OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

I came across this Chicago Reader piece from 2000 where this douche bag lambasted jazz for becoming "art" rather than pop. I wondered who he was - first Google hit reveals he "briefly drew national attention during the 2018 Supreme Court nomination hearings of Brett Kavanaugh, when professor Christine Blasey Ford alleged that Judge was present and laughing as Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were high school students over 30 years previously." What a prick.

this was written by an AI, right? this reads like it was written by an AI. it's really bad. particularly as a take on LGBTQ+ culture.

https://www.discogs.com/digs/music/ballroom-culture-madonna-vogue

if not i guess it should go in the "worst music writing" thread. i don't feel like AI "writing" counts for the purposes of that thread. only bad writing by humans should count. i like human bad writing better.

― Kate (rushomancy), Friday, June 14, 2024 8:02 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

that's pretty hacky but no I don't think it's AI. here's what AI writing looks like:

https://oldtimemusic.com/the-meaning-behind-the-song-vogue-single-version-by-madonna/

― frogbs, Friday, June 14, 2024 8:28 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

ok, i'd like to nominate the anon discogs "vogue" article as bad music writing. giving "vogue", a song which is still pretty contentious in a lot of ways, a bland, hacky, superficial gloss and saying it's a "pride" thing has gotta be one of my least favorite ways of "celebrating" lgbtq+ people.

“ By the start of the ’90s, the stage was set for Madonna to drop “Vogue,” and once again change mainstream dance floors.”

Oh, was it? What is that?

“She was already a household name, still had a controversial edge, and was dating renowned ladies’ man Warren Beatty.”

Ah, I see.

This review left me with my mouth hanging open, no joke. It's the most stick-in-the-mud/stick-up-the-ass jazz "criticism" I've read in I can't even tell you how long. This is the kind of thing the term "moldy fig" was invented for.

https://allaboutjazz.com/evergreen-julius-rodriguez-verve-records

personally, i wouldn't put anything from discogs on here because its a store and i wouldn't put anything anonymous on here either. i mean, its kind of a given that its gonna be bad or not worth reading.

xp lol that review is so wack. The continuous switching the spelling of his last name almost feels like an intentional bit that corresponds with his two-faces thesis, but then he also misspells Billie Eilish. This was incredible though: "He has composed for film and television, including the unforgettable series Suits."

Thinking about his publicist reporting back like, “soooo… we got a review”

Even when this guy likes something, he's a fucking idiot about it:

More faux-intellectual codswallop has been written about Cecil Taylor than about any other jazz musician, dead or alive. He has been, and continues to be, misrepresented as an arcane Einsteinian theorist by a cult whose members are afraid of visceral reactions to his art (or to anyone else's). But Taylor's work demands a visceral response. It has nothing to do with rational thought and everything to do with emotion and physicality. Sadly, the nonsense that has been written about his music will have driven unknown numbers of potential listeners away from it.

Basically every sentence in that paragraph is wrong, in different and sometimes contradictory ways.

Anyone unfamiliar with Taylor's work is advised to forget everything they have read about it before listening to Live At Fat Tuesday's February 9, 1980 First Visit. Everything except Taylor's own famous description of the piano as "eighty-eight tuned drums."

Taylor didn't say this about himself; Valerie Wilmer wrote it in her book As Serious As Your Life, and lazy critics have been borrowing it ever since.

This is the key to appreciating his music. Taylor played those drums with the energy, muscularity and stamina of an Olympic athlete, and on occasion of Zeus himself. Japan's kodo drummers are minnows by comparison. If James Brown was the hardest-working man in showbusiness, Taylor was the hardest-working man in jazz. Indeed, James Brown is Taylor's closest musical comparator. Brown's performances may have been choreographed and through composed to a molecular degree, while Taylor's were as in-the-moment and impulsive as could be, but the end result for the listener is identical: a combination of trance, catharsis and ecstasy. Providing, that is, that one lets go and surrenders to the music.

Taylor loved James Brown (and Aretha Franklin, and Marvin Gaye, and Beyoncé, and Rihanna), but come the fuck on.

