Written by Bouchra Haddani
In the time of vinyl and cassettes, a music critic was someone an artist would fear. Musicians, especially in pop music, sought their approval because they knew that by winning them over to his side, listeners would follow. Fans tended to feel as though their opinion was inferior to the one of an industry professional.
But today, everyone feels like a critic. After all, how hard is it to type a 6 sentence comment about an album under a TikTok section or on a subreddit when billions of people around the world have access to the Internet and music streaming platforms. Is music criticism a dead art? Or has it simply been democratized to the point where, because everyone’s a critic, no one truly is?
Music criticism has been defined by Britannica as “the branch of philosophical aesthetics concerned with making judgments about compositions or performances or both”. But who are the people who get to make these judgements? Historically, these critics came from the worlds of journalism or commentary writing and would be employed by magazines or newspapers to report about the latest shows to hit the road or the latest album release. People used to turn to music critics for guidance, trusting their respected professional opinion over all else. A music critic was almost always considered to be harsher but more reliable than a fan.
Nowadays, it feels as though that belief has eroded. The lack of clear, constructive, and negative criticism from these professionals on any album made in the past decade makes the average music enthusiast skeptical and detached from their opinions. As early as the ‘70s, The New Yorker’s rock critic Ellen Willis predicted the rise of music criticism as a way to separate serious art from merely commercial art.
This started a long standing tradition of critics dismissing popular albums, often rating them lower precisely because they were appreciated by the masses whilst propulsing lesser-known albums to worldwide fame by bestowing upon it the critically acclaimed stamp of approval. Albums with perfect or almost perfect reviews at the time were the rarity, while the albums with medium or lower scores were the norm; Radiohead’s Pablo Honey (5.4) or Oasis’ Be Here Now (5.3). Well-rated albums were a select few and most people shared the opinion of critics about their greatness; Blue by Joni Mitchell or Rumours by Fleetwood Mac are albums that got 5 stars reviews from Rolling Stone upon their release, and OK Computer by Radiohead and most of The Beatles’ albums received 10/10 ratings from the very pointy and meticulous reviewer Pitchfork.
Although, it can be asked how much of their popularity was influenced by those critics’ reviews. Critics wouldn’t shy away from negatively criticising an album, all the while neatly writing sharp multiple-paragraph justification for it. This remains true, save for Pitchfork’s most famous 0.0 rating, reserved for the band Jet, whose score for their 2006 Shine On was accompanied by a video of a chimpanzee urinating in its own mouth.
Before the 2010s, the average Pitchfork review was a 6, which is undoubtedly lower than today’s. We saw a shift in the general landscape of music criticism during the 2010s, following a rise in the celebration of pop music by the previously more rock-leaning critics. Indeed, around the mid-2000s, the rockism movement–who defends a superiority of rock music and believes in praising its perceived higher artistry and seriousness–started to lose importance and while a few rockists remained in the critics’ sphere, a lot of them gradually embraced the poptimism wave. A 2004 New York Times article by journalist Kelefa Sanneh, titled “The Rap Against Rockism”, is credited with solidifying poptimism as a proper and respected trend. It mocked the traditional rock critic and gave hip-hop, R&B, and mainstream pop the same critical respect once solely bestowed upon rock music.
In recent years, album reviews seem to all converge towards a high but not perfect rating, with almost none ever getting contemptuous reviews and perfect scores becoming more common. The convergence can be clearly seen if we look at the year 2019: Billie Eilish’s When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go scoring a 7.2, Igor by Tyler, the Creator an 8.0, Ariana Grande’s thank u, next a 7.9 on Pitchfork. These albums were well received by the general public, for example allowing Billie Eilish to fully enter the mainstream. All of these ratings are great, not amazing but certainly not harsh. Nowadays, most album reviews by Metacritics – a website that aggregates critical reviews of movies, TV shows, music and videogames – are green (considered good), the Pitchfork average rose to approximately 7.3 and Rolling Stones abandoned their 5 stars system in favor of merit badges, such as including “Instant Classics” and “”Hear This”.
