The Americana and roots music authority

On criticism being dead

I started writing this out as a comment on Grant's provocation that Merle Haggard is the greatest living American songwriter. It got long, so I'm commuting it over here into the blog space. Because it's really more about criticism than it is about Merle Haggard or anything else people are discussing over there.

Let me offer some context. Today I found myself in the curious position of explaining to someone I didn't already know about what exactly I do on this site. Am I a critic? Sometimes, but not exactly. A reporter? Sort of, sometimes, loosely. Editor? Yes, no. Not exactly. Administrator? A little bit, but no.

We have these words because they are things we've always had around. Criticism, especially, is something people think they understand. I've heard from artists that critics are usually "failed, embittered artists themselves" or are "obsessed with the form but don't have any actual talent." I've heard from fans that a critic is a professionally obnoxious know-it-all who seeks to point out artists' shortfalls. Of course all these assertions are laughable. Critics are people making a living being critics. A similar absurd falsity exists with teaching (those who can't do, teach). Teachers have a similar relationship with information to that of critics and whatever it is they criticize.

Criticism is not my favorite thing to do. Most really great albums can and perhaps should be summed up - as a fellow critic noted at a recent critics' conference I attended - by saying "you've got to hear this shit." Most really awful records can and should be summed up by saying "it did nothing for me." Saying either of these things in 170, 350, 500, 1200 purposeful words is nothing to shake a finger at. It's a craft in itself. Not because one must know what they're talking about and be able to make a solid argument, but also because most critics know that no amount of filling a 1200-word space in print is going to adequately communicate how great a great album is any better than the album will communicate on its own if people just give it a spin.

Of course ninety-eight percent of the records dropping these days are neither brilliant nor awful. Most of them are just okay. Or maybe even a little good. Or they're great for certain occasions, stirring in the right context. Or they're embarrassingly catchy even though most of us would agree they hold little artistic merit or culturally relevant staying power.

It used to be that the music industry was kind of a hierarchical structure of industry people - those who found artists, those who created an image, those who produced records, those who marketed products, those who held the purse strings, etc. Critics were educated analysts whose job it was to have exquisite taste. If you read ND in print, chances are you're on this site precisely because of the exquisite taste of Peter Blackstock and Grant Alden, and their cadre of excellent critics.

Long story short, all this is different now. The music industry has changed forever. Artists, on the whole, don't seek out major label contracts. Many hold their own purse strings, tweet their way into some semblance of marketing prowess. Many distribute their own work with little to no overhead. They meet and commune with one another online or at festivals. The hierarchy has flattened. And, concurrently, perhaps coincidentally - although I would argue it's not a coincidence at all - criticism is dead. At least "criticism" in the sense that we have, until this moment, used the word.

The important thing to remember here is that we're in a time when definitions are changing.

Many of my close friends who know exactly what this site is about still refer to it as a magazine. I'm okay with that. Maybe the word doesn't have to change. Maybe we just need to agree on a new definition. Maybe in ten or twenty years (or five, or fewer) a magazine will be something like this that happens on the web. I mean, if we all agree we don't know what else to call it, then we can change the definition together, right? That's kind of been the whole impetus behind this project on the new NoDepression.com.

And I think the same thing goes for criticism.

Several people have come here looking for our reviews. They've emailed me to find out where the critic's corner is and have been perplexed when I've explained that there is no critic's corner. There are no critics. Except that there are. At this exact moment (and by tomorrow morning, this number will likely have changed), we have 3,082 critics on this site. Kyla recently shared an email exchange with me where someone asked her if we would have someone at a particular festival or concert event. She told them, hilariously, that we don't have anyone anywhere anymore, or that, rather, we have everyone everywhere. To a similar end, I recently had a conversation with a member of this site who said throwing out all the definitions we've always identified with was a little like falling through space. What do we hold onto? I told him we hold onto each other, because we're all falling through space together.

We are all critics.

We can talk about educated ears, but things have changed. Don't get me wrong - there is still considerable merit in the knowledge, expertise and taste of folks like Barry Mazor (whose book on Jimmie Rodgers is out now, for example). But it used to be that only industry folks, artists, critics, and inexplicably obsessed hobbyists owned thousands of recordings. Now, the average music fan owns thousands of recordings across every conceivable genre. We find music on MySpace, on sites like this. We find it at shows. Friends give it to us. iTunes and Amazon suggest it. TV shows play it behind dramatic scenes. Reality competition show contestants perform to it and we download it immediately. We all have educated ears. Some more than others. Some of us favor niches (I admittedly know nothing about modern hiphop, but I like some Kanye - perhaps mainly because I've heard it enough that I can rap along). Others know no bounds. As soon as we comment on a blog post like this one, or like Grant's...or like Peter's post likening Bob Dylan to Shakespeare (preposterous!), we have been published.

