pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

none of y'all deserve larry smith production

Miss me with that, unperson and Soto

"honesty" = "someone being wrong but with confidence"

a lonely word too

I like Back From Hell and Down With the King

it's also easier to be a harsh and ahistorical critic than a good one

a lonely word too

everyone is so untrue

they downgraded interpol, nice

the downgrade made a connection between the interpol singer and ian curtis' voice, and that is very bad. it is perhaps my biggest musical writing pet peeve, and i don't even like interpol, i swear. i just cannot fathom a universe in which music writers repeatedly make that connection. interpol singer is not within 1 trillion miles of ian curtis in any way or form, not even superficially

i have been listening to stories from the city/sea obsessively the last few weeks so i wholeheartedly agree with the upgrade

I'd be more peeved if we'd pulled the site's frat boy attitude toward queer artists at its inception.

a harsh and ahistorical critic

Those Run-DMC reviews are definitely harsh, but they seem pretty cognizant of rap history as it stood in 2005.

The recent ones that come to mind where I think they were way off:

The 1975 - I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it
6.5 -> 8.7

Kanye West - Jesus is King
7.2 -> 4.2

Also would be nice if they had reviewed Paramore, Taylor Swift, et al. pre-2017 but I appreciate that they're working to rectify some of those gaps.

Kanye West - Jesus is King
7.2 -> 4.2

A little disappointed there wasn't at least one "Middling Sub-Best New Music Score" -> "Not Even a Passing Grade" shift.

the funny thing about this whole monday morning quarterbacking effort is that they seem to think that *now* they've reached full enlightenment and aren't a product of their times just as much as those old reviews were a product of their times, that future generations will look at say, Turnstile's Glow On, and feel like yes Pitchfork was right this is an enduring and influential masterpiece

Just wait for the next Pitchfork Anniversary retrospective where they reconsider the Best New Music handed to Wiki's Half God.

i would support a constant churn of revising all their ratings on a weekly basis dependent on twitter mentions, sociological change, clickthrough, astrological charts, reverse alphabetical order and blood type of original reviewer

all universal donors get a 1.6+ hike

all ratings should be contained within magic eye images

you really want to know how that new Low scores? well, cross your eyes a little and just zone out...

One of my only superpowers is being able to see Magic Eyes instantly. And no, my eyes are not permanently crossed.

what will be the first record to get a second revision? and will it be low>high>low, low>high>higher, high>low>high?

"It was cool to like Prince in 2021, and this was arguably not the case in 2004. Now that it's 2025 and we know more about his sexual proclivities, Musicology cannot in good conscience be higher than a 5.4"

and so the new editor-of-chief was chosen not by a vote, but by universal recognition of the chosen pair. chosen pair of eyes.

good money to be made with a social media scanning algorithm that can fix all these automatically on a minute by minute basis

Thread:

While I'm here, when I started at Pitchfork, you had to write 50 reviews *gratis* before you started getting paid (won't even tell you the number of bounced checks I collected). Workload was 2x 800 word reviews weekly, hence all the crazy long intro graphs in those old reviews.

— βετα (@betaworldpeace) October 5, 2021

The Grimes downgrade makes me think her next album has to be outstanding or she has to take a long hiatus or she’ll get ravaged by critics.

thing is, that new album really did suck badly (imo)

she could just put some good music out, it would probably help her case!

last year's album was fine.

Welcome to realiti.

Oh well if anything goes wrong she can continue doing 6M NFT scams.

thing is, that new album really did suck badly (imo)

I disagree, I think it was really strong and still sounds good, and the scramble to downgrade it 1.5 years later (because the "narrative doesn't cohere" or w/e) is laughable, but that's lyfe I guess

Welcome to New Jerzi

oh, i remember! i think it was well liked here. just saying, to at least one set of ears it really was pretty bad. her descent into being a really, really shitty person in the last couple years probably did contribute though, i can see what you mean

While they’re at this revisionism might as well get Ignition remix out of their top 20 songs of the 2000s

but i think i'm just a sucker for more low frequency synths that are less harsh paired with reverbed out vocals being delayed to infinity. it's a trick and easy to do but i like it. by contrast her new music seems designed to reflect the awful future she's actively trying to create

I agree with KM, not a fan of the contrived concept, the obnoxious lyrics and specially the sound of it. I could ignore it all if it sounded good but it’s super harsh sounding to my ears.

