Reading music reviews can get tiresome for me. All too often,
reviews of the same album will use identical angles and language,
and, over time, reviews by a specific publication start to look
interchangeable (e.g. the promising debut, the mid-career slump,
the overrated comeback). It all adds up to an experience akin to
deja vu.
Among the most popular music criticism resources for the college
crowd is online music mag Pitchfork Media. Pitchfork has quickly
built up a sizable readership and a reputation for refreshingly
literate, discerning (detractors might say elitist) reviews with an
indie rock slant. But even their relatively unconventional approach
adheres to a certain predictable pattern, according to Loren
Wilson, the University of Chicago student behind Pitchformula.com.
This guy combed through every available Pitchfork review and ranked
words on how often they appear in positive and negative reviews,
breaking them into the categories of instruments, sound, structure,
mood and vocals.
One of his more interesting conclusions is that, in a negative
review, Pitchfork critics are less likely to detail the actual
music and more likely to use words related to consumerism
(“bucks,” “marketed,” “sales,”
“ads,” etc.) and words insulting the intelligence of
the musicians or listeners (“mindless,”
“vacant,” “frat,” “dudes,” and
“y’all” included among them). Many of the
adjectives used in positive reviews are ubiquitous in music
criticism ““ “organic,” “ethereal,”
“complex” ““ while others are in the tradition of
Captain Planet ““ “sky,” “storm,”
“winds” and “ocean.” I’m not making
that last part up. I honestly have no explanation why so many
ecosystem-friendly words made the list. Perhaps they’re all
secretly Sierra Club members.
But I’m only using Pitchfork as a comparison point here.
I’m aware of the unfair criticism that our reviews are too
similar to Pitchfork’s. (Hey, they run five a day,
there’s going to be some overlap.) Inspired by my fellow geek
halfway across the country, I grabbed all available Daily Bruin
Soundbites from 2003 and 2004 (73 in all) and ran my own searches,
looking for whatever trends might emerge, which immediately raises
the question: Who has less of a life? The guy from the notoriously
boring school who did it for a final project, or the guy from UCLA
(where social opportunities abound) who instead chose to volunteer
this for the school paper?
Nevertheless, right off the bat, I’m happy to report that
virtually none of the words associated with consumerism or
stupidity showed up, with the exception of a few hits for
“rip-off” and one instance where a review ended simply,
and rather poetically, with “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”
Instead, our negative reviews use words like
“repetitive,” “boring” and
“original” (to convey a lack thereof).
When it comes to positive reviews, more words start to
correspond. Like Pitchfork writers (and, I suspect, many critics in
general), we like our music to sound “warm,”
“distorted,” “subtle” and especially
“layered,” which popped up in a whopping one out of
every five positive reviews. Another interesting outcome finds that
“polished” is an overwhelmingly positive word, while
for Pitchfork it’s the opposite. In terms of mood,
we’re suckers for anything “dark,”
“strange” or “emotional,” but still leave
room for “upbeat” and “confident” in our
top five, another distinction from the Pitchformula list, where the
top five moods ““ including sad, crazed and violent ““
are all unpleasant.
Also of interest are the gender dynamics at play: The female
pronouns “she” and “her,” in reference to
musicians, are found exclusively in positive reviews over the last
two years, whereas Pitchformula finds that male pronouns are 18
times more positive than female, and counts “feminist”
as a negative word.
So what does this all mean? Are Pitchfork critics really
condescending, pessimistic tree-huggers? Are we at dB a bunch of
easily bored emo-feminists?
Hardly. I think it’s safe to say that, while this kind of
analysis can legitimately be used to reveal general tendencies, any
publication has the right to its own unique preferences and style
without being labeled predictable. And although many words might be
repeated, it’s only because there’s a limited number of
adjectives floating around that can be used to describe specific
sounds. Most important are well-articulated and thought-out
opinions, and the more subjective matter of taste.
But the next time you see a sentence in one of our raves that
reads something like, “The dark, droning layers of percussive
guitar build from the upbeat and emotionally warm melody into a
strangely intense crash of polished distortion,” you still
have the right to send angry letters our way.
E-mail Lee at alee2@media.ucla.edu.