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Winning Critical Acclaim 217

Posted by michael from the least-common-denominator dept.
Alex Reynolds writes "'Are pop critics doing a good job? What does it mean to do a good job as a pop music critic? What is the difference between good and bad pop music criticism?' Loren Jan Wilson's innovative Pitchformula project takes the archives of music criticism and journalism from the popular Pitchfork web site and analyses them for commonalities in content, determining what attributes make for a 'good' or 'bad' evaluation. From this data, Wilson sculpted his compositional and performance technique to write rock music that should win critical acclaim."
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Winning Critical Acclaim More

Winning Critical Acclaim

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  • Just what we need. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by sulli ( 195030 ) *
    MORE freaking Radiohead knockoffs.

  • ...Like Dancing About Architecture (Score:5, Interesting)

    by flanksteak ( 69032 ) * on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @06:27PM (#9447267) Homepage
    I always read album reviews with a grain of salt. I've never been able to identify as to why, but I have never found popular music reviews to be very helpful to me. There are only so many ways that you can describe a particular song or expression of a genre and none of them adequately convey the way that I react to music. It's weird because I can read movie and book reviews and understand (and possibly agree on) what the writer is trying to say about the overall quality and purpose of the work.

    But when a music review comes along, it just doesn't work. Is it because it's very difficult to describe the collaboration of multiple instruments in a linear and narrow format (i.e., the sentence)?

    Along the same lines I've found that I have a very hard time describing music adequately to others. The only thing that occasionally succeeds (and happens to get used in music reviews all the time) is to compare the work to something that went before (like saying Limp Bizkit is a combination of funk and metal, or Britney is bubble gum sex pop). But then that's just a generic description, and not so much a statement on subjective quality.

    I don't think I've ever bought an album where I thought a reviewer captured how I felt about the music after I listened to it. It will be interesting to see if this can be accomplished using what sounds like some sort of data mining exercise.

    Thank God for try before you buy [kexp.org]. This is the one thing that has me buying more music over the last year than the previous four or five.
    • You said it yourself: "subjective" is the key word. It's a lot easier to write objectively about film or books than it is about music. You can (and should) still take in film and books subjectively, but your subjective view and my subjective view are, as the word implies, subject to you and to me, respectively, and you are not me and I am not you and sometimes I'm not even I.

      My point is that any review will have elements of the objective and of the subjective in it, but in music there's much less to be
      • Yeah, that nails it. While music is often collaborative like film, the elements of a movie aren't always as tightly integrated or interdependent. You can still like a story while disliking an actor's performance, while you rarely say about a song, 'I liked the bass line and the lyrics, but the rythym guitar sucked'. If part of the song is off, it's difficult for the rest to stand on its own.

        Books are also easy to pick apart, as they don't often have a lot going on at once and you can enjoy specific section
        • Actually there is a ton of rap music where the music/beat is pretty damned good but the lyrics are disgusting. I still listen to it, it stands on its own.

    • Re:...Like Dancing About Architecture (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ziggy_zero ( 462010 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @07:06PM (#9447564)
      You should especially take Pitchfork reviews with a grain of salt.

      Many of the reviewers there have vastly different opinions of many artists, and many have the typical indie rock prick mindset of "the more obscure it is the better". And the 10 point and single decimal scale has always irked me. What the fuck is the difference between a 6.7 album and a 7.3 album?

      I like the reviews in the Rasputin Manifesto (the magazine run by Rasputin Records), because they're relatively short, and don't use a point/star scale. You have to actually read the review to see if you'll like it or not.

      I usually just go to Pitchfork to get my daily dose of concert/new release news.

      • Re:...Like Dancing About Architecture (Score:4, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @09:25PM (#9448459)
        What the fuck is the difference between a 6.7 album and a 7.3 album?

        .6

      • Many of the reviewers there have vastly different opinions of many artists, and many have the typical indie rock prick mindset of "the more obscure it is the better". And the 10 point and single decimal scale has always irked me. What the fuck is the difference between a 6.7 album and a 7.3 album?

        Y'know, Pitchformula is a much more fitting name for Pitchfork. I find that pitchfork reviews aren't so good for any sort of consumer guidance or artistic criticism, but at least give a snapshot of whatever the

        • ...past market performance suggests that although the review will be good, you probably should have sold at Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's 10.0.

          Well, yeah - unlike the real stock market, this one has a hard ceiling of 10.0. Is it too late to short their new album? ;)

          • Is it too late to short their new album? ;)

            This is the ever-so-fahsionable world of rock and roll snobbery we're talking about here: if you think it's really coming, let everyone know you're over Wilco before the backlash hits. The cancer stage of this attitude is the intolerable "anything anyone has heard of is crap" obscuritanism that's been prevalent ever since "alternative" became a marketing category.

