Hector Berlioz, active as a music journalist in Paris in the 1830s and 1840s.

Music journalism is criticism and reportage about music. It began in the eighteenth century as comment on what is now thought of as 'classical music'. This aspect of music journalism, today often referred to as music criticism (although that risks confusion with the academic discipline), comprises the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of music and its performance. Modern art music journalism is often informed by music theory consideration of the many diverse elements of a musical piece or performance, including (as regards a musical composition) its form and style, and as regards performance, standards of technique and expression. It was expressed, for example, in journals such as Neue Zeitschrift für Musik founded by Robert Schumann, and is continued today in the columns of serious newspapers and journals such as The Musical Times.

Today a major branch of music journalism is an aspect of entertainment journalism — covering popular music and including profiles of singers and bands and album reviews. In the 2000s, online music bloggers are to some degree displacing newspaper and magazine-based pop music critics.

Origins[link]

Before about the 1840s, reporting on music was either done by musical journals, such as Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung or the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (founded by Robert Schumann), and in London such journals as The Musical Times (founded in 1844 as The Musical Times and Singing-class Circular); or else by reporters at general newspapers where music did not form part of the central objectives of the publication. An influential English 19th-century music critic, for example, was John Davison of The Times. The composer Hector Berlioz also wrote reviews and criticisms for the Paris press of the 1830s and 1840s.

Several factors — including growth of education, the influence of the Romantic movement generally and in music, popularization (including the 'star-status' of many performers such as Liszt and Paganini), among others — led to an increasing interest in music among non-specialist journals, and an increase in the number of critics by profession, of varying degrees of competence and integrity. The situation here was distinguished from that before the 1840s, in that the critics now — on the whole — were not also practising musicians; this could be considered a turning‐point.

Amongst modern practitioners of the classical music tradition who also write (or wrote) on music may be included Alfred Brendel, Charles Rosen, Paul Hindemith and Ernst Krenek.

Decline of art music journalism[link]

A "decline in [quantity of] classical criticism" has been occurring since the early 1980s, "when classical-music criticism visibly started to disappear". In the early 1980s, "Time magazine had a full-time classical critic" and "Vanity Fair had a classical critic", but by the early 1990s, Classical critics were dropped in many magazines. In part this is because there "...been a decline of interest in classical music, especially among younger people".^[1]

In 2007, The New York Times stated that "Classical music criticism, a high-minded endeavor that has been around at least as long as newspapers...has taken a series of hits in recent months", because "[c]ritics’ jobs have been eliminated, downgraded or redefined at newspapers in Atlanta, Minneapolis and elsewhere around the country and at New York magazine, where Peter G. Davis, one of the most respected voices of the craft, said he had been forced out after 26 years".^[2] The Classical music scene views "...robust analysis, commentary and reportage as vital to the health of the art form".^[2] In the late 2000s, Classical music criticism is increasingly available on blogs. Nevertheless, a "number of major newspapers still have full-time classical music critics, including The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Philadelphia Inquirer [,] The Boston Globe" and "The New York Times [,which] maintains a staff of three full-time classical music critics and three freelancers".^[2]

Popular music[link]

Music writers only started "treating pop and rock music seriously" in 1964 "after the breakthrough of the Beatles...".^[3] One of the early music magazines in Britain, Melody Maker, complained in 1967 about how "newspapers and magazines are continually hammering [i.e., attacking] pop music".^[4] Melody Maker magazine advocated the new forms of pop music of the late 1960s. "By 1999, the 'quality' press was regularly carrying reviews of popular music gigs and albums", which had a "key role in keeping pop" in the public eye. As more pop music critics began writing, this had the effect of "legitimating pop as an art form"; as a result, "newspaper coverage shifted towards pop as music rather than pop as social phenomenon".^[5]

