LOL, 4 years #Critics of the #MusicIndustry have been labeled #Rockists and Elitists 4 complaining about the decline in the quality of lamestream Music quality for decades, especially in #PopMusic, but we were right and something had to give, motherfuckers.

BTW, you can loathe #Poptimism not because you hate Pop Music, but because you care about it.

#MusicCriticism #Poptimist
https://web.archive.org/web/20230802192125/https://www.billboard.com/pro/record-labels-adjust-expectations-pop-stars/

But of course there is nothing to be done, and because it’s real people, it’s more like watching a train wreck where you already know there were no survivors.

Why are you watching that gruesome shit, anyway? 😉

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l60MnDJklnM
6/6
#beyonce #jayz #MusicCriticism

Songs I’ve Grown to Loathe, Part 2: (fights urge to say Electric Boogaloo) “Crazy in Love” by Beyoncé and Jay-Z

Don’t get me wrong, even after the TWENTY YEARS since it’s been released, the song still slaps. 90% of the song is pure heady pop bliss.

But the remaining 10%, especially in retrospect, ruins the song for me…

1/
#popmusic #beyonce #jayz #MusicCriticism

https://genius.com/Beyonce-crazy-in-love-lyrics

My latest op-ed on The Jakarta Post. This time I discuss the importance of music criticism in the world of Indonesian music so that the music that is created is better not only in quantity, but also in quality. Feel free to read it.

#music #critic #musiccritic #criticism #musiccriticism

https://www.thejakartapost.com/opinion/2023/01/27/to-win-appreciation-music-needs-criticism.html

My latest op-ed on The Jakarta Post. This time I discuss the importance of music criticism in the world of Indonesian music so that the music that is created is better not only in quantity, but also in quality. Feel free to read it. Link on my IG Stories.

#music #critic #musiccritic #criticism #musiccriticism

https://www.thejakartapost.com/opinion/2023/01/27/to-win-appreciation-music-needs-criticism.html

My latest op-ed on The Jakarta Post. This time I discuss the importance of music criticism in the world of Indonesian music so that the music that is created is better not only in quantity, but also in quality. Feel free to read it. Link on my IG Stories.

#music #critic #musiccritic #criticism #musiccriticism

https://www.thejakartapost.com/opinion/2023/01/27/to-win-appreciation-music-needs-criticism.html

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#RockAndRollGarage
The album that Aerosmith’s Joe Perry said is the best of all time

http://rockandrollgarage.com/the-album-that-aerosmiths-joe-perry-said-is-the-best-of-all-time/

#Aerosmith #JoePerry #BestAlbum #RockMusic #MusicLegends #GuitarHero #AlbumReview #MusicCriticism #RockAlbum #RockBand

I've been a big fan of #TomBreihan’s The Number Ones column on #StereoGum for a while. Going to have to grab a copy of this.

#PopMusic #MusicCriticism

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/tom-breihans-the-number-ones-tells-the-secret-history-of-the-pop-charts/

"There is a long and violent history of white women making themselves the metric by which womanhood is measured, while those whose experiences do not resonate with those of white women — specifics of employment or cuisine aside — are treated by those in power as less than fully women, less than fully human. Despite the numerous composers of color involved in this project, having Birrittella sing this poem re-enforces and perpetuates that history, and ends the work with an extraordinarily flimsy politics of similarity, one that has no room to imagine that some women may themselves be in positions of structural power over other women. (There is no consideration, for example, that the woman in the business meeting may be making bombs to drop on the woman herding goats.) People are too varied for a politics of similarity to ever succeed; we need a politics of solidarity instead."

I saw the entire PROTOTYPE contemporary #opera festival again this year and it was . . . not great. Read all about it in #TheLogJournal: https://nationalsawdust.org/thelog/2020/01/21/in-review-prototype-festival-2020/

#MusicJournalism #MusicCriticism #MyArticles

Come for the captivatingly physical bass playing, stay for the nonchalantly virtuosic drum solo — my latest in #TheLogJournal: https://nationalsawdust.org/thelog/2019/12/19/in-review-brandon-lopez/

#MusicCriticism #MusicJournalism #MyArticles

"I was particularly delighted by a passage where Wooley took off his mouthpiece and stuck a microphone up the bell to capture a volley of gurgles and pops that evoked a robot undergoing a gastrointestinal meltdown"

Read all about #AnneaLockwood's composer portrait — the good, the bad, the gleefully disgusting — in my latest for the #SanFranciscoClassicalVoice: https://www.sfcv.org/reviews/mill-valley-chamber-music-society/composer-annea-lockwoods-vocabularies-of-sound

