What If Blog Was One Of Us?
Stray thoughts on Pitchfork, the future of music writing, and what YOU can do to help. Plus...new music of my own.
I’ve been dragging my feet writing about last month’s Pitchfork/GQ merger slash non-merger(?) slash union-busting maneuver. From 2004 to 2009, I was an end-of-the-bench contributor for the site. As a broke undergrad, I didn’t get to meet most of my colleagues IRL, and I don’t have any saucy palace intrigue to share. So why should I weigh in? If you’re watching The Last Dance, do you care what Dickey Simpkins had to say about the ‘97-’98 Bulls?
Well, the following thoughts aren’t novel, but they kept bugging me. So now they’re your problem, too.
I tend to downplay my five years writing for Pitchfork. Career-wise, it was something of a cul-de-sac, but it completely reshaped my soft young head. I learned a ton about music, and became a much stronger writer thanks to the incredible editors who worked with me—I’m eternally grateful to Scott Plagenhoef, Nick Sylvester, Matthew Solarski, Catherine Lewis, Mark Richardson, et al. Still, something felt off. I very much enjoyed and appreciated music criticism (still do!), but felt increasingly uneasy doing the deed myself. Worst of all, I struggled with the same nagging feeling Eric Harvey outlines in his excellent Pitchfork essay: Giving lukewarm reviews to relatively unknown artists felt lousy. I wanted so badly to reach out and assure them that releasing a 5.8 album is an infinitely cooler and more valuable gift to the world than, like, making a really good deck for a Fortune 500 company.
I soon joined a band and quit writing about music. Plenty of thoughts and opinions were still rattling around the ole brain, but making music was an easier way to vent them than criticism. Maybe I’m just as middling a songwriter as a critic, but it suited me nicely.
My writing past hounded me a little. Haters saw ex-critics making music as some sort of vulgar display of power (lol). In reality, it was a fun way to go a couple thousand bucks in the red over five years. The entity of “Pitchfork” seemed to like, and then very much NOT like, my band. I was sore about it for a while, then learned to let it go. It was ~character building~. And besides, an 8.0 wouldn’t have changed my life.
By the time Condé Nast acquired the site, all the Hipster Runoff-era discourse about Pitchfork’s gatekeeping hegemony seemed woefully myopic. Sure, you could still get worked up about a dumb score or laugh at the occasional “Goop on ya Grinch”-y line, but it became hard not to see that Pitchfork was under the boot of the same powerful forces squashing the rest of us. In one particularly on-the-nose metaphor, a pop star called for its offices to get 9/11’d.
But enough about me. My heart goes out to the staffers who were senselessly let go. I may not have been reading Pitchfork.com on a daily basis, it was apparent these talented minds were pushing the site in cool new directions in the midst of less-than-brilliant ideas from the top brass. I’m sure once the initial sting wears off, these smart folks will have moved on to greener pastures.
The future of music writing (hell, music in general) can feel pretty bleak right now. It’s a mentality I’m not immune to. The world would be a better place if more capital were spent on culture writing. But sadly, folks, benevolent overlords aren’t walking through that door. While I understand the anxiety that algorithms are making us boring, or legacy media is increasingly unable to curate for us, it’s worth remembering we aren’t confined to the supply-side of the cultural equation here.
That’s not to sound like up-by-your-bootstraps conservative tripe, but as a glint of optimism. The ultra-wealthy weirdos who run everything seem increasingly oblivious to what normal humans want. Ideas-wise, they’re down bad, and we don’t have to keep drinking their slurry.
Blogs, Patreon, Substack, newsletters...these may not deliver us from evil, but the more effort I make to seek out interesting voices rather than reloading the same three URLs, the more reinvigorated I feel. In that spirit, I wanted to give some music writers and DJs their flowers. If you’re in a rut music-wise, I strongly recommend the following:
DJ’s in my regular rotation:
+ many more to be discovered. Apologies to anyone I missed!
BEAST NEW MUSIC
On Friday, February 16, I’m releasing my second EP as Needy Beast. It’s called Don Forever and is dedicated in loving memory of Don, my cat of 10+ years who passed away last September. Don’t worry, it’s not a downer. He was a happy-go-lucky oaf, so these four electro-pop tunes should be a good time. Watch this space...