How do you do music criticism without going insane?

Honest question! I mean, loving something but also being fiercely (and worse, professionally) analytical about it is glorious sure, but also really overwhelming. It's a unique disposition imo. Any tips?

have u seen these ppl

drink

drinking at least 8 glasses of water a day helps

Enjoy it for what it is, entertainment.

do it badly

yeah, just don't be loving, fierce, and analytical. most people aren't. other than obsessive fanzine people, but they are the minority and they always have been. there was a point in time when nat hentoff was editing down beat and he wrote almost everything in the magazine. every month. that could drive you nuts. nobody does that anymore. people hardly write at all anymore even when they have a staff gig. if you go by word count.

Are you envisaging this as a full-time job or an "interest", gospodin?

you guys must have some serious email filters setup for good promos vs trash promos, huh?

In my case, less filters and more quick impressions by subject line and promo photo. (I've rarely been steered wrong.)

legend has it you should purchase cough syrup in bulk

basically, go insane first.

be lucky and preferably male

aka "how do you do music criticism without going insane"

watch Almost Famous

Eurgh.

listen to Sound Opinions

xxxp djh

well as I said it feels like a disposition. a need to have a unique and well founded take on all sorts of things you love. in that sense full-time or interest doesn't seem relevant though it probably is. I'm doing it from time to time and only get free gigs in return but I very much feel like a music critic.

I very much feel like a music critic.

― gospodin simmel

broke, consumed by self-loathing, and prone to substance abuse?

exactly

do you compulsively procrastinate in order to avoid writing anything of value? if so, you might just have what it takes to be a writer.

you misspelled masturbate.

Start a YouTube channel.

Never managed to work out how to write for profit - always a hobby really. I haven't written anything for quite a few months now. I got asked the other day about whether I was likely to do anything again soon, and I realised that in order to do it properly I'd have to go back to spending long hours after work agonising about sentence structures and thinking even more intensely about music and pop culture than I already do, and so the answer is 'not for now'. I enjoy having my writing published but I kind of hate the actual act of writing.

I wrote an article once, and got paid.

I quit while I was ahead.

Never managed to work out how to write for profit - always a hobby really. I haven't written anything for quite a few months now. I got asked the other day about whether I was likely to do anything again soon, and I realised that in order to do it properly I'd have to go back to spending long hours after work agonising about sentence structures and thinking even more intensely about music and pop culture than I already do, and so the answer is 'not for now'. I enjoy having my writing published but I kind of hate the actual act of writing.

― Lennon, Elvis, Hendrix etc (dog latin)

for me it's different. i love writing (particularly when i'm writing terribly) but i goddamn hate trying to sell my work.

i write about 2,000 words of st8 fuckin fire on Everclear, put that shit up on eBay and let em fight for it $$$$

by "on everclear", you mean you drink a bottle of everclear before you start writing, correct?

I've always wondered how anyone can digest a new release thoroughly enough in a few days to write something authoritative-sounding. Often takes me a while to figure out what I think of something. I guess tying close listening to your daily bread probably helps.

some writers are just naturally authoritative-sounding

"I've always wondered how anyone can digest a new release thoroughly enough in a few days to write something authoritative-sounding."

it takes practice. but it's like anything else. the more you do it, the easier it is.

I've always wondered how anyone can digest a new release thoroughly enough in a few days to write something authoritative-sounding.

It helps if you narrow your focus. 90 percent of the time, I'm writing about jazz, or one of a few metal subgenres. And since those are genres I've been listening to for 30 years, I can write with (relative) authority. When there's something I don't know, I know where to look to find out.

It's interesting that music criticism gets that question more than film or literary criticism.

film and literature are more typically narrative artforms than music.

Not sure I agree but that argument would be that a more narrative form is easier to comprehend fully when it's experienced fewer times?

Pop music is so mercurial; perhaps its impetus to endless, relentless mutation makes it seem more psychically intimidating to tackle critically?

I ask that question particularly when the reviewer has one of those 27 disc sets to review...

I believe a lot of albums got lousy reviews particularly when they were double (or treble) lLP sets, so god knows how etc..

who said that dancing abt architecture line? that is so annoying ppl always quote that like it's some big truth bomb no one's ever heard before

Zappa, I think

that would make sense who could possibly have a big enough brain to understand zappa's complex 5/4 polyrhythmic varese-influenced doo wop dick jokes?

who said that dancing abt architecture line

- Bob Marley

http://inspirationalquotes.gallery/wp-content/uploads/Talking-about-art-is-like-dancing-about-architecture.png
RIP

well, this is actually pretty fucking fascinating!

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/11/08/writing-about-music/

so...Martin Mull! but it was sort of floating around in different forms since the early 1900s

would be more accurate if changed to "jumping off architecture"

my preferred form is "writing about music is like bombing about architecture"

i know a lot of architects - i'd say writing about music is not that dissimilar to architecture, as far as bitterness, lack of remuneration, and fury at the incompetence of the successful goes.

maybe life is like architecture.

i used to love writing about music and then i hit a point where i felt i had nothing interesting enough to say in the review/essay format about music any more (and i've since grown skeptical that 99% of other ppl have plumbed + exhausted the same wells) and then doing it just became tedious and rote. there are only so many adjectives, so many contexts. i did some ethnomusicology at that point which was better because then i could write about communities and do more intensive research and then sometimes transmute academic research into more publishable reviews. even then tho... there was something staid about the entire enterprise + i found it unsatisfying. when i found myself writing about emo + teenpop albums in the context of radical 19th century politics i realized that the jig was really up and i was just wasting my own time (and probably everyone else's). now i feel like the only music crit that interests me is "X is good," or "X isn't great," or "I didn't like X," bc at least these mundane value judgements are honest and useful if you can identify whose opinions are close enough to yours that their approbation means something is worth checking out. :/

who said that dancing abt architecture line? that is so annoying ppl always quote that like it's some big truth bomb no one's ever heard before

― blonde redheads have more fun (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 4 January 2017 19:58 (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol I was about 20 hours into a party on NYD and this dude with big shirt collars and bad facial hair kept quoting it at me to the point where I had to tell him that it's the actual most hacky thing you can say abt music writing

maybe life is like architecture.

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda)

nah, life is like a beanstalk, innit?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af-x67MHl2U

life in an elevator
livin it up while i'm goin down

Terrible service in this place:

http://www.impawards.com/1992/posters/blame_it_on_the_bellboy.jpg

i'm not trapped in here with the music, you're just not twisted enough for this game

https://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/jared-leto-joker04.jpg