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.
