the quietus : the new look

(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.

You realise I'm not the writer though. The writer is in her early 20s.

I have certainly enjoyed the writings of the Legendary Stud Brothers, Swells etc. I'm in the demographic to understand this, but I can't get over the lame way it's all put together. The writer comes off worse than the subject. That's surely a bad thing? Like a lot of your readers I don't live in the UK and I don't particularly identify with Flo as a ubiqutous media presence.

But hey, if this is a new thing where you're gonna start commissioning hatchet pieces then this is the place to start asking for recommendations!

In the so-called halcyon days of UK music journalism pieces like this were par for the course.

This was like a decade ago so not halcyon days I guess but Sylvia Patterson did a good Placebo one in the NME which was the first thing that came to mind... thing is it was written in a way that made it clear why/how Brian Molko was acting like a douchebag, and that the pair of them had had a row, basically. I think with this piece there are certain gaps that means it doesn't add up for the reader until the background to the interview is explained (which in the days of the aforementioned piece would have taken a week or a fortnight in the letters page)

Well it's a good job we don't live in those days anymore then.

Everything: We didn't commission a hatchet job. That is the whole point! We bent over backwards to allow her to talk about *whatever she wanted* and she still managed to put us in a position where it was spike or hatchet. Two implements I'd sooner not use at all!

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.

― & other try hard shitfests (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, 21 October 2009 20:50 (Yesterday) Bookmark

These are the two things that I think are most U&K.

If someone's being that difficult, surely the best reaction would be not to give them the time of day, rather than write a trash-talking piece.

I was indifferent to mildly disliking Florence before. This piece made me feel sorry for her, made me feel cringing about the backlash that's coming for her as it comes to every uppity bitch who is due her comeuppance for getting above herself.

Would you take down some flavour of the week male indie popstar who stuttered their way through an interivew? If you got in one of Friendly Fires or Waavves or Neon Indian or ::insert flavour of the week:: and they showed something less than an autistic music journo knowledge of the past decade's worth of indie rock criticism regarding canonical albums - would they get whipped up into some philosophical fury in quite the same way?

Using women to take down uppity women is, as Everything points out, an old trick, but still a cheap one.

And sorry but no, the fact that you interviewed LaRoux last month and let her run her idiotic mouth off in similar style without whipping that up into some philosophical think-piece (which actually might have been more called-for given the actually offensively hateful, as opposed to merely vague and fluffy, things that come out of her mouth) - that does not excuse you.

Awful piece which breaks the first rule of takedown pieces - give 'em enough rope. And the second rule - if you think someone's answer is weak say so to their face and create a dialogue, don't bitch about in print after the fact. Without the behind-the-scenes context it just seems vindictive and out of proportion to anything Florence said or did. Fine, if she was obnoxious, or patronising, or a complete moron, but she just sounds tired and vague and not deserving of this kind of snarky bullshit. This kind of sub-par rant-cum-stitch-up was never par for the course in the old days of NME and MM - I just read an old Swells piece with L7 where he's obviously disappointed by their flimsy answers and pokes fun at them for it but still conveys the sense that he wanted them to be better, or there's Sylvia's Alanis piece, where she lets Alanis make a fool of herself while being nicely understated herself, whereas this writer seems like she hated Florence from the off and proceeds to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I generally like Quietus but this should never have run.

Yeah, pretty sure this proves that the editorial team of the Quietus hate and fear women, great fucking observation xp

Fuck you.

You don't actually have any basis for what you're saying though, do you?

Strawberry Letter: If you keep on misreading everything I write then there's literally no point in answering this. But I'll give it one more go: Laura asked to interview her. We said do a 'Things I've Learned' so we can find some neutral ground so we don't have to lay into her (Luke and I dislike her, we presumed that Laura was a fan hence the request). She was offered a chance to talk about her ten favourite albums of the decade or *any other subject of her choosing*. SHE CHOSE TO TALK ABOUT HER TEN FAVOURITE ALBUMS OF THE DECADE. Then when we turned up she couldn't even name ten and two of the ones she chose were from the 90s. SHE CHOSE THIS SUBJECT AS SOMETHING SHE WAS EXPERT ON.

All she had to do was choose ten albums from the literally hundreds of thousands that have been released in the last decade.

We asked for Florence talking about her favourite albums. Period.

Due to her, and her alone we got a fucking mess and a waste of time. If you want to read this as misogyny then fill your boots.

Elsewhere on the site recently, other female artists being "taken down": Diamanda Galas, The Slits, PJ Harvey, La Roux, Siouxsie Sioux, Phantom, Yoko Ono, George Pringle, Speech Debelle, Theoretical Girl, Tori Amos, Lydia Lunch . . .

Elsewhere on the site, some of the best female writers in the UK given free reign to write about what they want . . .

What, I have no basis for saying

1) that the british press has a build-me-up-knock-em-down approach to pop stars

2) that the writer went into this interview/piece with an agenda - and I'm kind of suspicious as to what that agenda is

3) the harshness of the piece has a lot more to do with the particular philosophical axe that the writer is grinding than the artist herself - and is fairly inappropriate?

Really?

x-post

Doran, you're really coming across as quite angry and defensive - fair enough, given the Quietus is your baby. But when you've got a quite substantial amount of people saying that the article was over the line, perhaps you might give that some thought.

No, this bit

Using women to take down uppity women is, as Everything points out, an old trick, but still a cheap one.

I haven't read this Florence piece yet and don't have time to but that Brian Molko takedown mentioned upthread was pretty much by favourite NME interview of the late 90s.

That was a reference to this post:

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.

― everything, Wednesday, 21 October 2009 20:10 (Yesterday) Bookmark

Which riled me so much last night that I wasn't sure whether to suggest ban the poster or give them a medal. When something angers me on that kind of level, it means that it's something that I should really give some more thought to, to find out *why* it riles me. The phrase "clueless bitches" was what really angered me, but once I removed that particularly offensive phrase, the rest of the statement seemed depressingly plausible.

Now I don't know what the agenda of the writer in point 2 was - but given the line of thinking above, it does seem a possible agenda. Not one I like, but nonetheless a plausible one.

If it's not the case, then clearly the writer of the piece is certainly able to come on ILX and explain her actual agenda. I'd actually really like to hear a less depressing explanation for the vitriol in the piece.

(I was also really angry at Contenderizer's line of discussion in another thread, and that, I admit, may have coloured the conclusions that I posited about the agenda of this piece.)

Might be useful to separate possible misogynistic agenda (which I sincerely doubt in this case) from plain bad journalism.

This is a pretty cowardly piece. I'm no fan of Flo, but if you have a problem with ditzy or vague answers have an argument at the time and write that up! Don't go home, realise you've got no useable copy and then take it out on the interviewee!

I think she commented below the piece itself fwiw. I assume that everything poster is thinking of Burchill and a few less famous journos thereafter (eg Sylvia Patterson as per my Placebo interview mention) but the implication therein is wild conjecture at best and it's pretty baseless to suggest that was what was going on here

xp to Kate sorry

Might be useful to separate possible misogynistic agenda (which I sincerely doubt in this case) from plain bad journalism.

Point taken.

BURCHILL IS GREAT i will defend her 4eva

Your on your own there, lex, I fear