Музыкальная журналистика: история и современность

Journalism genre

Music journalism (or music criticism) is media criticism and reporting about music topics, including popular music, classical music, and traditional music. Journalists began writing about music in the eighteenth century, providing commentary on what is now regarded as classical music. In the 1960s, music journalism began more prominently covering popular music like rock and pop after the breakthrough of The Beatles. With the rise of the internet in the 2000s, music criticism developed an increasingly large online presence with music bloggers, aspiring music critics, and established critics supplementing print media online. Music journalism today includes reviews of songs, albums and live concerts, profiles of recording artists, and reporting of artist news and music events.

Music journalism has its roots in classical music criticism, which has traditionally comprised the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of music that has been composed and notated in a score and the evaluation of the performance of classical songs and pieces, such as symphonies and concertos. Before about the 1840s, reporting on music was either done by musical journals, such as the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (founded by Johann Friedrich Rochlitz in 1798) and the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (founded by Robert Schumann in 1834), and in London journals such as The Musical Times (founded in 1844 as The Musical Times and Singing class Circular); or else by reporters at general newspapers where music did not form part of the central objectives of the publication. An influential English 19th century music critic, for example, was James William Davison of The Times. The composer Hector Berlioz also wrote reviews and criticisms for the Paris press of the 1830s and 1840s. Several factors—including growth of education, the influence of the Romantic movement generally and in music, popularization (including the 'star status' of many performers such as Liszt and Paganini), among others—led to an increasing interest in music among non specialist journals, and an increase in the number of critics by profession of varying degrees of competence and integrity. The 1840s could be considered a turning point, in that music critics after the 1840s generally were not also practicing musicians.

In the early 1980s, a decline in the quantity of classical criticism began occurring "when classical music criticism visibly started to disappear" from the media. At that time, leading newspapers still typically employed a chief music critic, while magazines such as Time and Vanity Fair also employed classical music critics. But by the early 1990s, classical critics were dropped in many publications, in part due to "a decline of interest in classical music, especially among younger people". Also of concern in classical music journalism was how American reviewers can write about ethnic and folk music from cultures other than their own, such as Indian ragas and traditional Japanese works. In 1990, the World Music Institute interviewed four New York Times music critics who came up with the following criteria on how to approach ethnic music:

