After all this generalized misery in the media world, let’s plow through all the shitty recent news about music journalism, shall we? JazzTimes was bought by BeBop Channel Corporation, promptly tossed out their staff and started cranking out garbage like this and this. Similarly, Bandcamp, which has been a source of quality writing, was also bought out, prompting the new owners to cut the staff in half and canned main union people there, leading an editor to unceremoniously tell the union staff to suck it. The path of Vice’s ups and downs led to bankruptcy and being bought up by its lenders and also its top editors leaving. Paper Magazine laid off their whole staff while MTV killed off their news division.
As for Rolling Stone, you might have heard that Jann Wenner is a king-sized freaking jerk—mind you, this was even before he proclaimed that black and women artists supposedly didn’t have the brains or creativity of their white male counterparts. RS itself distanced themselves from him, leading to his own son, who now runs things there, to denounce him, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame booting ol’ Jann out of his leadership perch. The mag’s editor in chief denounced him too, saying that they’ll be vigilant about equal opportunity coverage in the future. RS even went as far as reposting the Black Rock Coalition’s response to JW. As to whether they’ll do better in the future, the proof will be in the printing, but also consider the many artists who didn’t get the access they deserved because of his leadership. And consider all the impressionable readers during his reign who had thought that RS was the primary reality of the music world. That’s not even mentioning the rest of the media who looked to RS as an authoritative source and went along with his skewed, long-standing version of music history.
So, let’s change gears here and honor some music writers who actually deserve it, namely the ones who passed away in 2023: Irv Lichtman, Scott Schinder and Dan Matovina. In other unhappy news, Todd Burns decided to shut down his Music Journalism Insider newsletter, which is truly a shame since he put a lot of time and effort into documenting the work and stories of quality writers. Just to balance things a bit, one piece of good news that came up this past year is that Paste bought Jezebel, so that the wonderful, brazen publication would continue on.
Also in happier news, there’s 30 superior pieces of writing from the past year here below. Washington Post, the Guardian and Vulture continue to be exceptional sources of good writing, with the Conversation making a name for itself too. Even a post-Jann Rolling Stone feature is here. Social media platforms also provide good content worth reading, including Facebook, Instagram and even the cesspool that Twitter/X has become—I’d also add in Reddit as an important source of ongoing conversations about the music world.
And as always, a request to you, the reader. Please, for God’s sake, support good journalism by clicking on the article links and reading up and also spreading the word. If you have a minute, contact the magazine or writer to let them know that you appreciate them—they almost never hear any kind words about their work. That way, you yourself will be part of the solution of sustaining good writing out there.
NOTE: Some articles are behind paywalls.
Karen Attiah “Let’s finally stop pretending Beyoncé stands for liberation” (Washington Post, December 8, 2022)
It’s easy to pick on pop stars for not solving the world’s problems or rising to every cultural or political moment. Surely, we can’t hate on Bey for the Israeli-Hamas war? But when the Israeli soldiers were using “Break My Soul” as a fight song for the battles, then that dragged her into the conflict, whether she wanted to be there or not. As Newsweek pointed out, she did previously cancel shows in Israel but screening her new Renaissance movie there and not speaking up about the appropriation of her song is causing blow-back. And as a commentator pointed out, Bey started the year doing a concert for Dubai royalty, who have an horrifying record of treatment of women and the LGBT+ community. Attiah does have a point here but to go so far as to say that this delegitimizes every social or political statement that Bey makes now or in the future is going a little too far. Like I said at the start here, we can’t ask stars (or anyone else) to be 100% politically/socially aware to match every stance out there. We can call them out though, just as Attiah did.
Myke Bartlett “I spent my formative years working in record shops. The pay was terrible, the work tedious, but it felt like a vocation” (The Guardian, March 31, 2023)
An Aussie record chain closes and the writer cries about its loss. “Boo hoo,” you might think and wonder how a record chain actually survived this long but Bartlett doesn’t mourn the shops so much as the community and bonding that they created and how we sometimes found shared communities even across borders, music styles and such. Can we still find that in the digital age? Sure—look at all the memes on TikTok. But, the truth is that the virtual world ain’t the same as bonding over music in person.
