The All-New STYLUS.

Basically, less long form music writing; sadness abounds.

Pitchfork is still around. What's the big deal?

lol

I'm going to miss Stylus' unabashed love of pop. I still remember Pitchfork reviewed Kylie's Fever because it was April Fool's, whereas I would eagerly look forward to reading stylus every week for swygwart's roundup of the UK top 40. I think most people on the teenpop thread have at one time or another written for stylus. The Reverend mentioned that they've got latin music reviews - a recent development, but generally Stylus is unmatched for its cross-atlantic perspective.

Pitchfork reviewed Kylie's Fever because it was April Fool's

Are you serious? Ugh.

that dominique leon is such an elitist bitch:

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/19918-fever

pop more leik pap amirite guyz

I've said this elsewhere, but yeah, what i'll miss most about Stylus is its commitment to doubt, that every canonized treasure or forgotten misunderstood cult item deserves a rebuttal or an appeal. Up can be down, and the skepticism actually makes to it print. The site wasn't a collection of staff-wide endorsements. I'm gonna miss it.

-- kiss out the jams, Sunday, 28 October 2007 16:37 (4 hours ago) Link

BIG HOOS

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=1566

Thanks, Swygart, if you're reading this, for introducing me to one of my favorite songs ever in hilarious and accurate fashion. (Oh, and for running the Jukebox, too.)

Rev, I don't even know if that's a boo or a yay

=yay

hmm...i thought everyone had the same opinion as i do and that we all agreed that stylus was crap. i guess i was wrong. it was so bland. did anything that ever appeared on there ever stir anything in anyone? not really.

it was so bland. did anything that ever appeared on there ever stir anything in anyone? not really.

I can't imagine anyone thinking this. Consider the "Seconds," "Playing God," and "Staff Top 10" features.

He must've not read many Stylus pieces.

Another kudos for the long extended pieces by some of my favorite ILX peeps. And some of the shorter stuff by my other favorite ILX peeps. RIP.

kiss, that's a BIG yay.

Oh, I forgot about Dom.

hmm...i thought everyone had the same opinion as i do
hmm...i thought everyone had the same opinion as i do
hmm...i thought everyone had the same opinion as i do

i kind of wish Stylus had polls.

Holy shit. It just occurred to me that without Stylus, I wouldn't have found ILX, at least not when I did. And even if I had, I might not have stuck around if not for recognizing several posters as Stylus contributers.

There's a lot of love in here.

Stylus RIP. Todd is seriously the best guy ever, running a site tirelessly, using a rotating carousel of writers [was Stylus the Montreal Expos of the music crit world?] to create a great outlet for longform music crit and also a great playground for all sorts of new music writers.

Working for and with Todd on Stylus was an opportunity for which I'm forever grateful. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't have ended up where I am today, not only for his generosity but for introducing me to a community of writers that could be critical without being mired in rockist/popist nonsense [at a time when that was all the rage.]

Thanks Todd and all the best with your future endeavors.

[BTW, Todd is still doing great stuff at eMusic's 17dots blog. Highly recommended. It's like reading Stereogum, except enjoyable and interesting.]

And so the farewells begin.

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/the-bluffers-guide-to-stylus.htm

1hey this is a real drag. thanks todd and nick and will and everyone else. good stuff - i stopped reading p4k long ago, i guess i may have to go back :(

# no Says:
February 6th, 2006 at 5:19 am

Fergal is like Dom except he’s actually funny and I don’t want to punch him in the gut.

RIP

Stylus' best ever opening paragraph:

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/reviews/the-am/the-am.htm

If nothing else I liked when Stylus provided a nice counterbalance to some of Pitchfork's more wonky reviews. In general, Stylus seemed to be a bit more levelheaded when it came to buzz bands.

seriously well done to all involved in the site.
i love(d) stylus.

I just read again the piece on Steely Dan's 'Gaucho'. Amazing stuff. My work week is about to get a little more boring.

You can use my Libertines review I sent to you (if you still have it) if you're running out of stuff by the end of the week, Stylus!

Please tell me that I can still read William B Swygart's writing somewhere else now.