A review should relate the music to other kinds of music that readers know, to help them understand better what the program was about. "The performers [should] be treated as human beings and their music [should] be treated as human activity rather than a mystical or mysterious phenomenon." The review should show an understanding of the music's cultural backgrounds and intentions. Demographics indicated that the group was 74% male, 92% white, and 64% had earned a graduate degree. In 2007, The New York Times wrote that classical music criticism, which it characterized as "a high minded endeavor that has been around at least as long as newspapers", had undergone "a series of hits in recent months" with the elimination, downgrading, or redefinition of critics' jobs at newspapers in Atlanta, Minneapolis, and elsewhere, citing New York magazine's Peter G. Davis, "one of the most respected voices of the craft, [who] said he had been forced out after 26 years". Viewing "robust analysis, commentary and reportage as vital to the health of the art form", The New York Times stated in 2007 that it continued to maintain "a staff of three full time classical music critics and three freelancers", noting also that classical music criticism had become increasingly available on blogs, and that a number of other major newspapers "still have full time classical music critics", including (in 2007) the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Boston Globe. In their book Rock Criticism from the Beginning, Ulf Lindberg and his co writers say that rock criticism appears to have been "slower to develop in the U. S. than in England". One of the early British music magazines, Melody Maker, complained in 1967 about how "newspapers and magazines are continually hammering [i. e., attacking] pop music". In early 1965, The Observer, the country's highbrow Sunday newspaper, signalled a reversal of the establishment's cultural snobbery towards pop music by appointing George Melly as its "critic of pop culture". Following Tony Palmer's arrival at The Observer, the first daily newspaper to employ a dedicated rock critic was The Guardian, with the appointment of Geoffrey Cannon in 1968. Melody Makers writers advocated the new forms of pop music of the late 1960s. "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". Author Bernard Gendron writes that in the United States "the emergence of a 'serious' rock press and the rock critic" began in 1966, presaged by Robert Shelton, the folk music critic for The New York Times, writing articles praising the Beatles and Bob Dylan, the last of whom had just embraced rock 'n' roll by performing with electric backing at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Paul Williams, an eighteen year old student, launched the pop journal Crawdaddy! in February 1966; in June, Richard Goldstein, a recent graduate and New Journalism writer, debuted his "Pop Eye" column in The Village Voice, which Gendron describes as "the first regular column on rock 'n' roll to appear in an established cultural publication". Rock journalist Clinton Heylin, in his role as editor of The Penguin Book of Rock & Roll Writing, cites "the true genesis of rock criticism" to the emergence of Crawdaddy! Lindberg et al. say that, while Williams is widely considered to be the first American rock critic, he "nevertheless looked to England for material". According to Gendron, Goldstein's most significant early pieces were a "manifesto" on rock 'n' roll and "pop aestheticism", and a laudatory assessment of the Beatles' Revolver album. Published in late August, the latter article provided "the first substantial rock review devoted to one album to appear in any nonrock magazine with accreditory power". Whereas Williams could be sure of a sympathetic readership, given the nature of his publication, Goldstein's task was to win over a more highbrow readership to the artistic merits of contemporary pop music. At this time, both Goldstein and Williams gained considerable renown in the cultural mainstream and were the subject of profile articles in Newsweek. The emergence of rock journalism coincided with an attempt to position rock music, particularly the Beatles' work, in the American cultural landscape. The critical discourse was further heightened by the respectful coverage afforded the genre in mainstream publications such as Newsweek, Time and Life in the months leading up to and following the release of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album in June 1967. Within this discourse, Richard Meltzer, in an essay for Crawdaddy! in March, challenged the highbrow aesthetic of rock proposed by Goldstein. The latter's mixed review of Sgt. Pepper in The New York Times was similarly the subject of journalistic debate, and invited reprisals from musicologists, composers and cultural commentators. Among other young American writers who became pop columnists following Goldstein's appointment were Robert Christgau (at Esquire, from June 1967), Ellen Willis (The New Yorker, March 1968) and Ellen Sander (Saturday Review, October 1968). Christgau was the "originator of the 'consumer guide' approach to pop music reviews", an approach that was designed to help readers decide whether to buy a new album. In the realm of rock music, as in that of classical music, 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.

Rock music received a considerable amount of criticism from conservative Christian communities within the United States. This criticism was strongest throughout the 1960s and 70s, with some of the most prominent Christian critics being David A. Noebel, Bob Larson, and Frank Garlock. While these men were not professional music critics, they often claimed to be qualified rock critics because of their professional experiences with both music and religion. Christian criticisms of rock music in the mid 20th century often centered around arguments that rock was both sonically and morally bad and physically harmful to both the body and soul. In The Big Beat: A Rock Blast, similar arguments were posed by Garlock, with the additional argument that 'good' music must come from distinguished and educated musicians. Additionally, Larson argued that the beats used in rock music could cause rebellion in younger generations due to their hypnotic and influential nature. This aspect of rock's history has been overlooked by historians and the media, but music experts now widely agree that rock's true origins lie in the American south among black populations. When critiquing rock music, Christian critics commonly portrayed rock music with "primitive and exotic imagery to convey [its] African roots". Carl Wilson described "an upsurge in pro pop sentiment among critics" during the early 2000s, writing that 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". Slate magazine writer Jody Rosen discussed the 2000s era trends in pop music criticism in his article "The Perils of Poptimism". Rosen noted that much of the debate is centered on a perception that rock critics regard rock as "normative the standard state of popular music to which everything else is compared". At a 2006 pop critic conference, attendees discussed their "guilty pop pleasures, reconsidering musicians (Tiny Tim, Dan Fogelberg, Phil Collins) and genres " which rock critics have long dismissed as lightweight, commercial music. Rosen stated that "this new critical paradigm" is called "popism" – or, more evocatively (and goofily), "poptimism". The poptimism approach states: "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." Powers claimed 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", while 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". Reacting to the state of pop music criticism, Miller identified a major issue as critics' failure to "credit an artist with getting a feeling across", specifically pointing out critic Lester Bangs as "a ball of emotion at all times", who nonetheless "never really related to his favorite artists as people who develop a skill of conveying feelings. You don't feel that he comfortably acknowledged being moved as a result of their honest work. Artists in his writing were vaguely ridiculous, fascinating primitives, embodying an archetype by accident of nature." Tris McCall of the Newark Star Ledger discussed his approach to music criticism in a 2010 interview, stating, "Most of us [critics] begin writing about music because we love it so much. We can't wait to tell our friends and neighbors about what we're hearing." According to McCall, even over the course of a long professional career, the enthusiastic impulse to share "never fades". The 2010s saw a rise of music critics who used YouTube and social media as their platform. According to Vice magazine's Larry Fitzmaurice in 2016, Twitter (X) is "perhaps the last public space for unfettered music criticism in an increasingly anti critical landscape". In 2020, The New York Times described YouTuber Anthony Fantano as "probably the most popular music critic left standing." Fantano's channel, The Needle Drop, is his main outlet, but he also streams music commentary on Twitch and posts on X.

