Why is music criticism and journalism such a joke? It's literally the worst of all form of media, even vidya journalism is better
Why is music criticism and journalism such a joke? It's literally the worst of all form of media...
care more
I agree, but it works cause there will always be sheep who just listen to whatever music critic x tells them is good, so there’s a market for it and people make money off of it, that’s just how life works bro
Because there's no meaningful barrier to entry to be a music critic and almost none of them bother to provide a good reason why we should care about what their opinions are
Honestly, if you don't have both
1. an extremely well-trained musical ear that can hear harmonic progressions and transcribe melodie, and
2. an extensive knowledge of musical history from the baroque era until today
then you don't know enough about music to be a useful critic of it
because there is very little worth saying about music in the first place
wire and the quietus are the only decent
>an extensive knowledge of musical history
that's what most of contemporary music journalist lack. even if you don't agree that's something you have to appreciate of people like simon reynolds, christgau or scaruffi, wire or quietus
Scaruffi has listened to a lot of albums (allegedly) but he doesn't have a good ear or a deep knowledge of music so his critiques are shit--he supposedly likes complex music but he doesn't know how to identify it. Both are necessary.
Christgau kinda sucks too but at least he's straightforward about what he likes
but at the same time in movies there's a lot of shit that doesn't go anywhere and gets terrible reviews, but when it comes to music, any release that has a decent budget to it gets an 8/10 at least
It’s far from perfect but there’s a million albums out there so it’s hard to just pick a random one hoping it’s good. You need someone to review it first to get an idea of what it sounds like. Doesn’t mean you have to agree.