What Happened to the Negative Music Review?
 

Wow. That's fucked up.

I hit my paywall at Wall Street Journal, and do not wish to subscribe, so would you mind going into a little more detail?

From the intro, it seems that negative music reviews have been declining since the rise for aggregators, even though the cherished and beloved negative review is still alive and well in film, restaurant, etc.

I guess 2017 is a particularly bad (er... good?) year, with nearly 800 albums reviewed and exactly ZERO "red" score reviews according to Metracritic — a statistic I can almost not even credit, considering what passes for music and how bad so fucking much of it is.
Between 2012 and 2016, 7,287 albums have been reviewed and only eight have been rated poorly enough to fall into the "red" category. I'm not sure what that means exactly.. perhaps their metric for negative reviews is flawed, or the criteria too narrow. But YIKES, what will become of the chilcren?

Anyway, way more detail would be great.

I haven't read the WSJ articoe but what type of a weirdo uses metacritic for album reviews?

I guess the reason that bad reviews don't exist anymore is that they became redundant now that all new music is represented in some way or another online. I think it serves fans best to have music reviewed by people who are interested in that type of stuff and if what they say sounds intriguing you can check it out for yourself within a few seconds of reading the review. The new bad review is an indifferent review.
I'm glad the days are gone of magazines getting people who don't like a thing to review that thing. It is a waste of everyone's time.

Fairly good point actually.

Also, the Metacritic scoring methods are a bit weird. The only albums that get an overall red score are the albums where the weighted average is less than 39. That's really low... 39 out of 100. That's waaaayyy below an F by academic standards, and not even bad review factories like Pitchfork kick out many 3.-something reviews. Usually a 4 or a 5 is enough of a sign that they don't like the thing.

And Metacritic "assign(s) more importance, or weight, to some critics and publications than others, based on their quality and overall stature." That's the official line from the website. Now, what the fuck does that mean, exactly? In order to truly establish a aggregate score, the ratings have to be equally weighted. And if a publication is considered to be of high enough "quality" to be used in the metascore, then all that publications critics should be given the same weight. But they're saying they weigh individual critics differently, which is strange.

Oh well. It doesn't matter. Basically, an album can have shit reviews all around the board, nothing but 5/10 or 2.5/5 or whatever, and still be considers "good" based on the criteria of both this article and Metacritic. Which is bulshit of course. Indeed, if EVERY review is a 5/10, (not that that would ever happen), the aggregate would (without weighted averages) be 50, and that undeniable failure of an album would still not be bad enough to be considered "bad" by the authors/aggregators. That's ridiculous.

On the other hand, I do think it can be constructive when someone who is actually steeped in knowledge or is a particularly big fan of a certain artist or group does a thoughtful review mentioning that for whatever reason the newest release isn't quite up to standard or is a significant departure. Negative reviews can be funny, but I'd rather find out about what is worth my time rather than what isn't.

Yeah negative reviews can be funny, but often aren't. Agree with yr first point though.

When they try really hard to be funny — when funny is the goal — oh my god. It's almost certainly going to be awful. I can just see the 22-year-old sitting at his computer, nodding and rubbing his beard at how wittily he is destroying this or that piece of music, and it's a sad thought.

When the humor is incidental, I think it's more likely to work. When it's a masturbatory attempt to make fun of an artist or their music, it's usually shit, and it's usually not helpful.

Savage Clone said it can be constructive, or informative or whatever, when someone familiar with a certain artist — a fan — explains why a recording didn't work for them, and I think that's accurate and very well put. In those instances, a negative review can be a positive thing, like a well-meaning critique, or notes on a friend's one-man play.

Generally, I think reviews of the first songs by new artists should mostly just be informative. This is what it sounds like, these are the stylistic components, etc. because that early on, one doesn't have enough context about an artist to start praising or calling it shit.

Basically this. I'm really glad to see less negative reviews tbh. Always thought a music review was much more interesting if you consider it as a way to describe a way you can get into a record, explaining some codes/keys, rather than just stating something is good or bad

I don't know if there's any systematic way to really review music "well." It's been bugging me forever.
To score or not to score? To provide a recommendation, or simply describe and detail? I really don't know what's best, but I think that even though numerical values tend to lead to more skimming and less thorough reading, I think ditching them altogether would decrease readership even more. Maybe that's ok? Maybe music criticism should either die off, or take on the shape of feature writing, telling a kind of story of an album based on the tangible facts (where and how it was recorded, what the songs are called, who plays what where, etc.) -- a story fleshed out by the writer's impression of what the intention is, what the music sounds like, and so on.

I don't know. Really. When I hear an album and it blows me away, I want to read positive reviews of it. I'm human, and there's no shaking the confirmation bias. When I really hate an album (which I probably wouldn't unless it's a beloved artist going totally off the rails, or something that I dislike that's just being jammed relentlessly it into my skull by radio or whatever), I want to read about how shitty the album is. That's rarely the case though. Most albums are neither AMAZING nor so unbelievably fucking terrible that I would derive pleasure from someone cutting it to shreds. It's usually just a non-thing. Most music is just whatever.
So I have no clue what my ideal system would be, but I guess I'm glad there are positive and negative reviews, if only because I can't think of a better way to systematically evaluate music when 80% of it doesn't even warrant being evaluated.

