Pitchfork’s Dead. Thank god for that!

Friday is (usually) fun. It’s about music. So there’s links and playlists. Today, the death of Pitchfork, the review site. But hey, there’s still a great playlist if you make it to the end eh…

I ignored the big music news last week - it broke a day before I was due to deliver my regular Friday music-related newsletter. So it wasn’t because I didn’t know about it. It was largely because I did not care. Aha, but here, now, I decide to write on it…so I must care eh. Anyway, I’m referring to the death of Pitchfork. If you’re reading this I’m sure you know all about Pitchfork - a culture review/news website that’s strap-line is The Most Trusted Voice in Music. I’m not sure that was ever - really - the case. But kudos on the confidence. How very American.

Pitchfork had its day, I believe, in the early 00s, and by about 2011 it was pretty much a parody of itself. Then, for most of the last decade, it carried a lot of news and retro reviews, and weighed in on almost any genre of music, but in the early 00s it was determinedly an alt/indie site, bubbling up to the side of, and then eventually right down into the mainstream, from earnest indie beginnings as one man’s blog in 1996.

Last week people went into instant commiseration mode as they announced redundancies and staff cuts, because it’s being folded in with GQ - we will end up, if we care, with the worst version of each as some sort of hybrid. But, yeah, big deal, right? It just meant the same old crew could trot out all these instant think-pieces about this signalling the death of music reviewing.

All I could think was America had a good extra-run.

Music journalism died here many years ago. And it isn’t websites being bought out by Condé Nast that did it (they acquired Pitchfork nearly a decade ago, btw). It is the streaming services, and the fact that music arrives all at once for everyone to hear with basically no barrier (cost) of entry. But I’ve said that all before. And so have many others. Music journalism was also assisted in its demise by newspapers and print publications chasing internet audiences and not trusting writers that had developed voices. And by internet ‘publications’ chasing trends rather than stories. And by advertisers not needing to advertise in the same tired old way. And by clicks being the new form of ‘reading’ and by anything that was shaped out of words being called ‘content’ instead of being referred to as an article, or writing, or, geez-fucking-hell-for-shits-sake, simply ‘a story’.

So there were many assistants in and around the death. And life, and music, continue on. And so, in some small ways does journalism. Loosely. So, people being upset about Pitchfork in 2024 seemed a bit like when a celebrity dies and suddenly everyone’s social media seems to proclaim that they were always watching or reading or listening to everything the conductor or writer or activist or actor or musician did, even when their same social media pages have never shown anything by the person in question previously.

Pitchfork’s best thing was - circa 2003/4 - when they wrote funny, cutting attacks on things, and some hugely positive raves too of course. They established a handful of strong-personality writers and let them just go for it. Then they, very quickly, started to make it not about the writer at all, and entirely about the brand: Pitchfork. They weren’t brandishing anything of the sort actually, they were languishing in their threads of whatever season, making online-reads without any real reason.

The death of Pitchfork started with that bloody wanky get-fucked decimal point rating. Sure, there was the music ‘review’ for those Aussie wowsers Jet. It consisted entirely of a chimpanzee drinking its own piss. There was the review maybe only I loved, where in talking about Frank Zappa, the writer (can’t even remember the name - didn’t matter) referred to themself as being of a similar level of genius. It was an arrogant aside served up in the intro as if the main course. These things were funny. Or silly. And often both. But they didn’t just have a one-star ranking, or a two or a five. The ratings went all the way up to ten. And stopped off at every decimal point along the way. So a middling Wilco album might be a 5.7 or a 6.2, a dud record therefore was anything 4.9 or below, with people reading for the rating. And what really was the difference between a 3.4 and a 1.9? I mean, really…

When I wrote album reviews for the newspaper, in another life, as the fresh, young, well, ‘intern’ I guess (they never paid me a cent) I sure got to understand how to use the 0-5 stars rating system, and maybe even kinda liked it/saw the point in it, but I wasn’t ever writing for the person that only scanned the bottom line. I was hoping, always, that my full text got a read. Oh, I also knew it was fish and chip paper too, 100%, but I didn’t just want to list some words of content ahead of the yay or nay ranking.

And I think Pitchfork was guilty of really making the rating system the thing in modern reviewing; making the review - in the end - all about the quality of the grade. In their way they were as earnestly wanky, as pretentious and ultimately dubious as that dork that calls himself the Dean of Rock Critics and hands out B+ grades as if every album is an assignment. (His name is Robert Christgau by the way, and you probably knew that already. He is currently 81. Maybe you knew that also).

Christgau’s consumer guides were quite often on the money actually, but those fucking pass/fail grades…was he ever really a writer, or was he one part scorekeeper, one part marketeer?

So, anyway, what I’m saying is I won’t miss Pitchfork. The pieces either lamenting its loss, or blaming Spotify, or both, were all disingenuous. That other old crank and borderline crackpot, Bob Lefsetz (he sends you a dozen emails a week, including all his feedback on whatever topic he rants on) at least correctly explained (again) that music all arriving on the same day and time and free for all was a bit of an issue. But hey, with a strap-line on his Lefsetz Letter calling himself “First in Music Analysis” - he might as well just call himself Boomer Pitchfork. Or the Associate Dean of Rock Criticism even?

America is adjusting, only now it seems, to the death of music journalism. They didn’t get the earlier memo?? (Oh well, I guess, I only have a New Zealand publisher after all).

So I didn’t write all this last week, because it would have just been one more piece. And it wouldn’t have cut through. I saved it a week, not for any hope it would mean anything more, but because now it has even less of a chance to cut through!

People looking to ride waves, and trends, and use revolting terms like “cut through” have been far more a part of the problem than they’ve ever been a part of any solution.

Writing is writing. Writing is about punching it out and doing it regardless of who reads, or comments, or buys. If you do, then of course I’m grateful. If you don’t, I’ll still be here. Still clacking away, regardless of who clicks.

But, if anyone does need to commiserate, or incinerate, have your space below for comments: What do you think about the alleged death of Pitchfork? Too soon? Not soon enough? Not relevant to you at all?

R.I.P.

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And of course, since it’s Friday, I’ve made us a playlist - 20 songs, as always, in an order I imagined to be best for them. Some things old, some things new, and now they live together in this shape. I hope, as I always do, that you like the whole thing, or at least some things from it.

Happy listening, and happy weekend to you and yours. Thanks for reading. And listening.

And there’s a brand new album out today by The Smile. You and I can discover it at the same time. Or at a time of our own choosing, from today. I still think that’s very cool…