pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

xpost MetalSucks still stays afloat too, it seems

(to unperson)

Just to reinforce the point that Deadspin had writers whom readers were eager to follow elsewhere: Drew Magary has 173K Twitter followers, and David Roth has 137K. Both of them have their own Wikipedia pages. Meanwhile, of the people listed on the Pitchfork masthead before last week, it looks like the one with the most Twitter followers is Philip Sherburne with 26K, followed by Puja Patel with 25K. Neither of them have their own Wikipedia page (nor, as far as I can tell, do any other former staffers, including Ryan Schreiber).

I know it was previously mentioned that there's really no such thing as a "household name" music critic, but it does feel to me that p4k, as good as the writing could be, didn't often publish writing that overwhelmed the institutional voice, if that makes sense.

It had a lot of great, admired writers, but doesn't really have a "break-out" voice like Magary or Roth, or like Charles Aaron in Spin, or even like the AVClub writers a decade ago. Not sure if this was an institutional prerogative, or if it's the difference between how Pitchfork related to its readers, compared to Gawker/Deadspin (as J0rdan S. described) or AVClub.

for the record i'm not saying i wish that p4k was more like the circa-2010 avclub

I mean that was essentially The Dissolve.

"Pitchfork" wasn't even a "household name" tbf

i've been thinking this week about an interaction i had a pitchfork festival some years ago where a random kid in the crowd noticed my VIP bracelet and asked me how i got it, and when i said "well, i write for the site" he said "what site?"

straight out of a Greta Gerwig script

A music Defector would need to be more like the columns section of Punk Planet than PFork, developing the personalities and engagement through snark.

I wonder what happened to that Veronica Mars character who got a Pitchfork internship

AllAboutJazz, Metal Sucks ... there are a half-dozen equivalents for country music and punk and maybe others. I actually think there's more room for these kinds of sites now than there used to be, and that they get better access to artists / artists are more open to talking to them than ever before. Every week, I see what I think is a reasonably "big" artist doing an interview with some website I've never heard of. (Granted, my reasonably big is probably two levels below the artists J0rdan is talking about that wouldn't give access to a fledgling music site.)

Of course, I don't think any of these kinds of places can actually make a living for more than one person, maybe two ... and certainly not 12-15.

thank you for the link jaymc, I enjoyed reading that long post by Mark Richardson

I wonder what happened to that Veronica Mars character who got a Pitchfork internship

― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes), Thursday, January 25, 2024 5:39 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

He reviewed a Swedish indie-pop album:
https://pitchfork.com/artists/5248-sakert/

(In his Rolling Stone piece, Marc Hogan wrote, "When a character on the TV show Veronica Mars mentioned getting an internship at Pitchfork, the editors playfully slapped his byline on one of my reviews.")

Playful slapping in the Pitchfork office

i've been thinking this week about an interaction i had a pitchfork festival some years ago where a random kid in the crowd noticed my VIP bracelet and asked me how i got it, and when i said "well, i write for the site" he said "what site?"

papal hotwife (milo z) at 5:36 25 Jan 24

A music Defector would need to be more like the columns section of Punk Planet than PFork, developing the personalities and engagement through snark.

Buddyhead's time has come again

Buddyhead: For when early ILX hot takes don't go as far or hard as one would want.

I sometimes still wonder if those Buddyhead bros ever saved up enough trade-in credit to get that Velvet Underground box set.

I will never understand a world where Buddyhead so thoroughly and meticulously destroyed the idea of "emo" as anything but the lamest, most poser-est loser shit around, and now we have to pretend this didn't happen as modern critics tell us we need to get serious about its return

whiney, have you met my friend MISTER DISCOURSE?

i said whiney don'tchu know that things go in cycles?

p4k, as good as the writing could be, didn't often publish writing that overwhelmed the institutional voice, if that makes sense.

yeah i think this was a relative weakness of the approach, especially as the institutional voice is what everyone got particularly weird about

A better Super Bowl analogy is probably something like the Grammys or RRHOF inducion...

ehhh i don't think there is a good super bowl analogy at all because there just isn't anything so central to music, and even by awards show standards the grammys are a weird perpetually out of touch joke that no one really takes seriously as meaning very much.