Steve Jones claims that both popular music articles and academic articles about pop music are usually written from "masculine subject positions". As more pop music critics began writing, this had the effect of "legitimating pop as an art form"; as a result, "newspaper coverage shifted towards pop as music rather than pop as social phenomenon";^[6] as well, in the way that critics differentiate between pop music and rock, using terms like "trivial", "fluffy", or "formulaic" for pop (versus "serious", "raw", and "sincere" for rock), there is an implicit or even explicitly gendered dichotomy.^[7] Simon Frith notes that pop and rock music are closely associated with gender; that is, with conventions of male and female behaviour.^[8]

In the world of pop music criticism, there tends to be a quick turnover. The "pop music industry expects that any particular [music critic] star can disappear within five years; in contrast, the "stars" of rock criticism are more likely to have long careers with "book contracts, featured columns, and editorial and staff positions at magazines and newspapers. Critic Robert Christgau was the "originator of the 'consumer guide' approach to pop music reviews", an approach to writing pop recording reviews that was designed to help consumers to decide whether to buy a new album.^[9]

In the realm of rock music (as indeed in that of classical music),^[10] critics have not always been respected by their subjects. Frank Zappa declared that, "Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read." In the Guns N' Roses song "Get in the Ring", Axl Rose verbally attacked critics who gave the band negative reviews because of their actions on stage; such critics as Andy Secher, Mick Wall and Bob Guccione, Jr. were mentioned by name.

US music writer Robert Christgau was one of the first rock critics in the 1960s.

Carl Wilson describes "an upsurge in pro-pop sentiment among critics" during the early 2000s, a "new generation [of music critics] moved into positions of critical influence" and then "mounted a wholesale critique against the syndrome of measuring all popular music by the norms of rock culture."^[11] In 2008, Ann Powers of the LA Times argued that "[p]op music critics have always been contrarians", because "pop music [criticism] rose up as a challenge to taste hierarchies, and has remained a pugilistic, exhibitionist business throughout pop's own evolution."^[12]

Powers claims that "[i]nsults, rejections of others' authority, bratty assertions of superior knowledge and even threats of physical violence are the stuff of which pop criticism is made"; at the same time, the "best [pop criticism] also offers loving appreciation and profound insights about how music creates and collides with our everyday realities." She states that pop criticism developed as a "slap at the establishment, at publications such as the hippie homestead Rolling Stone and the rawker outpost Creem." She notes that the "1980s generation" of post-punk indie rockers "has lately [i.e., in the 2000s] been taken down by younger "poptimists," who argue that lovers of underground rock are elitists for not embracing the more multicultural mainstream". Powers claims that with the 2000s-era "poptimism" critical approach, debates about bands and styles are "like the scrum in rugby", because "[e]verybody pushes against everybody else, and we move forward in a huge blob of vehement opinion and mutual judgment".^[12]

Slate magazine writer Jody Rosen discussed the 2000s-era trends in pop music criticism in the article "The Perils of Poptimism". Rosen notes that much of the debate is centred over the perception that that rock critics "...regard rock as "normative … the standard state of popular music … to which everything else is compared."^[13] At a 2006 pop critic conference, attendees discussed their "...guilty pop pleasures, reconsidering musicians (Tiny Tim, Dan Fogelberg, Phil Collins) and genres (blue-eyed soul, Muzak)" which rock critics have long dismissed as lightweight, commercial music. Rosen states that "this new critical paradigm" is called "popism"—or, more evocatively (and goofily), "poptimism". The "poptimism" approach states that "Pop (and, especially, hip-hop) producers are as important as rock auteurs, Beyoncé is as worthy of serious consideration as Bruce Springsteen, and ascribing shame to pop pleasure is itself a shameful act".^[14] In 2006, Martin Edlund from the New York Sun argued that music bloggers are to some degree displacing newspaper and magazine-based pop music critics. Edlund notes that while the "Internet has democratized music criticism, it seems it's also spread its penchant for uncritical hype".^[15]

See also[link]

• List of writers on popular music
• Women in Music (1935-1940) Periodicals chronicling the activities of women classical musicians from ancient Egyptian times to the then present, published by conductor Frédérique Petrides)

Sources[link]

• Bojan Bujic, Criticism of Music in The Oxford Companion to Music, Oxford Music Online.

