STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Here's an irony of this moment. Some people say the most outrageous things. but when critics write about entertainment, they become more polite over time. The writer Kelefa Sanneh says critics seem to be muffling their opinions of music.
KELEFA SANNEH: I always get annoyed when people say that music brings us together because one of the things it can do is give us ways to differentiate ourselves.
INSKEEP: Sanneh wrote a little history of music criticism in The New Yorker. And he says critics have lost their edge when compared with critics of the 1960s and '70s.
SANNEH: There was this guy named Robert Christgau who called himself the dean of American rock criticism, who literally gave letter grades to albums in the Village Voice. So Donny Hathaway he described as, quote, "supper-club melodrama and homogenized jazz," and gave that album a D-minus.
INSKEEP: Wow.
SANNEH: George Harrison, "Dark Horse." He called him a, quote, "horse dork," C-minus.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
SANNEH: There's this famous review in Rolling Stone by Greil Marcus of Bob Dylan's "Self Portrait" album, which began, what is this [expletive]?
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "COPPER KETTLE")
BOB DYLAN: (Singing) My daddy, he made whiskey. My granddaddy, he did, too.
SANNEH: So there was this idea that rock critics in particular were going to fight about music, were going to have strong and fierce opinions. And to me, as a kid, as I started to read some of these older articles, that seemed like part of the fun.
INSKEEP: Part of the story you tell is that people were entertained by these criticisms and maybe didn't take them entirely seriously. You could be a fan of George Harrison and read the horrible review of George Harrison and still kind of enjoy it.
SANNEH: Yeah. I mean, in pro wrestling, they call it kayfabe, right? The idea that you're kind of staying in character and that the audience likes a good fight. And also, there was this idea that, well, rock 'n' roll was this newish music that was kind of rude. So the critics were going to be kind of rude, too.
INSKEEP: Well, what then began to happen as the years went on to music criticism?
SANNEH: There was this idea - I wrote about it in 2004 - of this thing called rockism, the idea that critics were maybe a little too devoted to some of the myths of rock 'n' roll, and they were missing some other kinds of music. They were maybe not listening carefully enough to pop music or R&B or country music. And people started to talk about something called poptimism. The idea was, instead of being rockist, instead of being focused on loud guitars and sweaty guys in leather jackets, we were going to maybe celebrate pop music. And so instead of saying, oh, this boy band is just a bunch of sellouts making music to make money, they said, no, actually, this hit single is pretty good. And that movement became increasingly influential in music criticism.
INSKEEP: I'm realizing that one of the things you're describing then is what was happening in the broader society. Instead of having one narrative, one set of values, we become more multicultural. And people aren't so sure of their values and try to understand other people's points of view.
SANNEH: That's exactly right. I mean, anyone who has this weird job of being a music critic faces people who ask them, who the hell are you to tell me what music to like? And that's a reasonable feeling to have, but it can be kind of fatal to the enterprise of criticism.
INSKEEP: Was there another factor here? Social media gave fans the ability to push back on critics.
SANNEH: Well, yeah, fans didn't used to really have a voice, right? Musicians would make the records, critics would say what they thought, and that was kind of the end of it. But with social media, the conversation started to go in all sorts of different directions.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO")
TAYLOR SWIFT: (Singing) Oh, look what you made me do.
INSKEEP: Taylor Swift is in the news the last few days, in case you missed it. What role did Taylor Swift play in this transition?
SANNEH: Well, Taylor Swift was someone, on the one hand, whose fans were and are ferocious. And critics sometimes complain that if they said something negative about Taylor Swift, they got reprisals from her fans. At one point, the magazine Paste published a review of the Taylor Swift album "Tortured Poets."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE SMALLEST MAN WHO EVER LIVED")
SWIFT: (Singing) And I would've died for your sins. Instead, I just died inside. And you deserve prison, but you won't get time.
SANNEH: And the review was kind of negative, and it was published without a byline. And the idea was that this would maybe help keep the critic safe from any backlash from Taylor Swift's fans.
INSKEEP: Witness protection program. OK.
SANNEH: Exactly right, the critic with a brown paper bag over our head. And, you know, it's kind of funny, but it's a real sense of the pressure that critics sometimes felt.
INSKEEP: I feel that you have again touched on broader trends in society. We have raised...
SANNEH: Yeah.
INSKEEP: ...The cost of inconvenient or impolite speech.
SANNEH: Yes, and while also giving people more freedom. One of the things I noticed was that sometimes it seemed like the really harsh reviews of albums were coming from everyday users online, on social media. And then when you read a professional critic, you'd read something more thoughtful, more polite.
INSKEEP: What's an example of what you're talking about?
SANNEH: One example is the singer Lorde put out a record in 2021 called "Solar Power." And it got polite reviews. Rolling Stone gave it 3 1/2 stars.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SOLAR POWER")
LORDE: (Singing) My cheeks in high color, overripe peaches. No shirt, no shoes, only my feet. Just my boy behind me, he's taking pictures.
SANNEH: In fact, one of the most negative reviews of the album came from Lorde herself. Later in an interview, she said that the album was her attempt to be chill and kind of wafty. And she remembers thinking, actually, I don't think this is me. So you had this bizarre situation where professional critics were kinder to Lorde than she herself was. You sometimes hear it said that an artist is her own worst critic. But I don't think we want that to be literally true.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SOLAR POWER")
LORDE: (Singing) Are you coming, my baby?
INSKEEP: Why, if at all, does it matter if criticism has become much more polite?
SANNEH: (Laughter) You're asking a slightly more polite version of the question, who cares? One answer is that for some of us, it's fun to read slightly unhinged criticism. And it reflects something true about what it's like to be a person to listen to music. If you're talking to your friend about music, you'll probably hear some extremely strong and categorical opinions, right? Whether it's I hate metal, whether it's hip-hop hasn't been good since 2005, people tend to have really strong views. So I get a little skeptical when the critical reviews don't seem that strong. If we can't have a frank exchange of views about Taylor Swift, maybe we're losing our ability a little bit to have frank exchanges of views about everything else.
INSKEEP: Kelefa Sanneh writes for The New Yorker. His latest article is called "How Music Criticism Lost Its Edge." Thanks so much.
SANNEH: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SOLAR POWER")
LORDE: (Singing) That so... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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