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

"an oroborous of content and received wisdom" nails it, I think. Almost as if there is a desire to create a canon despite the rest of the world seeming increasingly very post-canon

It’s not really a problem if a consensus forms around what the most popular/“best” acts of a particular time forms; the issue is when everyone talking about it says exactly the same thing with no nuance/interrogation/sense of enjoying the music as a tangible, meaningful artifact

otm

i think only food adjectives should be allowed in reviews

agreed with Dan— this is passionless, bored (and thus boring) writing that doesn’t say much about the way the music sounds at all.

what the hell?

"This was No. 1 record of 2013 in 2013. I put it as my No. 10 about of 2013 in 2023 because..."

Hyden does that a lot, putting his favourite music later down in the list in favour of an objective "best" at number 1. I think the distinction between the two is bunk, but...

The writing is literally fucked. Like it went through a bad autocorrect.

ranking stuff or giving it star ratings or even percentages is fine, taking the scores very seriously indeed and writing at length about your rationale is almost always boring and shit

lists have killed writing basically

and here's why.

rankings really are lame because people don't bother to dig deeper. but i think we're conditioned to want them now.

we have an evaluation form we use at work where we give feedback to our instructors and there's of course a numerical rating alongside the feedback and almost everybody focuses on that instead of the feedback.

likewise, "such and such got 85% on Rotten Tomatoes" without bothering to understand what that means in terms of data aggregation and reading a few reviews.

The emphasis on scores and year-end-lists and chart placements and televised award wins gets heavier every year. If a great record slowly generates a good amount of steam between 2013 and the present, well too bad. They didn't get people's attention right away, so what good are they?

It feels strange how desperately certain types need to revise the canon of the 80s and 90s but rigidly worship the canon of 2007 to present.

what's the music equivalent of oscar bait?

how so? xpost

what's the music equivalent of oscar bait?

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 23 June 2023 15:08 (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

jessie ware

nah

nu-slowdive

if you're talking grammy bait, it's stuff like silk sonic, jon batiste, jacob collier

what's the music equivalent of oscar bait?

Simple, you just need to be [artist x who had a hot album 2-8 years ago] and release literally anything.

(That's "Artist X" meaning "full in the blank", not "artist multiplied by")

lol President Keyes

nu-slowdive

― imago, Friday, 23 June 2023 15:13 (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this wasn't entirely serious ftr sorry lol

what's the music equivalent of oscar bait?

H.E.R.

yeah basically anything that sounds like thrice xeroxed versions of 70s stevie

is there a music site even worth looking at in 2023? i can't remember the last time i looked at music reviews online. its been years. i figured they would just make me sad. seems like a bygone era. i'm not going on tiktok...

(there must be brainy cool young writers out there somewhere. does anyone do cool zines anymore?)

I thought the Lumineers were something-bait, but I don't pretend to understand anything released earlier than 1978 or later than 1989.

is there a music site even worth looking at in 2023? i can't remember the last time i looked at music reviews online. its been years. i figured they would just make me sad. seems like a bygone era. i'm not going on tiktok...

(there must be brainy cool young writers out there somewhere. does anyone do cool zines anymore?)

i should make a zine. for real! i know smart people. who don't want to make lists. i feel like there is a serious lack of fun when it comes to music writing. its all so......not fun. what i see of it anyway.

i should check in with the quietus. they have always done good work. stereogum....i made the mistake of looking at a best of metal 2022 list and it was rough. to read. i stopped reading it.

blogging 2.0 aka newsletters are all the rage these days, i prob have more fun writing mine than any other kind of writing i do, unfortunately i never have the time to write it

i'm too old to substack or whatever. i think i'll make a real zine. (i don't go to cities so i never see new zines but i know they exist.)

that thing that JBR is on. those are cool. i get e-mails about them. seems like an easy way for people to speak to people online.

the stereogum article on the battle of the depeche tribute bands in la is the best thing ive read in a minute

some friends of mine around the corner have an arts space and they have a risograph machine. it could make great covers for a mag.

x-post - will make a note of depeche tribute bands article.

there is a ton of stuff on here that is probably really good as long as you don't mind searching through it all. i remember reading some outstanding disco writing on one of the RBA sites. they even had a newspaper that i never saw. anyway, i should just shut up and read some of this. there is a long meredith monk piece that looks good.

https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/

https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2017/03/meredith-monk-feature

https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/pioneering-women

some friends of mine around the corner have an arts space and they have a risograph machine. it could make great covers for a mag.

hell yeah! i could probably get you "distribution" in a few spaces out here in the Bay if you made one ... i put that in quotes because it would be like, storefront record stores and art galleries that no one really cares about except a few hundred people lol

haha, that's good inspiration, cheers! and its a reminder that i could ask my pal raub roy to write something. and you too! we shall see. sometimes i blab a lot and nothing happens. but sometimes things happen too! you never know. i definitely need a summer hobby. i'm going a little stir crazy, creatively. and if those texas winds start hitting massachusetts, i'll be inside for awhile. its been getting pretty brutal here in summer. we get some unlivable weeks.

On the topic of lists, there's this week's "70 Best Alt-Country Albums" over at Paste:

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/alt-country/the-50-best-alt-country-albums-of-all-time

Apparently it's repackaged from 2016, but they managed to leave in a sentence about how, if Justin Townes Earle can "manage his demons," he just might be one of the all-time greats.

is there a music site even worth looking at in 2023? i can't remember the last time i looked at music reviews online. its been years. i figured they would just make me sad. seems like a bygone era. i'm not going on tiktok...

(there must be brainy cool young writers out there somewhere. does anyone do cool zines anymore?)

i've heard three of those! ingenue is alt-country? in what world? ingenue is tied with meantime for my fave album of 1992. i wore that knitters album OUT in high school. and obviously that mekons record is top ten of 1985 material. the rest i don't listen to. maybe by accident.

x-post

i like to think that i listen to almost everything but i guess i've met my match with alt-country. i picked up about 50 CDrs of hillbilly and rockabilly and country swing comps and i've been playing them for weeks at the store. someone burned a ton of bear family and euro-reissue label discs of that stuff and they sound great. and they made photocopied inserts of the covers which i always appreciate.

There are definitely still zines and zine shops.

it's so weird because listen I've worked in the content mines and do have sympathy for everyone who's gotta pull up their pants and, say, shit out Taylor Swift article to do numbers when the tour is going on but like who asked for this?

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

please don't pull _up_ your pants to shit

writers shit through their fingers

have sympathy for everyone who's gotta pull up their pants and, say, shit out Taylor Swift article

writers shit through their fingers

― ivy (BradNelson)

fine but why you gotta wear pants to do it

first rule of content mine club is shit your pants

I’ve said this many times but Neil McCormick is the *worst* music writer in the British media by a cunt-ry mile. For a start, every one of the Arctic Monkeys is a millennial. pic.twitter.com/ObVQ7pCwtE

— Mic Wright (@brokenbottleboy) June 24, 2023

I'd say it isn't inaccurate to state that Gen X sometimes adopts bands from younger generations, especially ones that play real music with real instruments. Wet Leg are the newest Gen X house band, for example

or older, even.

I have never used "utter" or "utterly" in any piece of published or unpublished writing.