References[link]

External links[link]

• International Federation of Music Journalists - an international group of media professionals who treat any aspect of music on any media. Publishes the "Directory of Music Journalists" and confers "Music Journalist Award".
• Our critics' advice - In this article Alex Petridis gives advice to young, aspiring, would-be music journalists.
• Don't look back - The Guardian, 27 June 2009. In this article John Harris writes about music journalism with reference to the well-known journalists Nick Kent and Lester Bangs.
• Is Music Journalism Dead? - Drowned in Sound, 21 July 2009. Popular music website Drowned in Sound dedicated a week to the subject of the past, present and future of music journalism. Included are articles by Everett True and Stuart Braithwaite.
• Master in Music Journalism - an international professional distance course organized by the International Federation of Music Journalists.
• BA(Hons) Popular Music Journalism course - a three years BA(hons) degree course at Southampton Solent University, UK
• Who cares what critics say? - Jay Nordlinger

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (June 2010)

Robert Hilburn (born September 25, 1939) is a pop music critic and author. As critic and music editor of the Los Angeles Times from 1970 to 2005, his reviews, essays and profiles have appeared in hundreds of publications around the world. Hilburn reflects on those years in a memoir, “Corn Flakes with John Lennon (And Other Tales from a Rock ‘n’ Roll Life),” which was published on Oct. 13, 2009 by Rodale. He is a member of the nominating committee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and lives in Los Angeles.

Early life[link]

Born in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and lived until he was 5 mostly on his grandfather’s cotton plantation in nearby Campti. During those years and when visiting his grandparents in later summers, he was exposed to the blues and country music styles that eventually gave birth to rock ‘n’ roll. After a few years in Dallas, Texas, he moved with his family to Southern California, where he graduated from Reseda High School in 1957 and California State University, Northridge (journalism degree) in 1961. His first musical hero was Elvis Presley. He worked as a news reporter on a suburban Los Angeles newspaper (the Valley Times TODAY) for two years, but tired of journalism and became a public information officer for the Los Angeles Unified School District in the mid-1960s. While there he began missing writing around the same time he fell in love with the work of Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Eager to write about music, Hilburn did a series of freelance pieces on such figures as Johnny Cash and Janis Joplin for the Los Angeles Times before being hired full-time by the paper.

[edit] The Los Angeles Times

While at the Times, Hilburn was the only music writer to accompany Johnny Cash for his landmark Folsom Prison concert. He also went with Elton John when John became the first Western rock figure to play in Russia; with Paul Simon on the “Graceland” tour stop in Zimbabwe; with Bob Dylan on his first concert swing through Israel, and with Michael Jackson on much of his “Victory” tour. He also spent a week on the road with the Sex Pistols during their first and only U.S. tour. At the Times, Hilburn was an early defender of such new pop culture movements as punk, techno and, especially rap when it was under attack by law enforcement agencies and members of Congress.

[edit] “Corn Flakes with John Lennon”

The book is a highly opinioned and deeply personal look at rock ‘n’ roll, focusing on a group of artists who not only helped build rock as an art form but whose craft and commentary helped shape the social values of our times. They include John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Phil Spector, Michael Jackson, U2, Kurt Cobain and N.W.A. He also wrote a biography, “Bruce Springsteen,” in 1985 as one in a series of Rolling Stone Press books that also included biographies of Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Critical philosophy[link]

When he started writing about music, Hilburn writes on his website, RobertHilburnOnline.com, he thought of rock as an inevitable chain of events—much like thousands of dominoes in a line that neatly fell one after another once Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry helped kick things off. But he eventually realized that concept was naïve. If you took away as few as four dozen artists from that endless row of dominoes, rock would have collapsed as an art form. Imagine your record collection without Bob Dylan, the Beatles or U2. Because of that, he felt one of the main challenges of a critic was to focus on those musicians who contributed to expanding that art form. In search of those artists, he says he frequently ended up writing about false promises; artists who ran out of ideas, self-destructed or compromised their music in hopes of wider sales. But he was also fortunate enough to connect with the most important artists of the rock era.