            • "Wilco? That's so last year, dude. Have you heard (insert band nobody's ever heard of) yet? Check it out sometime...." ;)

              • "Wilco? That's so last year, dude. Have you heard (insert band nobody's ever heard of) yet? Check it out sometime...." ;)

                Yr getting there. Two suggestions:

                1. Specificity is Better: Don't just rag on the band, rag on something specific: "Yeah, well, I checked out their new record, and it didn't do much for me -- I can never figure out if they're post-melodic or melodic, and it sounds like they can't either. And the lyrics -- what the fuck's a 'cherry ghost'?"
                2. Old is the new New, Lame is the new Cool:

    • Re:...Like Dancing About Architecture (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jglazer75 ( 645716 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @07:22PM (#9447663)
      A good music review will leave you NEEDING to hear whatever it is that was the subject of the review. After reading Psychedelic Reactions and Carborateur Dung (the finest collection of rock criticism ever) I needed to run out and listen to Bowie and The Clash and the MC5 and James Brown and The Animals and The Velvet Underground. And I hate Lou Reed. But damn Bangs is convincing.

      Some of the best reviews do exactly what you suggest, they hint at what has gone before (isn't that what all music does anyway?)...it can be difficult to describe a band in words without referencing the influences because the basis for your commentary is also the basis for the music. So, stay away from reviews that say: "I deem this album 3.5 stars because I am able to determine what's good." (I don't think David Fricke of Rolling Stone has ever written a good review. And Greil Marcus stopped being good when he stopped emulating Lester Bangs.)

      A good review is objective: "This album sounds like Aphex Twin, Pink Floyd and Nine Inch Nails got together, kicked each other's asses, and then had torrid, violent make-up sex." Or "If Tom Petty and Willie Nelson wrote a Counting Crows song, it wouldn't sound anything like this, but the words might be similar."

      ps. You still BUY albums??! Loser.

    • Album reviews can be useful if they are written by someone who has similar tastes to yours. Thus I find it useful to go back and look for good reviews of albums I especially like, and then look up other reviews written by the same reviewer. This doesn't always work -- musical taste is multidimensional. Thus I tend to associate a given genre with a favored reviewer and not automatically trust his/her reviews in other genres.

      I agree that most reviewers, even ones whose tastes I share, don't seem to cap

    • Pitchfork is no good for reviews! Wackiness.org [wackiness.org] is your friend for music reviews. They don't review a lot, but the reviews have a nice blend of humor and accurate comments. They even do movies! Give it a read.

      Disclamer: I know the guys who run. Good guys.

    • I think it's because books and movies are fairly representational and dualistic; i.e. left brain formatted -- which lends itself to analysis. Music is probably the most abstract artform that has achieved mainstream acceptance. Except for lyrics (certainly not the core of why we listen to music) it can't realistically be called representational. It is very right brain formatted -- i.e. emotional, spatial, temporal, things that generally defy description.

      Or something like that. What do I know... I'm only

  • pop != rock (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @06:27PM (#9447268)
    What is the difference between good and bad pop music criticism? ... From this data, Wilson sculpted his compositional and performance technique to write rock music that should win critical acclaim.

    Anyone else see the problem here?
    • I'm not convinced there's a problem there. I think he's viewing "rock" as a type of music within the bigger category of "pop."
      • ... and to clarify: "he" above is Alex Reynolds.

        Loren Jan Wilson carefully defines [pitchformula.com] (pop-up window from overview [pitchformula.com] "popular music":

        For the purposes of this project, "popular music" is an all-encompassing term that includes rock, hip-hop, dance, country, folk, and experimental noise music, plus a bunch of other things too. My review database includes some jazz and classical music reviews as well. It's common for popular music magazines to include music that "crosses over" to many different genres; pop review

  • Why I care... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Alex Reynolds ( 102024 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @06:27PM (#9447276) Homepage
    As a freelance music writer, I care to some degree that my kind of writing can be reduced to this. His work provides some perspective, something I can use to step back and evaluate what I do. Am I a shill or doing something useful?

    Outside of this, I find his work is a funny and insightful commentary on how the whole flow of media and information can fold back in on itself in an unexpected way. Metameta, baby.