I glanced at Stylus every so often and if a random google for a band turned up a Stylus review I'd choose that above most other sites, but I didn't keep up with it regularly because I thought of it as somewhat dry and serious, hushed reverence over old albums mixed with noncommittally half-positive chinstroking over new releases, but looking through the pieces linked here that doesn't seem to be true at all (yeah, it does seem kind of ridiculous now I've written it out that I could think that of anything with WBS, Dom and Dave Q onboard). Sorry, Stylus guys! I'd better get going through the archives.

Dave Q's Muse review is the finest troll in the history of Internet music reviewing.

And the comments on that!

also I missed Dom P's "review" of The View the first time around. 'tis beautiful.

^^^also this. I was being force-fed The View by my radio station committee at the time, and Dom pretty much articulated what I felt.

Todd Hutlock, today, and very very very OTM about the value of Stylus:

The Stylus model was always better for the writers than it was for the readers, and that’s REALLY saying something given how great some of the writing was. But I’ll be damned if there will ever be another place that is just gonna let me write however much I want on whatever the hell I want to write about, as long as its about some music of interest to someone out there. We broke the mold, my friend, and no one else is crazy and/or stupid enough to try to glue it back together.

hey, they let me write about Olsen & Johnson.

The warmth here is encouraging and, honestly, surprising. I'm convinced our commenters were the most grotesque group of gnomes in God's great earth.

That's only because Pitchfork never had a comments box.

OTM ^

Well, it pains me to admit it, but we’ve had plenty of favorite commenters on the site. Zarklephaser, Grand Banks, Florenz6, meatbreak, raskolnikov, et al.: we salute you!

WTF I WAS CALLED OUT AS A FAVORITE STYLUS COMMENTER??!?!!!

(totally unexpected, thanks to whomever suggested that!)

Hahaha, that was all Todd's doing, singling you and the others out. I don't think anything has had as much sustained, impassioned, profane and repeated discussion in our virtual office over the years as the comments boxes. God bless our readers. And hello, Zarklephaser.

Hello, Zarks!

I've known about this for a couple months now, but I'm still bummed about it, especially after reading this thread.

This is going to sound like another "kid with a dream" cliche, but so be it: Todd e-mailed me in early 2005 after reading something on my blog and asked if I wanted to join the staff. As someone who'd been casually writing about music for a couple years but had aspirations toward something more, I was thrilled and honored at the opportunity. I was a staff writer for about a year and a half, at which point I was let go because I wasn't writing enough. Which was totally fair, since I've never been a prolific writer. But another part of the reason I had trouble pitching articles was that I was intimidated by the level of talent and passion among the other writers on the site. I always felt a little out of my league. I continued writing singles reviews, right up until two weeks ago, because I didn't feel similarly burdened by the task of making snap judgments about T-Pain singles.

But I have a lot of happy memories of being a Stylus staffer. I think I wrote some pretty good articles, things I undoubtedly wouldn't have had the motivation to write on my own were it not for the site. The karaoke night in New York that Miccio alluded to earlier was a blast. In fact, everyone I've met through the site has been top-notch, and the staff message board was a wonderful, intelligent community (esp. when ILM started to go down the drain). And while the last article I wrote for Stylus was published over six months ago, it sucks to think that if I was suddenly inspired again to write 800 words on some long-forgotten pop song, I would no longer have a venue for it.

So long, Stylus. You'll be missed.

todd burns is a good guy and the site provided a lot of opportunities for a lot of people

it will be missed

Thanks for the thread summary, deej.

are u zinging me on stylus memorial thread?
poor form

oh u mad cuz i'm stylus on you

it will be missed
My college roommate pointed out that whenever somebody famous passed this life, the NY Post would inevitably publish at least one letter to the editor that ended with that phrase, whatever their previous take on said personage. So when Leonid Brezhnev died, under the heading "Bye Bye Brez," there was a letter to the effect that "even though he was the head of an Evil Empire, blah blah, he was a dominating figure on the world stage for decades, blah blah. He will be missed."

http://images.encarta.msn.com/xrefmedia/sharemed/targets/images/pho/t052/T052188A.jpg

We won't have Stylus to kick around anymore?