Thanks for this piece, John, and for the last one, too. I like "against the algorithm" as a battle-cry. We still need critics with particular tastes. Like many others, it's one of the reasons I'm here, reading you.
Yes entirely to Christgau, who I discovered much later. For me in the formative years, it was Ira Robbins and the Trouser Record Press, which I found in early college in the late 1980s. I was struck by his taste and also by his prose. I was in Botson when I first read Robbins, and it helped a great deal that there were several great used record stores that I could frequent. Every week, I could come home with three for about $10, and I often did.
I think Lindsay Zoladz is doing exciting work against the algorithm in her column, The Amplifier. I'm impressed by her taste and her range. She's written terrific pieces about Gram Parsons, The Replacements, and just this week, Sleater-Kinney.
You've given me a lot to think about as always. Firstly, the financialization you mention is a key piece here. The U.S. and generally much of the global economy has shifted more under the control of global finance, which to me means a shift away from people who actually produce things for a living. Especially MBAs and consultants seem to seek out the chokepoints where they can sit as middlemen to gain from other's work without doing much themselves (the eventual downfall of many platforms).
I read some time ago about putting the elements of creativity in order from consumption -> critique -> curation -> creation. There is so much incentive to consume that it can be hard to move to the next steps.
Also, if you never critique what you consume, it's hard to develop your own viewpoint and you end up relying solely on the opinions of others. I think this may be more broadly connected to interacting on the internet and the ease with which people are insincere. The first time you get piled on in the comments section, it's easy for a lot of people to pretend they were kidding and go with the crowd. Over time that has developed into a constant sarcasm where you can always deny what you said online is real unless it gets a lot of positive interactions.
You're so right about a good piece of criticism being a creative thing in it's own right, and I don't know when I last read such a thing in a long format, the closest being this newsletter, Austin Kleon's newsletter, and Catherynne M Valente's occasional essays, all on Substack, for as she says, "Twitter doesn't do nuance." (Neither does Trump, as various people have noted.)
I had problems trying to find things I had chosen with my own taste on Instagram, they constantly being pushed aside by the algorithm. It's interesting to note that some of my book recs come from people on Insta who do something else but also read books, and why I keep hunting down despite the algorithm.
That's sort of interesting that you've found people who may share your taste in other things that also surface books you're interested in. I do think there tends to be affinities across mediums sometimes, like you find someone who likes the same books you do and they also like the same movies.
Yeah, I think there are affinities, and with one person in particular I started noticing we have certain features in common, although probably not all things that can be easily pegged by demographic and algorithm... yet. We're both youngish, female, same country, like knitting and colour and books, are creative and disorganized and I suspect she has ADHD like me but still undiagnosed. I don't think there's a online algorithm for the last one yet... but, like the rumour of an algorithm knowing a woman was pregnant before she knew it, this could yet happen...?
I looked at some of Christgau's work and it reminded me how much I hate rock music criticism, which I feel like is all about people letting you know how superior they are to the music they're criticizing. But I guess I just relate to music on a more emotional level. (His explanation of the letter ratings is hilarious, though. I'm sure I'd love to read him on any band I don't care about, or who I dislike.)
You are always hating on Wilco here, but I'll mention nonetheless that Jeff Tweedy writes wonderfully about being a music fan in the '80s in his memoir, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back), and how he would learn about bands from magazines long before ever hearing them, and have a sense of what they sounded like from the descriptions. Your comments reminded me of that. Also the idea of having to buy a whole album not knowing what you would get--seems so strange to me now that I used to do that in the pre-Spotify days! (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was my best-ever purchase based only on having read about it :-)
It can feel a little wounding to read a critic who hates something you like, for sure. I'm a fan of Genesis and reading that review of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway makes me feel like a bit of a dork for liking it. But to me, that's part of what's important about developing taste is standing with your own response even in the face of that kind of disagreement. (Like how I admitted to being a Phish fan last week.)
No Tweedy/Wilco hate here! Big fan. I put his most recent book on my best nonfiction list at the Chicago Tribune. The new book is all about those formative records in his life. It great.