    • Why *I* care, too... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by muel ( 132794 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @07:36PM (#9447774)
      I as well am a freelance music writer, and though I'm tempted to link to my writing, I'd rather not have my editor freak out about her website crashing for "some completely random spike in traffic." mm-hmm.

      at any rate, this has to be my favorite /. link yet, because it combines everything that I love -- songwriting, music criticism and analysis of language. his database work is really good at nailing reviewer's cliches... in fact, while flipping through his data, I've found a lot of phrases that I gravitate towards that are listed and used here, too. this may mean much more to me than most of the people who read this, but as a guy who writes CD reviews, I have found the holy grail of how NOT to construct a CD review. it's like, "THESE are the cliche phrases - don't use them."

      what's interesting, though, is that this isn't so much a breakdown of music critism as much as it is a breakdown of human expression. I think if you take a narrow field of ANY sect of criticism, be it paintings, music, or even sports, you're going to run into a very particular style of expression, of phrases, of whatever specifically TARGETS the audience that seeks said narrow field. I mean, I'm not going to review impressionist art and gripe about qualities befitting a lifelike landscape portrait... sure, both forms will have things in common as visual expressions, but the person who wants the Van Gogh and the person who wants the 'happy trees' are going to appreciate their choice for very different reasons. so the fact that his mp3s sound much like what a pitchfork critic loves isn't a surprise at all. it just proves the consistency of the listening audience in question.

      now on to the music.

      I downloaded the mp3s and was pretty impressed with the instrumental work. sometimes, the drumwork tries so hard to contrast the backing music that it begins to sound TOO uncomfortable, but other times, the contrast is compelling. otherwise, he has picked up the spirit of Pitchfork-style criticism, in which new music fuses analog and digital instrumentation by culling LOTS of older influences and smushing them together. important bands are the ones that do two things: first, they take a step towards doing something new and interesting with musical forms, and second, they root their sounds in pop precedents. you hear both experimentation and catchiness in Wilson's test songs.

      those lyrics, on the other hand, don't come off so well, and I'm pretty sure the biggest reason is because a music critic considers lyrics as an integral part of the sound of a song, while Wilson takes the lyrical portion of songwriting and sets it outside the musical portion. Lyrics might be called "poetry," but even the greatest books of lyrics sound much worse when read than when sung with the intended music. Perhaps Pitchfork would eat these emo-sad lyrics up, but I see these lyrics in the same vein as NIN lyrics - sad for sad's sake, cliched, no real metaphoric weight.

      I'd be interested to see a similar project used to analyze poetry criticism, and then have those "analyzed" lyrics ported into Wilson's songs. then he might have a computer-created winner.

      all in all, you'd expect a totally robotic response to this sort of database study. "a song must have ingredient x and ingredients b, y and q. the computer has fused those ingredients together and here is the result." but one thing Wilson doesn't credit in his study is the ultimate human creation that is necessary. Wilson's statistics merely guided his own brain into composing what he felt matched the criticisms, which means the songs also matched the pop sensibilities that had to have been burrowed in his head for years. He's obviously a music fan and, even if he played "against his will," still applied his years of musical study and play to his final product. I wouldn't expect many other people in his shoes to apply his database results to music and come out in the end with mp3s that sound that listenable.

      he hasn't rendered music critics obsolete or
      • Maybe its the poor production that is distracting me, but I wasn't terribly impressed. For one thing, it felt like a mish-mash of variables with no coherent voice. There was a great deal of tension between the frenetic drums, which were recorded in the small space, and the more sedate piano which was recorded in a large space. Flipping back and forth between them is a great effect that is nearly unused, and unfortunately detracts from the plaintive vocals.

        This is a pretty interesting way of generating tens
    • The whole reason that we can even have something like popular music (or popular movies, or what have you) is that people's tastes tend to be fairly similar. Call it fashion, call it universal appeal, what it boils down to is that for any medium you can find certain elements that occur frequently in well-liked works of that medium. This observation doesn't seem particularly novel to me - it's an assumption that has to at least be implicitly accepted before you can lend any credibility to reviews, art/music

  • Hmmm..... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've started a website [slashformula.com] to track the way that comments are moderated on web forums. The patterns jumped out immediately with even the most cursory examination - say good things about Linux, Apple or socialism, get moderated up. Say good things about Microsoft or the US, get moderated down. "Truth" had absolutely no effect on the moderation.

    Let me gaze into my crystal ball and see how this comment will be moderated..... Hmmm.....
    • So Slashdot readers generally agree with Linux users, Apple users, and socialists, and disagree with Microsoft and US policies.

      So what?

      Are you saying their opinions are wrong?

      Are you suggesting that moderation is intended to be something beyond opinions about opinions (posts)? What ideal world (of your own making) do you live in?

  • My Opinion (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Haydn Fenton ( 752330 ) <no.spam.for.haydn@gmail.com> on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @06:30PM (#9447294)
    Mod me down if you will, I know it is slightly offtopic, but I think the majority of people involved with the music business do a much much worse job than they could.
    They are driven (not that I can really blame them) by profit.
    The artists themselves write terrible songs (look at 'Frankee's song in reply to Eamon's song - how many of us could write lyrics to another song? Exactly, pretty much everyone - It's not challenging, and her lyrics are pretty damn bad too). The critics don't really care who ends up number one, or who doesn't even enter the charts, they care about money. Just like Microsoft, and look where that got them (yeah, they may be rich, but they're hated by a lot of people).