It's precisely because of this that criticism, as we have until now thought we understood it, is dead. It's the end of the world as we knew it. Going forward, we can call it whatever we want. Regardless, as is true of almost everything, the new definition of criticism involves discussion and debate among anyone interested in joining in on the building of consensus.

"Everyone's a critic," the old saying goes. As true now as ever before, if not more so.

Comment by Reno Sepulveda on July 16, 2009 at 7:12pm: Funny, as technology allows more people to find their voice the the value of those voices goes way down.

I deal in legal documents/information. Back in the '90s I was telling an attorney how all this web technology would make the information so much more accessible. She told me "You just watch, the easier it is to find information the more people will take it for granted."

Smart lady.

Comment by Kim Ruehl on July 16, 2009 at 7:14pm: What do you mean by value? Are you talking about monetary value?

Comment by Easy Ed on July 16, 2009 at 9:02pm: I think you're a pretty smart cookie Ms. Ruehl, and we're all extremely lucky to have you be the whatever-you-want -to call-it at ND 2.0.

Comment by RP N10 on July 16, 2009 at 11:39pm: Interesting piece. A lot of the discussion on e-commerce has been about disintermediation (I think that's the right term) and a lot of what you describe fits that model. The web has made it a lot easier for artists to communicate with their [potential] audience directly and for internet communities - like this one but also yahoogroups and the like - to extend word of mouth almost limitlessly. "You've got to hear this shit" was the classic school playground recomendation followed up with a loan of a 45 or LP which, pre cassette, was hard to duplicate so you'd borrow for a few days and give it back then save up if you wanted your own. Now the playground encompasses a fat chunk of the planet and the vinyl passing has been replaced by a link. If I hear a new band in London and think they'd be of interest to someone else they can hear about them a few hours later.

Writers (let's lose the term critic) can inspire people to listen to an artist's work as long as the piece is well-argued, demonstrates a good understanding of the subject and is enthusiastic. The piece on Louisiana music in the last bookazine is an excellent example.

The problem with a lot of writing is that it reads like it was written as a job by someone who was given the CD/DVD/ticket for free on their plate and while this may have served a purpose when the bottlenecks of major labels, press and radio concentration and high cost distribution/duplication kept the artist and listener communities apart it doesn't add much value to either side as those bottlenecks go.

Comment by Don McLeese on July 17, 2009 at 7:58am: since i teach a course on arts criticism and am editing and annotating a book on it, such issues are very much on my mind--and even more on the minds of my students, who know i supported myself for three decades by writing criticism on popular arts and culture and wonder how they can do the same.

and i wonder as well, for just as there has never been an easier time to see your name in print (if this medium qualifies as print), there has never been a tougher time to get paid for your writing (because of all the free competition).

so, yes, everybody is a critic in that everybody has opinions. what distinguishes the compelling critic is the ability to build arguments. there is no right or wrong opinion--chocolate or vanilla, thumbs up or thumbs down, zimmy or the hag--but there are stronger and weaker arguments. the destination (the evaluation) isn't nearly as important as the journey (the process through which it is reached). readers don't care if a critic is always "right" (if such a thing were possible); they want to see an interesting mind at work. or, rather, an interesting mind at play, for there's a playful spirit that informs much of the most engaging criticism.

as much as i enjoy participating in this online community, it can't provide what the magazine did--features of breadth and depth, criticism that is compelling and provocative, essays that make you think, editors that serve as gatekeepers and make the contents as good as they can be. because that sort of journalism costs money.

when journalism is free, you get what you pay for. and what you don't get is the sort of criticism and editing that might be more valuable now then ever, as the overload of information and opinion makes journalistic judgment all the more crucial.

Comment by greasepaint on July 18, 2009 at 10:07pm: The "new definition of criticism" boils down to a casual blog post now and again? Not that some of the blurbs here don't impart nuggets of wisdom or even flashes of brilliance on occasion, but this strikess me as the antithesis of Grant A's piece in 10th Oxford American Music issue ("The amateurs have taken over and we live in a new age of transitory media" [consisting of] "opinions abstracted from the unpaid volunteers who have moved in to replace professional critics", a state of affairs which Grant understandably "takes personally") . Sure everyone's a critic, but can everyone churn out publishable criticism (although perhaps Grant's point as well as yours is that the words "publishable criticism" - at least for pay -- have been rendered an oxymoron by the interwebs).