Aarushi Bhandari “Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is a potent reminder that the internet is not real life” (The Conversation, August 4, 2023)
I know—you read the headline and you say, “No duh!” But Bhandari brings up a potent point—after the Person of the Year dated an NFL star, the right-wing outrage didn’t materialize at her shows. OK, granted that Swifties are inclined to boost her regardless of what she does but this also brings up a worthwhile reminder—the political outrage that we see online is cooked up by a small group who purposely manufacture hatred to glom off anything popular and also to get their own voices heard. “In what’s termed the ’90-9-1 rule,’ 90% of users on these websites only ‘lurk’ or read content, 9% of the users reply or re-post with occasional new contributions, and only 1% of the users frequently create new content.” Good lesson there.
Ecleen Luzmila Caraballo and Ben Felderstein “Here’s What Frank Ocean’s Coachella Set Was Really Like In-Person” (Complex, April 17, 2023)
A six year wait for one of the premiere voices in modern R&B ended at one of the most prominent US festivals and people were pissed. Or so we heard from social media. Two reporters there gave a nuanced take on the historic set, acknowledging why people were angry (going on late, short set time, miming to songs, FO not easy to see even up close) while also acknowledging how great it was to have him back and that they did in fact witness a great experience. Then again, for someone who wasn’t going to be reimbursed for the tickets/flight/etc, you get why some of the crowd wasn’t as forgiving. But then again, there was a reason why Ocean couldn’t do the show fans wanted or what he wanted. But would they still be forgiving, especially since he had to bail on Coachella Weekend 2?
Justin Curto “How Harry’s House Beat Beyoncé” (Vulture, February 7, 2023)
Even if it is only horse-race explanations after the fact here, it’s still a fascinating look into the mindset of the NARAS voters who
crowned Harry Styles with the Grammy for Album of the year and FYI, Curto himself doesn’t think that Harry necessarily deserved it either. But when Bey finally wins (which she will), then are the Grammys finally absolving themselves? And do we really expect the voters there to get it right most of the time?
Adam Faze “I’ve officially stumbled upon the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.” (X/Twitter, April 18, 2023)
A TikTok show producer stumbled across something interesting while listening to Spotify: he found dozens of ‘songs’ that actually seemed to be just the same song and created a Spotify playlist to prove it. Faze then had a revelation in the same thread: “(S)potify isn’t profitable due to high licensing fees from labels, but they might be trying to shift listening time from majors to generative music that costs them less to license or even MAKE in order to BE profitable.” Even if you’re skeptical about the conclusion here (I’m not—I think he’s right), Insider expanded on his claims in their own article about the same issue, wondering if labels will now let these IA creations take over playlists so they don’t have to pay actual artists/composers. Anyone from Spotify, or the majors, wanna reply?
Nelson George “RIP CLARENCE AVANT: THE POWER BROKER” (The Nelson George Mixtape, August 14, 2023)
Tutored by a Capone protégé, Avant would go on to prop up Soul Train, start a label that gave Bill Withers hits, give Jam & Lewis their own label, advise Snoop and Quincy Jones and propel Democrats into the highest office. All of that and more appear in a Netflix doc that George helped to make but some of the more juicy, seedy stories are here only.
Chris Gill “How the Beatles crafted the guitar and bass tones that forever changed the sound of rock music” (Guitar World, February 1, 2023)
With enough titles to fill an entire bookstore (where they still exist), nothing new or interesting can be said about the Fabs, right? Wrong. Usually when anyone dives into their tunes, we hear about the lyrics and harmonies but rarely any details about the guitars and the unique sound that George Martin helped them get with those strings. Here, we do hear that story, not only getting the skinny on the irony of a guitar built to avoid feedback actually making history by playing feedback but also a rare exception where GM documented who played what (on “Ticket To Ride”), how Clapton got Harrison’s guitar to actually weep, and how John, Paul, and George divvied up their parts on “The End.”
