Does anybody like music critics?

[idoit]

I honestly don't like any "professional" ratings of albums since I know everyone has different tastes buds in music and may perceive an album differently, like blowing it off over trying to say something like, "Korn's second album, Life is Peachy is turning their well-publicized childhood traumas into a cheap marketing device."[IMG]http://www.****.info/g.gif[/IMG]

[CharAznable]

Not a fan of Christgau

[SteveO]

Welcome to The Gear Page, home of countless frustrated critic-wannabies....

[mbargav]

Not a fan of album ratings, but I have always enjoyed reading music essayists. I think music, and every other art form can (and deserves to be) be discussed and criticized, and have always enjoyed reading those who do it well. I've never had pleasant, interesting, or illuminating discussions with people who write of all art-criticism.

[A-Bone]

It is often helpful to draw a distinction between criticism and review. Criticism is a formal evaluation of something typically predicated on some structural frameworks to aid the evaluation. For criticism to be successful, it also presumes that the reader is familiar with the subject and subject matter under critique. Put simply, criticism is written for people that have already had some exposure to the subject matter. Criticism tends to reside in journals. Meaningful criticism avoids too much personal interjection unrelated to this evaluation, and likewise minimizes excessive praise. Jacques Derrida is a critic.

Review is the consumerist evaluation of music, film, etc. that more frequently occupies space in newspapers and magazines. It is ideally designed with the assumption that the reader has not yet consumed the subject, as it is primarily a vehicle to express the writer's belief as to whether or not the subject under consideration is worth consuming and/or purchasing. Reviews are often personal, hyperbolic, witty, cantankerous and the like. Lester Bangs was more of a reviewer, an especially gifted and acerbic. Rollin Stone publishes reviews, rather than criticism.

Additionally, and of equal significance, when dealing with review of popular forms, such as film and popular musical genres, there is typically little formal education required, with the broader idea that democratized, popular forms of entertainment are suitable to the review of anyone that has consumed the subject. The typical requirement is the ability to write relatively clearly, but no need for contextual understanding, or even historical depth in the subject under review. This is why Gene Siskel could be a film reviewer despite his having no film education whatsoever.

In contrast, no reasonable organization would send the uneducated to observe and write about an art exhibit, ballet or dance piece, or likely even opera. Again, however when it comes to popular forms, the thought is that everyone knows as much as everyone else in the evaluation for purposes of review -- which doubles back to why it is important to separate critics from reviewers. Meaningful critique of art depends on sufficient understanding to place the piece in some context beyond "good" or "bad" or "success" or "failure." This contextualization and evaluation should be supported with meaningful examples and utilizing cogent and concrete ideas.

When people say "everyone's a critic", they are typically misspeaking in the stricter sense, and mean only that people tend to formulate opinions about things based on their exposure to them, and those opinions are sometimes critical (in the lay sense) of the item experienced.

So, to answer the OP, while I am less of a fan of music review (unless I get a kick out of the writer's style, such as Klosterman, or JD Considine, or Lester Bangs), I am definitely appreciative of music criticism.

[mbargav]

Originally Posted by A-Bone

Meaningful criticism avoids too much personal interjection unrelated to this evaluation, and likewise minimizes excessive praise. Jacques Derrida is a critic.

In one of my favorite essays ("Age of the world picture"), Heidegger argues that we experience the world as an experiment in which we (singular, not collective) are the only stable and available first principle. I've always thought Bangs and Klosterman apply that approach to cultural criticism. Klosterman is as blunt as to use a dictionary definition of Solipsism as an epigraph to Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.

[pavlov]

I've noticed that once most teenagers learn a few barr chords they suddenly become music critics and anything that they are not into basically sucks.

[John H]

As Richard Thompson says, "There's only one thing worse than a professional music critic - that's an amateur music critic."

[Scooter Burbank]

Originally Posted by A-Bone

It is often helpful to draw a distinction between criticism and review. Criticism is a formal evaluation of something typically predicated on some structural frameworks to aid the evaluation. For criticism to be successful, it also presumes that the reader is familiar with the subject and subject matter under critique. Put simply, criticism is written for people that have already had some exposure to the subject matter. Criticism tends to reside in journals. Meaningful criticism avoids too much personal interjection unrelated to this evaluation, and likewise minimizes excessive praise. Jacques Derrida is a critic.

Review is the consumerist evaluation of music, film, etc. that more frequently occupies space in newspapers and magazines. It is ideally designed with the assumption that the reader has not yet consumed the subject, as it is primarily a vehicle to express the writer's belief as to whether or not the subject under consideration is worth consuming and/or purchasing. Reviews are often personal, hyperbolic, witty, cantankerous and the like. Lester Bangs was more of a reviewer, an especially gifted and acerbic. Rollin Stone publishes reviews, rather than criticism.

Additionally, and of equal significance, when dealing with review of popular forms, such as film and popular musical genres, there is typically little formal education required, with the broader idea that democratized, popular forms of entertainment are suitable to the review of anyone that has consumed the subject. The typical requirement is the ability to write relatively clearly, but no need for contextual understanding, or even historical depth in the subject under review. This is why Gene Siskel could be a film reviewer despite his having no film education whatsoever.

In contrast, no reasonable organization would send the uneducated to observe and write about an art exhibit, ballet or dance piece, or likely even opera. Again, however when it comes to popular forms, the thought is that everyone knows as much as everyone else in the evaluation for purposes of review -- which doubles back to why it is important to separate critics from reviewers. Meaningful critique of art depends on sufficient understanding to place the piece in some context beyond "good" or "bad" or "success" or "failure." This contextualization and evaluation should be supported with meaningful examples and utilizing cogent and concrete ideas.

When people say "everyone's a critic", they are typically misspeaking in the stricter sense, and mean only that people tend to formulate opinions about things based on their exposure to them, and those opinions are sometimes critical (in the lay sense) of the item experienced.

So, to answer the OP, while I am less of a fan of music review (unless I get a kick out of the writer's style, such as Klosterman, or JD Considine, or Lester Bangs), I am definitely appreciative of music criticism.

Well done!