I think it might work to have numberless reviews, but to still somehow designate some of the albums as "Notable" or "Must-hear," or whatever. I don't think a " or notable" or "must not hear" equivalent would be necessary at all.

I'm just blabbering because when I've always been interested in writing about music, but goddamn... I wouldn't actually WANT to using any of the major publications' rubrics for doing so. So it makes me wonder about what I would like to do, or see more of.

wsj is having a labor day sale: a 2-month subscription for a dollar. they will only gouge you later. yes it's a rupert murdoch outfit. but also maybe an essential newspaper for some, due to their business focus.

...

HEY! YOUR MUSIC SUCKS!

so metacritic was used because it lets you look at stats very easily, and you can spot changes in trends without having to resort to claims such as "back in my day, a critic would...."

pretty well written article actually. touches on things like fan harassment of critics enabled by social media which incentivizes people to gush over garbage.

here are the last 2 paragraphs:

Stephen Thomas Erlewine, senior pop editor at TiVo and a long-time music critic, says a positive development is that critics have become more diverse and fairer to subgenres such as nu-metal that were dismissed in the past. Critics, he says, should focus on what an album means, not just whether it’s good or bad. Yet he worries that the narrowing focus on megastars—all those positive reviews, nuanced think-pieces and fun lists—is fueling a trend where pop’s 1% get more and more popular at everyone else’s expense.

“Music criticism, like journalism in general, is the first draft of history,” he says. “Without some sort of writing about what’s happening in the culture, we’re going to be poorer in the future.”

Although i would have thought due to the decline of the major record labels pop's current 1% are comparatively less popular than who ever was most popular 20 or 30 years ago. Even if the focus of the mainstream is more narrow.

Major record labels are doing fine and own huge shares of publicly traded streaming services. They're adapting. The labels aren't going to let themselves suffer, no matter what. Artists are not as fortunate, and I think you're right that even the most popular artists are really nowhere near the level of previous generations. Taylor Swift is setting YouTube records, but she's no Pink Floyd, let alone Beatles, even in a purely dollars and cents way. She's not even an Nsync.

Hmm... I'm not sure about that second bit. The kind of music criticism aggregated by Metacritic (reviews using metrics) and actual music writing are different beasts entirely. Interviews and features about musicians, sure, those are at least broadly speaking, part of that historical process. That writing should be spread out, and it is. But the two-paragraph, 1-5-star reviews in rolling stone or the daily rarely-below-6, rarely-above-8/10 Pitchfork reviews? Nah. An album is reviewed along with 5-10 others and that's it... it goes away the next day, no matter how big the artist is. In fact, I think the "biggest" artists are less big than they ever have been. Kanye and Jay-Z and Taylor and Beyoncé may take up a ton of the tabloid space, but I think as a "ruling class" they're significantly less dominant than the big artists of previous generations. The review for the albums they put out once every three aren't taking up any more space than the lesser-knowns on that front. They're just likely at the top of the screen, or closest to the front page of the magazine. For that day, or for that issue, respectively.

They're also all HATED by a massive chunk of the population. So many people hate Taylor and Kanye and Jay and Bey and Kendrick and Drake and so on, it's insane. It's a weird deal.

Methinks he thininks a bit too highly of the significance of the job. It's being done by MILLIONS of people, mostly for free, and being consumed constantly by anyone with a smartphone.

take it up with the author ha ha ha. want me to copypaste it here?

No no no... thanks, but that's not necessary. Thanks for providing details though.

I just happen to think that portion is just a little... what's the word... ahh, dumb. Yes dumb.

Coincidentally (at least I don't think The Wire has anything to do with the goddamn Wall Street Journal ;) )...

https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing...gative-reviews

ETA: This article works as part of a dialogue of sorts with the WSJ and Quietus pieces, both of which are mentioned.

the wall street journal is a good paper! try reading it some day

i'm not saying that i agree with its political positions but they actually still practice journalism and go gather facts and shit. their business and economics reporting is really impressive.

i got a trial subscription for labor day and they send me something like 20 newsletters per day with charts showing me the progression of rent inflation (higher than wage growth) and how at the edges of unemployment businesses are having trouble finding qualified applicants (bring more immigrants, i say) and innumerable other facts and trends that help me understand the world better in a way that no other publication does. (okay, maybe bloomberg is a match, but i don't have a subscription).

anyway, that article you posted is nice, it delves more into the aesthetic function of criticism but does not refute the wsj piece in any way, it actually deepens and reinforces and complements the original argument.

and props to the wsj for looking at actual FACTS and demonstrating a trend with verifiable evidence, which is what professionals do. their focus is business and industry so that's clearly their angle. nothing dumb about that piece or its approach to its subject.

Wow... this is a FAR more interesting read than the WSJ article (which I finally read, btw). It’s also a shitload more fun (and article that finds a way to wedge in “I Killed Christgau With My Big Fuckin’ Dick” is a-ok by me). :D

Thanks for sharing!

