Controv!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Here are some links that may entertain or aggravate ya!

(If you read my tumblr or Lex's LJ you'll have seen them)

What hath Popism wrought?: critics being nice to albums - WHEN WILL THE MADNESS STOP.

Right Music Wrongs: popism means that the righteous anger of the people against bad music must now be outsourced to corporations like Virgin Mobile Australia.

Simon Reynolds on 'wonky': a losing move in the game of genre jenga, sez Lex (and many others)

Comments

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

*How* old is most of the music on the Right Music Wrongs website? Are they saying that crimes against music are less frequent now, or, indeed, since c.1990? Well hell, that sounds like a straight-up rebuttal of Wyman's thesis right there, doesn't it?

I find the idea that encouraging greater levels of thought and complexity around criticism leads to weaker and more supine reviews to be, frankly, arse. Not just a straw man, a straw legion.

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

The reason they are virtually all old records, I think, is that the test of time has been settled - the critics have agreed these are crap records. Frankly there are none I'd really want to defend in the top ten, but if the best things you can find to attack are those, you are wasting your time.

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

I was reading a good article about why book and music reviews are generally so much more positive than movie reviews. The thesis, basically, was that movies get huge marketing hypes, so people read movie reviews to see whether a movie is good or bad, so bad reviews serve a good purpose. Music and book reviews people basically read to find some undiscovered gem to listen to, so it's better to find somebody who likes the item that they can give a good review to.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I would like to read that article if you still know where it can be found.

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure it was on the Onion AV Club website. I'll check it out when I get home, cause I can't access that site at work.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

Ta!

[ex-al-ewing.livejournal.com]

When I think of KEEPING IT REAL and STICKING IT TO THE MANUFACTURED PLASTIC PEOPLE OF POP the first thing I think of is Richard Branson and the mobile phone arm of his gigantic megacorporation. Huzzah for the spectacle!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Amusingly, when you search for Virgin Mobile sponsorship the first thing that comes up is Britney's tour.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

what i like about "rockist boy critics" is, aside from the fact they're often quite fit to look at at the indie disco and in fact my regular snogging partner is one, is that they have this BURNING DESIRE to find something to engage some kind of quasi-marxist STRUGGLE against 'noez those commercialist popists who like music that a lot of the time doesn't sell many records like eg: bassline are OPPRESSIN' MAH OPINIONS' when in fact of course a)whilst there indutibly is "popism," the targets normally charged as such aren't it (i would call the more militant wings of Popjustice-messageboard idiocy "popist" in the sense that "rockist boy critics" like to paint "popism" as existing) since eg: poptimists have no such thing as "consensus" let alone some kind of grand agenda and b) this is all just insane internet paranoia dudes can't we all get along and diss music others enjoy and have a FITE about it because people are WRONG ON THE INTERNET and allow the whole dialectic process to play out as it ought or whatever.

being a hegelian popist i'm just sitting around WORRYING about THIS SORT OF THING. well no actually i am sitting here and taking this all really personally because i am ill but anyway.

as i said elsewhere, r3yn0ld5 makes me furious beyond all belief with his insinuation that he is somehow more down with Young London Urban People than the reader despite the fact he is of course sitting in a posh apartment in New York being old and smug. i have 0 problem with people who are not Young London Urban People writing about perceivedly Young London Urban People's music but i do deeply dislike the insinuation that i couldn't possibly understand it the way simon reynolds can. i mean i realise i'm a Young(ish) Rural-To-London-Immigrant Person and don't even really understand the tube yet but FFS, i do not need some kind of middle aged dude with a book deal to tell me that "YOUNG PEOPLE LIKE THIS SORT OF THING YOU KNOW" (apols to middle aged dudes with book deals, i don't think you all do this sort of thing)

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

I love this comment! Thank you.

