pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Yes, but you are a golden man, Alfo

There is no decimal system with movies but there is a five star system on book and film reviewing places. I don't see how that is a massive difference here.

0-5 stars is different than a 0.0-10.0 decimal ranking; and ecumenical audience ratings read entirely differently than Pitchfork numbers— even when lone critics attempt at rating the entire canon (Maltin, Christgau), the rating system takes on a different tone and vibe and meaning. Pitchfork always felt like a panopticon

the travistan 0.0 was 2004, the peak of their power to make or break artists at will, and i always understood it as a power gesture, "we made you, we can also make you go away". i had more than one friend during that era who had careers stop on a dime bc of an ott negative pfork review. obviously that was 20 years ago now and the site evolved in many positive ways since then but i think its important not to brush all of that stuff under the rug of "ryan was just a kid back then"

Not to mention letterboxd!

Maybe I'm programmed differently, but going back to when I started reading rock journalism in the early '90s I've never given a shit about the stars, thumbs, or decimal points. I notice them but it's the review itself -- the prose, the strength of the argument -- that made me think about the object under review.

It's the tension between viewing criticism as a way to expand your thinking on a piece of art vs viewing criticism as an *ahem* consumer guide. Most ppl who care deeply about criticism view it as the former, but I'd guess most readers of any site (music, movies, whatever) tend to think of it as the latter, which is where the rot sets in (though I frankly think this was entirely established in media commodification long before Pitchfork ever came to be). And of course I'm a hypocrite because having said all this I will still sometimes check critics I trust's ratings when I'm just looking for a quick guide as to whether something's worth my time.

Best thing again would be not to have ratings at all but good look to any site trying to wrest some place in the discourse with that approach, today or at any point since I started following music!

Many xposts.

Imago bringing in the goods in '24:

it is no longer acceptable to give a Mansun album 9.3 on a whim

xp: ok, not to me. Never thought that decimals made the rating of culture worse.

xp to fgti

0-5 stars does also usually include decimal points tho.

There is no decimal system with movies but there is a five star system on book and film reviewing places.

It is true though that while current books are rated, old timey literary criticism hardly ever indulged in that. Wonder when it became default?

I was chatting w bf last night about it, and he said this: “an ideal critical body is one that seeks to put the work into the hands of those who would best appreciate it.”

fgti's bf otm x10000000000

I don't agree with that either. It says to me you need a level of musical training to appreciate music, that there is a certain skillset and a lot of my favourite writing about music, film, books have come from places with a bigger range than that.

I was chatting w bf last night about it, and he said this: “an ideal critical body is one that seeks to put the work into the hands of those who would best appreciate it.”

So no negative reviews whatsoever?

Yeah I’ve always vociferously argued against the “music training makes for better music writing” red herring

I didn’t know I’d be typing this morning about how a decimal system has a different effect on the tone of a review (and a system of reviewing) than a letter grade, or an integer system, or a “two thumbs up” system, but I’m happy to, just let me make a coffee and get off my phone

It is true though that while current books are rated, old timey literary criticism hardly ever indulged in that. Wonder when it became default?

― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 19 January 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Books works slightly differently as it's a lot older than recorded music or film. But you have a historical canon which certain critics will observe.

More recently you have things like Goodreads and Amazon ratings, which come with it's own issues.

xp

Well yes you have a canon but that is part of what I'm talking about - while it's pretty common to do a retrospective for, say, Bob Dylan or Scorsese and include numbered ratings for all of their work, you're unlikely to find an article on Jane Austen or James Joyce doing this - even when the critic is saying that certain books are superior and others lesser. The implication to some extent being I think that once you're in the Canon all your stuff is to be read, almost regardless of quality.

the travistan 0.0 was 2004, the peak of their power to make or break artists at will, and i always understood it as a power gesture, "we made you, we can also make you go away".