Conversely, what would’ve been a bad review in the more scandalous years of critics, is today a moderate one. In 2021, Kiwi singer and song-writer Lorde distanced herself from her usual dark and intense style to try and emulate the lighter sound that trended following multiple 2020 critically acclaimed albums such as folklore by Taylor Swift and Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers. Lorde’s Solar Power was poorly received by her fans and the general public, and she went on to admit a few years later that it was a “wrong turn” in an email sent to her fans. And yet, it still managed to score a 3.5 stars review from Rolling Stone and a shocking 6.8 from Pitchfork. More recently, international superstar Taylor Swift’s newest album The Life Of A Showgirl received a lukewarm reaction from her fans, with many of them admitting to its lower standing compared to her previous works. Nevertheless, it scored a 70/100 on Metacritic.
These raving reviews sparked widespread backlash on social media, with music amateurs expressing their disappointment in recent years’ music criticism, making this album the straw that broke the camel’s back for a lot of people’s last shred of respect towards those professionals and their magazines , with some TikTok users calling the reviews “embarrassing” and stating that “music criticism is dead”. This distrust lowered their opinions’ relevance and as a consequence of that, audiences either started sinking new authoritative voices or finally trusting their own opinion without needing anybody else’s validation.
With the rise of social media, sharing your opinion on anything is easier than ever. This accessibility led to the rise of short form music content creators, who discuss a whole LP in under a minute, making it seem as though that’s the time they’ve spent listening to it too. Fans and foes alike can comment, positively or negatively but rarely ever critically, on any album or song they listen to. To get more engagement, those videos have to be released when the music’s beginning to trend, usually mere hours after the music drops, meaning that they do not let themselves listen and sit with the music before sharing their hot take to their two or 200,000 followers.
We can consider these music reviewers as having replaced music critics, but I think that more than just becoming authoritative figures like critics were in old times, the rise of short form music content has led to a culture of heated debate between fans online. With sides of the Internet sometimes randomly meeting on neutral TikTok ground to defend their opinion on the matter. And to some extent, that’s a good thing; I would argue that debating art is the goal of any art enthusiast and artist. Fiercely defending your opinion while allowing yourself to accept that it may not be the only true and valid one is great.
The issue arises when very specific debates are constructed of replies such as “or you just don’t get it”, “artists are allowed to have fun” or calling to misogyny any time the subject of the debate is a woman. While sometimes these answers may be totally valid, and some listeners simply don’t connect with certain subject matters or are openly sexist, others are plainly art elitists who dismiss pop as lesser art. The issue with these answers is that they don’t get to the heart of the debate: the art itself.
This debate about music, genre hierarchy and artists’ talent and effort recently led to the “just be a fan” discourse. Following the release of Swift’s album, one of her most famous fans, a YouTuber known as The Swiftologist, made a video diving deep into its production, songwriting and artistic direction. He was subject to a response video from longtime music industry songwriter and hitmaker Justin Tranter, encouraging him and all other music listeners to “just be a fan”, adding “you know nothing about a song, [] about this industry”, implying that they didn’t need nor have the right credentials to analyze nor criticize music they listen to. According to his logic, his definition of a fan converges with that of a passive consumer, expected to bring out his wallet, pay, and enjoy the final product without wanting to delve deeper into its components and their quality.
Except a fan is not supposed to be a passive supporter, who should be satisfied with anything their favorite artist sends their way. Rather, they should care enough to criticize their favorite musician, and demand a high-quality final product, without necessarily being a professional critic. The distinction between fans and critics is gradually getting blurry, to the detriment of talentless, soulless artists who view their music as a business first, and art second.
Real artists should value audiences who engage with their work mindfully, who dare question it and foster a dialogue between the admirers and dissenters alike. So no, music criticism isn’t dead per se, but it is absolutely going through a period of reconstructuring, where power dynamics are changing and new authoritative figures are emerging. We’ll be waiting and watching to see if the music industry and its artists will adapt to this new landscape.