Maria Godoy “What makes that song swing? At last, physicists unravel a jazz mystery” (NPR, January 18, 2023)
A great New Orleans philosopher once said (quoted in the article elsewhere), “if you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know,” but can we actually quantify it? Enter a theoretical physicist. Though we non-musicians might not pick up on it, the “friction between the rhythm section and the soloist” and “downbeat delays” are signals to musicians that we are in fact in the land of swing. These delays were analyzed in hundreds of jazz songs and found to be a common denominator. Bassist/composer Christian McBride had a better, less scientific way to pick up on what’s swinging and what’s not: “You’ve just got to listen to people who did it well.” No PhD could argue with that. If there are gonna be further scientific studies on this, I can’t think of a better thing to volunteer for.
Wren Graves “Sorry, There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Fair’ Ticket Price in an Age of Income Inequality” (Consequence, March 27, 2023)
This starts with an excellent comparison of how much ticket prices have jumped even with inflation, comparing what the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, and Prince charged for shows in their prime with current-day prices. ‘Dynamic pricing’ that Ticketmaster introduced was hardly fan-friendly—it might have stopped some, definitely not all, scalpers but still doled out sticker-shock to many would-be concert-goers. Even showing up front all the fees they’re charging, Ticketmaster/Live Nation just remind you how much they pocket from the show, where the fees sometimes can be close to the ticket price itself. Taylor Swift and The Cure’s Robert Smith took to shame T/LN and got somewhere—the former prompting some Congressional action, the later getting some price adjustment on fees. As Graces notes, income disparity among fans will mean that only the top 1% income-earners can get into the hottest show or get the only decent seats while many working class fans can’t even find the time to login in the morning to get the tickets at all when they usually go on sale. One solution: David Lowery suggests Stubhub pay a resale royalty to artists and venues though that won’t necessarily keep prices down.
Kory Grow “Battle Between Limp Bizkit’s Wes Borland and His Ex-Wife Now Involves… an Album Review?” (Rolling Stone, January 16, 2023)
Welcome to the “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” Department. A guy who helped to give the world “Nookie” decided that Carrie Callaway/Queen Kwong (his ex-wife) defamed him by talking about him in a Bandcamp interview by Mischa Pearlman as well as a record write-up. In a Facebook post, Pearlman followed up by saying that she vetted the story with Bandcamp lawyers and helped give RS the story. Thankfully, this time the courts smelled bullshit and called it that—in a follow-up story, Grow documents how a judge tossed the Limp guy’s case. That’s a relief ‘cause otherwise reading this sum-up of the article could make all of us liable and called to testify in an upcoming case.
Michael Hall “Hellhounds on His Trail: Mack McCormick’s Long, Tortured Quest to Find the Real Robert Johnson” (Texas Monthly, May 2023)
The tale of the ultimate blues researcher who had been sitting for years on his manuscripts for the definitive stories of Texas roots music and Robert Johnson. But Robert McCormick’s self-destructive urges and paranoia stopped him from becoming a celebrated author and known better by writers who would cop (or steal) his work and research. But McCormick was no innocent himself—he stole work and fabricated material purposely. His ‘definitive’ Johnson bio finally came out earlier this year but included tons of bullshit about a ‘second/real’ Johnson that he claimed was totally different from the one we knew. Regardless, his archives, aka ‘The Monster,’ are now the property of the Smithsonian (his one-time employer) and a box set of his tapes/recordings will come out from that. All of which makes an incredible story the likes of someone like Mack himself could have told, or not told in his case. Interesting follow up from Ted Gioia who, like Hall, knew Mack in his later years and has some theories about why the ‘real Robert Johnson’ that Mack supposedly discovered came up at all.
Marc Hogan “A Guide to ‘Fan’ Organizations Funded by the Ticketing Industry” (Pitchfork, August 3, 2023)
Nice that Congress finally took a cursory interest in out-of-control concert ticket price hikes but ever wonder who’s still pushing against any kind of regulation? Groups that call themselves “National Consumers League” (funded by StubHub), “Fan Freedom Project” (ditto), “Sports Fans Coalition” (ditto) and “Protect Ticket Rights” (National Association of Ticket Brokers) don’t want high priced tickets to change any time soon and have the funds to bend political ears. How Orwellian.