Posting a second comment on a totally different topic--I was just listening to David Leonhardt on The Daily talking about how standardized tests, for all their imperfections, are still a more equitable way of getting a diverse student body than the alternatives. I very much agree with you that the SAT doesn't measure anything meaningful (or didn't, back when I took it 30 years ago) but yet I wondered about the practicalities of dropping it. Just curious what you would have to say about that, as someone who I know has thought deeply about these issues (and has been critical of David Leonhardt in the past). Short of overhauling all the inequities in our society, that is, which seems rather unlikely to happen in a timely fashion.
I'd say a couple of things in response to that Leonhardt piece. One is that he's wrong about some of the interpretations he draws from the data. This article from Liam Knox at Inside Higher Ed rounds up some reactions to the piece that have some well informed pieces from people who work in admissions. If you want to go really deep you can follow the links that Liam shares in the roundup. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/admissions/traditional-age/2024/01/17/reigniting-standardized-testing-debate
I'll also share a stat that was very impactful to me when I first heard it a few years ago. 85% of college students go to institutions that accept more than 50% of applicants, which is to say the vast majority of students go to schools that are not particularly selective and do not need an SAT in order to determine who is qualified for potential admission. Another stat is that the schools covered by the study Leonhardt is working from (the Ivy plus colleges) represents 0.6% of the total enrollment in post secondary education.
If we're concerned about inequities, by far the most important thing we could do is provide sufficient resources to the (primarily public) higher ed institutions that educate the vast majority of students. In short, put the attention at the places students already go, rather than worrying about what's going on at these elite institutions that will always be exclusionary.
Thanks for sharing that article! Great point that I was missing the forest for the trees and failing to recognize that the argument being made related only to highly selective colleges. (Though it is disturbing how many of the powerful people in our country attended just a few colleges.)
You're so right about that last part. These are people who attended these schools and have come to buy into the meritocracy arguments without thinking about them critically. They're successful, so of course this is the route to success, and they pay more attention to those schools that the ones most of us attend.
Excellent take on the apparent demise of Pitchfork and the structural limits of Substack. Yes, criticism is a form unto itself that may be enjoyed as such (in addition to Christgau I’d highlight Pitchfork’s Sunday retrospective album reviews). But fundamentally criticism is a service and that service is simply of less financial value now - both to the publisher and the consumer - due to the reasons you state. That said, because streaming has made music timeless (Fats Domino and Tyler the Creator are now direct competitors) I’d argue music criticism is even more essential in helping us decide where to devote our time and listening energies. But that’s a non-financial consideration these days and therefore an agency most people are happy to farm out to the algorithm.
Excellent insight about how there is a role for critics, but not a mechanism which places economic value on it beyond individuals deciding to support the work of the critic through some kind of direct means (e.g. subscription).
In a way, it strikes me as part of an even broader pattern of the replacement of human labor with automation provided the illusion of quality or performance is maintained. I've been thinking about this idea a lot in conjunction with my writing about ChatGPT (large language models) and how they may be employed in work and education. Those algorithms do not do what humans do (they can't think, feel, or reason), but they can produce something that seems like what humans do. It's not the same, though.
Unfortunately, Pitchfork has been a shambling corpse for years now. They primarily cover mainstream artists and follow the crowd on albums and artists they give the most accolades to. We lost them half a decade ago or more.
I think the diminishment is directly related to being acquired by Condé Nast and being treated like an asset that has to continue to increase in value, rather than a publication which should be run profitably and sustainably.
Great one, John. Your piece, along with another, have me thinking. It's undebatable that good critics add to the experience of finding and enjoying art. And yet, the fact is, the profession of "critic," the venues where they operate, and their importance in culture are spiraling downward.
Why?
I think it has to do with, as you say, alternative methods of discovery (social media, algorithms, etc.). For the layman, a critic isn't needed. But what about those who really do care about finding/discovering great, great stuff? I think it has to do with the complete and utter failure of critics today to deliver work that feels honest, authentic, *actually* critical or different. Rather, it's all become very predictable, and sad. You walk away with the sense of: eh, I'll take my chances on my own selections / explorations / research.
