(many xposts)
I mean, I get into this argument all the time. Generally, I don't CARE about the writer. If the writer was an interesting person, I'd be reading an article on THEM, not the artist I care about. Like wow, the Jesus And Mary Chain helped you get through high school. You and America, buddy.
Generally if a piece of music writing has the word "I" in the first sentence, I usually stop reading, real talk. Save it for your dream journal.
The sad shit is now most mag writing is indistinguishable from internet writing because rates are so low.
― wooden shjipley (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, 11 August 2009 15:21 (fourteen years ago) link
Not that there isn't exceptions blah blah blah strawman lol flame etc
― wooden shjipley (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, 11 August 2009 15:22 (fourteen years ago) link
What about "I don't know about you but I'm fucking sick of this indie-lite electrodribble that permeates every airwave within earshot"?
― dog latin, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 15:38 (fourteen years ago) link
Whiney, you do realize you just used the first person yourself five times in two sentences yourself, right?
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 15:41 (fourteen years ago) link
I'm posting on a message board, not writing for a paycheck!
― wooden shjipley (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, 11 August 2009 15:42 (fourteen years ago) link
the mark richardson thing about lovely music in stylus is pretty much verbatim all the first person objections ur spoutin btw but imo its top5 great but I suppose its kinda like how it used to be pretty awesome when Buffy had to make some inspirational speech but in the last series she did it every episode and it was really tiresome?
― ❊❁❄❆❇❃✴❈plaxico❈✴❃❇❆❄❁❊ (I know, right?), Tuesday, 11 August 2009 15:44 (fourteen years ago) link
xp (And I just used "yourself" twice in one sentence, duh.)
Anyway, first person is a tool, like any other tool. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. (As an editor at the Voice, I was frequently known to edit sentences from pitch emails back into submitted reviews in part because the emails did use the first person, and sounded less stiff and stilted and more conversational in the process. I.e., sometimes it helps make for better writing just because that's how people talk. So I've never bought the idea that "writing for a paycheck" required "detaching yourself from the subject.")
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 15:47 (fourteen years ago) link
Again, i'm not saying that it's always bad, but there's not a lot of writers who can pull it off without sounding like My First Fanzine
― wooden shjipley (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, 11 August 2009 15:49 (fourteen years ago) link
"The first time I saw Spoon..."
So why would print them (unless it was a really good fanzine?)
Still, especially when space on the page is at a premium -- which it was even when wordcounts could get away with being ten times higher than they are now -- wasted words are wasted words, "I" included. (Though at least "I" is a fairly short word.)
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 15:50 (fourteen years ago) link
the mark richardson thing about lovely music in stylus
Think you mean Mike Powell, but Mark Richardson is a good example of someone who uses the first person to excellent effect in his Resonant Frequency column.
― jaymc, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 15:52 (fourteen years ago) link
oops yeah
― ❊❁❄❆❇❃✴❈plaxico❈✴❃❇❆❄❁❊ (I know, right?), Tuesday, 11 August 2009 15:53 (fourteen years ago) link
If you can write entertainingly, I forgive your first person narrative.
― Mark G, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 15:54 (fourteen years ago) link
xhuxk on point
― max, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 15:59 (fourteen years ago) link
xp "So why would print them?", I meant.
Anyway, bottom line is, no fucking way does the the detached pseudo-objective tone used in most glossies and daily newspapers make for better music writing than what I was printing week in and week out in the Voice for ten years (though sure, a few pieces I published may have sounded "Internetty" or whatever. Point was to have lots of different voices, so it'd be a miracle if anybody approved of all of them. I didn't want to ban Internetty writing -- which can be good too, sometimes -- either.)
On the other hand, I like the creativity with which guys like Sanneh at the Times have managed to get around the limitations against first person and swear words. A smart writer can work within those perimeters, too, and make it entertaining anyway.
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:02 (fourteen years ago) link
its funny you mention sanneh--his profile of michael savage in the nyer from a couple weeks ago was very careful about not using "i" (which i think is generally a no-go in the nyer, except in the personal essays they publish every once in a while) but still managed to tell a set of interesting stories about sanneh's own encounters w/ savage that sort of hinged on sannehs own specific experiences trying to set up an interview... in the end, though, i thought it would have been a better piece if they had let him use an authorial I
― max, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:06 (fourteen years ago) link
wow that got convoluted
I thought about that, too.
