the quietus : the new look

Jesus, did Florence fuck the author's boyfriend?

too cringeworthy to read, cruelty is not a good look. Neither is encouraging anyone to be more like her from La Roux. (I can be cruel about her because I'm just some lame guy on the internet rather than someone she gave some time to and such.)

Am I the only one who read this as dismissive of her and cruel towards the PR machine that placed her in the public eye?

A couple of observations: firstly, how stupid do you have to be to not be able to work an iPod? It'd be nice to be able to somehow justify that she's clearly not an idiot, but what's still to come might seem to negate that.

^^ both cruel AND dismissive!

ha okay I kind of forgot about that part

yeah but seriously i'm reasonably technologically illiterate myself and i worked out how to work my ipod in about a minute

I work in IT and iPods confuse the fuck out of me. What's your point?

its not just that we have to call her stupid because she cant use an ipod, its that we also get to imply that she partakes in some kind of 20th-century ludditry that makes her both an idiot AND ideologically suspect

Yeah, and there's that whole subtext of "women can't deal with technology..." - not sure where the writer is going with that one. I'm not sure if she's condemning Florence for playing to that stereotype, or just reinforcing it.

There just seems to be a nasty edge to this "let's smash down pop stars" when they're female (see also the rage directed at LaRoux) - but I suppose there were those puppets on YouTube acting like idiots.

I'm not sure how the dynamics of the writer being female play into this. It would be easy to dismiss it as misogyny if the writer were male - but the female writer being dismissive of and cruel stupid female pop star is just too close to home for me. There's probably a healthy dose of projection in this discomfort. Women police other women just as rigidly - if not worse - than men do.

But in this case, I'm just as guilty of it, as LaRoux and Florence annoy me perhaps *more* because they are sold as "strong or arty women" when they're poppets. But how to counteract this - coverage of non-poppet females doesn't get quite the discussion and fuss, does it?

Sorry, my thoughts are ill formed and I'm tired.

I would just like to make it clear I'm not excluding myself in this, before anyone calls me out as hypocritical.

I'm trying to figure out why it makes me uncomfortable.

Yeah, buts its one thing to make cruel and dismissive comments about a pop star on an internet forum or at the pub with friends, another thing entirely to use your public forum to do so in such a callous way.

Yeah, but if you interview someone, and they turn out to be a complete and utter inarticulate idiot, isn't that part of what one should represent in an accurate depiction of the interview?

It's not actually the interview so much that bothers me as the "ha ha, we were right" trumpeting about it, which is more my friends (and myself to be honest)

I really don't know what I'm saying. Just expressing my discomfort and trying to work out what with.

But tbh, this article goes well beyond "she's a bit inarticulate" though.

eh its also hard to get behind an interview that wears its heart on its sleeve so clearly--obviously its impossible to go into an interview w/ no preconceptions but itd be nice to think that this writer was willing to have her mind changed

It does seem a bit "break a butterfly on a wheel" TBH. I don't know if the interviewer went in with the idea that she was a puppet, a poppet and a tool. Why interview someone in that way?

The bit about the ipod is just bizarre. "Welch is a willing victim of the post-mySpace obsession with fetishizing technical ineptitude. How stupid do you have to be to not be able to work an ipod? " she asks, ignoring Flo's quite rational explanation that she uses a CD player because post-90s technology breaks down on her (it's even mentioned that she rummages for her player in a large bag - an activity that is basically Russian roulette for ipods). Nowhere does she say she is not able to use it. As someone who's on his third digital camera in just over a year I can understand that.

And the bitchiness about how Flo can't articulate clearly enough about her favourite albums made me LOL. Just because it's a requirement that UK music journalists have to be able to provide endless lists appraising old albums in 40 pithy words doesn't mean that popstars have to be able to do it too. Have things really got so bad that we are supposed to share the anger at not being provided with yet another summary of "This Is Hardcore"?

I vaguely recollect that the English music press has a history of employing at least one or two clueless bitches to take down easy targets. It's probably comforting for the middle-aged dudes that read the Quietus to know that these traditions continue, even when done as poorly as this.

Doran, who edits the site and posts here as he does, asked me to pass this on (as he's been busy with reaction to this all day) -- this is collated from a couple of reaction posts over on FB:

---

"...we set up an interview where she was going to talk about her favourite music of the 00s, after she turned down loads of subjects. Then when we turned up, she couldn't name ten albums from this decade and two of the ones she did name were from the mid 90s.

"She spent the entire allotted time acting like a pillock and talking utter shite. We reflected this....She chose the subject. She had a month to research it. Ten albums she likes from the last ten years.

"I'm not an unnecessarily cruel person but I don't really feel *that* guilty given the amount of time we put in at our end.

"I'm certainly not going to spike it for example just because it seems mean or doesn't fit in with someone's PR schedule.

"I took the decision to not go into the boring behind the scenes details, perhaps I should have done....I may write a follow up feature but I'll let the dust settle first."

Wouldn't it have been better for all parties involved to just, uh, not run the piece?

I mean, Christ, if Pitchfork couldn't get beardo from [INSERT HIP INDIE BAND HERE] to name his favorite albums of the decade I don't think they'd write an article trashing him.

Wouldn't it have been better for all parties involved to just, uh, not run the piece?

^^^^^^^^^

"two of the ones she did name were from the mid-90s". LOL at the aspie music writer dude's latest round of redundant album summaries being threatened by this. The rest of us are not so bothered (though as a music pedant myself I should mention that This Is Hardcore came out in 1998, not 1997 as mentioned in the article).

yeah, plenty of other ways to frame this besides calling her an idiot

(i don't even know this chick is, but it's a shitty article)

Not running the piece doesn't really send a "stop fucking around with us" message to the artist and their camp, though.

