I will spare myself no embarrassment. Like William Safire, to whom I credit the idea of an annual mea culpa, I will not attempt to save face retroactively. These are not typos, transpositions of numbers or other copy-editing errors (although I had a few of those too). These are errors of substance and judgment. I can be such an idiot sometimes.
- Dan Neal, What I Got Wrong (and Right) in 2012
Link submitted by a new convert to rockcritics.com (they all come around eventually), who adds, “Dan Neil is a treasure. I’m hardly a car buff, but I read his columns religiously. Wouldn’t it be nice to see some music critics do this?”
I don’t know much about cars other than how to drive and play music really loud in them, and I agree, the article’s terrific. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of this in music criticism, too, though I’m not sure what the criteria would be (critiquing a car being somewhat different than critiquing a piece of music; the former is more reliant on objective metrics, no?). Still, it’s a fetching idea.
Does anyone in music criticism do this? Is it a good idea?
