pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

depends on what kind of music you're interested in I guess

sure, I mean like in the sense of general music news orgs in legacy org veins, you're right, everything music news/release-wise has prob been atomized

I just follow a bunch of musical acts/labels/etc on a twitter list, listen to new music streams, whatever

It would be an interesting thread to pinpoint when people stopped caring about "music" as a single tent/interest...

Maybe 2004/2005 OK Go-era end of MTV/beginning of YouTube for normies and then and then the 2016/2017 Beyonce/Kendrick/Solange/Drake/Kanye nu-poptimism celebrity web-traffic suffocation for nerds

yeah thanks Whiney that's what I think I'm getting at with this

Yeah, the example I always point to is the movie Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, which is one of the funniest movies of the 21st Century but presupposes the viewer has some interest/connection to things as wide as Justin Bieber, Macklemore, Odd Future and Marshmello. It was a huge flop and I think because people weren't as invested in pop music to see a send up of big-tent pan-genre popular music (see also every music award show plummeting in ratings over the last 10 years).

Meanwhile, the MTV era had room for Spinal Tap, CB4, Fear of a Black Hat, 2Gether, A Mighty Wind...

it's almost as if some powerful force has completely devalued music (and musicians) for basically everyone

the novel coronavirus

yeah my questions is also kinda like: Is pitchfork the last legacy supposedly music covering thing in existence that moves the cultural needle in some way (way less than before, but still)

and if so that's pretty funny as it seems the conde nast thing has put it into heavy musk kanye new movie star news territory in a av club style or something

I guess cult of personality style things like needledrop still have music front and center but I've never really paid attn to that so maybe he covers video games or something instead now (or always has idk)

It's funny because in that 2004-2016 span, the internet basically said "OK, here's 8000 cheap and easy ways to find the music you connect with" and essentially killed off all monocultural institutions for delivery (MTV, terrestrial radio, cable TV, record stores) and most monocultural institutions of thought (Village Voice, Spin, Entertainment Weekly, Billboard becoming completely unusable). Then once 2016 rolls around all 8000 of those sources became "oops, it's only scalable if we cover the same 5 artists as everyone else"

Stereogum is still humming along and hasn't turned into covering Euphoria or whatever

yeah, stepping outside of the new org realm for a sec, those post-oink invite only music torrent music sites (which were all a good source for discovering things) have communities that seem like they've dried up, even the active ones

xp cool good to know

yeah man #no1curr

Yeah, there is no real "catch-all" "music" website other than Pitchfork, at least that I know of.

I follow Foxy Digitalis, The Quietus, and Aquarium Drunkard, RA only sort of, and a few columns here and there (unperson's jazz column for Stereogum, good example), plus this site. Even back in the heyday of Pfork, though, I was going all over the place to search for stuff, which is how I came to be here.

What I miss is spending hours sifting through fusetron and sending money orders in the mail.

i might add npr music (whose scope is necessarily narrower than a place like stereogum because demographics, but in other ways much more expansive and inclusive than a place like stesreogum) and (even though the brand has been worthless for at least 20 years) rolling stone.

I mean, pitchfork has a bunch of cultural/maybe unrelated to music stuff at the top of the page but they've published over 30 album reviews since the beginning of the month and we're only ten days in?

Yeah you can definitely find out about new album releases from pitchfork

If they had a sense of humor, they would have followed their interview subject’s suggestion for the title of this fluffcore piece:

She added, “I’m excited to see what clickbait you come up with. ‘Japanese Breakfast Slams Machine Gun Kelly!’”

Wow. At least the ridiculousness of that made me laugh? Pretty embarrassing though.

It makes Rolling Stone look even worse (though I didn't click thru to the source article, maybe it's also "half joking").

Sorry, I used the direct link in your post. Upon visiting the front page, I see that that's the top article right now.

Does this sort of thing happen often?

It makes Rolling Stone look even worse

This is a true statement that is also a total burn.

Thanks for the chuckle though. Yikes.

Does this sort of thing happen often?

