Pitchfork and Its Readers Must Atone for Their Crimes
Hey! Happy Thursday. How are you? Good? Good. Any fun plans this weekend? Wow, that does sound like fun.
Before we get into everything, wouldn’t it be so quirky and random if you subscribed to get two newsletters a week in your inbox, shared this article with your friends, family and potentially your dog, and followed me on Twitter? That would be SO fun, bestie!
Anyway, let’s talk briefly about Pitchfork.
Pitchfork has been around for a while. Through this time period, the outlet has risen to prominence for a certain type of music fan. High marks for indie darlings, critical reviews for others.
You know what I’m getting at. I believe their reviews are still worth reading, but if you’re a fan of pop or rap, you’re probably not going to enjoy the score.
No music review outlet is free of sin. Pitchfork, Consequence of Sound, Stereogum, The Needle Drop - whoever you are, you’ve made a number of unpopular reviews that people disagree with.
It comes with the territory. When you deal with something subjective, like music or movies, you will have to deal with people who like things you don’t, or don’t like things you do. It’s just how it is.
Things get more confusing when your review outlet consists of a lot of people. The Needle Drop is one bald dude who likes Death Grips. If you disagree with him, you’re disagreeing with just him.
With an outlet like Pitchfork, it’s almost like a roulette - any number of writers or even independent contributors could review your favorite album, and that can be good and bad.
In the recent case of comedian Zack Fox’s hilarious and interesting “shut the fuck up talking to me,” Pitchfork made… the wrong choice in selecting a writer to listen to it.
You can read the full review here, where contributor Stephen Kearse is overly and unnecessarily critical of Fox’s DEBUT ALBUM.
If you don’t know who Zack Fox is, you probably haven’t heard his 2019 viral hit “Jesus Is The One (I Got Depression)” which references Fox’s cancelled Vice show, the impending death of the universally beloved Betty White, and getting arrested for tax evasion.
It was made in collaboration with producer Kenny Beats for his series “The Cave,” and the making of the song is as funny as the song itself. Nobody thought Fox would continue to make music, but he brings Kenny Beats back for a track on his new album, and even gets legendary producer The Alchemist on the title track.
Overall, it doesn’t reinvent the wheel on comedic rap, but it’s a debut album with a definitive direction. Kearse doesn’t seem to think so, and he continues to defend his point at… 6:45 in the morning today (he lives in Washington DC, I checked). Get some more sleep, man.
Music is subjective, but I think it’s silly how strongly Kearse feels about an effort from an inexperienced rapper. It’s an odd dynamic of a rapper who doesn’t take himself seriously, versus a reviewer who takes himself too seriously.
The result is a review that just doesn’t make much sense. It just comes off as rude, pretentious, and critical for the sake of being critical. I think this is part of why music reviewers and review outlets don’t get a ton of respect from the hip-hop community.
So much of the discourse surrounding outlets like Pitchfork and people like Anthony Fantano is that they take themselves too seriously, or don’t review rap albums for what they are, so it’s easy to just say “music reviewers take all the fun out of music,” and just move on.
When someone reads this Zack Fox review, it’s easy to say that reviewers as a whole just don’t get it. It bugs me, because there are definitely people who do understand the cultural influence and importance of hip-hop and review it in context, and don’t take themselves too seriously, but it’s hard to separate them when they’re all housed on the same website as reviews like Kearse’s.
That’s where that review roulette comes back into play, because I’m smart and know how to structure an argument. When it’s seemingly random who gets to review an album in any genre, the results are mixed.
Kearse’s previous favorable reviews include (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) Injury Reserve’s incredible “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”, and Nas’s “King’s Disease II.” Of COURSE he’s not going to like Zack Fox! Why would you let him be the one to write the review?
Before I get too mad, that closes the book on that portion of our show. But that’s not the only topic at hand today, my friends! No, no, it is not. For those not in the know, it is Pitchfork’s 25th anniversary this month. Happy birthday, congratulations, etc.