Devon Ivie “Dolly Parton on the Most Prolific and Invigorating Music of Her Career” (Vulture, November 27, 2023)
Ivie is great at this kind of article (she did the same with Roger Daltrey recently too, with impressive results), asking artists about to name songs that are most meaningful to them in different ways—much better than the standard empty interview method that these older stars have heard thousands of times. Sections include “Song that cemented your freedom,” “Album you sacrificed the most to make” and “Song that best embodies your own mythology.” As careful and smart as DP can be about her image, she doesn’t disappoint with her answers.
Aidan Levy “Lou Reed: Rachel Says” (Tidal, June 26, 2023)
Who was the mysterious Rachel who was Reed’s mid-70’s muse? One of his biographers looked for the answer and found the story as much as anyone had. Rachel was Reed’s inseparable trans partner for a few years, with each of them looking out for each other. But things fell apart and Rachel was homeless for a while and dead by 1990, resigned to an anonymous resting place in a mass graveyard. And yet, we hear echoes in Lou’s ’70s music that would be impossible otherwise without Rachel.
Katherine Long and Jack Newsham “Get Money (COVID remix)” (Insider, August 11th, 2023).
Subtitle: “How Post Malone, Chris Brown, Nickelback, and other stars scored $200 million in pandemic taxpayer cash.” Part of the justification is that they employ lots of support staff but do we know if the staff actually got some of the dough? And what about the managers who got the money, who claimed they didn’t need it, bought nice big houses not long after and wouldn’t account for the COVID funds otherwise? A: No comment from them.
Courtney Love “Why are women so marginalized by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?” (The Guardian, March 17, 2023)
A: Because most of the nominating committee is made up of white guys who don’t make enough effort to be inclusive. That’s it, really and it’s been obvious for a while but give credit where it’s due—this did start a lot of much needed conversations about the problem and the points she brings up about how long it’s taken some women who should have been in there decades ago (Sister Rosetta Thorpe, Chaka Khan, Linda Ronstadt) is spot on. I’ve been pushing for Chaka to be in there for years and they still need to include Stax co-founder Estelle Axton and the Marvelettes. Admittedly, I’m a HoF voter but if they ever did put me on the nominating committee, those are the two names I’d demand first and foremost, even if I had to lock the doors there until everyone else agreed.
Amanda Marcotte “The gospel according to Sinéad O’Connor: She was right all along” (Salon, July 27, 2023)
Once upon a time, O’Connor was an admired, brash voice in the music world who also had a global hit with a Prince song. Then she went on Saturday Night Live and showed some real guts, tearing up the pic of Pope John Paul II and said “fight the real enemy” to protest the Catholic Church’s cover-up of child abuse. The backlash caused her career to take a commercial downturn and she became the source of hatred and continued ridicule, on SNL and elsewhere. Decades of personal and health struggles followed. In light of her recent death, the otherwise idiotic Morrissey insisted that it was a little late for everyone to praise her after the fact. Marcotte also wondered where was the reckoning for her before and why couldn’t anyone come forward to praise her prescient criticism of the church, especially since it’s been decades since she was proven to be right. Also see Allyson McCabe’s “Appreciation: Sinéad O’Connor was right all along” (LA Times, July 27, 2023).
Matt Mullen “Why are artists releasing sped-up versions of their songs?” (Musicradar, January 25, 2023)
For decades, our attention spans have been shrinking, in part because we’re so addicted to electronic stimulus via our phones/computers/tablets/laptops, undoubtedly encouraged by tech and social media companies themselves. Twenty years ago, a Norwegian DJ duo helped to hatch ‘nightcore’ which sped up dance/pop hits and helped to spawn this trend, gaining billions (not a typo) of likes/listens/watches on Spotify and TikTok. Labels and artists are taking note also, offering their own sped-up versions of songs to cash in on the trend. Will this lead to the end of the world? Mullen is not only skeptical about this but also actually encouraged by the trend. “Technology’s rapid development might have enabled social media to decimate our attention spans, but it’s also made music production vastly more accessible. Now, pretty much anyone with a computer can access music-making tools cheaply and easily.” So, get ready for the microsecond hits!
