Worst music critics

I read through George Starostin's reviews and found them charmingly straightforward. He's a classic rock facist, and a rude a#shole..but not a pretentious c@nt like christigau, and he called clapton's "pilgrim" the worst album ever which is right....is this just a leisure activity for him or do they actually publish his reviews?
 
I hate Christgau. It's like a ****ing paragraph. He rarely elaborates.

I like Lester. He's just a great writer in general so I appreciate that.

I also like Pitchfork, despite the hate they get. They have a lot of talented young writers. Basically, I relied on their 100 greatest lists as a plunge into indie and many music forms, so I owe them a big debt. I dont much care about their actual reviews, but the paragraph or so they have when they do a list is usually really good.

Also there are a few reviews like the Funeral review by Arcade Fire that is just a fabulous piece of writing on it's own. I wish my Funeral essay was that eloquent.

I hate the Rolling Stone reviews. Their lists at the end of the year are better and more accurate of a critcal mass, but usually the album reviews are retarded, because some reviewers will give a Jonas Brothers album five stars, while Animal Collective and St. Vincent will get 3 1/2. In fact, the most critically aclaimed albums so far this year have gotten like a 3 1/2 at best from Rolling Stone

But to Christgau's credit, the Pazz and Jop list is pretty useful.

I feel that critics alone are idiots, but as a mass or a whole they usually get it right.
 
That's actually one rare moment where I agree with him, I love The Police. But the rest of those comments are on a scale of stupidity I've never seen from a critic before.

His anti prog and anti punk bias is pretty over the top, especially because he reviews so much of it.

Calling Pink Floyd unoriginal and then saying Rolling Stones was one of the most original banRAB of their time, that's some good sh*t.

Self reminder, imitating black people is original.



Sorry, I'm with him on this one. No, no, f*ck no and no.

Yeah it's still stupid to say there is no original rock past the late 60s, but when people call The Fall one of the best banRAB of the late 70s/early 80s, I can understand the pessimism.
 
Davey Moore's (along with many other posters here) writeups alone are better than anything I've ever read in any magazine or on any website.
 
This was pretty much what I was going to say when I started reading the thread, I don't think it's fair to criticize them because really it's about taking the time to relate your experience to others and folks like Lester, Cristagu and even generic multi author sites like AllMusic and Pitchfork have emassed amazing collections of music reviewed, they'd be held in high esteem I believe if they posted their reviews here like we do instead of for major publications.
 
What a stupid "profession", thanks to the internet we now live in an age where good recommendations aren't hard to get, because you can always find people who are compatable with your tastes.

And thus this makes "professional" music critics pretty much worthless, then again they always have been. Obviously most of them wouldn't know good music if it bit them in the ass so consumer advice is obviously not what they excell in. So what is their job? If it's being a huge music snob that doesn't know sh*t about the subject, then they earn every penny.

Thanks to blogs and music journals, it won't be long until these overpaid c*ntbags will be long forgotten, but in the meantime, let's look back on the ones that really boil our piss. It seems like all they were ever good for was describing everything but the actual music, instead they just make stupid generalizations about the artists backgrounRAB and intentions which usually end up being far from the truth and falling into the horrible misconception that the only way to review a song is talk about it's lyrical content.

A lot of them don't even give more than an incredibly brief description when it comes to the actual music, it's a lot of linguistic masturbation and what better example than Pitchfork? It's as if talking about the music is too goddamn easy and straightforward, they have to be pretentious chodes about it and rant about how music quality is somehow tied to superficial things like class and "authenticity". Music is the last thing they have on their mind.

If they only talked about what the music means to them, it would be ok. But they don't, they try to be objective, and by that I mean try to pass of their clearly subjective opinions as objective facts. A lot of them these days don't use a vocabulary all too different from the average internet troll.

Most of the merabers of this forum could do better than these idiots, seriously.

Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau, Rob Sheffield, Jimmy Guterman. Raging retarRAB every last one of them, the fact that they are considered the deans of western music critics is nothing short of horrifying.

I used to say Christgau was the absolute worst, that is until I found this guy.

Only Solitaire: George Starostin's Music Reviews

This guy is a linguistics researcher and apparently one of the brightest in his field. But yeah, being smart at one subject can't prevent you from being a total retard at another. As this guy's other hobby as a music critic clearly proves.

So let's see. He rates artist's whole careers on letter grades. And thus The Beatles, Stones, Dylan and The Who are the only A grade artists in rock music history. Black Sabbath, The Residents and Pretty Things are a D, and Syd Barrett is an E. And ABBA a C. What more neeRAB to be said? :laughing:

His reviews are even worse, I won't quote them, I let you find out for yourself if you're willing to endure the blinding stupidity.
 
I think it's unfair to lump them all together. In my experience there are 3 types of reviews.

1. Reviews that give you a general idea what to expect without being overly detailed.

2. Reviews written for fans of a band where comparisons are usually made to the artists back catalogue and are usually very thorough written by someone who's extremely knowledgeable.

3. Self publicising bullshit where the reviewer just wants to show off he went to university.

I don't mind people doing No 3. Just keep it on a fucking blog nobody wants to read & don't pretend it's objective journalism.
 
Yeah, I'd say most people here are better at describing the music than Christgau, Sheffield or any of those douchebags.

But I have to say I don't consider myself to be very good at reviewing albums, I have a habit of just describing the music in a very specific way and don't really try to make analogies or stuff like that.

But I consider that to be better than not talking about the actual music at all, which is my main problem with magazine music critics, or anyone who tries to emulate the style of those critics.

Pitchfork especially do those kinda impersonal reviews that are not concerned with trying to get you into to the albums at hand, it's just some good ol' ego stroking based on whatever obscure music they discovered that they know is gonna inspire a bunch of idiots to rave about it regardless of how indisputably horrible it is. It's like they're trying to be as pretentious as humanly possible.
 
Does it now?

Because give me a guitar, bass, a keyboard and drum machine and I can make you something far far worse.

Pitchfork will love it.
 
The other thing is about Christgau and his review of Macca's Ram is that critics back then saw Lennon as being the one saying something intellectual which meant they could use their reviews to say something serious and therefore get satisfaction from feeling like they were intellectual.
 
Most of the people on allmusic.com

They gave every Beatles album save for "Let It Be five" stars, including "Beatles for Sale", but I've only seen one or two albums from any artist during the last 15 that they've given that score.
 
Robert Christgau, does this guy even like music? Honestly every review Ive read by him he makes the album sound like its crap yet he gives it an A. I dont think I've ever read anything by him saying something positive about an album. Fuck this guy.
 
Opinions are opinions.

But to go on an say originality in music ended somewhere in 1975 is not only ignorant, it's downright insulting to alot of musicians.
 
Their job is to get bring attention to whatever organization is paying them. More attention = more advertising $$ so if music critics get attention (for any reason) they are earning their keep.
It's all just business. Employers of critics give no sh*t about the critics' opinions or their writing.
 
Like they say, if you can't do it, critique it.

Most music critics I can think of are failed musicians. Just like most food critics are failed chefs. No doubt they do it to make themselves feel more worthy.

I agree, they suck. Luckily, as you said, in the age of the Internet and 'information highway', they are becoming 'obsolete.'
 
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