Because of this, Pitchfork and its writers have been looking back on the last 25 years of music in various ways.
They re-scored some of their reviews with the added context of time, something I thought was a really interesting concept. They gave some extra love to albums like The Strokes’ classic “Room on Fire,” and they re-evaluated some of their more pretentious stances, like with 90s/00s indie staple Liz Phair’s radio-friendly self-titled album.
They also released a “200 Most Important Artists of the Last 25 Years” retrospective, which is (thankfully) not a ranked list, but done in alphabetical order.
Of course, it’s hard to encapsulate all of music in 200 people or groups, so there were a few that may have been unceremoniously left out. Overall, though, a pretty comprehensive list.
Now, it’s time for me to make fun of Pitchfork readers. For THIS. The Best 200 Albums of the Last 25 Years, According to Pitchfork Readers, AKA “a list of Radiohead albums with some other ones thrown in there.”
I’m gonna lay this out on the line: I am not a fan of Radiohead. It’s probably my most controversial music opinion, but I think a lot of their stuff is over bloated and self-important, to the point where I don’t care to listen to it.
Within the TOP FIVE of the 200 BEST ALBUMS OF THE PAST 25 YEARS, lies “Kid A,” “OK Computer,” and “In Rainbows.”
You cannot tell me there aren’t albums better than that. Frank Ocean’s masterpiece “Blonde” is in sixth. The Strokes’ “Is This It,” 8th place. I had to scroll down to #22, Interpol’s “Turn On the Bright Lights,” before I found an album that I didn’t like more than “In Rainbows” or “Kid A.”
We’ve all overrated Radiohead. It has gone too far. I know I said music is subjective earlier, but I am a liar. If you think “In Rainbows” is better than “To Pimp a Butterfly” or “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” your brain is broken, and you need to recontextualize some things.
You are a NERD if you think Radiohead is that important. (I will clarify: I am kidding. This is a bit. I would never be mean to you. I care for you too much.)
It was interesting to see the discrepancy between men, women, and nonbinary people in terms of selecting important and influential musical works.
Nonbinary people voted SOPHIE’s “OIL OF EVERY PEARL’s UN-INSIDES” as the third best album of the past 25 years, while women had Lana Del Ray’s “Norman Fucking Rockwell!” as the BEST album of the past 25 years.
Men were the only demographic to include Arcade Fire’s “Funeral” AND Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot,” while nonbinary folks gave more love to Björk and Neutral Milk Hotel and women chose Lorde, Fiona Apple, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift.
I really do commend Pitchfork for trying to fit 25 years of music and culture into a few articles. It’s a really difficult undertaking, and Radiohead jokes aside, I think they actually did a pretty good job.
There really aren’t any crimes being committed, I only titled this newsletter the way I did so you would click on it. I tricked you! I’m sorry. I hope you’ll still trust me in the long run.
What you SHOULD take from this article, though, is that there are music reviewers who are good at leveraging cultural and contextual factors when writing reviews, and you would benefit from reading them rather than casting aside music critique as a whole.
It sucks that negativity often garners more attention than positivity in any review sphere, but there are people out there who really care about giving music the appreciation it deserves, and it brightens my day whenever I read a review that really shows that appreciation, even if it is critical overall.
I hate to toot my own horn, but if you’re interested in honest criticism and a love of music, maybe consider subscribing to this newsletter. In 7 days, I’ll be releasing some words about my favorite albums to come out this month, which I don’t think you’ll want to miss - there was some REALLY Good Music in October!
The playlist for this week is one from our outlet of the hour, Pitchfork’s 25 artists shaping where music will go from here. This is a fun exercise, and I really liked listening through this playlist - some MIG favorites like 100 Gecs, black midi, Rina Sawayama, and Snail Mail make appearances!
Thanks for reading and subscribing and sharing and all that jazz, I appreciate you deeply if you managed to get all the way to the end. Love you, miss you already, talk to you Monday.