I think she actually corrected a lot of the mixing complaints for the deluxe version iirc, but I never gave it a chance.

wow@ that tweet thread

I think also something that I failed to connect with is all the saturation. Her previous albums had many layers of sound with purpose, MA suffers from way too much shit going on that only sounded to me as throwing random ideas without a core to hold on to. I can only remember 3, max 4 songs from the album.

That tweet thread

Hard not to just get an overwhelming "all the kids at school say this is [cool or uncool] now and I want to fit in" vibe. Bad for their brand! It emphasizes a perception that they are no longer thought leaders, even if they'd counter that by showing examples of times they were "right" about a bunch of acts before they blew up or were reassessed. Let's go ahead compile a list of examples that convey the opposite impression of the most important thing our brand depends on its readers believing... that we are the tastemakers. What else can they say differentiates them from a marketing POV?

the intro at the top was pretty clear that it was a list of 19 individual grievances from current staff, but p4k should never have expected people to actually read that

Ironing out the challops

"Here are 19 album review scores that we’d change if we could."

Odd framing; obviously they could, arguably they are

The implication is that their past is both holy and wrong

I liked the "if we could," makes the previous scores seem legally binding

basinski has locked in their 10.0 and has excellent representation

‘I would change the score, but you gotta take a day off and fill out all these forms.”

Hard not to just get an overwhelming "all the kids at school say this is [cool or uncool] now and I want to fit in" vibe. Bad for their brand! It emphasizes a perception that they are no longer thought leaders, even if they'd counter that by showing examples of times they were "right" about a bunch of acts before they blew up or were reassessed. Let's go ahead compile a list of examples that convey the opposite impression of the most important thing our brand depends on its readers believing... that we are the tastemakers. What else can they say differentiates them from a marketing POV?

― Evan

The lack of specialty in every major music publication is a sad race to see who clickbaits the audience the most.
Pitchfork placing attention to artists like idk Bad Bunny and completely ignoring artists like Fleet Foxes which definitely seem like a much uncooler choice than Bad Bunny in 2021 but you’re right it looks like a lame and dishonest attempt to fit with the cool kids. Moving into reviewing genres out of indie rock is a great move but bandwagoning into the same 5 reggaeton or the same 10 hip hop artists every other major publication raves about is not being a tastemaker. They need to start championing their own take on music or I don’t see the point of p4k when something like Rolling Stone exists and does it better.

I don’t even know what’s the age audience for p4k anymore… If I go to my mid-20s nephews talking about the latest Drake or Bad Bunny album I doubt it’ll give me a cool aunt vibe.

critics haven't liked a new drake album since like 2015 though

they still do tastemaker stuff but only really in the same indie rock/more accessible side of experimental music area as always

the review revisionism piece is weird, some of them are very obviously correct & some are just 'why bother including this' or seem like over-corrections? like no, turn on the bright lights was never an instant classic but it's weird that they don't rate it much at all now? and i love chairlift but moth really was a 7.

Hard not to just get an overwhelming "all the kids at school say this is [cool or uncool] now and I want to fit in" vibe. Bad for their brand! It emphasizes a perception that they are no longer thought leaders, even if they'd counter that by showing examples of times they were "right" about a bunch of acts before they blew up or were reassessed. Let's go ahead compile a list of examples that convey the opposite impression of the most important thing our brand depends on its readers believing... that we are the tastemakers. What else can they say differentiates them from a marketing POV?

They were never thought leaders imo. I listened to r'n'b while they were pushing mediocre indie like Animal Collective. They caught up, good for them.

That's great but I'm talking about how their overall readership perceived them, especially when they were breaking acts left and right. Their brand is based on this.