    Musicians, Footballers, Actors, etc. They all make massive amounts of money for things which contribute almost nothing to the evolution and development of mankind. Now look at people like nurses, firemen, teachers, etc. We (at least here in britain) often hear about them going on stike because of low pay, yet they contribute a great deal to mankind.

    The whole monetary system is really messed up.
    If we sorted it out, we might see some musicians and critics who work hard at their job.


    Disclaimer: I love music, couldn't live without it, and I think a lot of artists do a great job, but I stand by my point. They should get paid the same, if not less than people who actually do the world good.

    • Your Opinion is Wrong (Score:4, Interesting)

      by CyberHippyRedux ( 687568 ) * on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @06:58PM (#9447511) Homepage
      Insightful my ass...

      "Musicians, Footballers, Actors, etc." do not all make massive amounts of money, only those who have a good grasp of their industry make a living, and of those a few make it to the top. For every Eminem there are hundreds of performers trying (and failing) to get there. How much do the actors at your local theater (assuming you're not living in NYC) make? Probably a free meal and a drink, in most cases.

      It isn't the monetary system that's messed up, it's modern life. Twenty years ago every small town had several bands playing in the bars downtown any night. Now, most have one or two clubs or bars that have music on the weekends, and they're lucky if they fill up enough for the musicians to walk away with more than $50.

      In a major city you can work your way up to making a living with music, if you have the skills, patience, tenacity and luck.

      Many bands who have hit it "big" have wound up with little or no money due to the way the record companys handle things - handing signees a wad of cash that turns out to be a "front" or loan against future sales, charging the band for EVERYTHING (studio time, distribution, everything the record company does they charge the band).

      Modern Americans are either too lazy or scared of the potential of getting a DUI to go out to a club to see a live band. Why try when you have hundreds of channels of crap on the TV to choose from?

      It's very rare for the average musician to get paid enough to survive - all the "professional" musicians I know (yes I'm one of them) have day-jobs to pay the rent.
      • What city do you live in? I'm living in Minneapolis, where you can walk into pretty much any bar and see a killer band playing live, with a good-sized crowd if the opening band didn't drive them away. A few people are saying we might be the next Seattle.
        • A few people are saying we might be the next Seattle.

          Unless you like endless hordes of MTV-driven imitators, hope that they're wrong.
        • What city do you live in? I'm living in Minneapolis, where you can walk into pretty much any bar and see a killer band playing live, with a good-sized crowd if the opening band didn't drive them away. A few people are saying we might be the next Seattle.

          You're a youngster, I guess. Minneapolis is not the next Seattle...it was the first Seattle, and without Minneapolis from '81 to about '86 there likely would have been no Seattle.

          Go buy Husker Du's Flip Your Wig and Warehouse: Songs and Stories and the R

    • Re:My Opinion (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Raptor CK ( 10482 )
      In a coldly Darwinian sense, nurses, firemen, and teachers contribute very little to mankind. They're helping those who would otherwise be culled from the gene pool at an earlier age. They'd die of some disease, or in a fire, or just end up in a dead end job without the ability to read, utterly forgotten about.

      Not that I really agree with that, but it's entire possible to look at things from that perspective.

      To contract, musicians, athletes, and actors give us something to strive for. Music and drama a

      • "Darwinian" (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Infonaut ( 96956 )
        In a coldly Darwinian sense, nurses, firemen, and teachers contribute very little to mankind.

        I could see how someone could argue from that perspective, and I understand that you're advancing this case for the sake of arugment, but such an opinion is easily dismissed:

        FDR suffered from polio. Whether he was a good President or bad, he did sit in the White House longer than any President in U.S. history. The docs and nurses who kept him from dying helped America's Commander in Chief stay alive during WW I

      • Using your same pseudo-darwinian reasoning, nurses save talent thet helps our species to advance (a disabled or sick person can have some talents that are important to preserve and use for as long as possible),

        Ditto for teachers.

        As for firefighters I will leave it, I can't contend logiclly with somebody reaching half of his conlussions in an inhebrated state pulling argument out of that part where the sun nevr shines,
      • While the professions you mentioned (nurses..teachers) do prevent the weakest links from being eliminated, they provide a service, without much thanks, that keeps our society civilized. That's why we (should) reward them. I think that musicians and athletes serve a purpose as well, though in this day and age they're a more self-serving group.

