Just North of Something Important: Music criticism as music education?
This is how I learned about pop music: by reading enough criticism that assumed the context that I was able to pick up the received wisdom about bands, sounds, and eras. From these two little bits, if we know that Blur and Suede were Britpop bands, we know that Britpop is now regarded as a high-hype period and that Melody Maker was one of the main players. Useful! I think we probably overlook the socialization function of music criticism more than we should. By immersing yourself in a culture talking about its own history - as music criticism constantly does - you can haphazardly pick up the information you need to participate in that conversation and present as a reasonably knowledgeable observer. The social capital is public domain, as it were. As annoying as criticism’s self-absorption can sometimes be, I think that’s ultimately a really valuable tool.
I can’t really disagree more. The history that music criticism constantly refers back to is both narrow and inaccurate, warped by gender/race/class/lifestyle values that it mostly still doesn’t own up to. I see no value in picking up any of its bullshit received wisdom; pretty much every bad piece of criticism I come across is actually a direct consequence of people buying into that received wisdom, “haphazardly picking up information” second hand and passing it off in order to “pass” as a member of some sort of imagined music crit inner circle. Bullllllshit! I still resent the brief period (about 6-9 months, in my first year of university) during which I attempted to do exactly that, in the misguided notion that I had to cleave to certain opinions and values in order to “present” myself as someone who was permitted to talk and write about music. The very last thing anyone should be doing is allowing themselves to be socialised by the culture of music criticism.
FWIW, I could not care less about what the Melody Maker put top of whatever list in 1993…Britpop, Suede, all of that nonsense meant nothing to me at the time and means even less to me now. I’d hate to think that it’s somehow regarded as “necessary” knowledge for people who want to talk about pop music.