Over the years, Savage has noticed that his disdain for the mainstream media is widely reciprocated ... So when he received an e-mail from a journalist asking for an interview, he was deeply suspicious. He read the e-mail on the air — he kept the writer anonymous, and didn’t mention that the request came from The New Yorker — and then asked his listeners, “Should I do the interview or not?”…
About a week later, Savage revisited the topic — “my continuing correspondence with a big-shot magazine writer.” He quoted the latest exchanges, along with his tart response, in which he asked, “Why must all of you in the extreme media paint everyone you disagree with as demonic? Why is the homosexual agenda so important to the midstream media?”
...
When he invited the journalist into one of his undisclosed locations, he proved to be a first-rate host, chatty and solicitous. A steady supply of beer refills lubricated the conversation (one of his earliest books was “The Taster’s Guide to Beer,” which was published in 1977), and as the temperature dropped and the sky above Berkeley started to turn orange, he seemed to be working hard to stay suspicious, despite himself. On his next show the next day, a caller asked how the interview had gone, and Savage described his interlocutor: "If I told you he looked like Obama, I wouldn't be far from the truth." Coming from him, this sounded like a deeply twisted compliment.
Sanneh has to resort to speaking of himself in the third person ("the journalist," "his interlocutor") but otherwise does a decent job with passive-ish phrases like "a steady supply of beer refills lubricated the conversation."
― jaymc, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:22 (fourteen years ago) link
no i think you're OTM, that NYer piece was convoluted. it read to me like sanneh had a personal 1 on 1 reaction to savage that was quite different than what he expected and the resulting article would have been more effective and immediate using the "I" but the NYer has always employed a certain lofty distance from its subjects, even in the 70s it wasn't really into the personal/new journalism thing. well apart from pauline kael I guess.
but journalists do have to meet readers half-way. my problem with a lot of the vintage village voice stuff is that it's so personal to the point of being impenetrable or off-putting.
― m coleman, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:24 (fourteen years ago) link
the best first person stuff illustrates how the subject of an interview interacts with other people, rather than "setting the scene"
― lex pretend, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:25 (fourteen years ago) link
i'm guessing whiney's not big on fiction as a rule.
― strongohulkingtonsghost, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:26 (fourteen years ago) link
I'm not big on fiction as a rule either, and one of the principles that was drilled into me when I started writing was that first-person is something you have to earn--expecting the reader who's never heard of you before to go along with I-I-I-me-me-me instead of saying "So what?" and moving to the next item is not generally a good idea--but I love first person writing even if (despite whatever reputation I may have for it due to the 33 1/3 book) I don't use it all that often professionally.
― Matos W.K., Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:30 (fourteen years ago) link
matos if you don't mind me asking: you're not big on fiction as a journalistic device or (gasp) you don't like reading novels?
― m coleman, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:36 (fourteen years ago) link
I don't write fiction or about music, but first-person is the default in my area of writing (analytic philosophy). Sometimes we resort to the royal "we" if we're feeling nervous about first-person. But it was made clear to me that third-person is to be avoided, as is passive voice.
― deep olives (Euler), Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:37 (fourteen years ago) link
hang on, you're not big on reading fiction...at all?!
xp!
― lex pretend, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:37 (fourteen years ago) link
xp I don't buy the "have to earn" thing. I'm not even sure what it means. If I listen to a song sung in the first person, I might be able to relate to, and be moved by, the song even if I'm unaware of the singer's specific biography. Not sure why reviews are necessarily different. You don't have to be a famous writer to have a life that creates a context.
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:37 (fourteen years ago) link
i thought he meant less that you have to earn it in the sense of being already famous or noteworthy, but in the sense that you have to earn it through your writing--i.e. you have to justify use of the first person in the piece itself, not necc explicitly, but at least in making your "I" of interest to the reader
― max, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:39 (fourteen years ago) link
When it's well done - and it does have to be superbly well done, and yes, generally (but not always) "earnt" - first-person music writing is my favourite of all music writing. (And when it's pointlessly done, the reverse holds true.)
For my own part, I avoid it at least 95% of the time - but then I come from a personal-blogging background, and taking "myself" out of the equation was a deliberate, sought objective.
― mike t-diva, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:40 (fourteen years ago) link
My first piece at the Voice (when no reader could've had any idea who I was) and a couple soon after were in the first person, fwiw. I seriously doubt they would have improved if the "I"'s had been edited out. (Whether they stunk regardless is another question, but they wouldn't have stunk less.)
Editorial "we" -- first person plural -- bugs the hell out of me no matter what, though. I never buy it, and I've fought editors to keep it out of my own writing (which usually they've been open to).
And btw, I've also edited at Billboard, where first person is almost never allowed. So it's not like I don't know that drill. I just don't like it much.
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:45 (fourteen years ago) link
Of course, at Billboard, the writing tended to be more news and less review-oriented. (So first person would have probably have made no sense anyway.)