        To quote Dogbert, I'm for anything that gets rid of people, but I do appreciate the nurses and, especially, the teachers in our society.

        --trb

    • Re:My Opinion (Score:5, Interesting)

      by grioghar ( 228683 ) <thegrio@NOSpAm.gmail.com> on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @07:09PM (#9447581) Homepage
      We don't fear dying or being stupid anymore in this day of extended life and wealth of information.

      We fear being bored. And thus, we throw exhorbident amounts of cash and idolation at the shrines of entertainment.

      *looks around and realizes he sounds fanatical*

      Just the way I've always looked at it. Hell, I admit I do it to.

    • Re:My Opinion (Score:2, Insightful)

      by HexRei ( 515117 )
      Musicians, Footballers, Actors, etc. They all make massive amounts of money for things which contribute almost nothing to the evolution and development of mankind. Now look at people like nurses, firemen, teachers, etc. We (at least here in britain) often hear about them going on stike because of low pay, yet they contribute a great deal to mankind.

      This is not at all true. For one thing, the ones that make massive amounts of money are the top tiny percentile of their profession. For every actor making 10
    • What makes you think teachers are nurses are noble. Many of them seem to take the job simply because it's there and they can do it. My public school years taught me that most teachers were far from noble and the experiene of relatives in hospitals taught me that many nurses are not so noble and just need a job. They aren't necessarily any special than you or I, and at current rates we can fill their posts so what's the big deal.

      Just think, when was the last time you saw a rich white high school graduate sh
    • "I'm a capitalist, just like everyone else in this country. I asked for a certain amount of money, and they paid it to me because they know if they didn't, someone else would. If you asked for the same amount of money, they wouldn't have paid it to you, because no one else would."

  • Knock off the pop, join the metal people! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Lord Graga ( 696091 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @06:30PM (#9447295)
    I have found metal reviews a lot more interesting to read. Especially the reviews at Gothmetal.net [gothmetal.net] has been good reading. It might just be because of the VARIATION that metal has brought with it. Pop music, rap, dance, techno, whatever you call it, has allways had a bit of repetition in my eyes.
  • If you actually read pitchforkmedia.com, you'll see that the highest rated albums are the ones that innovate the most, that bend old genres, create new ones, and break all formulas. The lowest rated records are those that knock off established artists and pander to the general public (i.e. not critics)

  • Basically (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jfdawes ( 254678 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @06:32PM (#9447318)
    This guy is saying for the most part society in general is pretty damn predictable and if you know how you can produce something that is "pleasant". i.e. it fits well within the mainstream and can be said to have some mildly controversial elements (ha! controversational) while not really offending anybody.

    Essentially you can bank on being able to sell something if you're prepared to make pap. Is it any sort of news that tastes in music can be estimated as easily as tastes in food?

    McDonalds anyone?

  • It would have been more impressive... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by peeping_Thomist ( 66678 ) * on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @06:35PM (#9447345)
    if she'd gotten her music reviewed before she revealed how she made it. Now we'll never know how Pitchforkmedia would have reviewed them.

  • The question has a false premise... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GPLDAN ( 732269 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @06:37PM (#9447361)
    The article states - what does it take to be a good POP reviewer? That makes no sense. No serious music critic would define the question that way. A good music critic reviews mnay genres - classical, jazz, rock - and sub-genres, alternative or indy-rock, ska, hip-hop, etc.

    These reviewers would tell you the term "pop" means nothing to them. If you are going to confine yourself to reviewing what is on the Billboard charts, you should get out of the business.

    His approach is flawed, he is taking written reviews of popular music, and attempting to determine what the critics liked about by de-constructing the review into keywords. Shouldn't he be de-constructing the music itself? If I steal the riff from this song, and combine it this way - I could create a new song that should also be popular. Either way, it's not going to work. No computational analysis, either of written reviews or of the actual notes themselves - will reveal a hidden formula for writing good songs that will be popular.
    • I think you need to take a step back and think about this a second.

      Pop has a pretty wide definition in some people's minds. He's not even thinking of the Billboard charts -- I take what he was implying as "anything but classical or traditional music". I'm betting that "pop" was a simple way for him to encapsulate ALL genres of music into his study. I have a wide definition of pop too -- just because I can see most music as one entity does not mean that I can't break down the lines, either.

      I think you re

  • Well, if the NME had developed it (a music rag in the UK), it would simply go like this:

    if (band_name == "The Strokes" || band_name == "The Libertines")
    printf("10/10");
    else
    printf("%d/10", rand()%10);

    On an honest note, it annoys me that there should be some generic formula for critically analysing music. It's this kind of thing that makes all music follow a generic pub-rock path like it did in the mid-late 90's (Oasis anyone?). Or generic R&B/Urban path like it does now...

