Hector Berlioz, active as a music critic in Paris in the 1830s and 1840s.

A music critic is someone who reviews music (including printed music, performances of music and recorded music) and publishes on them in newspapers, magazines, books or journals, or since the 1990s, on the Internet. Some large newspapers or magazines may employ multiple music critics. Newspaper and magazine music critics are expected to follow the standard style used in the publication, but other than that, they are encouraged to develop their own personal writing style, because this is what draws and retains readers. ^[1] Typically, a music critic will only write for a single publication. Some music critics also write books analyzing musical styles and discussing music history, thus verging on the field of musicology.

Overview

There is no formal training required to be a music critic, but it is common for music critics to have done postsecondary study in music, because "a deep knowledge of music, repertoire, performance and composition is important".^[2]. As well, music critics need to be able to explain specialized musical concepts to a general audience ^[3]

The balance between the different elements in a review (information about the performer or group; information about the pieces/songs; commentary about the technical and subjective elements of the performance) depends on the audience that a music critic is writing for. Music reviewers writing in general-interest magazines may not be able to assume that the readers will be familiar with music performers and pieces/songs, so they may include more "background" information on the ensemble or band, the composer or songwriter, and the pieces or songs.^{[citation needed]}

Art music

Many composers of classical music were also notable writers on, and critics of music, including Hector Berlioz, Richard Wagner and Robert Schumann. Amongst modern practitioners of the classical music tradition who also write (or wrote) on music may be included Alfred Brendel, Charles Rosen, Paul Hindemith and Ernst Krenek.

The "decline in classical criticism" has been occurring since the early 1980s, "when classical-music criticism visibly started to disappear". In the early 1980s, "Time magazine had a full-time classical critic" and "Vanity Fair had a classical critic", but by the early 1990s, Classical critics were dropped in many magazines. In part this is because there "...been a decline of interest in classical music, especially among younger people".^[4]

In 2007, the New York Times stated that "Classical music criticism, a high-minded endeavor that has been around at least as long as newspapers...has taken a series of hits in recent months", because "[c]ritics’ jobs have been eliminated, downgraded or redefined at newspapers in Atlanta, Minneapolis and elsewhere around the country and at New York magazine, where Peter G. Davis, one of the most respected voices of the craft, said he had been forced out after 26 years".^[5] The Classical music scene views "...robust analysis, commentary and reportage as vital to the health of the art form".^[6]In the late 2000s, Classical music criticism is increasingly available on blogs. Nevertheless, a "number of major newspapers still have full-time classical music critics, including The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Philadelphia Inquirer [,] The Boston Globe" and "The New York Times [,which] maintains a staff of three full-time classical music critics and three freelancers".^[7]

Popular music

Music writers only started "treating pop and rock music seriously" in 1964 "after the breakthrough of the Beatles..." .^[8]One of the early music magazines in Britain, Melody Maker, complained in 1967 about how "newspapers and magazines are continually hammering [i.e., attacking] pop music". ^[9] Melody Maker magazine advocated the new forms of pop music of the late 1960s. As more pop music critics began writing, this had the effect of "legitimating pop as an art form"; as a result, "newspaper coverage shifted towards pop as music rather than pop as social phenomenon" .^[10] "By 1999, the 'quality' press was regularly carrying reviews of popular music gigs and albums", which had a "key role in keeping pop" in the public eye.As more pop music critics began writing, this had the effect of "legitimating pop as an art form"; as a result, "newspaper coverage shifted towards pop as music rather than pop as social phenomenon" .^[11]

Steve Jones claims that both popular music articles and academic articles about pop music are usually written from "masculine subject positions". As more pop music critics began writing, this had the effect of "legitimating pop as an art form"; as a result, "newspaper coverage shifted towards pop as music rather than pop as social phenomenon" .^[12]; as well, in the way that critics differentiate between pop music and rock, using terms like "trivial", "fluffy", or "formulaic" for pop (versus "serious", "raw", and "sincere" for rock), there is an implicit or even explicitly gendered dichotomy.^[13] Simon Frith notes that pop and rock muisc are closely associated with gender; that is, with conventions of male and female behaviour. ^[14]

