Do We Still Have a Use for Bad Reviews
I’ve never liked bad reviews.
As a music fan, they always bummed me out. If they’re about an album I like, they’re frustrating. If it’s a bad album, I want to make my own opinion of why it’s bad, or just skip it. No one like a spoiler.
Blogs like
made a name for themselves by giving really harsh scores to innoquous works. If an album had the nerve to be hyped, yet passable, P4K would give it a 1.3 rating. Boom! You had been forked!
But when the publication like that pans a pop release, or a disappointing sophomore record these days, it feels old.
Bad reviews use to have a fonction. Not that long ago, there was much less music being released every week. Magazines could pretty much cover everything in their niche, give the albums a rating (often in stars) and tell you what you needed to buy, and what you could skip.
That’s because you actually had to purchase your music at the time. So forget skipping through a bunch of songs on Spotify to discover new tunes. You had to find a critic with similar tastes as yours and rely on him or her to guide you.
I bought many albums because I they were well reviewed. It was that psychological thing where I would find qualities to music I didn’t enjoy that much so I could justify my 15$+ purchase.
And then, bitorrents came along and I wasn’t interested in bad reviews anymore. Since I could - and, allegedly, did - download freely all the music that was coming, I was more interested in good reviews that would let me know what I needed to hear. All that new music was more than even an OCD music nerd like me could handle.
A few years later, I started blogging for music magazines, and I had to write reviews. Suddenly, I was in a situation of (very relative) power.
I reviewed some great works of art, and some forgettable ones. Often, I couldn’t listen to the album before picking it for review, so I had some bad surprises, and was reduced to giving a few 6/10 ratings along the way, which I still don’t feel great about.
The trick I eventually developed was to write about the stuff I liked about an album, whether I was reviewing a good or a bad one. If the best thing I have to say about an album is that it has great tones, it’s probably not that good.
Eventually, I had the epiphany that a good review isn’t about casting a throwaway judgment on a body of work, but rather, it’s to contextualize it. As a critic, it’s my job to tell the reader where it finds its place in the cultural landscape. What it represent.
The rating is just an afterthought. Something to grab the reader’s attention.
I’m sure most people who check Pitchfork’s bad ratings never bothered to read the media's lengthy critiques. If they did, they’d soon realize a bunch of them don’t even make sense.
Bad reviews are a thing of the past. There is so much content out there, reviewers don’t really need to waste time on bad music. If they don’t mention it, we get the point.
Tell me what I need to hear, talk to me about stuff you loved. Tell me where it’s from, and why you love it. I don’t have time for the rest.