  • flavor of the day (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mabu ( 178417 )
    Critics are not static instruments. The whole idea that a critic has standards that don't change is ludicrous. What's popular now and what was popular in the 80s are completely different things. Critics simply reflect the current flavor of what most people like, which is constantly in a state of flux. Trying to tie a formula to their results is a waste of time unless you take into account the influence of modern media, which generally has the most influence over what people think is "good."

    Nirvana is a
    • The critical acclaim that Nirvana reached was only because reviewers were trying to identify themselves to the kids.

      Nirvana sucked, musically. Awful.

      But they still made good songs.
    • A decent critic doesn't simply echo popular sentiment - that's what billboard charts are for. But a decent critic can take changing social views and trends into account when writing a review, and talk about why an artist is relevant or how they play into the larger musical scene.

      Good criticism isn't a knee-jerk decision about what's good and what's bad - relatively subjective judgements. It's more about having a dialouge with the art, and judging it on its own merits.

      A good reviewer should have been able

  • Eargh.. Pitchfork.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by chewy_2000 ( 618148 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @06:39PM (#9447376)
    I think SA has a pretty good take on Pitchfork Media.

    Here. [somethingawful.com]

  • They are mostly wrong, and very few real people pay any attention to them. "Artistic merits" is another way of saying "it's pure crap".
  • The better looking the artist, the worse the music.

    Seriously, surfing the music channels I have lately found myself switching channels before hearing the song, if the people in the video are too pretty. Perhaps I'll become classically conditioned to dislike beautiful people.

    Hmmm. This is beginning to suggest a Pavlovian psychology study. Also reminds me a little of A Clockwork Orange.
  • Up-tempo, feel good music. Music that puts a smile on your face and a spring in your step. Music that uplifts the human spirit. But, most of all, what the public really wants is more songs about serial killers and Satan. [hiddenagenda.org]

    Really, it's all there in the market research...

  • If he wanted to compose "original songs" based on a predictable formula, why use pitchfork as a source?

    So, look at this scoring system. He says anything over 7.4 is a positive review, and he counts up the words used in it. What happens when they review the latest Radiohead album, give it a 9.3 and whine for 500 words about what wasn't perfect? To me (a daily reader of pfork), they are good at talking about new indie music and getting the word out, but they are pretty arbitrary with whether a 7.9 review
    • I feel pretty much the way you do about Pitchfork. Some of the reviews are really good: informative and pretty objective. Others are these ridiculous "concept" reviews that convey absolutely nothing about the music. But in any event, its' a great way to find out about new music.

      I thought the numerical score they gave for the Junior Senior album was ridiculous. That was an extremely enjoyable album. Ah well.

    • I agree completely. Pitchfork writers frequently try to make their reviews inventive by abandoning traditional music writing. Their large base of staff, inconsistent point rating scale, and weird "concept reviews" make it pretty worthless as a data source for analysis. I love Pitchfork, but this is a dumb idea. Well, an objectively dumb idea. It seems to be working as a publicity stunt.

  • sigh (Score:2)

    by nnet ( 20306 )
    Just what the world needs, more formula pop music.
    • Just what the world needs, more formula pop music.

      Like Nickelback [thewebshite.co.uk] by any chance ? :)

      • Re:sigh (Score:2)

        by nnet ( 20306 )
        No. I've ignored mainstream radio (well all radio) for the last 15+ years. What little I've heard of nickelback reminded me of a metallica-clone. Sad but true (pun intended). True originality can be found in non mainstream genres like progressive rock [progrock.com].
  • Apparently singing in tune doesn't matter to the critics.

    Not that this is a surprise.

    Kind of original. Far too emo/indy. To call this rock is a ridiculous stretch.

    I utterly hate this, which probably means that Starlister will become the bellwether of a whole new generation of schlock. I imagine they will go very far.
  • As a frequent reader of Pitchfork's reviews, I think there's a problem with this guy's analysis. See, Pitchfork's reviews basically span three genres: indie rock, electronic music, and hip hop. The author's analysis just takes all of pitchfork's reviews as a whole and draws conclusions. The result is a couple of tracks that sound like bleak, Radiohead-esque indie rock with breakbeats, and unfortunately, I think they fail miserably.

    It might be more interesting to divide the reviews based on genre and do an

  • Indie film reviews (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bad Vegan ( 723708 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @06:53PM (#9447473)
    The same issue applies to film reviews.

    I'm the producer on an indie film currently in its festival run (shameless plug: http://www.qualityoflife-themovie.com) and it's amazing how much power these reviews have, particular with the industry press (Variety, Hollywood Reporter, etc.).

    What's completely messed up is that these industry reviews can make or break a small indie film like ours. The big Hollywood bloatware films can just spend their way into the hearts and minds of American theaters.