Mister discourse
Oh the time has come

Pitchfork maybe overcorrected in moderating wilder impulses, but I thought there were plenty of distinct voices there. Maybe not promoted as such, exactly, but still quite clear. (Some writing was better than others, as everywhere.)

she thought it was a literal festival for pitchforks

https://i0.wp.com/www.onesnladay.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/12-5-2009_0.30.17.01.jpg?w=624&quality=89&ssl=1

Tbf the kid was just there to see R. Kelly

am i remembering that there used to be another pitchfork.com that was a family website or something? in the early years? or am i confusing it with something else?

It was a livestock website

yeah the music site was pitchforkmedia.com until they bought the pitchfork.com domain in the late 2000s

have i really been reading pfork for half of my life? my goodness.

(i still fucking type "pitchforkmedia.com" sometimes)

i'm confused by this. has the url been sans "media" for this long and my browser/phone really are just super smart and nake up for my stubbornness?!

*make

my superior typing can always be relied on.

Wayback Machine suggests that pitchforkmedia.com was redirecting to pitchfork.com until sometime in 2020.

Having a weird site name, or one that you didn’t even really own the URL for, was sort of a tradition among music sites in those days of the Internet.

full disclosure (sorry, this might be kinda harsh): the name tainted them as questionably (but no, yeah pretty much) racist typical self-consciously ironic whiteguy schitt from the start. idk, just the fact that i didn't even get the name made me hate them even more.

and yet, i kept reading it. l.

thank you for the link jaymc, I enjoyed reading that long post by Mark Richardson

― Dan S, Thursday, January 25, 2024 5:58 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

You're welcome, Dan. His recollection of Amy P.'s hiring amused me because I've long wondered whether I had some small part in it. Back in 2005, I'd made the acquaintance of Scott P., and while hanging out one night at a bar (maybe with deej?), he asked if I had any suggestions for who he should hire as Pitchfork's news editor. Amy's name was the first one that came to mind, probably just because I'd read her Village Voice reviews and knew she was into indie rock. Not long after, I found out that she got the gig.

Of course, I'm not delusional enough to believe she wouldn't have otherwise been considered, it's just kind of funny to think about given that she ended up staying there for almost 20 years and is now being praised as the heart and soul of the site, etc.

With her name in the news about the layoffs, I remembered I randomly met Amy P. once years ago, pre-Pitchfork. She was a friend of a friend and we all went to see Dizzee Rascal together in Brooklyn lol. There's an early 2000s moment for you.

On the comparison with sports journalism, isn't that the tendency though ? Reaction videos, point-by-point analysis, a bigger focus on performance and competence, the artist as superhuman, ratings, fans of this VS fans of that. I'm sure you can trace it the vocabulary too: return to form, beating the odds / expectations, hit or miss, tackling, handling, delivering, doing a good job... I still agree with your broader point Jordan, but at the same time feel we're not so far from "post-game break down" and that there's definitely a parallel there.

Nick Sylvester on his time at P4K:
https://smartdumb.substack.com/p/24-years-of-pitchfork

lol great subhead

The grinch you hoped would never get gooped on. Alas. An ode to the early days.

how much of that is made up

xxxp plus stan culture's obsession w/streaming stats, chart positions and "new records," gaming the album charts as a sort of "Deflate-gate," etc.

If only this was the remaining staff playing a prank:

News
Ice Spice Shares New Song “Think U the Shit (Fart)”

By Nina Corcoran
January 26, 2024

Ice Spice reimagines our perception of shit and farts

I kind of want to hear Ice Spice cover “Lift Yourself” now

You think you're a shit, but you're only a fart
You think you're a shit, you are only a ...

Where's neanderthal

I kind of want to hear Ice Spice cover “Lift Yourself” now

― the new drip king (DJP), Friday, January 26, 2024 12:44 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is actually the last good kanye song