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zecg

What We've Lost in Music Criticism (freddiedeboer.substack.com)

submitted 1 year ago by zecg to c/stuffandsuch

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"This is the sort of thing that became Pitchfork’s stock in trade, this confused muddle of politics and pop, stuffed with trendy terms from cultural studies and the insistence that liking music was a form of activism."

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[–] CodexArcanum 4 points 1 year ago

I thought this comment by "gnoment" was pretty interesting as well:

The moralization of media is a capitalist dream. A capitalist problem with art is that there's no accounting for taste, which means that aesthetic that can never 100% be controlled. Well, now that its about morality and not aesthetic, it's much easier to control and market.

I'd been obcessed with Contrapoint's video about aesthetics. I hadn't understood how much of fascism is rooted in particular aesthetics. This reminds me of that, and seems to expand on it with this useful notion that aesthetic control is manufactured through both populism and moralizing.

Trump people don't really argue morality through, they argue pure aesthetics as though that was morality.

[–] darganon 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This guy seems big mad that pop music is popular, and that the majority of the country doesn't agree with his politics.

[–] givesomefucks 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seems like he's complaining about how the music is less diverse, and pointing out the irony that their using diversity of staff as an excuse.

(The implication that demographic diversification must necessarily steer a publication in a particular musical direction is very common and has always seemed straightforwardly a matter of prejudice to me, but you can’t blame Harvey for repeating it.)

He's not complaining about diverse staff

He's complaining about a lack of diversity in music

But it's not a "woke" thing that they only focus on pop music, it's a capitalist thing.

Most people like pop music. That's why it's pop music.

And people like reading what agrees with their opinions. So Pitchfork says pop music is best for the clicks, and ignores other genres.

Pitchfork is for the kids, always has been.

It's like complaining TRL from MTV always had pop at the top. Anything else was so rare I still remember the one time Eminem topped it when I was a kid.

20 years ago this was already happening, we were just all younger and didn't notice because we were still in demographics MTV and Pitchfork cared about, even if we weren't who they cared about most.

Now we (at least me and the writer of the article) aren't.

We're older and the music industry doesn't cater to us anymore.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"I used to be with 'it', but then they changed what 'it' was. Now what I'm with isn't 'it' anymore and what's 'it' seems weird and scary. It'll happen to you!" - Abe Simpson

Personally, I don't think the music industry has ever catered to anyone but Capital. The counter culture was never catered to because it was counter. If you want to find new metal you can find it, just takes some looking is all.

Whenever this topic comes up it feels like the people that liked what they were told to listen to never had to develop the skills to find music they like or the people to share it with. Now those doing the telling have moved on to the new hotness leaving people behind.