    We might not even get a chance to be in theaters if the industry reviews are poor. Distributors pay attention -- or not -- based on these reviews.

    And why not? Distributor's lives are hectic and who has time to do detailed marketing analyses on thousands of new indie films each year...why not let the industry rags do it for you?

    It's so frustrating since so many of these reviewers aren't the target audience for the films.

    For instance, our film is a narrative feature about two graffiti writers in San Francisco. It's completely targeted at an underground youth audience...and those people that love that sort of thing. But the Variety reviewer was -- drumroll please -- a middle age dude who actually used the word "louts" in his review....and said the soundtrack was "molar-rattling".

    Grandpa obviously woke up on the wrong side of the bed.....

    In fact, younger audiences (14-25) generally love the film....but the acquisitions folks may never get the chance to know this. Etc etc.

    We're just one example, but in the music industry, the same sort of thing is going on.

    During the dotcom years, people talked about disintermediating the system such that people like us (media producers) could reach an audience (film viewer, music lovers, etc.) directly.

    Sadly, the only thing that came of this (in a major way) is peer-to-peer, which doesn't exactly pay the rent. Also, filmmaking has a much different $$ structure than music. Musicians can make most of their money on live shows, while filmmakers make it all in the exhibition/distribution. Thus, peer-to-peer directly threatens us in a way it doesn't necessarily hurt musicians....But I'm sure some of our musician (or geek) friends might disagree in one way or another.

    But that's a different debate.... :-)

    - Brant

  • pitchfork (Score:2, Interesting)

    by NanoWit ( 668838 )
    All the reviews I've read on pitchforkmedia.com have been explaining how either the author of the review is better than the band being reviewed, or how the author and the band are both much better than you. They don't fall over themselves to praise every band (which is good) but I still don't think I get solid information there (which is bad). My method for finding music still is finding somebody that has tastes sort of close to yours, then getting into whatever they like.
  • They don't know, they're not relevant, and that's not what their site is about. Intellectually incestuous hipsters, smug in the obscurity of their tastes are their target demographic.

    I'd sooner ask Jack Chick what's wrong with America. That answer might at least be entertaining.
  • Considering the state of commercial music today, it's hard to believe that anyone *isn't* a critic. The shrink-wrapped cultural cocktail that the entertainment industry shits out daily is more than enough to be critical of.

    And no, I *haven't* had my coffee.

  • Sincerity is not reproducible (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CharAznable ( 702598 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @07:13PM (#9447608)
    The results are hardly suprising.
    Critics like Radiohead, Sigur Ros, The Flaming Lips and Wilco.
    Critics hate The Vines.
    One thing you can't recreate by analyzing databases is sincerity, which is an integral part of the bands that critics like.

  • Irrelevant? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nick_davison ( 217681 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @08:00PM (#9447932)
    Isn't a pop-music critic irrelevant by definition?

    Pop Music is an abbrieviation of Popular Music. By definition, the best popular music is simply whatever sells the most. The worst popular music is whatever sells the least.

    Certainly, people can have other views. People can have their personal tastes. At the end of the day though, they simply have opinions vs. the simple perfect (by definition) metric of sales.

    I'm sure an argument can be made about marketing having an influence on sales. While that's potentially true, recognise what the basic business of a record label is. They want to make as much money as possible. If they believe a record has mass appeal, whether it's good, bad or indifferent, they'll put in as much money as they think will get them a return greater than their investment. OK, they can get that judgment wrong sometimes but their opinion, given their paid highly for it, is more likely to be accurate than most critics. If the critics were so accurate, the record labels would hire them as A and R men.

    There is the notion of artistic merit. Then again, seeing as it's relatively rare for anything artistic to get even close to uniform reviews, even that is more personal opinion and personal values than anything else.

    At the end of the day, all a critic really does is serve to be someone with an opinion. If you can find one with an opinion close to your own, they can save you time by helping you find things that suit such a shared opinion.

    Still, when it comes to pop music, given its basic definition, analysing criticism, as opposed to analysing nothing more complex than sales figures, is probably a mistake.

    • The perfect +5 post? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by IronicGrin ( 619760 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @08:31PM (#9448106)
      Has anyone done a study analyzing Slashdot moderation patterns with the aim of creating a template for the "perfect +5 post"?

      Seems like every other critical medium has been vivisected using lame-ass statistical meme-mapping techniques, so why not this one? Go to it, muchachos. There must be a dissertation in there somewhere.

      (Or barring that, a pony.)
  • This was in an Archie Double Digest

    Dillon.. or Dilton.. that smart guy with glasses.. he analized all the top 5 music songs of all time and computated a #1 hit for Archie's band.. and they were #1.

    ya ya ya.. its only a comic.. but who dosent wanna see Betty and Veronica in a litte #69?

