pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

re: decimal scores - i agree the 'nuance' they provide isn't really helpful and they probably added to the occasional disconnect between editorial-imposed-score and review which always felt weird whenever i noticed it.

Consider this: do we evaluate films or books in the same way that Pitchfork has taught us/inured us to evaluate albums? Do you ever hear anyone talking about the new Scorcese as being an 8.1 or whatever?

film nerds kinda, but usually just a 5-point or 10-point scale. video game nerds (and the developers and publishers!) really obsess over metacritic scores but video game criticism is a disastrous field that far too rarely digs too much beyond 'does this work' and has more extreme versions of most of music criticism's issues.

it is no longer acceptable to give a Mansun album 9.3 on a whim, or a Fiery Furnaces album 9.6, or do a ridiculously misguided pan of Frances The Mute (you're not forgiven!) - everything has been carefully controlled to fit an acceptable editorial brand, to the extent where scores, BNMs and even EOY lists can be extremely accurately predicted. and the BNM thing has created another interesting phenomenon: when one of pitchfork's writers wants to review something obscure and musically off-brand, and really likes it - if the editors can't be convinced it's worthy of greater hype, it gets flung into the 7.8-8.3 pocket of No BNM For You.

i do agree about this as an issue and it probably could have been managed by being less obsessive about the p4k 'brand' and just allowing things to be given 8.3+ scores without BNM? let BNM serve as the broad recommendation label it currently does but be less precious about scores beyond that - that sort of brand management is always what rubbed people the wrong way about p4k. i think weird misguided pans are something we are better off without, though that doesn't mean negative reviews are bad - if anything having more would be ideal (use the full scale!) but it's better when a negative review is coming from a place of serious engagement and understanding instead of just lazy or cruel dunks. that all comes back to the general score inflation problem where the worst score anything can get these days is like ~4.5 on pretty rare occasion

9.6 was a little high for Blueberry Boat, but Pfork "compensated" it with misguided pans of two latter FF albums...

I used to know a film obsessive that kept a database of movies watched rated down to the decimal, which he would often revise. Like, he'd revisit a 6.8 and change it to a 6.3. That seems pretty nuts and really underscores (ha) how arbitrary these ratings are. Back when I worked at the AV Club there were no ratings, no grades, no stars, nothing like that, and I recall everyone on staff was pretty on board with the ethics or whatever of that, letting the words speak for themselves. But of course ratings became inevitable, because as much as people push back against criticism as consumer guide (XGau aside), that's probably how most people read it. Just tell me if it's good, you know? And as reading became shorter and writing less read, that number or grade became more important than the words. Especially as the site evolved and matured, not too many people griped about what a Pitchfork writer wrote, but they never stopped griping about those numbers.

The Blueberry Boat 9.6 next to NME's 1/10 on Wikipedia is classic and the original incentive for me to hear it

9.6 was a little high for Blueberry Boat, but Pfork "compensated" it with misguided pans of two latter FF albums...

never really listened to Fiery Furnaces but I really enjoy Eleanor Friedburger's solo albums a lot

Bitter Tea deserved 9.6

I always felt like people complaining about the focus on number score or BNM outcomes were kind of feeding the beast they complained about? I published lots of pieces with say a 7.9 score which in my head felt a bit higher, but it would be pretty dispiriting if that was the main takeaway from the reasonable chunk of time I spent writing those pieces.

The best way to tackle this thing has always been to promote good (or call out bad) writing (at P4K and elsewhere) without reference to the score or label, IMO.

9.6 was a little high for Blueberry Boat

disagree, their best and a highlight of the decade for me

i wrote monthly reviews for Decibel Magazine for 6 years and never gave an album a score. Decibel has number scores. my editor had to choose his own number after reading my review. i didn't always make it easy for him.

i would have given blueberry boat a 9.9 though.

i never think about pitchfork anymore but whenever it comes up i just mourn my dollar bin column in their short-lived print magazine. my most favorite thing to write! thanks j-hop! that kinda did it for me and the writing thing when conde nast pulled the plug on that magazine.

(having said that, i don't actually think things need to last forever. businesses. pitchfork. sports illustrated. restaurants. anything. more things should come and go actually. institutions are overrated.)

I like BB a lot but think it peters out a bit in its final third or so

a great tribute/retrospective/whatever you want to call this from Mike Haliechuk of Fucked Up, a band that definitely got the Pitchfork bump: http://lookingforgold.blogspot.com/2024/01/p-fork.html

xps Quantification (usually a star rating) was expected for most mainstream newspaper like the Chicago Tribune or Sun-Times, but not in the NY Times and many others - once I shifted to the Village Voice and later periodicals like Film Comment, Cinema-Scope, the New Yorker, I virtually never saw scores or ratings. Aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes were ridiculous, their "scores" are based on severely misguided methodology and mean nothing.