I agree with everyone else on the point of this piece makes The Quietus appear really, really mean, but where I break with the disapproval is that I am okay with them being really, really mean.

There are a lot more diplomatic ways of sending that message. Plus doesn't it run the risk of pissing off the PR people to the point of damaging relations with other artists? Just seems like a pointless exercise just to be spiteful for wasted time.

I guess this just bothers me because I really respect the writing at the site and this is the furthest thing I would expect from them.

the problem for me is that it triggers my natural instinct to feel bad for someone who is being made fun of behind their back.

I don't know if a feature published about you on a public site that you know is coming out because you participated in an interview for it is analogous to making fun of someone behind their back; it seems rather aggressively like making fun of someone to their face.

i think it wouldn't even be so bad if they had just written a diss article about her, but the fact that it's an "interview" plays on your worst fears of your words being taken out of context/the wrong way, making a bad impression, etc.

"I took the decision to not go into the boring behind the scenes details, perhaps I should have done....I may write a follow up feature but I'll let the dust settle first."

yeah, he should have gone w/ the "boring" behind-the-scenes details, since the article is ostensibly about bullshit PR hype and the "behind-the-scenes" shit IS that PR hype, and without the b-t-s stuff that shows how shady and irritating flo is being the article just comes across as ultra-bitchy

Exactly. The words spoken by Flo don't match the bitchiness in the writers opinions.

the point is that while florence doesn't offend me enough to make me think that she had this coming, i'm all for the music press being meaner, bitchier, not just in opinion columns but in the more eye-catching interview format, because i'm sick of reading interviews with awful artists, granted to them (ahead of other, better artists) because of the stature, where the journalist has to pretend to be enthusiastic about their music. this happens a lot! music journalism isn't about trotting out puff pieces ffs.

I agree on the overkill of puff pieces, but I don't think being "meaner, bitchier" is the correct answer. What about just honest?

I thought this was great. I'm sick of "everything's great" when it clearly is not. I'm sick of everything being a puff piece. A major takedown (especially on a rubbish "artist" like this) was due and I'm glad The Quietus did it.

Major takedown? Um, no. A major takedown would consist of reasoned, well-thought out arguments not snide comments and bitchiness.

DUDE SHE DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO USE A iPOD

Does The Quietus have a substantial readership? I never really hear anyone mention it or see anyone link to it anywhere.

The few times I've checked it out, I really didn't see anything compelling enough to make me want to return.

I read it several hours ago at work, so maybe I missed some particular nuance in the thing, but my problem with the piece isn't that the writer's being "mean," it's that the writer lacks any hint whatsoever of self-deprecation. Exposing the charade of the entire Q&A-with-a-pop-star process could've made for some funny or interesting reading, but the writer just seems intent on proving herself smarter than her subject (if the writer went into the interview with an open mind -- or anyway, not merely intent to proclaim this person a dork -- it sure doesn't read as such). Also, don't pieces like this work better when you get the sense that the writer cares deeply about the subject -- hence, the daggers come out because they're let down or something?

Curious what the writer means by this also:

that laughable period in music where being female developed into its own genre?

I would have preferred it if the piece had just been an essay on Florence, without the quotes from the interview. The writer's angle/agenda had very little to do with the quotes used in the piece. So having the quotes in there, and having thus Florence participate in her own takedown, to my mind distracted from the thrust of the piece and made it less effective.

I don't know if a feature published about you on a public site that you know is coming out because you participated in an interview for it is analogous to making fun of someone behind their back; it seems rather aggressively like making fun of someone to their face.

― the blackest thing ever seen (HI DERE)

Does The Quietus have a substantial readership?

I count for at least two readers, pal.

"Does The Quietus have a substantial readership? I never really hear anyone mention it or see anyone link to it anywhere.

The few times I've checked it out, I really didn't see anything compelling enough to make me want to return.

― kshighway1, Thursday, October 22, 2009 4:38 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark"

Unique readers yesterday: 13,623
Average readers per month: 165,000
Page views per month: 4/500,000

And, at all times, your mum.

Strawberry Letter 22: For the record the other Quietus Editor wrote an extremely supportive and pro-La Roux feature for which . . . we got roundly slagged off by everyone.

There's no site rules on who we're into or not into, which is why if you come round the offices you can regularly find me stabbing myself in the face with a sharpened screwdriver at some of the reviews we run. But such is the life of giving your writers free rein.

xxxpost. From the comments section of the article, the writer said this: "I was as engaging with her as I know how to be, smiling and trying to be a bit chatty - totally at ease and with no intention of trying to twist the conversation into some hard hitting critique. I'm absolutely sure that she's sick to the back teeth of doing press, but I probably naively assumed that it might be a nice change to have a non-demanding chat with someone of a similar age. "

"I mean, Christ, if Pitchfork couldn't get beardo from [INSERT HIP INDIE BAND HERE] to name his favorite albums of the decade I don't think they'd write an article trashing him.

― & other try hard shitfests (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, October 21, 2009 9:50 PM"

I have much respect for Pitchfork but how they run their business has nothing to do with me. I don't gaze up at a poster on the wall every morning that states: What would Pitchfork do?

I gaze up at a wall covered entirely in pictures of SunnO))), Gary Numan picture disks and Billy Childish artwork and do exactly what I feel like doing.

Picture discs, innit.

How old are you by the way?

My bottom line is this: I regret leaving the ums and ahs in but that is entirely my fault as the writer had some concerns about it but I said I'd deal with it. In retrospect I wish I'd changed that bit.

But by and large I'm pleased with the piece. In the so-called halcyon days of UK music journalism pieces like this were par for the course. Editors went out of their way to commission them. I didn't; it was the last thing I could do bar spike the piece. Which was never going to happen after the amount of time and effort put in.

I'm 38.