Hey Cecil, I hear you like drums

xp I suggest that you may be a little too close to this subject, and that's understandable, but as shitty as the other examples are - and they are shitty - I don't find the premise of that first quote especially objectionable or even incorrect, though I will concede that the binary is weird. I think Taylor's music is rewarding whether you approach it "rationally" or viscerally. I sorta feel the same way about people like Lacy, Tristano, and Braxton (but not Zorn)

How much of Taylor’s stamina was just coke.

How much of Taylor’s stamina was just coke.

OK, I admit it, he was exactly like James Brown!

"It has nothing to do with rational thought and everything to do with emotion and physicality."

This is such a dated way of thinking though. Apart from all the non-Euro philosophies that never made this mistake in the first place, we now also have decades of neuroscience about how these three things are all inextricably connected. You could argue he's merely adopting this binary for analytical reasons, but he's being such a prick about it I'm not inclined to justify it

This is such a dated way of thinking though. Apart from all the non-Euro philosophies that never made this mistake in the first place, we now also have decades of neuroscience about how these three things are all inextricably connected. You could argue he's merely adopting this binary for analytical reasons, but he's being such a prick about it I'm not inclined to justify it

Exactly. Also, I'm not gonna dig through the rest of his writing to find out, but I wonder if he's ever said anything like this about a white artist...

It's also musical elitism in the guise of anti-elitism, because if you don't "get it" on a "visceral" level, there's no option to learn about it or understand it better.
It also suggests that only people who haven't heard Cecil Taylor's music could dislike it!

Les Borsai is the co-founder of Wave Digital Assets.

https://www.spin.com/2024/07/music-critics-suck/

The Pitchfork review system’s highest review is a 9.9 — used only once, for the Complete Motown Singles, in 2007

huh

? don't they have several 10.0s?

or is that what the 'huh' is about

yeah, I have no idea why he thinks the scale only goes to 9.9

“He begs to get canceled by audiences who don’t think about him and have no idea he thinks about them.”

Well, is that actually true? Is Eminem that out of touch, irrelevant? Because it seems to me that you, Rob Sheffield, are talking about it.

Perhaps the writer is adopting Eminem's "battle rap" style because that was a ferocious diss.

This genuinely is the worst piece of music writing ever.

Then he goes on to compare it to the Hindenburg disaster, the gas-stuffed zeppelin of “The horror! The horror!” fame

I can't

lol isn't that "Heart of Darkness"?

this may explain some things

This is the dumbest thing I have ever seen. I asked the question 6 years 1 month and 27 days ago. ⁦@Gartner_inc⁩ ⁦@KenAllard⁩ pic.twitter.com/xOdmx4R68q

— les.eth (@lesborsai) July 5, 2024

lol his company website bio says he ‘sits at the cross-section of entertainment and economics’

finally someone is willing to take down the "loud voices" setting the discourse like...Dash Lewis

what a clown

Incidentally, Dash Lewis is one of the best of the (presumably) younger Pfork critics and I'd be very happy if his reviews did have the cultural impact this writer seems to suggest he has

It could be worse. A certain kind of British music writer of the 1990s would have followed the opening sentence ("I recently came across Eminem’s Hall of Fame induction speech by Dr. Dre") with "and then I wiped it up" or something like that.

Having skimmed through the article, the writing just comes across as flat and dull. I had no desire to engage with it deeply. It has the curious teenage habit of simultaneously trying to be impactful and assertive, but without attracting too much attention, as if the writer was scared. It reminded me of those indie bands from the 1990s who split up the moment their single got to number 37, because they couldn't stand the pressure. If you want to be a writer you have to be prepared to end up with blood on your hands.

More importantly I don't detect a distinctive individual voice, so what's the point? My own writing is immediately identifiable because I have a distinctive, original voice. I present myself as a crazed, fascistic demagogue delivering a sermon to a crowd of mice - a gross exaggeration of my actual personality, obsessed with pop trivia rather than the union of corporate power and the state. I skirt as close as I can to the style of fascism without actually being offensive because I am at heart a good egg. Whether you love or merely adore my writing, it is at the very least distinctive.