So often, it seems, critics are completely out of step with tastes, which sounds suspiciously familiar to a common gripe when it comes to political ideologies. Wherever a mainstream critique or opinion can be found, it feels mainstream, completely missing the whole point of critique/curation. Maybe this is caused by a vicious cycle of 1) the writer trying to do whatever they need to do to keep their job and thus 2) their work being crappy because the inauthenticity is perceivable. I don't know.
If you have them, I ask you to put aside your preconceived notions of Freddie de Boer and read this piece if you haven't (I wonder what you think): https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/what-weve-lost-in-music-criticism). While sprinkled with some other... stuff, I think the main idea is there, and the diagnosis is accurate.
"In practice poptimism amounts to the constant valorization of that which is already popular, in our culture industries, and a corresponding disdain for that which is not. And this flips the most sacred duty of a music critic on its head: the most important thing music criticism has done, among other virtues, has been to elevate precisely those artists and albums and songs that were insufficiently known and underappreciated."
Some form of this plagues the dying - or dead - industry of critique in all mediums. For music, it was poptimism. For movies and TV (and maybe books), it's almost the opposite, a preference for things that portray the political ideals of the moment, rather than what's, you know, just plain good / under the radar / or simply an authentic, raw reaction to a person's encounter with a work of art.
I think these things are always multifaceted, rather than being attributable to singular causes, so I'm a little suspicious of the "poptimism" theory. It sounds like an argument with mass culture, which to me is like shouting at the wind. I think Freddie is often an interesting read, less so when he's prosecuting grievances against those he considers either his inferiors or who he believes may hold him in some contempt. I promise you (and him), no one cares if he like metal the same way no one really cares that I like Phish.
Framing these things around grievance make it tough to cut through to something meaningful. In the piece itself DeBoer undercuts his own argument around the "constant valorization of something popular" by acknowledging that Pitchfork continued to review music off the beaten path to the end. That is also engaged in a form of music writing he finds less important or meaningful seems more tied to demands of the marketplace more than anything ideological.
I feel like there's a contradiction on something you say here where you say "critics are completely out of step with tastes" but then suggest that they're pandering to a kind of consensus ideological stance. Wouldn't that be an attempt to be "in step" with tastes.
I think the challenges of criticism aren't particularly new. There's always been critics who have been accused of carrying water for particular movements or groups while others claim to be strong independent thinkers beholden to no one and nothing. For me, the proof is ultimately in the pudding. If a book or movie is put into the world simply because it meets the "political ideals of the moment" with no regard to quality, it's probably not going to make much of a splash.
Like Barbie is talked about as reflecting a current cultural zeitgeist and lots of people can be annoying online about its importance in a poptimistic way, but also, it's an entertaining movie! I mean, I don't think it's my favorite movie of all time, but in terms of filmic qualities, it's far superior to Oppenheimer, which had some dialog that had me laughing out loud, without that being the purpose of the dialog.
Maybe getting back to some of what I said last week about the importance of taste, I think it's important for we as the audience to always maintain our individual agency over these things and not get too bent about whatever trends or changes come, while also being open to the possibility in change for ourselves. That's the reflexive process of allowing art into your life, IMO.
THE FEAST OF LOVE was a book that both Meg and I had on our shelves when we met in college. We went to see Charles Baxter read a few years later, we were probably 22. We got him to sign our copy and told him our story, about how we read it to each other out loud before bed, and he was completely unimpressed. "Oh, yeah," he said, "people read it at their weddings.” LOL it was so great.
That's funny. He is low-key in the extreme. He gave a reading where I was teaching and I brought up a stack of like 8 of his books (I could've brought more), including the first edition of Harmony of the World published by a university press and I was sure he'd be impressed by my clear fandom. He looked at it and said, "Huh, not a lot of people have this one."
Thanks for this piece, John, and for the last one, too. I like "against the algorithm" as a battle-cry. We still need critics with particular tastes. Like many others, it's one of the reasons I'm here, reading you.