In an article published in 2024, Jessica Karl, a Bloomberg News columnist, opined that "the way we critique music is broken". She argues that the current culture of consuming new music, particularly with the release of Taylor Swift's album The Tortured Poets Department (2024), is unhealthy. While she found some of the reviews of the album were "well considered", she opined others were pre written and "daft". She explained that critics are "staying up until dawn to finish listening to an album as if it's a college paper we're cramming to complete by the morning" and long albums like the 31 track Tortured Poets frustrate them. Karl also felt that reviews appearing online within hours of an album's release discredits both the plaudits and criticism. She condemned the Paste review for making "a litany of petty, exclamation pointed digs" at Swift, and dismissed the rave Rolling Stone review for calling the album a classic within a day, as well as criticizing articles by "reputable publications" like Time and The Philadelphia Inquirer for catering gossip to the masses and fandom instead of serious journalism of the art.

Applying critical theory (e. g., critical gender studies and critical race theory) to music journalism, some academic writers suggest that mutual disrespect between critics and artists is one of many negative effects of rockism. In 2004, critic Kelefa Sanneh defined "rockism" as "idolizing the authentic old legend (or underground hero) while mocking the latest pop star". Music journalism "infected" with rockism has become, according to Yale professor Daphne Brooks, a challenge "for those of us concerned with historical memory and popular music performance". According to Holly Kruse, both popular music articles and academic articles about pop music are usually written from "masculine subject positions". McLeod found that a likely cause of this dichotomy was the lack of women writing in music journalism: "By 1999, the number of female editors or senior writers at Rolling Stone hovered around a whopping 15%, [while] at Spin and Raygun, [it was] roughly 20%." Criticism associated with gender was graphically discussed in a 2014 Jezebel article about the struggles of women in music journalism, written by music critic Tracy Moore, previously an editor at the Nashville Scene. Moore described how another female music blogger, an "admitted outsider" who threatened no stereotypes, was greeted with enthusiasm by men, in contrast with Moore's own experiences as a self described "insider" who was nevertheless expected to "prove" or "earn" her way into a male dominated journalism scene. Crawford points to "[t]he record store, the guitar shop, and now social media: when it comes to popular music, these places become stages for the display of male prowess", and adds, "Female expertise, when it appears, is repeatedly dismissed as fraudulent. Every woman who has ever ventured an opinion on popular music could give you some variation [of this experience] and becoming a recognized 'expert' (a musician, a critic) will not save [women] from accusations of fakery." Unsurprisingly, according to Brooks, "the history of women who've been sustaining a tradition of writing about rock since the 60's" has been "largely hidden in American culture". Brooks theorized that perceptions of female artists of color might be different if there were more women of color writing about them, and praised Ellen Willis as a significant feminist critic of rock's classic era. Brooks wrote that "the confluence of cultural studies, rock studies, and third wave feminist critical studies makes it possible now more than ever to continue to critique and reinterrogate the form and content of popular music histories". In Brooks' view, "By bravely breaking open dense equations of gender, class, power, and subcultural music scenes", music journalists, activists and critics such as Ellen Willis have been "able to brilliantly, like no one before [them], challenge the intellectual and political activism and agency" of the entire music industry.