You know, I remember reading about Harry Harlow. He was a scientist who separated tiny little monkeys from their mothers and made them suckle from a wire monkey doll covered in cloth. In doing so he demonstrated that love is not real. It's just that we crave cloth. We love to feel cloth. There was something sadistic about Harlow's experiments. But also hilarious, because he was such an unrepentant misanthrope. And that is my goal as a writer. That is why I cover myself in cloth. Because, over time, the population of this planet will learn to stroke my cloth and also suckle from me. And not the other mothers. Only me.

Ultimately people want to be entertained. All of life is entertainment. Writing is entertainment. The article linked above is dull. It's not entertaining. It didn't entertain me. It didn't even make me angry. And it didn't encourage me to read anything else by the writer. No! I do not want to suckle from that man's teat. Not that man. Or from that woman's teat, because this is 2024 and we can all suckle from women's teats now. Not just men.

At this point the next message will probably be "jesus fucking christ", to which my responses are I admit that, yes, remember the cloth, and remember the cloth in that order.

pic.twitter.com/x7Ycc8C5dv

— les.eth (@lesborsai) March 12, 2024

This guy's only other Spin article is about how we can't make good films anymore because of the wokes.

Then he goes on to compare it to the Hindenburg disaster, the gas-stuffed zeppelin of “The horror! The horror!” fame that crashed in New Jersey in 1939, to completely ruin the fun. Thirty-five people died that day.

That part is so good, because it’s not only concern trolling but gets the quote wrong

I actually enjoyed the Eminem album but Dash was otm in that entire review. I would have given it like a 6.0 or something but he def nailed what doesn’t work about it

god that was EXCRUCIATING

"Eminem taps into something primal for me and my fellow Generation X-ers, the same way Rage Against the Machine and Oasis do. Their complete disregard towards anything other than the opinions they hold true is what art should be."

uh...

i don't think i can read past that...

Hindenburg was 1937 for the record.

Then he goes on to compare it to the Hindenburg disaster, the gas-stuffed zeppelin of “The horror! The horror!” fame that crashed in New Jersey in 1939, to completely ruin the fun. Thirty-five people died that day.

Heh, this is the full paragraph in Sheffield's original:

Not just a flop. The flop. The flop that killed the 20th century. We’ll never get another rock flop like this one, for the same reason we’ll never get another Hindenberg. It only takes one exploding gas-stuffed blimp to ruin the fun for everybody.

Interesting how the "gas-stuffed" and "ruin the fun" parts got transferred over, outside of any quotation marks.

Friends we seem not to have given the author credit for going back all the way to April 2023 as the basis for his bizarre ad hominem

Led Zeppelin have permanent and exclusive rights to exploit the Hindenburg disaster.

This guy is the master of “this thing that annoys me on the internet is a world-historical problem” writing

Whoops wrong thread

I’m not saying “lock thread” but Les has made a compelling case

this is not the worst music writing ever, but i hate it:

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/david-berman/everything-in-this-room-right-now-is-a-part-of-me-david-berman

can someone read the first two or three paragraphs and explain to me why this person is writing this piece?

or am i barking up the wrong tree because i would much rather read about DCB than the author, and this kind of piece is supposed to be about the author, and therefore i'm clicking on the wrong things?

Sorry, I bailed out when I learned that the author was a senior in college in 2019.

dude is the music editor of paste so i guess he can do what he wants but in general don't click on paste links. you save time that way.

if it had started: "I was sitting in a Hyatt bathtub with my mom when the bleach starts to burn..." i might have been intrigued enough to continue.

well he’s the editor so at least no one else had to read it

I found a good pull quote:

"Admittedly, I had know idea who David Berman was. I didn’t know what Silver Jews was, nor had I heard much about Purple Mountains at all."

I wish I knew such serenity— seriously, have never been able to understand what’s to like about any DB projects.

“I wasn’t familiar with Drag City and had only just recently gotten into Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. Songwriters like Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Joanna Newsom, Bill Callahan and Stephen Malkmus were just names I’d likely scrolled past without considering.”

Ok already