As more pop music critics began writing, this had the effect of "legitimating pop as an art form"; as a result, "newspaper coverage shifted towards pop as music rather than pop as social phenomenon" .^[15] In the world of pop music criticism, there tends to be a quick turnover. The "pop music industry expects that any particular [music critic] star can disappear within five years; in contrast, the "stars" of rock criticism are more likely to have long careers with "book contracts, featured columns, and editorial and staff positions at magazines and newspapers..."As more pop music critics began writing, this had the effect of "legitimating pop as an art form"; as a result, "newspaper coverage shifted towards pop as music rather than pop as social phenomenon" .^[16] Critic Robert Christgau was the "originator of the 'consumer guide' approach to pop music reviews", an approach to writing pop recording reviews that was designed to help consumers to decide whether to buy a new album.^[17]

In the realm of rock music (as indeed in that of classical music)^[18], critics have not always been respected by their subjects. Frank Zappa declared that, "Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read." In the Guns N' Roses song "Get in the Ring", Axl Rose verbally attacked critics who gave the band negative reviews because of their actions on stage; such critics as Andy Secher, Mick Wall and Bob Guccione, Jr. were mentioned by name.

US music writer Robert Christgau was one of the first rock critics in the 1960s.

Carl Wilson describes "an upsurge in pro-pop sentiment among critics" during the early 2000s, a "new generation [of music critics] moved into positions of critical influence" and then "mounted a wholesale critique against the syndrome of measuring all popular music by the norms of rock culture."^[19] In 2008 Ann Powers of the LA Times argued that "[p]op music critics have always been contrarians", because "pop music [criticism] rose up as a challenge to taste hierarchies, and has remained a pugilistic, exhibitionist business throughout pop's own evolution."^[20]

Powers claims that "[i]nsults, rejections of others' authority, bratty assertions of superior knowledge and even threats of physical violence are the stuff of which pop criticism is made"; at the same time, the "best [pop criticism] also offers loving appreciation and profound insights about how music creates and collides with our everyday realities." ^[21] She states that pop criticism developed as a "slap at the establishment, at publications such as the hippie homestead Rolling Stone and the rawker outpost Creem. ^[22] She notes that the "1980s generation" of post-punk indie rockers "has lately [i.e., in the 2000s] been taken down by younger "poptimists," who argue that lovers of underground rock are elitists for not embracing the more multicultural mainstream". ^[23] Powers claims that with the 2000s-era "poptimism" critical approach, debates about bands and styles are "like the scrum in rugby", because "[e]verybody pushes against everybody else, and we move forward in a huge blob of vehement opinion and mutual judgment".^[24]

Slate magazine writer Jody Rosen discussed the 2000s-era trends in pop music criticism in the article "The Perils of Poptimism". Rosen notes that much of the debate is centred over the perception that that rock critics "...regard rock as "normative … the standard state of popular music … to which everything else is compared."^[25] At a 2006 pop critic conference, attendees discussed their "...guilty pop pleasures, reconsidering musicians ( Tiny Tim, Dan Fogelberg, Phil Collins) and genres (blue-eyed soul,Muzak)" which rock critics have long dismissed as lightweight, commercial music. Rosen states that "this new critical paradigm" is called "popism"—or, more evocatively (and goofily), "poptimism". The "poptimism" approach states that "Pop (and, especially, hip-hop) producers are as important as rock auteurs, Beyoncé is as worthy of serious consideration as Bruce Springsteen, and ascribing shame to pop pleasure is itself a shameful act". ^[26] In 2006, Martin Edlund from the New York Sun argued that music bloggers are to some degree displacing newspaper and magazine-based pop music critics. Edlund notes that while the "Internet has democratized music criticism, it seems it's also spread its penchant for uncritical hype".^[27]

Notes

External links

• International Federation of Music Journalists - an international group of media professionals who treat any aspect of music on any media. Publishes the "Directory of Music Journalists" and confers "Music Journalist Award".
• Who cares what critics say? - Jay Nordlinger

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