Gutted about what's happened to Pitchfork.
Bizarrely, both me and my son had pieces pending when the news came - and they've both just run.
One of the great things about Pitchfork is the space they've given to young writers to go wide and deep (old writers too!). Here's Kieran Press-Reynolds with a thinkpiece on shitpost-modernism: "the flood of 2020s music that straddles the line between serious and silly, shattering conventions and exploding taste boundaries".
In the piece, I reference a rave review in NME that turned my head around after initially finding the album off-putting. By Barney Hoskyns, that review can be read here at Pantheon. And here (also here as scans) is a much later piece where Barney interviews Cocteau Twins about the length and breadth of their career.
On the subject of music journalists and music journalism, there's been a lot of interesting, if necessarily anguished commentary about what happened at Pitchfork and the future for criticism. I particularly like these thoughts for NPR music from Ann Powers, especially the last of her three points:
"To me, the best thing about music writing is that compared to other elements of the culture economy, it’s relatively useless. Some forms of entertainment journalism feed the star-maker machinery more than others: celebrity profiles, for example, flesh out the personae that turn artists into fetish objects.... What I love about music writing , though, is that it can sidestep that productive, competitive side of culture, the market-driven need to sell more tickets, more records, more streams. Instead, great music writing messes with productivity by creating a space to slow down and really immerse in someone else’s creative work. To really listen..... I feel nourished by the daring of my fellow scribes, by the way their words are indeed extraneous to the churn of art and emotion as product, carving out a zone where the pause matters, time spent thinking, laughing at a good line, feeling my brain crackle as it absorbs an insight.... In the end, what matters about music writing is exactly the same as what matters about music: It isn’t leading anywhere productive. Instead, it’s offering a break from the grind, a free zone for thought and a few glorious, rejuvenating moments of fun.... Music writing says: Slow down. Pay attention. It witnesses the unfolding of meaning within measured time, and calls back to it"
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ReplyDeleteIt is very sad about Pitchfork. In its early days I mentally pigeonholed it as the house journal of the American Indie scene, and so tended to ignore it, but in recent years I have been reading it more and more, and finding more and more good things in it. Either it has got better, or it was always good and I have only recently realised.
ReplyDeleteOf course this is an absolutely brutal period for journalism of all kinds, caught between the anvil of slumping ad revenues and the hammer of AI content creation techniques. I was shocked to discover today that Sports Illustrated has gone out of business. It felt like one of those names that had been around forever and would go on forever.
In the case of Pitchfork, several people have been making the argument that the role of music journalists as tastemakers and gatekeepers has been fatally undermined in the age of streaming. But it's not clear to me why that should suddenly make all the difference now, 22 years after Napster.
That said, this piece by Casey Newton is an interesting read, making the case quite persuasively that it was the platforms that killed Pitchfork: https://www.platformer.news/why-pitchfork-died/?ref=platformer-newsletter
When institutions look strong and successful, it's easy to fixate on their flaws. But when they go down due to corporate machinations, their strengths become easier to see, especially when nothing more positive that could reach the same audience is on the horizon. It's much more likely that The Quietus won't exist 5 years from now than that former Pitchfork editors and writers will construct a new site that improves upon it while still reaching the same readers. Conde Nast's loss will be Substack's gain, but that's another way of telling people who used to have union jobs to embrace gig work.
ReplyDeleteThink this is the inevitable downstream effect of popular music no longer being the pulsebeat of society, tbh.
ReplyDeleteI suspect in the medium term the only music publications that will survive will be genre-specific (esp. Metal).
Yes I am sure you're right about the place of music in society. And I think it relates to the point about streaming, too. The meta-musical factors that gave performers much of their power - their looks, the things they said in interviews, the cultures they sprang from - are all stripped away in the age of streaming. Discovery used to be based on recommendations in the press - both specialist and generalist - and TV appearances, which all in various ways highlighted those meta-musical factors. Now it's based on skimming through recommended playlists, seeing what catches your ear, usually within the first 30 seconds. Everything beyond the music is hidden.
DeleteThe music of Boygenius is not particularly interesting, but they are impressive in the ways they have managed to use social media, interviews, styling and live shows to build identities for themselves as personalities and as a group. It's not easily done these days.
I agree that these things are interrelated. And it's not just music. I always get a bit disheartened when another local pub closes. But on the other hand, I'm not likely to return to my old social habits, so I'm a part of this process of change as much as anybody else.
DeleteThere seems to be a move away from the old compulsive habits of the past (I think even drug use is rapidly declining), but I'm not sure if this is a general societal trend towards sobriety, or if it's because people are getting their compulsive kicks more and more through digital culture, such as video games and the internet,
Probably it's a bit of both.