The ( hopelessly outmoded?) critical aesthetic in Pop/Rawk I admire most is exemplified by the likes of Lester Bangs and Nick Toshes (you know, the Creem magazine crowd) Their best work sure didn't undertake the "building of consensus." Instead their highly indidual writing often provoked, cajoled, and shocked - but ultimately enlightened - the reader. Hell, many of Lester's best pieces hardly touched upon the purported subject of his reveiw. They were often about Lester, but the best of them stood (and stand) unto themselves as works of kick ass prose, or "Art", if you will. To this reader, this kind of lightning in a bottle happened more often in the features rather than the review section of the print version of No Depression . Nevertheless such writing (be it a professionally done review or an artful rant) prompts me to submit that the collective musings here -- as entertaining and worthwhile as they sometimes are -- seldom fall under the banner of genuine music "critcism" , no matter how hard one might try to tweak the definition.

Comment by Joe Maynard on July 20, 2009 at 5:25am: Yes, I agree with greasepaint. Critics are often my favorite writers and it is often just a genre of it's own. But as is my "criteria" for other artists, critics should offer something that sharpens or even changes our perception of art or world at large. I think I've read that Nick Tosches book about 9 times. I used to carry Pauline Kael in my pocket in college. Critics are my friends and mentors. When friends die I carry their opinions with me, the way I carried around "At the Movies." Aesthetic opinion for me is as important as political opinion or religion. Art is the lense that informs decisions, and critics keep that lense clean...boy, that was a corny metaphor. I'd give myself a 2 of 10 on that comment.

Comment by Kim Ruehl on July 20, 2009 at 7:00pm: Well there have been just as many not-so-great critics in the heyday of print. I think people who care enough about the craft to delve deeply into an album and analyze it in a blog post probably know at least something about what they're talking about. And if someone happens upon that blog and feels like they've learned something they didn't already know, more power to them. The beauty of the web is that, if I read a blog review by a critic who seems to not know what they're talking about, I don't have to keep reading. I didn't pay for it. I can move on and seek out a reliable source.

I think traditional criticism does and should still matter, I just don't think the web is the place for it. Folks who come to the web in search of it are going to come up short, and I see no problem with that. The web isn't good for reading novels, and it's not good for traditional criticism. Personally, I want those things in print. I probably wouldn't want to delve into scientific theory online either, but I don't know. My interest in science is much more sporadic. I think the problem is that we generally want the web to give us everything, and it's just not good for certain things. If people want to be critics online, they're going to have to abandon whatever definition they think they know for "criticism" and come up with something completely different because I think it's a square peg/round hole scenario.

As I noted when I originally wrote this (and I've had days more to think about my point here), this is very similar to the impetus behind this community site. So many people have tried to take their print publications online and attack the online model the same way they did in print. We're all starting to find out what now seems like the most obvious thing - the web is not a magazine. You can't make a magazine online. You have to do something different. You have to come up with new words and then define them, and then teach them to people, and then build consensus, then agree, and THEN move forward. It's as true for whatever "criticism" is going to mean on the web as it is for whatever "No Depression" is going to mean on the web, as it is for a number of other things we're redefining these days (politics and policy, education, economy...).

Comment by Don McLeese on July 21, 2009 at 7:55am: the web could be good for traditional criticism if there were a paying model. and obviously there are places on the web where criticism thrives--from the nytimes site to pitchfork. but with this site continuing to bill itself as "The Roots Music Authority," that authority once derived from features of breadth and depth, incisive criticism and judicious editing--none of which are now part of the working model (but can be found in the archives) and all of which require paid critics, writer and editors. it's as if Rolling Stone went web only, quit paying contributors, published anything that anyone posted, but billed itself as "The Rock Music Authority."

again, i like this site, enjoy participating in it and have other ways to pay my bills. but the "Authority" that once distinguished the brand comes at a price.

Comment by Sam on July 21, 2009 at 8:55am: When everyone has an equal voice (be it artist or critic), it becomes difficult for consumers to sieve information from the firehose of data. The direct, self-marketing of artists to listeners only increases the value of a critic whose opinion you can decipher or trust; a critic who will do some of the heavy lifting of sorting through the virtual piles and extracting a few items that might be of interest to you. Unfortunately, not only has the artistic stream turned into an indecipherable torrent, but the critical metaguide to the reservoir has turned into a similarly unsorted, unprioritized, uncontextualized pool of opinion. I concur with Mr. McLeese -- it's difficult to draw authority from the unbridled work of the masses, and readers and musicians are the poorer, not the richer, for it at this point.