How not to write about music

I’ve been writing about music for more than twenty years in one form or another. From the occasional review for my friend’s fanzine ‘ A Short Fanzine About Rocking’, through a number of other aborted blogs (some sooner than others), and a chapter in an actual honest to goodness book to this blog. I love writing about music, regardless of whether anyone actually reads it (although some readers would be nice). I’m still not sure I really know how to do it. I have, however, learnt a few things about how not to do it along the way.

Don’t go (gratuitously) negative

People love reading negative reviews. Some of the most popular reviews on Pitchfork are for those albums rated 0.0 (this is not unique to music writing — reviews of really bad restaurants get way more clicks than good ones), I wrote some pretty mean reviews myself, when I was writing for a fanzine where I had to review whatever I was sent. This was until I thought about the (admittedly unlikely) prospect of the band actually reading them, and felt bad.

If you’re being overly mean just for laughs or clicks, don’t. The music you’re slating has almost certainly had many people’s hearts and souls poured into it and has more value than your cheap snark, even if you don’t personally enjoy it. This doesn’t mean all music writing has to be positive, There’s plenty of room for well thought out criticism, just that all music needs to be treated with a certain level of respect. I almost exclusively write about music I enjoy. It seems a waste of my limited time and energy thinking too much about music I dislike. Although slightly hypocritically my last blog was a panning of the Pistol TV series (only because I found it strangely compelling)

Don’t use the phrase “clearly influenced by” ….

When what you really mean is “sounds a bit like”. My wife’s band the Winter Club were told more than once they were clearly influenced by band x or y (or the C86 movement) that they’d never listened to or even heard of, let alone been influenced by. It’s just a way to compare a band to another band, while trying to make it sound like you’re not doing that.

…Or the phrase “Emperor’s new clothes”…

It’s the arrogance of this one that annoys me. So, there’s some band who are really popular, and you don’t happen to like them. Fine. But the phrase “Emperor’s new clothes” implies that everyone else is just pretending, and that you’re the only one honest or wise enough to tell the truth. Really it’s just your subjective taste vs. theirs. There’s nothing clever about disliking something popular. Plus, I can never spell the word emperor correctly at first attempt, which I find very annoying.

…or x band is like y band on z drug…

I thought this practice had been stamped out by Lee & Herring’s ‘Norman Wisdom on acid’ sketch back in the 90s, but no. I still see this on a regular basis. Just pick a band and drug at random and Google it. “The Clash on acid” — 3700 hits. “Billy Bragg on speed” — 5 hits “Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci on Quaaludes” — 0 hits, admittedly, but you get the jist. Quite a fun way to waste 5 minutes.

It’s not just an awful cliche, it also comes across as an extremely lame attempt to sound cool by implying you know what effect some illegal drugs have. New Order are Joy Division on Ecstasy is the only acceptable example of this, only because it is literally true.

…or the word ‘Songstress’

I would have expected this deeply patronising word to been consigned to the dustbin of history by now, but I still see it being used unironically fairly often. It makes me think about the way female artists were written about in the music press in my teenage years (the 90s), which seemed to consist mainly of the following questions: Are they crazy? Who are they dating/sleeping with? Who really wrote their songs? Things might have improved a little, but we still have a way to go before all musicians are treated and respected equally, regardless of gender. Getting rid of this word would be a start.

Don’t keep making up new genres

The NME and Melody Maker were particularly bad for this, back in the day (New Wave of New Wave anyone? Romo?), although they had the excuse of having to fill a whole music paper every week. It has been continued through the 21st century by music blogs like Pitchfork (Fidget House? Chillwave? Nerdcore?). Genre feels less important than ever, now that the whole world and history of music is accessible in an instant, so labelling music in this way feels unnecessary. Jimi Hendrix said, “there are only two types of music, good and bad”. My friend Fuzz said, inspired by the cataloguing system in HMV and Virgin Megastore, “there are only two type of music, rock/pop & other”

Don’t spend too much time describing how music sounds

This may seem counter-intuitive, but I don’t think there’s all that much value in trying to describe what a song or band sounds like when the reader can almost certainly immediately go online and listen to them/it. Write about how they make you feel, why they are significant, why they are worth the reader’s time, or why you love them instead.

Don’t worry about ‘Dancing About Architecture’

There’s a quote, variously attributed to Frank Zappa, Laurie Anderson and many others, that says “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”. Presumably intended to imply that it’s a both pointless and impossible task.

Firstly, dancing about architecture actually sounds amazing, and if anyone wants to put on, say, a modern dance piece about the brutalist Roger Stevens building at the University of Leeds, I’m there for it.

Secondly, someone wiser than me pointed out that writing about music is actually like writing about architecture, or indeed writing about anything. Even if you can never quite capture the full essence of what you’re writing about through your words, doesn’t mean that the writing has no value.

I bought my first Sleater-Kinney record based purely on a live review I read in the NME. I delved into the depths of Neil Young’s back catalogue because I loved his biography ‘Shakey’ by Jimmy McDonough so much. Stephanie Phillips made me think about Solange in a new light. Blogs like For The Rabbits (and indeed, Dancing About Architecture) lead me to wonderful new music all the time.

So, I’ll try, and probably fail, to avoid all of the pitfalls I’ve listed, and I’m going to keep dancing about architecture. “Dance like nobody’s watching”, they say. Well, I’m going to write like nobody’s reading, whether or not that remains literally true.

Originally published at http://colourthecortex.wordpress.com on June 24, 2022.