DeRogatis/Pitchfork

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By Pitchfork Reviews Reviews

And now there are 30 million people reading Pitchfork and roughly 0 million people reading Jim DeRogatis, and his philosophy about writing and thinking about music is currently music writing’s historical loser, and somewhere out there in the crowd right now is music writing’s current historical winner, Nitsuh Abebe, maybe taking notes on his phone, maybe problematizing some arguments, and likely on his way to composing a piece that will make you think, like, “Fuck! That’s so smart.” It won’t metaphorically take you somewhere new, or get you really excited about a record or music, but that’s not what it’s aspiring to do.

“Music writing’s current historical winner” (and its corollary, “historical loser”) — precisely the sort of smug phrasing that makes me feel blessedly old and out of touch and ignorant about what’s really being discussed about music and music writing these days. (And I don’t mean to imply anything here about Nitshu Abebe, whose writing I’ve often liked. It wouldn’t make a difference whose name was bandied about there.) Also, any writing that merely succeeds in making me think “how smart!” but fails in any way to “metaphorically take [me] somewhere new” — well, it’s just not for me, I guess. I don’t really get the point of the entire piece, to be honest, it seems very couched in evasions (like, for instance, the whole yawning incident).