Something really silly at the top of the page? Sure – this one is kind of a standout, though.

I think it's emblematic of why I stopped reading pfork, tho-- I don't know or care who Japanese Breakfast or Machine Gun Kelly are, and so much of the site is just taken over by bullshit like this.

They are content creators and entrepreneurs. Try to keep up!

Is that news item all that different from something that might have appeared on Pitchfork 15-20 years ago about a quirky intersection between mainstream pop culture and the indie-rock musicians that the site trafficked in? Like the Blue's Clues guy recording an album with Steven Drozd of Flaming Lips. Or some guy from the Shins dating someone on America's Next Top Model. Japanese Breakfast is a core Pitchfork artist (shows up the site's year-end lists, has played the festival), so it's not that weird for her to be covered in the news section.

some guy from the Shins dating someone on America's Next Top Model.

Did you mean "beating"?

Oof, I forgot about that part of it.

It's true they've always had quirky items, but this is a particularly silly one (and feels a little like, yes, straining for clickbait – especially when it was the top item). It's moved down on the page this morning, though.

I guess it also gets at a pet peeve around the current atmosphere in which fans/stans/Courtney Love/etc. pounce on even slight similarities in cover art, songwriting, whatever, and declare that "theft" has occurred.

(on that score, I'm glad Zauner was cool and laughed it off, but it feels like Pfork was hoping to stir the shit)

Yes fans would like to have a word with both of them

Breakfast at Kelly's Cover Connection: Go Lightly

Yeah Jayymc, I think that when more and more of that kind of article started to be more prominent was around when I stopped reading every day.

So it might not be that different but I guess it feels/looks even worse than that, to me at least.

This week’s Sunday review is breezily written, but the figurative language in the final paragraph sure whips up a gale:

Like fashioning a house of cards in a strong wind, Maxinquaye held its destruction in its own creation and its failure in its success: a borderline unclassifiable work that was Tricky in both name and nature. If we can no more remake Maxinquaye than land another first man on the Moon, it remains a magnificent singularity, a full-on solar eclipse of an album that blotted out all precedent to seek refuge in the shadows.

(those random italics were meant to be a link)

SZNZ: Spring appeared on the vernal equinox, a Sunday; it is the first of four EPs inspired by Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons that Weezer plan to release throughout the year. It’s a fitting gambit for Rivers Cuomo, and not only because The Four Seasons might be considered The Blue Album of Baroque music.

(No justification for this comparison follows)

Struggling to find meaning in this. Is there any?

The Four Seasons is probably the most famous and familiar piece of Baroque music there is, whereas the blue album is pretty far from that status relative to rock/pop albums.

The blue album is Weezer's debut; The Four Seasons was published when Vivaldi was in his 40s and had many compositions under his belt.

Is the writer saying they have something in common musically? Thematically?

The writer goes on to compare this four-EP Weezer project to Wagner's Ring, I guess because they both have four parts...?

Don't you know that referencing Classical music makes you look like you know what you're talking about?

I can’t defend the Wagner reference, but on some oblique level I sort of got the four seasons/blue album comparison. They are both melodic and catchy, and disproportionately well-known and iconic relative to other comparable works. Now that I type it out it’s pretty flimsy but it did make sense in my head somehow

iirc The Four Seasons wasn't a popular work until the 20th century

The Blue Album also didn't achieve popularity until the 20th century

Makes you think

you know, Vivaldi only made music for 4 seasons

Rivers Cuomo made albums for 7 different colors

including PINKerton

Alfred—enjoyed your Rush review! I think this sentence is missing a word (“rather”?):

Rush experimented with a slight skank on Permanent Waves’ “The Spirit of Radio,” which might explain why it became an actual hit in reggae-drenched England than in an America that went through the trouble of keeping Black disco-tinged acts off the air.

Thanks! I'll take a look.

The mag's first Rush review!

Nice piece!

thank you

Yeah that was great and thanks for the new dn

Is the bonus live album any better/different than Exit Stage Left?

Good review, Alfred!