Just read about this bullshit of GQ absorbing pitchfork. I wasn’t the most avid pitchfork reader but they deserved better than this. RIP

I don’t know the numbers but theoretically wouldn’t expanding pitchfork into an event promoter - such as the Pitchfork Music Festival or even single artist/dj concerts/parties - had kept the lights on? Never had the chance to go to one - and I guess the upcoming one planned for March 2024 in Mexico City will be cancelled - but I felt the lineups were fairly unique and forward thinking compared to other ones.

I worked in one of the first Corona Capitals in Mexico City and they made a lot of money - not sure how hard or expensive it is in the US specially post-2020, but I mean Conde Nast shouldn’t have too much trouble promoting this concerts and finding a team focused on the live aspect of the Pitchfork brand.

Post from Joe Shanahan, owner of the legendary Metro here:

just reading up and on the Pitchfork roll up into GQ via Conde Nast. i use "pfork" for weekly or daily updates on bands / tours. i find the reviews valuable to gauge interest or even sometime to listen to something new. i am not fan of the rating system...never have been, but again a tool for the trade. i read this one today (the Guardian piece) and yes, lets see how it plays out but honestly this changes the playing field that "pfork" leveled back in the day as the festival and "magazine" flourished right here in chicago.

He added later, responding to a comment:

not sure it really effects the festival, mike reed and his team have good grasp on the booking with or with out pfork, in my opinion.

As far as I understand it, the Mexico City fest is continuing as planned, and the annual Chicago fest is returning this summer.

Can't remember where I read about Mexico City, but the Chicago Sun-Times reported on the Chicago fest:

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2024/1/17/24042468/pitchfork-music-festival-chicago-gq-merge-conde-nast-anna-wintour

it seems to be more union busting and dumb corporate meddling to try to squeeze out a little more profit than p4k being unsustainable or anything

i doubt the mexico festival gets cancelled given they've already sold tickets for it, and i haven't seen anything about the festivals team getting laid off (though they might have anyway, or might after mexico is done, idk)

Feels kinda like having a new Bandcamp Festival.

As some might remember, Pitchfork basically co-opted Intonation Fest in Chicago. It has always been run independently of Pitchfork, but Pitchfork does have a lot of influence the line-up and obviously the promotion. But you could usually find Chicago Jazz or Jazz adjacent band snuck in there by Mike Reed

when i reviewed film the place i was at the longest had a number rating system, but it ran at the bottom of the reviews… when anyone ever had a problem with a number, i was thankful that at least it meant they scrolled all the way to the bottom

The best rating system I’ve ever seen is the SF Chronicle’s “little man” system for film and theater - in paying various levels of attention in his seat.

Was thinking of the little man today too. And there’s a whole book out there on Robert Parker’s 100-point rating system (later the standard for Wine Spectator et al) and how it changed how a wine got it’s reputation, what it’s value was, and its status, all that stuff.

I rate albums using the BeerAdvocate system:

4.50 - 5.00 = World-Class
4.00 - 4.49 = Outstanding
3.75 - 3.99 = Very Good
3.50 - 3.74 = Good
3.00 - 3.49 = Okay
2.00 - 2.99 = Poor
1.00 - 1.99 = Awful

When I was reading SPIN in the early 90s they used the traffic light system

https://i.imgur.com/cJuYw55.jpg

This has been a horrible week, LA Times laying off 1/4 of its staff, a Baltimore newspaper being bought by a Sinclair Media person, Sports Illustrated and ILM specific Pitchfork going under. And T^rump thinks he's a King.

a great tribute/retrospective/whatever you want to call this from Mike Haliechuk of Fucked Up, a band that definitely got the Pitchfork bump: http://lookingforgold.blogspot.com/2024/01/p-fork.html

― Murgatroid, Friday, January 19, 2024 8:15 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Thank you for posting this, it's a really fascinating read. It's also (I think, unless I have missed a bunch of stuff over the years) very rare insight into the other side of all this, ie. how Pfork could affect musicians in a positive way. Like if Pfork wasn't going through whatever is happening to it now, I don't even know we would hear this viewpoint at all. It might even have been considered foolish for a musician to post something like this when Pfork was at the top of its game, or even when it wasn't at the top of its game.

I want to say this part is moving, and it is. But there's also sadness and anger that this stuff is presumably just going to go away and things like this can't happen again.