Alex Petridis “‘I never lived a life I didn’t want to live’: Sly Stone on addiction, ageing and changing music for ever” (Guardian, October 6, 2023)
Other than Ben Greenman, the co-author of his recent biography, Petridis is one of the few sources that can actually get the famously reclusive legend to talk. Mind you, Sly is still frustratingly cryptic but even the brief glimpses here are fascinating. Hopefully his bio will reverse the trend but isn’t it a shame that this brilliant, multi-genre genius hasn’t gotten the credit he deserves? Granted, his long-standing hermit-like existence doesn’t help but there’s obviously also health issues at play. Still, if Dylan can get long-standing cult-like love, why can’t this other mysterioso?
Vernon Reid’s guitar player campaigns (Twitter/X, September 2023)
The great Living Color guitarist/songwriter had enough and needed to say something. His favorite guitar players weren’t being given the online love they deserve. The result was that this past fall, he used his Twitter/X feed to stan for them and encourage others to boost them too. Guitar World’s Matt Owen noted this noble quest, including Reid’s viral campaign to get recognition for Robin Trower and Robert Cray as well as Elliot Easton, Ernie Isley and Mike Stern. End result: Reid’s campaign is working, getting recognition for these other string-benders. It’s some of the best kind of musical advocacy, honoring great artists just as quality journalism seeks to do sometimes.
Jeff Rosenstock “Felt appropriate to post this on Labor Day” (Instagram, September 5, 2023)
Where the indie rocker schools us on the cut that venues take for artists’ merchandise at their shows, sometimes totalling up to 20%. Doesn’t help that the major concert companies (AEG, Live Nation) swooped in to buy up clubs during the pandemic, as JR point out. Eddie Fu’s Consequence of Sound article on this points out several poignant responses that Rosenstock got from other artists including Steve Albini (who points out that this is all negotiable by the artists) and Sweet Pill who remind us that merch is now where many artists make most of their money, making the situation especially painful for them. And who do the rising costs get passed on to? A: all of us fans. Live Nation seems to have listened to him and did something about it for smaller clubs, cutting their merch fees but NIVA said it’s just another way for them to crush competition by handing out fees to artists.
Jennifer Rubin “GOP objections to the ‘Black national anthem’ are about control” (Washington Post, February 13, 2023)
A former Republican (though still conservative) who thankfully passed on the MAGA Kool-Aid, Rubin is well positioned to get into the poisonous mindset of the right-wing cultural warriors and what’s the basis of their objections to the Superbowl music choices. It’s not just ignorance, it’s also fear that they will lose their privilege and dominance. Worse yet, they won’t achieve their Christian Nationalist dreams, which happen to be racist in origin and still carry that stench and intention.
Drew Schwartz “Drake or Fake? A Lawyer Explains the Legality of AI-Generated Music” (Wired, April 21, 2023)
TikTok user/producer Ghostwriter977 posted an AI generated song, “Heart on my Sleeve,” with the voices of Drake and The Weeknd, which became a hit and also a source of controversy. Along with wondering ‘is this the future of music,’ an intrepid writer wondered what were the legal issues here, consulting with Chris Mammen, a Silicon Valley lawyer who’s up on copyright and AI. The two go into detail and down the rabbit hole to try to figure out who might or might not sue (the artists, the labels, the producer) over this and who may or may not have the rights. The answers to all these questions at the moment are [shrug emoji] but the battlelines are being drawn now and this is a map of how it will play out. What’s at stake here is a lot, maybe more than we know, or would want to know.