Yes entirely to Christgau, who I discovered much later. For me in the formative years, it was Ira Robbins and the Trouser Record Press, which I found in early college in the late 1980s. I was struck by his taste and also by his prose. I was in Botson when I first read Robbins, and it helped a great deal that there were several great used record stores that I could frequent. Every week, I could come home with three for about $10, and I often did.
I think Lindsay Zoladz is doing exciting work against the algorithm in her column, The Amplifier. I'm impressed by her taste and her range. She's written terrific pieces about Gram Parsons, The Replacements, and just this week, Sleater-Kinney.
You've given me a lot to think about as always. Firstly, the financialization you mention is a key piece here. The U.S. and generally much of the global economy has shifted more under the control of global finance, which to me means a shift away from people who actually produce things for a living. Especially MBAs and consultants seem to seek out the chokepoints where they can sit as middlemen to gain from other's work without doing much themselves (the eventual downfall of many platforms).
I read some time ago about putting the elements of creativity in order from consumption -> critique -> curation -> creation. There is so much incentive to consume that it can be hard to move to the next steps.
Also, if you never critique what you consume, it's hard to develop your own viewpoint and you end up relying solely on the opinions of others. I think this may be more broadly connected to interacting on the internet and the ease with which people are insincere. The first time you get piled on in the comments section, it's easy for a lot of people to pretend they were kidding and go with the crowd. Over time that has developed into a constant sarcasm where you can always deny what you said online is real unless it gets a lot of positive interactions.
You're so right about a good piece of criticism being a creative thing in it's own right, and I don't know when I last read such a thing in a long format, the closest being this newsletter, Austin Kleon's newsletter, and Catherynne M Valente's occasional essays, all on Substack, for as she says, "Twitter doesn't do nuance." (Neither does Trump, as various people have noted.)
I had problems trying to find things I had chosen with my own taste on Instagram, they constantly being pushed aside by the algorithm. It's interesting to note that some of my book recs come from people on Insta who do something else but also read books, and why I keep hunting down despite the algorithm.
That's sort of interesting that you've found people who may share your taste in other things that also surface books you're interested in. I do think there tends to be affinities across mediums sometimes, like you find someone who likes the same books you do and they also like the same movies.
Yeah, I think there are affinities, and with one person in particular I started noticing we have certain features in common, although probably not all things that can be easily pegged by demographic and algorithm... yet. We're both youngish, female, same country, like knitting and colour and books, are creative and disorganized and I suspect she has ADHD like me but still undiagnosed. I don't think there's a online algorithm for the last one yet... but, like the rumour of an algorithm knowing a woman was pregnant before she knew it, this could yet happen...?
I looked at some of Christgau's work and it reminded me how much I hate rock music criticism, which I feel like is all about people letting you know how superior they are to the music they're criticizing. But I guess I just relate to music on a more emotional level. (His explanation of the letter ratings is hilarious, though. I'm sure I'd love to read him on any band I don't care about, or who I dislike.)
You are always hating on Wilco here, but I'll mention nonetheless that Jeff Tweedy writes wonderfully about being a music fan in the '80s in his memoir, Let's Go (So We Can Get Back), and how he would learn about bands from magazines long before ever hearing them, and have a sense of what they sounded like from the descriptions. Your comments reminded me of that. Also the idea of having to buy a whole album not knowing what you would get--seems so strange to me now that I used to do that in the pre-Spotify days! (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was my best-ever purchase based only on having read about it :-)
It can feel a little wounding to read a critic who hates something you like, for sure. I'm a fan of Genesis and reading that review of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway makes me feel like a bit of a dork for liking it. But to me, that's part of what's important about developing taste is standing with your own response even in the face of that kind of disagreement. (Like how I admitted to being a Phish fan last week.)
No Tweedy/Wilco hate here! Big fan. I put his most recent book on my best nonfiction list at the Chicago Tribune. The new book is all about those formative records in his life. It great.