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:47 (fourteen years ago) link
And I come from a journalism (and not fancy dancy "new journalism") background too. I came up covering zoning boards and sewage commissions, where objective detachment is strived for. Not saying I don't understand it there, obviously. When I'm defending first person, I'm specifically referring to criticism (though, when it comes to say artist features, I prefer criticism to be part of the deal.)
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:51 (fourteen years ago) link
i thought he meant less that you have to earn it in the sense of being already famous or noteworthy, but in the sense that you have to...justify use of the first person in the piece itself, not necc explicitly, but at least in making your "I" of interest to the reader
Well, obviously I buy this, if that's what Michaelangelo means. But in that sense, you need to earn whatever you put in your writing -- so first person's no different from anything else.
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:54 (fourteen years ago) link
I mean I don't read novels almost at all. Gasp!
― Matos W.K., Tuesday, 11 August 2009 16:59 (fourteen years ago) link
xpost: If there's one thing I hate even more than editorial "we", it's the sort of "we" that includes both the writer and his/her presumed readership. ("When did we all fall in love with Kings Of Leon?")
― mike t-diva, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 17:01 (fourteen years ago) link
haha please tell me you made that KoL quote up Mike
― Matos W.K., Tuesday, 11 August 2009 17:02 (fourteen years ago) link
Really: What do you mean we, kemosabe? (Those ILM threads titled "What Do We Think Of [fill in the blank]?" are almost as bad.)
― xhuxk, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 17:04 (fourteen years ago) link
Tbh, reading good first-person music writing is what made me want to write about music. (Or even reading bad first-person music writing: some Pitchfork stuff from around the turn of the century, though hard to read now, at least made me realize that criticism need not be all neutral/detached/objective.)
― jaymc, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 17:08 (fourteen years ago) link
(Which, I should add, was mighty refreshing for someone who just wanted to write about his experiences with music and his reactions to listening to certain songs or albums without the burden of serving as some kind of authority.)
― jaymc, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 17:12 (fourteen years ago) link
Avoiding first person is a good technique to get beyond the inherent subjectivity of reviewing music- it pushes the writer to find a common ground with the reader, rather than just reporting their personal reaction. I drop it if I start to get grandiose.
― bendy, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 17:26 (fourteen years ago) link
lots of reasons here why i generally prefer reading about music on the internet just my personal opinion!
― ❊❁❄❆❇❃✴❈plaxico❈✴❃❇❆❄❁❊ (I know, right?), Tuesday, 11 August 2009 17:35 (fourteen years ago) link
Re this, exhaustively shat upon by Eric Boehlert.
http://mediamatters.org/columns/200908030038
Related:
http://mediamatters.org/columns/200908110005
― Gorge, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 18:09 (fourteen years ago) link
"Avoiding first person is a good technique to get beyond the inherent subjectivity of reviewing music- it pushes the writer to find a common ground with the reader, rather than just reporting their personal reaction. I drop it if I start to get grandiose."
I think this is one of the root issues but it also points to the fallacy of avoiding first person - the technique assumes that it's the specific use of "I" that makes music writing solipsistic or uncommunicative. It also suggests that that the choice is between solipsism and objectivity (I accept that specific publications may have other reasons for disliking it).
But it's not hard to write a review that avoids using "I" but still reads like the writer has never thought to question their personal reactions, their prejudices, their assumptions.
Learning to adopt a critical perspective w/r/t those things has a lot to do with how you relate to music generally, how you try to convey what the music is actually doing etc. etc.
Kogan is a good example of a writer who puts himself into the story but still makes the music's potential to affect different people differently the star attraction.
― Tim F, Tuesday, 11 August 2009 23:33 (fourteen years ago) link
The tendency to lean toward the first person is usually an indicator of a writer being green but not always of self-obsession. A lot of these throw away 'I thinks', 'I feels', 'as I was saying to x' etc come from a nervousness about stating an opinion without a crutch or without reflexively reminding people that, it's just, like, their opinion, man. All reviews and value judgements are obviously the opinion of the writer. We can tell because it's prefixed with a byline. It's just that if a writer is all apologetic and constantly reminding people that it's all subjective innit, they won't get ripped to shreds on the internet. Or not as much anyway.
But it's a writer's job to be authoritative. In, er, my opinion it is anyway.
It's more acceptable in features but then the reasoning still has to be solid behind it. I've been stabbed during or around three interviews. Once accidentally by a member of a band while we were larking about, once purposefully by a band member during a play fight that got out of hand and once after getting so drunk in an interview I got thrown out of the hotel by security and got stabbed randomly outside.