Shannon Silver “Artist & Partner Mental Health Toolkit” (Daily Rind, May 5, 2023)
Great writing isn’t always flowery language—sometimes, it’s taking an important subject and sharing vital information. Via a blog put out by the Orchard, a music distributor, four mental health resources were polled to find pertinent info not only for musicians but also for the people around them who support them. Dealing with drugs/alcohol, lack of income and health insurance, self-doubt, anxiety, depression, healthy boundaries, external pressure and more, it’s an excellent, practical resource. Anyone who really wants to be a manager should use this as a resource tool to help when these things come up.
Nadine Smith “How hip-hop beats took over country music” (Fader, Sept 28, 2023)
Good history lesson here (i.e., Kid Rock and Bubba Sparxxx were doing this year ago) and an interesting inside perspective about the Nashville hip-hop scene. Plus a good explanation of why the latest stars in this field, like Jelly Roll, actually aren’t ridiculous.
Patti Smith “He Was Tom Verlaine” (The New Yorker, January 30, 2023)
As beautifully poetic as you’d hope from her, especially about a fellow traveler who also made his mark at the same Lower East Side club. They grew up near each other but only collided in Gotham and then bonded over music, literature, and art, becoming kindred spirits. Recalling his last day, she remembers him cutting her hair years ago and the glow that he then left behind. Also see Colin Groundwater recalling how Verlaine was a famous NYC bookstore’s best customer.
Marica S. Tacconi “Music painted on the wall of a Venetian orphanage will be heard again nearly 250 years later” (The Conversation, November 14, 2023)
This Penn State professor/musicologist visited a famed Venice church and noticed something in the music room there. A fresco had the detail of a music score—Tacconi got a closer look to find out what it is and through some sleuthing, ID’d it in a Roman library as a lesser-known 18th century opera. Not content to let this amazing discovery go, she then got together funding for a late 2023 revival/performance of the work on period instruments. Bravo! And where the hell are the rock, blues, jazz, rap scholars who are doing the same?
Washington Post staff “50 Hip-Hop Stars Share 50 Songs They Love” (Washington Post, August 4, 2023)
Impressive as Jon Caramanica’s New York Times series where he had 50 hip-hop legends tell their stories (which you should also read), this series from the Post seemed even more endearing. Again going with the ‘hip-hop is 50 years old’ theme (which may not be the truth actually), here we have 50 legends pick their favorite rap tracks, which is fascinating to see. In a chain effect, some of the rappers/producers/DJs here in turn
choose other artists who then go ahead and choose other rappers/producers/DJs cited here otherwise. The result is De La Soul’s Posdnuos picks Boogie Down Productions, Beastie Boys Mike D. picks De La Soul, Doug E. Fresh notes Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Scorpio of the Furious Five picks Naughty By Nature, Big Daddy Kane picks Stetsasonic, Daddy-O’s Stetsasonic picks UGK, Geto Boys’ Scarface picks A Tribe Called Quest and also gets picked himself. Now aren’t you curious to read on?
Ian Winwood “Arena Rock Is Dying So Why Are They Building More Arenas?” (Telegraph, March 29, 2023)
Granted that Winwood is dealing with UK venues but it’s definitely applicable elsewhere. “Not only is the headline class of the 21st Century growing older, but the rock biz’s rickety infrastructure for younger bands means that at the top end of the market replacements are proving hard to find.” Simply put, there’s a ‘pipeline problem’ where the arena acts are gonna die out soon and the fans that fill the seats to see ‘em aren’t getting any younger either. Plus, the labels aren’t doing a good job grooming up-coming acts to reach this level, much less survive after a few years. The recent architectural investment is a head scratcher, especially when the most recent US big investment in concert experiences, Las Vegas’ the Sphere, just launched and is already worried about cost overruns and who’s gonna fill it after U2. So why all the new arena buildings? Wishful thinking perhaps? Maybe it’s the Field of Dreams model—if you build it, they will come. Then again, a fantasy movie about resurrecting dead stars might not be a great role unless they’re planning on holograms (which they are, actually).
— Jason Gross is the Editor and founder of Perfect Sound Forever.
— See also our 2022 interview with Jason.
— And stay tuned for an archival upload of past Best Music Journalism features by Jason Gross
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