I agree all around about WSJ. I don’t have a subscription, but I used to, and it’s a paper that I will pick up at the store fairly regularly, and even (gasp!) read in the library when I’m there.
Yes, it’s a Rupert Murdoch joint, but even so it’s perhaps the best example of a print publication still devoted to facts over clicks and sales in the 2010s. (Of course, part of its success in this regard is certainly due to the dependability of its readership — mostly older, over-educated, well-off white folks; not a ton of kids or working class laborers thumb through the thing, but whatever.)

HOWEVER... I don’t think Mr. Nazi was trying to refute WSJ by posting the Wire’s story (which I’m still reading, or taking a break from reading, as I type this). I think he was just saying “hey, here’s another take on this whole thing,” and offering it up as supplemental reading for the thread.

And, y’know, one really shouldn’t expect a mag like The Wire to present information in a similar way to WSJ. They’re two totally different beasts; one is a newspaper (a newspaper’s newspaper!), and the other is a feature-laden entertainment magazine. So I think the disparity between the two in terms of fact reporting is kind of a non-issue, as the two pubs simply don’t exist to produce the same kind of product. *shrug*

eh? i never said that sopas meant that link as a refutation, but he sorta called the paper names? which, from an ideological stance i guess one could do, but not from a journalistic one. those fuckers do good work.

the other thing i alluded to was that you called the wsj argument dumb. it's not. at all. it's the same argument more or less as the wire one, just from a different perspective-- the wire with the more aesthetic and philosophical take as it befits its editorial goals and standards. but both deal with the subject of media coverage and the deleterious effect of excessive praise.

(on a side note: i'm also heartened by the wire's denounciation of the absurdity of numerical scores, which i have always resisted... except where i'm used to them by repetition, like with netflix, where i must feed the machine that gives me recommendations-- but it's not the same thing.)

anyway-- let's not quibble about the details of minor misreadings and misunderstandings. let's go berate some music instead!

Im pretty sure I called Metacritic’s aggregating methods dumb (or, rather, statistically unsound). I don’t think I called the WSJ argument dumb. But I guess I may have? I dunno.

...

Stupid music sucks!

"I hate music / It's got too many notes..."

Mats know best.

The Wire is not an entertainment magazine. It's a music magazine, and a good lot of the music it covers, while GREAT, is hardly entertaining at all! :D

maybe people are afraid to be proven wrong in hindsight...like it sounds like garbage to me now..but what if it's just way ahead of me....

like some of those early rolling stone reviews of what are now thought of as classic albums.

Lester Bangs always (privately, I believe :D) reserved the right to be wrong, even when he was being ABSOLUTELY VICIOUS in his reviews. Just to give you two prominent examples, Exile On Main St. and On The Corner got the trademark L.B. shitstorm, but later he saw the light and placed them in his pantheon.

haha. fair enough!

the flip side of the coin, I remember hearing that when john peel didn't like some music he felt bad and assumed he didn't get what the band was going for and it was HIS issue which I thought was interesting as well

Funny. People should be afraid of the exact opposite.

Lik, in 2002, everyone was saying Interpol was the new Joy Division, and no small number of Trail of Dead/Sonic Youth comparisons were made if memory serves. And while those 2002 albums still hold up quite well, gushing over them would be suicdide for a music reviewer in 2017 (or ‘16, ‘15... any time after 2003, really).

I think I would actually suck nards at reviewing music. I’d overthink everything, and I’d end up making embarrassing declarations about the goodness and shittiness of things.

What I really like is when NPR or some other outlet does a series of rapid fire “first impression” reviews of a big new release with commentary from multiple writers just talking about how they feel immediately after hearing an album for the first time. But that’s not really possible with low-profile releases... or really anything other than Kanye/Drake/Beyonce/Taylor Swift stuff. Still, I think there’s something to it. Music is a visceral thing after all, so it makes sense to discuss it in terms of the feelings it inspires.

I like Byron Coley's column in the wire, everything he reviews gets like 2 sentences! And those two sentences tell you enough about the band and the record give you a clear enough idea about whether you want to pursue further

Robert Christgau has being doing the same thing for ages now (OK, mostly his reviews are not as "micro" as Coley's, but still) and in almost each one of those appraisals he's said more than anything twenty times longer.

http://www.robertchristgau.com/cg.php

Yeah. He knows his shit.


:D

Pitchfork are the absolute worse for this. The amount of albums they've SLATED and then a few years deleted said review to now give it a 9 or something is just ridiculous.

Hmmmm...

Yep. This happens a lot. There’s no taking their reviews seriously. Honestly, it’s just a thing to bolster your own positive opinion of something it they happen to agree, and a thing to bitch about if they disagree.

If I like an album and it gets an 8-10, I’m happy about it. If I like an album and it gets less, I bitch. If I hate an album and it gets an 8-10, I bitch. If I hate an album and it gets less, I’m satisfied. That’s all it’s good for. Bias-bolstering.

Ah well, poor guy is half a silly fool. I’ll pray for him or whatever.