The Devolution of Music Writing

Over the past several weeks, I've been told what particular artists writers like and how what they like makes them feel. I've been told what bands and DJ's are getting "mad respect", "pushing the envelop" and "innovating" for x genre. I've been told what's been exploding in specific, regionally focused scenes. I've been told what's popular and what isn't. I've been told what their (eerily similar) "best albums of 2011" are and which of these I should buy. I've indulged various top 10 lists which find songs, albums or artists that conform to their pithily named subject. I've been given insights about what the Biggest Artists of the year think about when they make a song and what they're like interviews. I've been given windows into upcoming albums from yesteryear's Big Artists - each dripping with breathless anticipation. I've even been given tour dates for hot, new talent and listings for what clubs or shows are upcoming in numerous areas. 

In essence, I've been shown the how of music, the when of music and the where of music. I've been exposed to music as feeling and music as mood. I've been showered with the establishment of music as a social construct and a regional/cultural encapsulation. I've been encumbered by music as style, as technology, as fashion - all of this by various magazines, e-zines, websites and blogs. What hasn't happened - and what I had hoped my unusual consumption of music-related media would do - is clarify why those who are writing about music are primarily the ones doing this. 

Because if music is as they paint it; if music is inseparably tied to genuinely popular, important or interesting things; if music is simply the codification and expression of trends and preferences that they report on, then the inspiration for their existence isn't premised on music itself, but rather on the social and cultural trends that music can act as an embodiment of. To accept that view is to accept that music is essential to the expression of fashionable and interesting social currents but not, in itself worthy of being essentialized. As such, I find myself returning to a question so basic that the ambiguity of the answer is almost inherently damning. What, exactly, is the function of music writing to music writers? 

Beyond the presence of scores, their "reviews" serve as a means to document impressions instead of reflecting on and critically viewing a specific work. In most cases, there's only the scarcest acknowledgment of craftsmanship and far, far more attention paid to "impact" - both on the listener and the "scene/genre" (a metric always reached by assessing critical and popular consensus). This isn't to say that such approaches are automatically invalid: indeed, they can be useful for contextualizing your opinions or the music itself. But shouldn't we be troubled by the ubiquity of writing about music without describing, understanding, explaining, analyzing and disassembling the music itself? 

They don't write like people tasked with thinking through and analyzing the music. They don't write like they have a view that requires justification or elaboration. They don't speak to me like I've heard the album and have my own opinion of it. They don't speak to me like I'm interested in the history of the music or capable of grasping the technique and comprehending individual flourishes. They speak to me like I'm a consumer. Someone to be marketed to, appealed to, pleased and flattered.

When you look at the club/underground sensitivity of sites like Resident Advisor, or the  dishonest perceptional consciousness of sites like Pitchfork or the brochure-style presentation of sites like Mixmag, you don't get the impression that they're sites that write about music so much as they're sites that exist to shape and "represent" the various subcultures that music is peripheral to. They're weather vanes that gain their prominence from identifying what "hipster/underground/clubber/gangsta/rocker/emo/goth/indie" looks like and and then embodying it for consumption with the feigned authenticity that each sect recognizes. It's not music as music, it's music as fashion: where the only thing that measures what's "good" coincides with what appeals to the niche your music magazine is trying to represent. And I can live with that, to a point. But if they see themselves as advertisers, sponsors and publicists they're being contemptibly dishonest by failing to clearly say so.

There's a line between criticism and scene promotion that's mutually exclusive by its very nature and a failure to observe it invites a culture of bad analytical and writing practices that are otherwise avoidable. It's inarguable that pieces like this are almost completely distinguishable from advertisement. And it's just as inarguable that a publication that's invested in the energy, prominence and mood of a particular "scene" has a vested interest in making sure that nothing fundamental to the scene is criticized. If your paycheck hinges on, say, boosting dubstep as an important musical genre, you may criticize specific dubstep artists, but you're never going to say that what makes those artists bad is endemic to dubstep's dance/club-centered musical expectations and conventions - even if that were true. It's a massive conflict of interest inherent to music journalism and it's one that rewards publications for finding, funding and boosting the New Thing and being the site/magazine that represents it. But by tying their resources into social trends, they put themselves on a leash that limits the extent of what they can say or do.

The tonal and conceptual similarities between a lot of the sites is a stylistic and substantive limitation that's the natural consequence of that conflict. When promotion is their intent, then top 10 articles and attempts to stay "current" while writing interviews or gossipy articles about "Why x artist is hot!" are perfect for packing sites with content without actually being forced to say anything reflective. The problem isn't necessarily that this is sleazy and dishonest - though it's both - it's that it's inhibiting. Unless you belong to the scenes in question (and even if you do), all you're learning is what they think is popular, where to go to listen to what they think is popular, and whether you're cool enough to agree with it's popularity. In the absence of a "why" as any justification for musical interest, all you're left with are the peripheral, aesthetically schizophrenic trappings that flash/image sites bring you. All you're left with are the what, where and how. All you're left with are the things that take you to what they want you to spend money on. And because they always want you to spend money, they're always restructuring the pantheon of "acceptable" and "new" and finding the most marketable things to stuff into it.

Music deserves a better class of writers. And listeners deserve a more expansive range of description. The deprivation of a thorough attempt to put language to song, and to put thought behind what critics favor handicaps our ability to process and understand the music. It's impossible to identify talent and skill if music is thoughtlessly reduced to impressions and gimmick-awed emotional reactions - and that's the point. If you're capable of saying "that's wrong" to a music review, they lose the basis for their power and they lose the promotional value of influence. 

Language is what makes it possible to reproduce and identify specific concepts, and this brand of music writing subsists on selling albums by appealing to the familiar and inarguable; to the emotional and the non-musical. Because they know - as I do - that if they provided a means of discussing and describing music, their claims would be disagreeable on grounds that are subject to reason. But by making the discussion of music about everything but the music, they forfend any requirement to justify their biases/investments and most importantly, they forfend any requirement to demand musical progression. To enrich themselves, they must cheapen an art. To succeed, they have to neuter our ability to contest them. I'll be more willing to respect them when I can discern a difference between music reviewing sites and billboards - or at least a willingness to acknowledge that no such difference exists.