#NewMusic #ContemporaryClassical #MyArticles #MusicJournalism #MusicCriticism

ICYMI: I saw violin superstar #Midori at (Le) Poisson Rouge on Monday and wrote all about it — from Azerbaijani fiddle dances to sonic miscalculations — for #TheLogJournal :

https://nationalsawdust.org/thelog/2019/11/05/in-review-midori/

#reviews #MusicCriticism #MusicJournalism #MyArticles

"Entering to sing Puccini’s “Nessun dorma” (None shall sleep) in a massive plumed helmet and a stone butch leather-dyke biker jacket, Oratonio managed to channel both male operatic superstars and various queer elders whose wings I’ve sheltered under. It was a brash set full of wonderfully bizarre turns — a pseudo-Classical arrangement of “Jessie’s Girl” followed quickly by a hard-rock take on “Send in the Clowns” mashed up with “Vesti la giubba” (Put on the costume) — and it was deeply surreal to watch in front of a well-heeled audience who gasped in shock that a drag king could sound like a lyric tenor, and who sat politely through the sloshed-out key changes instead of drunkenly whooping and trying to shove dollar bills into any crevice of Oratonio’s clothing that would hold them."

Read my latest in the San Francisco Classical Voice!

https://www.sfcv.org/reviews/roulette/resonant-bodies-festival-2019-flouts-expectations

#MusicJournalism #MyArticles #MusicCriticism #ResonantBodiesFestival

i got real mad about capitalism and climate change and wrote a review of #JuliaWolfe's new #oratorio #FireInMyMouth, which is a furious and searing exploration of the #TriangleShirtwaistFire. Read all about it over at the National Sawdust Log: https://nationalsawdust.org/thelog/2019/08/30/album-review-julia-wolfe-fire-in-my-mouth/

#NewMusic #MusicJournalism #MusicCriticism

hello hello hello! there's a fascinating new #trans #musical cast recording that just dropped at the start of this week, and i wrote all about it for #TheLogJournal! check out my review, and then head over and give the album a listen: https://nationalsawdust.org/thelog/2019/07/24/album-review-eamon-boylan-soft-butter/

#MusicCriticism #MusicJournalism #SingingTheatrePieces

a youth choir, a post-minimalist composer, the US Poet Laureate, two soloists, and a trove of letters from African American soldiers in the US Civil War — my latest #review is live in the #LogJournal: https://nationalsawdust.org/thelog/2019/05/02/in-review-a-premiere-by-songs-of-solomon/

#AaronSiegel #TracyKSmith #SongsOfSolomonChoir #NewMusic #MusicJournalist #MusicJournalism #MusicCriticism #WorldPremiere

my latest #review is live in the #SanFranciscoClassicalVoice! i talk about the #AmericanComposersOrchestra playing #MortonFeldman, #GloriaCoates, and #DuYun with some things that were successful and others that were . . . less so! click on over and give it a read: https://www.sfcv.org/reviews/none/the-american-composers-orchestra-takes-a-magic-carpet-ride

#MusicCriticism #MusicJournalism #MusicJournalist #MyWriting

i'm not saying i *never* #review music by people who are no longer alive, i'm just saying i don't *often* review music by people who are no longer alive, so don't miss this rare foray of mine into the misty depths of the early twentieth century and the emergence of concert #spirituals:

https://nationalsawdust.org/thelog/2019/03/05/in-review-fisk-jubilee-singers/

#MusicCriticism #MusicCritic #MusicJournalism #MusicJournalist #LogJournal #FiskJubileeSingers

i saw a piece that was accompanied by projections of dinosaurs, and then i heard a piece that *reminded* me of dinosaurs — guess which one i thought was more successful! find out the answer in my latest #review for the #LogJournal, covering a Composer Portrait of #WangLu:

https://nationalsawdust.org/thelog/2019/02/26/in-review-wang-lu-composer-portrait/

#MusicJournalist #MusicJournalism #NewMusic #MusicCritic #MusicCriticism

New review! I'm over in #SFCV writing about a truly exceptional performance of #AnthonyBraxton's Composition 222. Click on over and give it a read to see what i think of a certain prominent violinist's abilities on . . . trumpet?

https://www.sfcv.org/reviews/none/vibrant-ghosts-anthony-braxtons-composition-222

#MusicCriticism #MusicCritic #review #MusicJournalism #MusicJournalist