I struggle with Simon Reynolds, he just makes me so bloody angry lot of the time. I ranted a lot about his slagging of various "noise" genres of music (unspecified, obv, cos he does not know WTF he's on about) in his intro to "Bring The Npise", so I'll keep it short here: he *can* be smart, but he's usually a prick.

[koganbot]

I see in my soul, as a man w/ a book, that the kidz are down w/ boring music by Gerrard & Nevil, and great feminine music by Taylor of Swiftness.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

1) "Hitsville" piece - wasn't there an Idolator post dealing w/this very subject a while ago? I mean, it's mostly a structural thing - any given publication tends to have many music reviewers, all of whom will pitch to review stuff they like (and will mostly get to do it); but one film dude, only occasionally more, reviewing all of the week's releases.

2) link doesn't work?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It needs some ridiculously advanced iteration of Flash (so you can see the title spelled out in a lame spraycan graphic!) - not really worth installing it for this link!

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I'm perplexed at the Hitsville pt. 2 response to Mike's post about writing a fair Arcade Fire review. Actually, I'm just perplexed generally. I don't think this guy has any idea what he's actually so angry (or sounding so angry) about. I think the three most important pieces of information to consider when thinking about Metacritic are:

(1) METACRITIC decides whether or not many of their reviews are positive, not the majority of the sources they are choosing from, so to try to gauge positive/negative split among these reviews is ridiculous -- you'd have to go to the PRIMARY source and do a qualitative, not quantitative, analysis. (This may be true of films, too, but that means that THOSE are suspect too -- are the people who decide the "score" of an unscored movie review the same people who decide the "score" of an unscored music review?)

(2) Metacritic makes their ratings on a more specific scale than most sites actually have. We can say of a 4-star system that has no half-stars that, very rougly, 1 = very bad, 2 = bad, 3 = good, 4 = very good. And this depends on the critic -- the understanding of the "4-star review" might mean "masterpiece" or "probably one of the 20 best films of the year," two very different criteria.

(3) As many people have said, there is no cogent PR industry for music as a whole. The only comparable (and even then it's not that comparable) analogy in films would be like trying to include all art-house releases, major film festivals, and maybe major experimental and museum screenings in this kind of system. I bet you would see the exact same thing happen as happens in music. The critics who go to see these works will likely be very critical, but won't write reviews that easily translate to "thumbs down" (or, also important, "thumbs up").

But of course (4) we don't know this, because the movie industry and the music industry are completely different entities that, at very institutional levels, have exactly ZERO to do with one another. (For one thing, the resources that go into film and television are utterly staggering, even in comparison to major label music expenditures including production AND marketing. Music is a niche entertainment field from an industrial standpoint. Really you'd be better off comparing film reviews to videogame reviews, and you'd be better off comparing Metacritic music review scores to, e.g., compiled review scores for something like comic books.

One thing that "something we call popism" should do if it wants to argue against the "Down with the System & The Man" mode of critical engagement with music is to UNDERSTAND the system and the Man and begin to better figure out that, in the scheme of things, the allocation of resources between music releases, even including things like advertising/marketing budgets, just don't hold a candle to other media in the entertainment industry (even the concept of "industry" of music is more fractured in music than it is in film, in which the coordination of huge sums of money is an absolute requirement for basic production let alone mass distribution). If anything, there should be a reactionary anti-system faction of film reviewing that refuses to engage with much of it because of its demonstrable labor injustices, etc. The music industry just doesn't participate in [insert problematic mode of production and state of the world etc.] the way that other media do.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Forgot to hat tip chuckeddy's point in that old Idolator piece in (1), and uh I guess there were 4 points, though the final one is more of a bigger picture thing.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I see that I have now called down the Popist Comments Crew Massive on Hitsville's blog! Destroyer-in-paddling-pool scenario!

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Well, I still can't figure out if I'm more irritated or amused by the Virgin Mobile thing (and I refuse to re-type any of it from it's Flash format) and I'm not planning on reading the Reynolds piece. So Hitsville is the only fish in the barrel!