I actually found a 2004 NY Observer article about Pitchfork (bc I was fact-checking my claim that Chris Kaskie was hired as "advertising director"), and there was a whole thing about that:

When asked about his magazine’s ability to make or break a record, Mr. Schreiber (officially Pitchfork’s editor in chief and publisher) is a bit tongue-tied. “It’s unbelievably cool to have any kind of influence,” he says. “But I’m totally taken aback by it, and I’m torn by it. You want to be careful, because you know that if you have a really positive response, you are going to do this great thing for bands. And it’s the greatest thing in the world to see that band going around playing for 50 people and the next night, because of a good review, it’s sold out.” Mr. Schreiber paused. “But you have to keep it honest,” he continued. “And that’s why we have any impact, because people know that they’re going to get a straight answer from us. We would never trash a band that’s putting out its first record, just to kill it. Though, with something like the Travis Morrison record, I know that I would give it the same ranking no matter what.”

A 0.0? This reporter thinks that rating is grossly unfair (and, for the record, is a big fan of Travistan). Mr. Schreiber feels otherwise. “I think that a record can be so unlistenable and so terrible that it deserves that rating,” he said. “It’s totally subjective. So is it devoid of worth to me personally? Yes.”

I grew up on the Rolling Stone five-star system, Christgau's letter grades and Siskel and Ebert. But also reading Kael, e.g., so I was well aware you could do criticism without assigning a rating. I don't really have strong opinions about ratings vs. non-ratings, but if you're going to have them I thought Pitchfork's 100-point scale was a better way to do it than the flattening effect of turning things into three-star, three-and-a-half-star, four-star categories. Is there a real difference between a 7.7 and a 7.9? Sure!

Just starting to think of it, but there’s a difference between an individual critic giving a rating and a publication giving a rating (Pitchfork, heyday Rolling Stone). With Pitchfork, it never felt like “well, that’s a [critic’s name] 7.8.” Whereas Spin (I’m flashing back to scanning their numeric ratings) felt like individual opinions.

you're faced with a monolith which on one level features a broad and well-written catalogue of content, and on the other level controls with a tiresome sense of the fashionable what it really foregrounds, armed with a decimal-point scale that has given false credence to a process that was at least once upon a time not pretending to be objective. and so you have these great writers toiling away within a giant sorting mechanism.

imago otm here. I've read p4k since 2000, I've read great writing and discovered some great music, but it was always couched inside a "consumer guide" model that, as fgti was pointing out, was truly seperate and "above" any scene or musicians it was covering

xxp Obviously *readers* rate books on Amazon/Goodreads, but do critics? I'm not super-plugged in, but I'm struggling to think of an outlet that reviews books with quantifiable ratings, other than like starred reviews on Kirkus or whatever.

I've written both rated and non-rated reviews, and I don't feel like the rating affects the writing. But I will say that my least favorite type of rated review to write is something with a middling score, like 3 out of 5 — because if you just look at the rating it signals "meh," but those can actually be interesting works to write and think about depending on their context.

With Pitchfork, it never felt like “well, that’s a [critic’s name] 7.8.” Whereas Spin (I’m flashing back to scanning their numeric ratings) felt like individual opinions.

Hm, I'm curious why you think so. Both outlets published reviews with numerical ratings and bylines.

So no negative reviews whatsoever?

Who says a negative review won’t make an album sound interesting to someone? I have absolutely sought out things that I have enjoyed immensely because of how badly they were savaged (that Farrah Abraham album comes to mind, but also the Nasa album Ishan-Allah that came out when I was in high school, which was an absolute mess but also a ton of fun)

p4k writers are always very quick to mention that they don't set the scores

xp

pfork used to print bylines at the bottom of the review which i'm sure helped with the monolithic perception

come on ppl, siskel-ebert two thumbs is a dialectic! and even better is the spread of six-plus or however-many marks it is that TSJ gives/gave: it turns it into a collective argument abt what constitutes value. editorial star systems may well at some point involve discussion of and decisions about value, but the reasoning is opaque to the reader (bcz off the page): the guesswork becomes a projection that evades and suppresses the energies of analysis at the recieving end

b3n w4tson once complained to me that he couldn't always tell from my reviews if the record was good or bad: i forget what my response was at the time (irritated mumbling under my breath probably) but my actual real response today is "then i have succeeded! fuck you!"

xpost re Kirkus Reviews

Many reviews on Kirkus are paid for by publishers

Yeah I’ve always vociferously argued against the “music training makes for better music writing” red herring

yes do not saddle our goon tie with this — if ppl are looking for the “actually, your review is better if you know what you’re talking about” guy I’m that guy and upon this rock, etc.

