Critical Vendettas

Also from that same part of the online exchange:

Alanis Morissette: Does not know a beat from a bleat. I still think “You Oughta Know” is the whiniest record ever made. She’s better in movies.

Aimee Mann: Up there with Lucinda Williams, but a much more obnoxious whiner than Alanis Morissette–I mean, there’s a difference between making a horrible hit record based on an irritating emotion and basing your whole life on it. The sense of entitlement, of condescension, comes off of her in waves. Given that a whole movie was based on her wisdom, though–who can forget every character, dead or alive, mouthing along to, “Wise Up,” I think, in Magnolia? And then, lo and behold, everybody did wise up. Gosh.

In his defense, Mann, Morissette, and Williams are horrible. (Gillian Welch I can take for a song or two.)

Sidenote, but I thought it was funny that he was lamenting how hard it was to find the early White Stripes records, which at that time (2002) could have been found on LP at any decent indie record store, and on CD anywhere up to and including Best Buy.

In Mann, Morissette and Williams' defence, Greil Marcus is horrible.

i guess reed-bangs is the other way round, isn't it

I was thinking of the antagonistic relationship with Reed as maybe the closest thing for Bangs, but obviously different in that Reed was an artist he loved. I can't think of a case of Bangs bearing an excessive grudge against a band he detested.

the mann and morrissette critiques don't strike me as sexist, really, though it's ridiculous for GM to hold mann responsible for "magnolia." tbh you can pull up pretty much any old ilm thread about a female artist and get more horrible quotes than that within the first three or four posts.

as far as vendettas go, the worst and most indefensible thing GM has ever written was an item from his top-10 column years ago. the lead singer from the spin doctors had been diagnosed with vocal cord paralysis and had lost his voice (he's since recovered), and marcus just quoted the news story and labeled it "best news of the week."

Agreed. I even asked him about that in one of those rockcritics.com forums--he wouldn't backtrack a bit. (And seriously, the misogyny he objected to in "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong"--primarily a specific line--was that appreciably different or worse than a lifetime of stuff he'd praised, from the Rolling Stones on down?)