Thank you Pitchfork writers for taking our music seriously before we did. Your words changed my life.

mississpi, picking up on a thread lost to the "click to view all" button, are you familiar with youtubers like hazel and ThorHighHeels? very much interested in video games for their vibes and atmosphere, and willing to reclaim a lot of what we'd see as objectively broken mechanics (janky controls, bugs) as part of that. I do think it borders on shtick sometimes, especially with ThorHighHeels more than hazel, but maybe that's because I've watched too many of their videos in one go. at any rate while I'm not entirely convinced I think the impulse to judge games outside of the traditional "objective" parameters is a positive one, if only because it might make their viewers consider that this is how other artforms can be approached, too.

i read that based on your words, Position2, and it was really quite moving at times, and weirdly had some resonances with things in my life.

same, that was a great read

I remember Alfred's Listen Without Prejudice review made my week.

― you can see me from westbury white horse, Friday, January 19, 2024 11:04 AM (yesterday)

Just saw this and am thanking u

Yeah - just adding to the chorus for that Fucked Up article.

ilxrs wr bst ptchfrkrs. fr rl. ilxrs and simon.

tylerw's Invisible Hits column was great

I bought many albums based on Dominique Leone's reviews around the mid-00's. Also distinctly remember getting Blueberry Boat (a favourite album) because of that 9.6.

The first iterations of the decades lists were also very crucial resources for me.

Yeah, Dom and Mark R were my favorite pfork writers back in those early days and their participation on ilx is what originally had me hooked. I don't think I've ever anticipated an EOY list like I did the personal top tens they'd post here.

srsly as soon as i found ilm i bailed on pitchfork as the type of information was more fun and reliable here. late 2001. except seeking any nabisco stuff there iirc. i wasn't hostile just increasingly lol.

https://apnews.com/article/music-pitchfork-gq-conde-nast-wintour-media-ecaef9445b5d9f86d9990c181306cb71

In screenshots of a public Slack channel accessible by Condé Nast staff, obtained by AP, Melissa Consorte, a Condé Nast vice president, wrote on Wednesday, “Pitchfork is not going away as a brand.”

“This is not a terrible thing for us — GQ and P4K were getting in each other’s lanes and this makes it easier for us to use them in a complementary fashion,” she said, using the popular shorthand for Pitchfork. “I think this will only help P4K feel bigger and more recognizable in the long term.”

On Thursday, Consorte followed up: “Pitchfork is not being shut down or rebranded as GQ — from a client and user perspective, everything will look the same.” And in another public Slack channel, Joanna Melissakis, Head of Sales, Beauty at Condé Nast, wrote that “Pitchfork will remain a standalone brand but the internal reporting structure is changing.”

Does that mean their editorial approaches were overlapping too much, and now P4K will focus on different stuff than whatever it is GQ covers(?)

xp I only see this from the outside, but that sounds like such bullshit. If Pitchfork is "not being shut down or rebranded" why were so many of the people who work there fired?

Does that mean their editorial approaches were overlapping too much, and now P4K will focus on different stuff than whatever it is GQ covers(?)

No, it means "We didn't anticipate the backlash — time to start backpedaling! Leak to the press! Leak to the press!" No one laid off will be getting re-hired, of course.

Makes it sound like GQ and P4K were both covering music, so why not fire all the P4K editors because the GQ ones are much better at it.

Nah, this seemed like the plan all along. Not sure why they would end Pitchfork as a brand. They just want to keep it running on the cheap.

Anna Wintour was probably meeting with an accountant who line-itemed all sorts of dubious expenditures, like her sunglasses budget or hair person or wardrobe or dinners with dictators or whatever, and she kept saying "no, no, not that, no, I need that, no" until she came across "Pitchfork" and asked "what's that?" And the accountant shrugged, so she said "cut that, then." And everyone in the office kind of looked around nervously and shrugged. And then they went home and their 30-year old kids told them how dumb a decision it was.

It's analagous to when New Times Media bought The Village Voice and fired everyone - the editorial staff, the film and music critics (Taubin, Hoberman, Christgau, etc. etc. etc. there were so many great ones) and opinion writers like Nat Hentoff, all of them giants - and then just destroyed it as a brand. I'm wondering, did they make any money doing that?

Does that mean their editorial approaches were overlapping too much, and now P4K will focus on different stuff than whatever it is GQ covers(?)

i think the opposite - aligning p4k's editorial approach with gq's (which will surely be for the worse) and if there's anything in terms of reducing overlap i'd expect p4k to do less profiles because that's about the only music coverage gq does

Larry Fitzmaurice:

"If you were a left-of-center indie act looking for a P4k look before, good luck trying to get into whatever GQ has in store features-wise (my prediction: BNM as something that applies to things beyond reviews, e.g. a social sell like "Playboi Carti's new album is named Best New Music—read our exclusive interview and check out this fashion spread with the rapper now")."

We are talking about a site that had a beer section not that long ago