Who says a negative review won’t make an album sound interesting to someone? I have absolutely sought out things that I have enjoyed immensely because of how badly they were savaged (that Farrah Abraham album comes to mind, but also the Nasa album Ishan-Allah that came out when I was in high school, which was an absolute mess but also a ton of fun)

Well same, but as an example do you think the critic attacking that Farrah Abraham album was thinking "hopefully by expressing how much I hate this I will get some people to be intrigued and check it out"?

But I will say that my least favorite type of rated review to write is something with a middling score, like 3 out of 5 — because if you just look at the rating it signals "meh," but those can actually be interesting works to write and think about depending on their context.

Film critic I know recently said "three star movies are the best kind", and while there is a hint of "some of the best bands of all time are bland" to this I kinda get where they're coming from lol.

I just mentioned to bf the positive response itt to what he said last night, and he asked me to add the other part of what he said: “it’s important to remember that a review is a conversation with the art itself” and yeah that’s also very astute. He works in theatre, tho, criticism and creation are necessarily a symbiotic thing

As far as I’m concerned, a decimal point system is fine and cool and interesting when employed in a free-wheeling Who Gives A Shit manner— much like the olden days imago made reference to. When the same system is applied to attempt to create a definitive “hierarchy of quality”, with a pretence toward objectivity, that’s when things get hairy; remembering now that even Fantano and his single-origin ratings expresses on every video, paraphrased, “but hey, this is just my opinion.”

It’s when the decimal system took on an air of definitiveness that its problems became apparent. The slight differences between a 7.1 and a 7.2, the conversation-generating differences between an 8.2 and an 8.2 BNM. It no longer becomes “a conversation with the art” and it starts to feel like a stock market

The system will inevitably favour “good music” over “interesting music”, which for over a decade left queers/non-whites/non-men/not-rich artists at a disadvantage, until the conscious correctives toward this problem were addressed

It also numbed the readership— albums that were talked about were those that had been slighted or those that had been highly-praised (8.5 and up); I think there’s even an expression for when an album was rated in the 6.0-7.9 bracket: tranched.

I can think of 100 artists who’ve stopped music/ended a project/needed therapy as a result of Pitchfork’s brutal treatment. As for those whose careers are indebted to the boost that Pitchfork gave them? I can think of two. Sufjan and Basinski. I can’t think of anyone else.

So no negative reviews whatsoever?

I would love someone to rate 'n' rank the Joyce Carol Oates oeuvre.

Or her tweets

As I stated above, I have picked stuff up due to negative reviews too, but I don't think it's true that critics writing negative reviews are, as a rule, writing them in the hopes that their negative opinions will get audiences to pick those records up.

xpostx2

I was chatting w bf last night about it, and he said this: “an ideal critical body is one that seeks to put the work into the hands of those who would best appreciate it.”

iirc this is how Allmusic approaches its ratings. What does this Horse Lords, John Mayer, or Miles Davis album deserve to be rated within the context of that artist's oeuvre and the scene in which it exists/existed.

Personally, I never had a problem with Pitchfork's editorial perspective but totally get why someone whose tastes clash with that perspective would be turned off.

didn't realize people still cared about bnm and 3 digit scores. i feel like the cultural cachet they once commanded eroded to almost nothing like, 6-8 years ago

As for those whose careers are indebted to the boost that Pitchfork gave them? I can think of two. Sufjan and Basinski. I can’t think of anyone else.

really? no one else?

We need to rate our 6.6, 7.4, and 8.2 posters on this thread.

I think Vijay Iyer definitely benefited from Pitchfork at one point deciding he was the only jazz artist they were gonna cover.

fwiw, the last 12 albums pitchfork put a BNM label on are fairly diverse, including experimental cellist Titanic, two metal albums, and Sufjan:

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/best/albums/

I was chatting w bf last night about it, and he said this: “an ideal critical body is one that seeks to put the work into the hands of those who would best appreciate it.”

iirc this is how Allmusic approaches its ratings. What does this Horse Lords, John Mayer, or Miles Davis album deserve to be rated within the context of that artist's oeuvre and the scene in which it exists/existed.