Posting a second comment on a totally different topic--I was just listening to David Leonhardt on The Daily talking about how standardized tests, for all their imperfections, are still a more equitable way of getting a diverse student body than the alternatives. I very much agree with you that the SAT doesn't measure anything meaningful (or didn't, back when I took it 30 years ago) but yet I wondered about the practicalities of dropping it. Just curious what you would have to say about that, as someone who I know has thought deeply about these issues (and has been critical of David Leonhardt in the past). Short of overhauling all the inequities in our society, that is, which seems rather unlikely to happen in a timely fashion.
I appreciate this question very much.
I'd say a couple of things in response to that Leonhardt piece. One is that he's wrong about some of the interpretations he draws from the data. This article from Liam Knox at Inside Higher Ed rounds up some reactions to the piece that have some well informed pieces from people who work in admissions. If you want to go really deep you can follow the links that Liam shares in the roundup. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/admissions/traditional-age/2024/01/17/reigniting-standardized-testing-debate
I'll also share a stat that was very impactful to me when I first heard it a few years ago. 85% of college students go to institutions that accept more than 50% of applicants, which is to say the vast majority of students go to schools that are not particularly selective and do not need an SAT in order to determine who is qualified for potential admission. Another stat is that the schools covered by the study Leonhardt is working from (the Ivy plus colleges) represents 0.6% of the total enrollment in post secondary education.
If we're concerned about inequities, by far the most important thing we could do is provide sufficient resources to the (primarily public) higher ed institutions that educate the vast majority of students. In short, put the attention at the places students already go, rather than worrying about what's going on at these elite institutions that will always be exclusionary.
Thanks for sharing that article! Great point that I was missing the forest for the trees and failing to recognize that the argument being made related only to highly selective colleges. (Though it is disturbing how many of the powerful people in our country attended just a few colleges.)
You're so right about that last part. These are people who attended these schools and have come to buy into the meritocracy arguments without thinking about them critically. They're successful, so of course this is the route to success, and they pay more attention to those schools that the ones most of us attend.
Excellent take on the apparent demise of Pitchfork and the structural limits of Substack. Yes, criticism is a form unto itself that may be enjoyed as such (in addition to Christgau I’d highlight Pitchfork’s Sunday retrospective album reviews). But fundamentally criticism is a service and that service is simply of less financial value now - both to the publisher and the consumer - due to the reasons you state. That said, because streaming has made music timeless (Fats Domino and Tyler the Creator are now direct competitors) I’d argue music criticism is even more essential in helping us decide where to devote our time and listening energies. But that’s a non-financial consideration these days and therefore an agency most people are happy to farm out to the algorithm.
Excellent insight about how there is a role for critics, but not a mechanism which places economic value on it beyond individuals deciding to support the work of the critic through some kind of direct means (e.g. subscription).
In a way, it strikes me as part of an even broader pattern of the replacement of human labor with automation provided the illusion of quality or performance is maintained. I've been thinking about this idea a lot in conjunction with my writing about ChatGPT (large language models) and how they may be employed in work and education. Those algorithms do not do what humans do (they can't think, feel, or reason), but they can produce something that seems like what humans do. It's not the same, though.
Unfortunately, Pitchfork has been a shambling corpse for years now. They primarily cover mainstream artists and follow the crowd on albums and artists they give the most accolades to. We lost them half a decade ago or more.
I think the diminishment is directly related to being acquired by Condé Nast and being treated like an asset that has to continue to increase in value, rather than a publication which should be run profitably and sustainably.
Great one, John. Your piece, along with another, have me thinking. It's undebatable that good critics add to the experience of finding and enjoying art. And yet, the fact is, the profession of "critic," the venues where they operate, and their importance in culture are spiraling downward.
Why?
I think it has to do with, as you say, alternative methods of discovery (social media, algorithms, etc.). For the layman, a critic isn't needed. But what about those who really do care about finding/discovering great, great stuff? I think it has to do with the complete and utter failure of critics today to deliver work that feels honest, authentic, *actually* critical or different. Rather, it's all become very predictable, and sad. You walk away with the sense of: eh, I'll take my chances on my own selections / explorations / research.