As we're all commenting on this blog, I'm sure we're all of the same mind about the importance of music writing. There probably isn't much more to add to the Ann Powers quote above. But I think one one other crucial element of music journalism isn't emphasized enough: interviews. In the pre-internet years writers were part of a publicity ecosystem which artists and record labels couldn't afford to shun. Scribes who produced "useless" chit-chat were typically connected to media outlets who also functioned as publicity machines. The press wielded just enough power to compel artists to speak to these journalists, essentially meaning (by proxy) the audience could question the artists. It produced fantastic work, ranging from professional interviews in which the writer used serious, intelligent questions to nudge the artist to elaborate on their work/persona (e.g. Simon's interview with Public Enemy) to uproariously messy affairs in which artists were pushed so far out of their comfort zone they became perversely fascinating (e.g. Lester Bangs' Gonzo trainwreck sit-downs with Lou Reed). The effect was the same, though. The public got at least some hint of the real person behind the music. Writers weren't gate-keeping, but gate-crashing.
ReplyDeleteToday, as mainstream journalism wanes, as writers become marginal, the bigger artists have decided to raise the drawbridge on the peasants. It goes under the usual cover of "using media to speak directly to fans, wow, what an amazing time to be alive!" but we know it's phony and choreographed. I saw a story recently about how great it was that Taylor Swift had figured out she could bypass the media and talk straight to her fans. No! What a loss for her fans-- that Taylor Swift will never have to answer a real question, reveal something about herself that isn't carefully pre-fabbed and airbrushed and manicured by her publicist. You see it across the board, not just with her. Artists have always want to control their image to the nth degree and now it's incredibly easy. Journalism has always held the powerful accountable, in music no less than politics, and that's what I'll sorely miss.
My other thought is that, coincidence though it is, putting the thoughts on the demise of Pitchfork side by side with the piece on shitpost modernism could be read as part of the same historical shift. There are plenty of reasons for the decline of journalism, but one of them has to be the ongoing transition from the Gutenberg world to...well, whatever new world the work in Kieran's piece points toward.
Yes, the shitpostmodernism culture - or anti-culture - is part of the thing that is calling time on the idea of music or arts criticism. Partly because it's shattering the ability to sustain linear thought.
DeleteMy students don't appear to read any music criticism - despite mostly being musicians. They get their info from streamers or laterally from recommendations and word of mouth. Maybe if they get really into a particular artist, they'll read up, dig deeper. But quite a few seem to resent the idea of someone else's opinion having more weight than theirs or anybody at all.
How that attitude translates to the educational environment, where you are supposed to learn about things you don't know already about, from an expert.... is anyone's guess.
There is an interesting contrast with film journalism and film culture. Cinema is an older art form than rock, and is arguably no more central to the wider culture, but the debate about film seems to be amazingly healthy, thanks in large part to Letterbox'd. It has created a focal point for the conversation, where fans, professional critics, and film-makers will discuss everything from "Birth of a Nation" to the "Mean Girls" remake.
ReplyDeleteEvery now and then you see people talking about "a Letterbox'd for music", but none of those ideas ever seem to get anywhere.
This is a valid point, but as I'm in full-on Debbie Downer mode I would just add that discussion around music, film, and other art will always be robust and healthy. There will continue to be excellent writing about these forms. It's just that very little of it will have any impact on the wider culture. We'll have small pockets of enthusiasts, that's all. Will Self announced the end of the novel, a few years ago, but he clarified that the novel isn't going to die completely, the form will simply shrink into a tiny enterprise kept aloft by a passionate minority, like opera or chamber music. I think that's more or less correct.
DeleteYou get a flavour of this with The Quietus, which even LOOKS like a local newspaper.
DeleteOn the front page there are usually about 30 articles about cultural nobodies, with titles like "S'pisha to collaborate with Foodonklee" and "New Blutvottel album to be produced by Fssdfjfjsjdkms;;"
It's the cultural equivalent of "Birthday Beryl Gets A Surprise From Her Postman".
JEANNE DIELMAN taking the #1 spot in Sight & Sound's 2022 poll signaled a moment where film, considered as an art form more than a commercial product, has become this kind of niche. Obviously, there are major exceptions, but the division into blockbusters and films which will never reach a mass audience is glaring.
DeleteI'm really in two minds about writing this, considering everything, but I do feel I should point out that there are good-faith criticisms to make about the Pitchfork style, as it is.
ReplyDeleteIf you wish for an elaboration, fine, but if you think this post in bad taste, feel free to delete it.
You don't have to like everything about a publication to recognise that for it to go out of existence - or to continue in a much constrained and reduced form - is a bad thing. There's a whole ecosystem of "cultural workers" - musicians and people involved in the business of music, as much people directly involved in the magazine as writers, editors, designers, photographers - who are badly affected by this. And beyond that it's a gloomy harbinger for the future of music media.
DeleteAnd the gloom continues this week with lay-offs at LA Times.
I suppose many of those criticisms can be summarised in one word: hipster.
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