in-the-glow/

xp -- I should clarify, my argument here is actually less from the perspective of a writer than that of a reader

But as a writer, surely your tolerance for reading a purely lyrical analysis is higher than the average Pitchfork reader.

sure, but, like, my classmates also made lyrics their aim away messages, not sheet music

Wasn't that a purely textual medium? That seems like saying "my friends always had music for their ring tones, not lyric sheets".

the point is, generally speaking they did so because that's the part of the song they particularly latched onto

This is the thread where I sing along to "Da Funk"

(and of course, one can do that through discussion of music as well as lyrics, but it is patently ridiculous to call the lyrics off-limits. for what seems like the millionth time, if an artist didn't want to intentionally incorporate words into their vision, for a reason, then they wouldn't include words.)

But I never called for the lyrics to be "off-limits" in an album review (I haven't got time to go skimming through every other post either, but I don't recall anyone else advancing that argument either). I said it was ridiculous for a music review to avoid mentioning the music completely.

and it's equally ridiculous for a review of non-instrumental music to avoid mentioning the lyrics completely, yet those reviews never make it into "_____ is stupid" threads

I've just had a listen to the first single off that Georgia Anne Muldrow album, on YouTube. It's fairly strange music as well as being good. It's unusual and evocative, like the other things I've heard by her.

It's not as if there's nothing there sonically of interest to write about. So it's odd that the reviewer didn't bother trying.

xp You are welcome to find an example and post it here! I only encounter the opposite scenario on Pfork.

Actually, here’s one up right now that only cites a few lyrical snippets... sounds like the lyrics aren’t very important? Maybe the music just isn’t very important for those other albums.

(Like this other current review, which basically seems to say the music is generic emo-punk, nuff said.)

Anyway, there's a lot of black-and-white going on here

I think album reviews should talk about what the music sounds like, I like when the reviewer is able to pick up on genre-synapses to posit where the music's lineage is from. If the music demands it then I would hope the reviewer would be able to make note of certain functional aspects of what it is doing, even if it's just an intuitive reading. If it doesn't, there's no real need to speak on "oh what an interesting first chord of "Thank U, Next"" because it is interesting but not worth commenting on.

If the music has lyrics then they requires comment. I prefer the reviewer to isolate a couple of lyrics to describe why they think the lyrics "succeed" or "fail" and to preferably do so in a literate and entertaining way. I do not like when a c+p lyric is summarily dismissed as "trite" or praised with an "we've all been there, amirite" kind of non-engagement.

I do not like much biography written into a contemporary review, I prefer intersections between work-and-biography to be explored critically, later, if warranted. I do not like a critic to summarize recent events, whether internal or external, leading up to the making of the album unless it plays a major role in the work itself.

I do like solipsistic personal anecdotes about the critic and their own life, I like when they describe the situation that they first encountered the music of the artist, I like extreme digression and tangents that are unrelated to the album at hand, in short, I like it when the critic is putting their own style on the line. That said, I do not like it when a review opens with a personal anecdote, or an extended commentary on current events as a metaphor for the album itself. I like when a record review beings with "The first thing you hear is..." and then a description of what you hear when you put on the record. I like it when critics talk about music succeeding and/or failing, I do not like it when critics talk about music being good or bad, unless they do so hilariously and overuse their superlatives.

first one that comes to mind, at the risk of sounding like a stan, is throwing muses' purgatory/paradise, an album that comes with a book of lyrics and essays accompanying every song, that says in the introduction, "All of the stories on this record are true." it is safe to say that the lyrics to this album are both important and easier than usual to interpret. but this is not borne out in the reviews. I hate picking on this one in particular, because it's not bad per se, but it mentions exactly two lyrics, at least one misinterpreted. https://www.popmatters.com/176319-throwing-muses-purgatory-paradise-2495710130.html

LOL @ really trying to make Linda Ronstadt a hipster icon

Ronstadt's version of "Willin'" is one of the most egregious mismatches of singer and material ever

and this is such a shallow reading of the original

The latter song is possibly the greatest example of Ronstadt’s artistic talent in those halcyon days. The Little Feat version of “Willin’” sounds like a sloppy celebration, but Ronstadt found the yearning in it, the loneliness of a job built on back roads and amphetamines

actually, strike shallow. It's just totally wrong!