Where’s the snarky music writing and do we really need it?
That was the question at a SXSW panel I was on last week. I wondered about this myself, mostly because I usually didn’t indulge in snarky (mean, snotty) music writing myself (there’s too much good stuff I wanna write about). There is a place for snark but where exactly?
The premise came from Dave Marsh, the panel moderator, saying that there wasn’t enough of it around anymore. I disagreed. Here’s what Austin360 quoted me as saying:
“Music journalists won’t come close and can’t compete with blogs and bulletin boards. And if you don’t think you’re competing with them, you’re delusional. They shape opinion whether you like it or not. Bloggers have much more influence than you think.”
Not exactly what I said though I do insist that you ignore blogs’ influences at your own peril. What I really said was that writers in mags and pubs can’t compete with blogs and online forums in terms of snark because these places usually don’t have editors or moderators and so, anything goes. Of course, that’s a good thing as you have a lot of unconventional voices speaking up but it’s also a bad thing as some of these voices should have shut up in the first place. That’s just the nature of the First Amendment, right?
Another topic that got a little mangled during our discussion was Twitter, aka the hot online forum now, which of course is also experiencing a backlash. I was saying during the panel that print publications are shrinking word counts so much that a medium like Twitter was a good place where you could practice trying to say something significant in a small framework. Somehow that got twisted into me saying that Twitter itself was the future of journalism and would replace longer reviews. That ain’t the way I see it though just as with other forms of writing, I don’t see why Twitter can’t extend our way of communicating about our favorite music.
Zines, like Perfect Sound Forever, also came up in the conversation. Marsh asked why I started mine and what the purpose was. I started PSF ‘cause I was bored and lonely (definitely not anymore) and I wanted to shed some light on good performers from the past and present (and maybe future) who hadn’t gotten enough recognition. In terms of our snark topic, my feeling was that many zines don’t doll out bile (unless it’s towards major publications or what’s seen as fat-cat artists) because their reason to be was to talk about things that the editors didn’t think were getting adequately covered elsewhere. That kind of void usually leaves little room for snark (unless your Maximum Rock’n'Roll).
Going back to Marsh’s basic premise of why there’s less snarky music journalism out there, I had two theories: 1) right now, many writers and editors are too worried about their jobs to be too critical, 2) many other writers are worried about being cut off from promo lists if they get too mean in their reviews (of course, there’s the magic of downloading to overcome such concerns).
I do think there’s room for negative comments and thumb’s down- after all, do we really just wanna read how every album’s great? In fact, there’s room for good negative constructive journalism- the best recent example is Carl Wilson’s 2004 article about Prince Paul’s The Politics of Business album and why it’s failure was significant. And of course, there’s the other end of the spectrum like Pitchfork’s thoughtless take downs of Black Kids and Travis Morrison. But just so you think that there isn’t room for funny snark out there, I do like PF’s slap at Jet. It’s juvenile but it’s also pretty damn hilarious and in its own way, much more creative than paragraphs of prose dumping on the album would have been.
Comments
“...many writers and editors are too worried about their jobs to be too critical.”
Really? What jobs are you referring to exactly? Is being critical something that music critics get fired for? I can think of a few where the opposite is the case - The Guardian, Pitchfork and the NYT.
Comment by Liz from Brooklyn — March 24, 2009 @ 8:35 pm
At this point though, the line between blogger and journalist is blurry, particularly when it comes to music. Writing for Pitchfork right now holds about as much clout as writing for Rolling Stone, but are Pitchfork writers still bloggers? There’s always been something of a particularly snarky tone when it comes to music writing, which was influenced by the beats. But does that mean it’s even worse on the internet now than, say, the heydays of Meltzer or Tosches? I don’t think there’s much quite at that level, even though we’re fully equipped to do so.
The irony is that the internet was supposed to be free to let people publish whatever they want, but sites that are focused primarily on traffic still are limited in how little they can do, as opposed to ones focused on good writing. It would be easy for me to publish a 3,000 word review of F*cked Up like Bangs could with the Stooges in Creem, but I couldn’t write it for Prefix or Pitchfork, since no one would think it worth reading, no matter if it was the next Howl.
Comment by Ethan Stanislawski from New York, NY — March 24, 2009 @ 9:25 pm
great comment Ethan.
I’d also like to add that there’s a difference between “snark” and “criticism”. The former might be entertaining to the disinterested reader but it’s also unfair to the sincere and hard-working musician. The latter might be less entertaining for the casual reader, but at least it’s an (attempt at) an unemotional appraisal of the art in question. They’re both necessary to an extent because there’s nothing more boring or unhelpful than reading a succession of vaguely positive 8/10 PR-pleasing “reviews”. But the very best music writing is that which can combine both criticism and snark, being rigorous but not boring, and funny but not unfair.
Comment by Ally from Edinburgh — March 25, 2009 @ 7:12 am
To answer the primary question of the article. 3-4 years ago, Pitchfork seemed to have cornered the market on pointless snark- mean just for the sake of being mean. They seem to have gotten it under control over the past few years, although it still comes out from time to time. With that indie-snark void left open, it seems like Coke Machine has risen (sunk?) to the occasion and now fulfills that function as well or better than most bloggers.
Comment by Chris Conaton from Houston, TX — March 25, 2009 @ 8:56 am
Because the web allows readers/visitors to listen to the music being written about, I feel that the music blogger is (or should be) performing the role of the old-style free-form FM radio DJ: presenting music that he or she likes, and simply ignoring things he or she doesn’t like. The point here is to get people excited about good music, not berating the (mostly) honest efforts of the less than talented.
Another reason I don’t believe bloggers should be spending time writing about what they don’t like is that few bloggers are qualified as actual critics—that is, few have enough training and/or breadth of music knowledge to offer meaningful negative criticism of any kind. It basically comes down to personal taste, and presenting personal taste (“I don’t like this”) as fact (“This album sucks”) is an exercise in pointless narcissism.
Comment by Jeremy from Philadelphia — March 26, 2009 @ 6:35 am
Thank you for these very thoughtful comments!
To follow-up on what Ally said, I totally agree that ‘snark’ and ‘criticism’ aren’t necessarily the same thing- I think Wilson’s piece on Prince Paul is a great example of that. Criticism can definitely be constructive and thoughtful. I think part of the problem is that we don’t see enough of that.
Comment by Jason Gross — March 26, 2009 @ 10:28 am