So often, it seems, critics are completely out of step with tastes, which sounds suspiciously familiar to a common gripe when it comes to political ideologies. Wherever a mainstream critique or opinion can be found, it feels mainstream, completely missing the whole point of critique/curation. Maybe this is caused by a vicious cycle of 1) the writer trying to do whatever they need to do to keep their job and thus 2) their work being crappy because the inauthenticity is perceivable. I don't know.
If you have them, I ask you to put aside your preconceived notions of Freddie de Boer and read this piece if you haven't (I wonder what you think): https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/what-weve-lost-in-music-criticism). While sprinkled with some other... stuff, I think the main idea is there, and the diagnosis is accurate.
"In practice poptimism amounts to the constant valorization of that which is already popular, in our culture industries, and a corresponding disdain for that which is not. And this flips the most sacred duty of a music critic on its head: the most important thing music criticism has done, among other virtues, has been to elevate precisely those artists and albums and songs that were insufficiently known and underappreciated."
Some form of this plagues the dying - or dead - industry of critique in all mediums. For music, it was poptimism. For movies and TV (and maybe books), it's almost the opposite, a preference for things that portray the political ideals of the moment, rather than what's, you know, just plain good / under the radar / or simply an authentic, raw reaction to a person's encounter with a work of art.
I think these things are always multifaceted, rather than being attributable to singular causes, so I'm a little suspicious of the "poptimism" theory. It sounds like an argument with mass culture, which to me is like shouting at the wind. I think Freddie is often an interesting read, less so when he's prosecuting grievances against those he considers either his inferiors or who he believes may hold him in some contempt. I promise you (and him), no one cares if he like metal the same way no one really cares that I like Phish.
Framing these things around grievance make it tough to cut through to something meaningful. In the piece itself DeBoer undercuts his own argument around the "constant valorization of something popular" by acknowledging that Pitchfork continued to review music off the beaten path to the end. That is also engaged in a form of music writing he finds less important or meaningful seems more tied to demands of the marketplace more than anything ideological.
I feel like there's a contradiction on something you say here where you say "critics are completely out of step with tastes" but then suggest that they're pandering to a kind of consensus ideological stance. Wouldn't that be an attempt to be "in step" with tastes.
I think the challenges of criticism aren't particularly new. There's always been critics who have been accused of carrying water for particular movements or groups while others claim to be strong independent thinkers beholden to no one and nothing. For me, the proof is ultimately in the pudding. If a book or movie is put into the world simply because it meets the "political ideals of the moment" with no regard to quality, it's probably not going to make much of a splash.
Like Barbie is talked about as reflecting a current cultural zeitgeist and lots of people can be annoying online about its importance in a poptimistic way, but also, it's an entertaining movie! I mean, I don't think it's my favorite movie of all time, but in terms of filmic qualities, it's far superior to Oppenheimer, which had some dialog that had me laughing out loud, without that being the purpose of the dialog.
Maybe getting back to some of what I said last week about the importance of taste, I think it's important for we as the audience to always maintain our individual agency over these things and not get too bent about whatever trends or changes come, while also being open to the possibility in change for ourselves. That's the reflexive process of allowing art into your life, IMO.
THE FEAST OF LOVE was a book that both Meg and I had on our shelves when we met in college. We went to see Charles Baxter read a few years later, we were probably 22. We got him to sign our copy and told him our story, about how we read it to each other out loud before bed, and he was completely unimpressed. "Oh, yeah," he said, "people read it at their weddings.” LOL it was so great.
That's funny. He is low-key in the extreme. He gave a reading where I was teaching and I brought up a stack of like 8 of his books (I could've brought more), including the first edition of Harmony of the World published by a university press and I was sure he'd be impressed by my clear fandom. He looked at it and said, "Huh, not a lot of people have this one."
I did get him to write an introduction for a republished edition of one of my great uncle's books. https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/introduction-to-allan-seagers-a-frieze-of-girls
haha that's excellent.
Substack has always been hyped as the answer, the savior, the future, but I don't quite think it is, except for a handful:
https://sassone.wordpress.com/2023/09/28/we-need-to-talk-about-substack/