The first piece was written third person with only passing mention of boisterous high spirits. The incident was unremarkable. Barely drew blood. The second time was pertinent. The guy was a loon and this helped to illustrate that. Some of the piece was written in the first person. It was impossible to write it neatly otherwise. The third incident was ignored and the piece was written in the third person. A good pub story perhaps but nothing to do with the band or the story.
Once I got to an interview with Matt C from The Bronx to find out that we'd both broken our noses the night before. That was kind of on the cusp. Could have been written either way. Just about interesting enough as a jumping off point to be worth including.
As a rule you shouldn't do it unless it's an on the road/reportage piece or you have a unique involvement in the story that no one else has (or at least your readers don't). That said - and I'm twisting Eric Arthur Blair to my own ends on this - I'd break any rule about writing I have rather than write something barbaric.
(And house style rules. If you can't write a piece around I said/we said/Rolling Stone said and still make it readable, maybe you shouldn't be writing. It's fairly straightforward after all.)
Co-sign everything that guy said about a variety of voices on a magazine.
― Doran, Wednesday, 12 August 2009 10:37 (fourteen years ago) link
Re. "authoritative": should music writers attain a certain level of knowledge of music before setting up as arbiters of taste?
― smoke weed every day, Wednesday, 12 August 2009 11:06 (fourteen years ago) link
Not necessarily because knowing loads about music doesn't necessarily give you good taste in music and beyond that 'good taste' is a bogus concept on its own.
It's up to the individual writer not to make a fool out of themselves/magazine that's hired them. Canonical thinking is the enemy of good music writing but that doesn't mean you shouldn't know about this stuff anyway. I mean, I hate the Beatles and a lot of other big groups from the 60s and won't write about them as a rule but it doesn't mean I don't have a basic grounding in them.
Some writers set up this completely false binary of the job being fusty old rock professors with their "facts" and everything and young, free spirited rebels who don't know about the music but who can "feel" it and "live" it. Somehow suggesting that the more you know about music, the less you can actually appreciate it, which is obviously not true.
― Doran, Wednesday, 12 August 2009 11:23 (fourteen years ago) link
good for you for fighting the power
― max, Wednesday, 12 August 2009 11:32 (fourteen years ago) link
i can't believe people are still arguing this stuff.
― strongohulkingtonsghost, Wednesday, 12 August 2009 11:37 (fourteen years ago) link
^^^ probably listens to the beatles
― max, Wednesday, 12 August 2009 11:38 (fourteen years ago) link
i'll fight you for that.
― strongohulkingtonsghost, Wednesday, 12 August 2009 11:38 (fourteen years ago) link
with a broken copy of rubber soul.
― strongohulkingtonsghost, Wednesday, 12 August 2009 11:39 (fourteen years ago) link
More cross-pollination between genres of media journalism would work wonders imo
Was really happy to read two high-profile pieces on unsung-hero friends this year (Rob Moose in The Star, Shahzad Ismaily in The Times)
― blurbing about music in architecture magazines (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, 21 December 2023 22:39 (three months ago) link
Todd L Burns is ending his Music Journalism Insider substack
https://www.musicjournalisminsider.com/
― curmudgeon, Friday, 22 December 2023 20:08 (three months ago) link
Baltimore Sun newspaper was bought by right wing Sinclair Broadcasting exec so that likely means even less music coverage there.
― curmudgeon, Friday, 19 January 2024 21:56 (two months ago) link
pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)
Pitchfork demise on Pitchfork thread
― curmudgeon, Friday, 19 January 2024 22:31 (two months ago) link
LA Times laid off a lot of staff including Suzy Exposito
― curmudgeon, Wednesday, 24 January 2024 22:17 (two months ago) link
Music editor and one or two music writers included in the LAT layoffs.
― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Thursday, 25 January 2024 01:41 (two months ago) link
Ugh. Exposito I guess had shifted away from music to another area there. But all bad. Another billionaire owner I think worried that he's losing millions on this one thing that won't significantly impact his bottom line
― curmudgeon, Thursday, 25 January 2024 18:29 (two months ago) link
Not really about the music writers here, but more about the LAT layoffs.
― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Thursday, 25 January 2024 18:40 (two months ago) link
Editor Craig Marks was at Blender and Spin aways back. Billionaire owner’s massive cuts are brutal
― curmudgeon, Thursday, 25 January 2024 22:48 (two months ago) link
Wow, I remember his name from Blender! That's the only mag that ever published my stuff, as a "freelancer" (in college)
― cellaring potential (morrisp), Thursday, 25 January 2024 23:10 (two months ago) link
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/30/pitchfork-q-music-reviews-critics-songs
― curmudgeon, Tuesday, 30 January 2024 21:02 (one month ago) link
That’s J. Doran from Quietus re Pitchfork and Spotify
― curmudgeon, Tuesday, 30 January 2024 21:43 (one month ago) link
NPR radio station , WAMU , at American University had taken over the DCist news website years back. Suddenly they just decided to kill it , and are blocking access to the site . Years of articles including my freelancer 2020 interview piece with Ethiopian musicians Hailu Mergia and Selam Woldemariam, who are both based in the DC area. 15 people got laid off.
https://www.axios.com/2024/02/23/wamu-dcist-layoffs-npr-washington
― curmudgeon, Friday, 23 February 2024 17:05 (one month ago) link
Sheesh, how miserable.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 23 February 2024 17:17 (one month ago) link
Someone checked and my article I referenced above is still luckily enough available if one places the url in the wayback machine of the web archive, but one has to know that. Management shut down Dcist because they said they wanted to focus on the radio station (but many of the dcist reporters also did audio stories, and the station gets lots of money from listeners and from the University , so it's not a funding issue).
― curmudgeon, Saturday, 24 February 2024 18:50 (one month ago) link
Is it OK to plagiarize your own words from a story you wrote 10 years ago for a publication that no longer exists (and whose website is long gone)?
― alpine static, Wednesday, 27 March 2024 04:53 (two days ago) link
Hmmmm, do you feel comfortable doing that even if few will know?
― curmudgeon, Wednesday, 27 March 2024 04:59 (two days ago) link
Firmly of the belief that reusing your own words is not plagiarism. I don't know the context you're using it in, but you could always say, "as I once wrote ..." or something. But morally/ethically, I personally don't have a problem with it.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 27 March 2024 05:11 (two days ago) link
I think it's fine. I literally don't think the words I wrote exist anywhere anymore, unless they're in the artist's mom's scrapbook or something.
Story published in 2017. Publication ceased to exist in March of 2020, both in print and online. When I Google phrases from it, nothing comes up. The artist even has an extensive "press" section on his website and it ain't there.
Doesn't really matter anyway - as is often the case, I think I have an idea and then when I start writing it goes a different direction.
But! I have enough defunct outlets in my past that this question comes to my mind a few times a year.
― alpine static, Wednesday, 27 March 2024 05:14 (two days ago) link
We should ask Bill Ackman what he thinks.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 27 March 2024 05:17 (two days ago) link
Oh, and I've done the "As I wrote back in..." thing before. Rarely, but a few times - a couple times in the same pub as the earlier reference, and a couple times linking to something I wrote for someone else!
If the 2017 publication still existed, I don't think I'd be comfortable with lifting directly, even my own words. That might be too cautious, I don't know.
― alpine static, Wednesday, 27 March 2024 05:18 (two days ago) link
Googlability does seem like a pragmatic metric.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 27 March 2024 05:21 (two days ago) link
The clincher: Some right-wing group bought this alt-weekly a few months before COVID and was in the process of turning it into "the conservative alternative" to the bigger alt-weekly in town before just shutting the whole thing down in March of 2020 with no warning whatsoever. Fuck 'em!
(Although they were *not* the owners when I wrote the piece in question.)
― alpine static, Wednesday, 27 March 2024 05:28 (two days ago) link
I recycle all the time. Magazine or web articles get expanded into book chapters, etc. No such thing as self-plagiarism IMO.
― Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson), Wednesday, 27 March 2024 13:29 (two days ago) link
I recycle too.
― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 27 March 2024 13:36 (two days ago) link
I haven't had a new thought in 17 years, so I quote myself all the time, here, there, and everywhere--as tipsy said, usually prefaced by "as I once wrote ..."
― clemenza, Wednesday, 27 March 2024 14:07 (two days ago) link
worse is when you write down yr insightful and amazing present-day comment on some phenom from a decade or four ago and then find you wrote abt it at the time except you forgot, and when you check what you said last time it's identical
― mark s, Wednesday, 27 March 2024 14:09 (two days ago) link
all creative people recycle.
― fact checking cuz, Wednesday, 27 March 2024 15:00 (two days ago) link
I would be very pleased to have a current-day thought and then find that past-me had the same thought, as opposed to (as is typically the case) something infinitely more stupid, embarrassing, annoying, and long
― ን (nabisco), Wednesday, 27 March 2024 15:10 (two days ago) link
oh man i would gladly swap one of my old long embarrassing thoughts for one of yours any day of the week. i find that not looking back at all is the key.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 27 March 2024 15:40 (two days ago) link