When I bemoaned Conde Nast's evisceration of Pitchfork and the sorry plight/demise of other music publications/sites recently, in conversation with a bunch of music-loving friends, the predominant reaction was a shrug of the shoulders (though one person went as far as saying that they were glad to see Pitchfork go for selling out to pop and peddling pretentious nonsense). I'll admit I was dumbfounded. Clearly, while the case for the importance of music journalism is self-evident to the likes of me, it needs to be made cogently for the benefit of others.
Thankfully, Quietus founder John Doran is just the man for the job. In this Guardian article, he argues that music criticism - or at least music criticism at its best - isn't merely an adjunct of the industry, a shallow PR exercise: "We do need a music press independent of streaming platforms to help us sift through the mountains of crap, but we need people to see that we are far more than just a glorified Argos catalogue ... [T]o assume that record reviews only exist to help you buy music is a fundamental category error. Criticism is never, ever, just about the music. When we talk about the music we're often talking about everything else in life that is important besides."
He's spot on. Yes, music writing often/usually serves a practical purpose, enabling readers to sort the wheat from the chaff - but it's also much more than that: (in the right hands) an artform in its own right, something that can be savoured as its own thing independently of the actual music that prompted it.
To use Doran's term, music criticism can create its own "magic". And that is why, he concludes, "[w]e mustn't let such a beautiful thing be broken and cast aside".
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