These are very different, imo - what you're describing is evaluating a record for an audience that already appreciates an artist, "good for a John Mayer record" is meaningless if you don't already know who John Mayer is.

Honestly I understand anyone who feels that Pitchfork ceasing to exist would be a net positive, I think at its worst it was pretty awful. I think the improvement in my mind was strictly the wider array of voices and more thoughtful takes. Maybe I'm unduly influenced by the peak work vs the valleys. I don't read it nearly as much or in-depth as I once did. But for recent work, a lot of the present company is included in the peaks. I always think of Ivy's review of Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy that's one that made me reconsider that album and her (always thought she was ok but that piece altered my perception wholly.)

I actually liked having the "BNM" stamp, separate from the ratings, meaning something like "P4K thinks this is special". You need highlights to have an identity, to introduce yourself, give a taste, and encourage a dive. Whereas I can't tell apart ratings herded within a 6-7 range when I have to factor in my own taste, the hype factor, the boost given to make it up to the artist for a previous underrated work. It's not as if I'm going to listen and say "no wait, that wasn't a 7.4, this was a 6.3, liars". A 100-system is bound to be inconsistent and I cannot take it seriously. But highlight 2-3 albums I find great, and I'm forever thinking "you got it right those times, and you might again".

As for those whose careers are indebted to the boost that Pitchfork gave them? I can think of two. Sufjan and Basinski. I can’t think of anyone else.

really? no one else?

― kissinger on my list (voodoo chili), Friday, January 19, 2024 10:29 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

uh yeah, that's some nonsense. my friends' band were single-handedly propelled by good reviews in pfork to indie minor celebrity status for a few years, led to them getting signed by 4ad, a euro tour, etc. just one random example

Same experience wrt Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. Even if I never knew Sarah as anything other than the singer of Silence.

i understand musicians having a complicated relationship with the site, but i really don't get ilx type music nerds hating it as readers/consumers. the quantity-quality-breadth of writing was amazing; can't imagine being anything but sad that that will soon cease to exist

One thing to clarify regarding the "BNM culture" thing - feels like there's a knee-jerk reaction to be like "who cares? Why so invested in their arbitrary hierarchies?"

When people fret about it on ILX, I give them the benefit of the doubt that they're speaking more to the weight that dumb lil' tag meant, or used to, from a marketing standpoint. At their height it would really drive sales!

I also think people are overlooking how powerful the scores themselves were as a device that carried a weight of importance other scoring systems didn't, which again is speaking to how this affected the artist from a marketing perspective. The snobby specificity of the number-point-number along with the calibrated-by-design difficulty of going above the +9 threshold meant that despite how good/innovative the writing itself was there was I believe still hordes of visitors that wouldn't even really read the write-up, they'd just come to sear the score into their brain (I always think of all the studies they do where people perceive wine/liquor as better worse purely based on a good/bad score). So they head to the shop and see a new album on the racks and their brain goes "this album = 8.6 BNM" and they most likely buy it. Perhaps, ideally, they read the whole review and liked the overall description, maybe just a memorable blurb from it resonated, but I do think a very large percentage had that glowing red number and BNM flashing in their mind above all else. Just a human psychology thing.

uh yeah, that's some nonsense.

Well, for every recording artist who owes Pitchfork a debt, I can name twenty more whose lives were enormously impacted, negatively, irreparably

And yeah, I feel a desire to reiterate at this time that I feel mixed-sad about this “folding”, and again offer condolences to those laid off, and a strong desire to see the Sunday Reviews continue (and join my voice in shouting out ivy. for illustrating that Talk Talk-Fumbling connection so brilliantly)

xp
yeah I appreciate fgti's perspective itt as I have never been the object of music criticism and have no idea what that is like. But it's frustrating how this conversation tends to dissolve into personal impressions. jaymc posted their 2003 top singles yesterday, and even as a moderate pitchfork defender I was surprised by it: https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/5924-top-50-singles-of-2003/

likewise, this isn't directed at anyone here, but it would be cool if the twitter anti-poptimists actually read all of Ewing's columns and explained their problems with the actual texts