  • Let's face the music... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Izago909 ( 637084 ) <tauisgod@g m a i l . com> on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @08:58PM (#9448305)
    The vast majority of pop music is a cookie-cutter formula. By using music written by a template, lyrics written at a 5th grade level, and vocals preformed by some cute blonde, most pop is made for the lowest common denominator in order to appleal the the highest number of people. That translates into more market saturation and more sales. I'm not saying that all pop music is garbage, but most of it is by default. We can't forget that most of these so called critics are in the industry's pocket also.

  • Pitchfork is crap (Score:3, Informative)

    by no reason to be here ( 218628 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @09:18PM (#9448423) Homepage
    NIN releases are routinely bashed on the pitchfork site. Look at a broad base of rock critics however, and you will see NIN being generally praised. It's not just NIN, either. Some of the critics as pitchfork seem to have an agenda against certain bands, and make sure to give said bands poor ratings at every turn. (Though I'm not sure, a cursory look at the site seems to suggests that the one positive NIN review they have up, written by one James P. Wisdom, was the last review written by said reviewer for the site).

  • Silly Person (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @10:24PM (#9448781)
    Pop music isn't sold on the basis of how good it is, it's sold on the basis of how effectively it's marketed.

    Better to spend your time analysing the ways in which millions of people are convinced that the latest trashy teen queen singing her little heart out about how in love she is could possibly be worth buying.

    (Long Dark Teatime of the Soul tells us how, too!)
  • ...are artists. If you can't do it, shut up. And if you can, you know better than to try to can it in software.

  • I could have saved this guy a ton of work (Score:4, Insightful)

    by humankind ( 704050 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @11:16PM (#9449072) Journal
    The formula for "successful" pop music is pretty simple:

    a) Whatever crappy song Clear Channel puts in heavy rotation to foist upon their radio-listening hostages

  • orwell's songwriting machine is born. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Essron ( 231281 ) on Wednesday June 16, 2004 @11:33PM (#9449141)
    at least the author understands her obsession for popular music reviews is unhealthy. i must applaud the methods and approach used...but the goal makes me uneasy.

    i think the concept of this analysis is only useful to monitor the homoginization of creativity. perhaps remotely notable for product marketing purposes, if tied to sales data. the idea suggests an elevated status for critics while cheapening both artists and the most victimized segments of music consumers.

    sure, one can have a statistical analysis of what makes certain critics write approvingly. but the question is what is that worth? i think less than nothing. net negative for culture, but perhaps an advance for the ruin of beautiful experiments.

    orwell's songwriting machine is born.

  • Simple. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by corian ( 34925 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @12:40AM (#9449375)
    If the music is crap, but the critic likes it, the critic is crap.

    Later, rinse, repeat.

  • "So you want to be a rock and roll star?" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Zhe Mappel ( 607548 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @04:27AM (#9450246)
    As with the recent grad student project analyzing New Yorker stories, seeing the hard instruments of science pressed into the soft belly of the arts yields up a kind of biology class dissection thrill. Having suffered through enough prolix rock crit, who doesn't want to see the critic's thorax? ;-)

    Wilson quantifies, in detail, the patterns that emerge in some rock crit. But it wasn't ever mysterious, was it? The critics are doing what artists and musicians do, which is copy each other. The arts look to the arts. And they xerox endlessly. Yeats wrote, "Nor is there singing school but studying / Monuments of its own magnificence." The Byrds boiled it down to this: "Just get an electric guitar / Then take some time and learn / How to play." We wouldn't remember the Byrds at all today if they hadn't done such nice Dylan covers. . .

    The spooky good thing about Wilson is that he's a musician, too. After all his earnest left-brain crunching I was prepared to hoot at his two prefab songs, and in truth, I did snort at the chorus in "I'm Already Dead," which whines: "I'm already dead / I'm blind and deaf." (And the rigor mortis is a complete bitch!) But his "Kissing God" isn't bad. Musically it may lean hard on the critics-pleasing tricks, exactly as he set out to do. But as a mildly original rearrangement of others' techniques, it's pleasing, and that's the bottom line. Lyrically, I rather liked his phrase "I'm kissing God and losing you"--it's a tasty bit of the profane, like something Prince might have dreamed up in one of his weird Jesus-meets-Larry Flynt fits. And the spastic drumming, well, that's a plus, too. :-)

  • Parody Site (Score:2, Informative)

    by trippcook ( 529339 )
    Don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but SomethingAwful did a pretty dead-on parody of Pitchfork [somethingawful.com] a few months ago. It should, indoubtedly, be checked out.

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