Real Writers Don't Write Music...Wait...

Washington CityPaper laments the invasion of literary writers into the music writing scene, and the end of music criticism:

All of these literati attempts at criticism don't signal undue influence by culture-studies departments everywhere. Nor do they suggest that today's novelists and memoir-slingers are hipper than their predecessors. No, they point to the fact that real rock critics are fighting for space and that informed opinions are underpaid and underutilized in mainstream media outlets. They mean that criticism has become cameo-stunt casting...

Aside from the narcissistic prose, these authors share with Eggers a lack of desire to engage with any culture outside their own alt-pop, college-rock, new-folk, Time-Life-classics orbit.


Isn't "narcissistic prose" synonymous with music writing?


"It's huge," says Wishnow, "the fall of the rock critic as celebrity that we used to know - the Greil Marcus, the Chuck Eddy, the Christgau. Peer opinion and access to peer opinion have been so elevated and multiplied that people tend to know about [records] from a trusted voice before the rock critic even does. In most cases, the rock critic finds out about it after the average Insound or Pitchfork or blog reader knows about it."

This is news? When was the last time anyone read Rolling Stone? Everyone and their brother (even me!) had a music zine in the 90s. And now with blogs, forgeddabottit.

We all know that rock critics just want a book deal like a "real writer".

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