Have a look at this movie review in today’s NY Times. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Doo-doo-de-doop-boo-wah…
Finished? Alrighty.
What a delightfully snarky little evisceration that review is. I tip my hat to A. O. Scott. Mind you, I haven’t seen the film in question (I gave up on film a couple of years ago, for the most part), but having seen the ads I’d guess that his/her characterization of it isn’t too far off.
Now I want you to imagine that it was an album review. Can you think of a major publication – newspaper or magazine – that would run something like that? Because I can’t. For one thing, none of them would want to go that far out on a limb and risk pissing off an advertiser. Although come to think of it, movie studios spend a hell of a lot more money advertising in the Times than any record label would even consider. I don’t imagine those full-page ads they clog the Arts & Entertainment section with come cheap. But I don’t think you’re gonna be seeing any of the Times’ music writers taking apart an album with that same sort of gleeful reckless abandon anytime soon. Why is that?
And if some mag or paper actually did run such a review, people would be running to their keyboards in such a rush to be the first to call it “elitist” that our nation’s emergency rooms would be full of broken-fingered hipsters faster than you can say “Clap Your Hands Say Yeah”.
How did things reach such a pitiful stage? Why are music critics so severely handcuffed while their film-watching counterparts run free? There comes a time when, to do one’s job as a critic, it becomes necessary to point out that not only does the emperor not have any clothes but he also cuts his hair funny and has an embarrassing tattoo on his ass, as well.
Bullshit dogma doesn’t allow that anymore. All music is now of equal worth, and music critics have been reduced to auxiliaries of the marketing departments of the various record labels, cheerleaders for whatever’s on offer this week. Think about it – when was the last time you read a review in a music publication that wasn’t positively glowing, to one degree or another?
A dedicated reader can find a critic whose taste closely matches their own and go from there, but the casual reader is gonna get duped a few times into buying lackluster CDs that have been hyped beyond their worth. At that point, “criticism” loses whatever worth it may once have had. I'm all for remaining as positive as possible in a review, but sometimes you just have to fling a little shit in order to get your point across.