Interacting with those figures, Hilburn came to appreciate the tremendous toll that rock can put on an artist’s personal life; how there is often far more drama off-stage than on. In the end, all it takes to be a star is luck and a commercial sound, which explains why we have so many mediocre hit-makers. To be a true artist, you need enormous talent, fierce ambition, an original vision and an unyielding toughness. He saw some artists triumph because they were tough and others die because they weren’t tough enough.

“What linked Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash and Ray Charles, the Beatles and Bob Dylan was the old fashioned American notion that each individual can make a difference, whether you are a truck driver from Memphis or a blind piano paper from southwest Georgia. Rock ‘n’ roll was the promise of a better day and the best artists spread that message with an almost missionary zeal,” he declares on his website. “I’ve always believed in that liberating message, which is probably why I responded most to artists who fought to keep the promise alive.”

Hilburn is married and lives in Los Angeles.

References[link]

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (January 2010)

• Hilburn’s Official website
• Hilburn’s biography, Los Angeles Times

External links[link]

• RoberHilburnOnline.com - official website
• CornFlakesWithJohnLennon.com

Mark Kemp (born April 10, 1960, Asheboro, North Carolina) is an American music journalist and author. A graduate of East Carolina University, he has served as music editor of Rolling Stone and vice president of music editorial for MTV Networks. In 1997 he received a Grammy nomination for his liner notes to the CD Farewells & Fantasies, a retrospective of music by '60s protest singer Phil Ochs. His book Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race and New Beginnings in a New South was published by Free Press/Simon & Schuster in 2004 and issued in soft cover by the University of Georgia Press in 2006.

Kemp began his journalism career as a newspaper reporter at the Times-News of Burlington, NC, and later as an editor at the science magazine Discover. In the late 1980s, he began writing for the alternative music and culture magazine Option. The Los Angeles-based publication was one of the chief chroniclers of the post-punk independent alternative rock, hip-hop, experimental jazz, electronica, and avant-garde music scenes, as well as a rich source of information on so-called world music. Kemp became the editor of Option in 1991, the year Nirvana's breakthrough album Nevermind stormed the pop charts. Option's visibility in the early '90s led to Kemp's hirings at Rolling Stone and MTV.

During Kemp's tenure at Rolling Stone, several acts made first-time appearances on the magazine's cover including Beck, Marilyn Manson, The Prodigy and Sean Combs. Kemp also was responsible for assigning a controversial investigative cover story on Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder, reported by a team of three journalists without Vedder's cooperation. At MTV Kemp was part of a team responsible for launching the popular daytime music-video series Total Request Live; he also helped develop shows for MTV's sister station VH1.

Kemp left MTV in 2000 and focused on his social/cultural memoir Dixie Lullaby, in which he revisited the southern rock of his youth and examined its social and psychological impact on young Southerners in the years following the civil rights movement. In 2002 he returned to his home state of North Carolina, where he continued to write about music, business and culture for a variety of media outlets including The Charlotte Observer, Business North Carolina, eMusic.com, Rolling Stone and Paste. He is currently editor in chief of the Charlotte, North Carolina, edition of the alternative weekly Creative Loafing.

References[link]

• Currin, Grayson. "Home is where the South is: A city boy returns to Dixie to reconnect with his music roots." Independent Weekly. September 15, 2004. Retrieved May 22, 2008
• 40th Annual Grammy Awards Coverage: Musical Theater, Film and Television, Box Sets and Writing.
• Hochman, Steve. "Pop Music; Cover boy." Los Angeles Times. November 17, 1996.
• Stout, Gene. "Rolling Stone tries to expose Vedder as 'master manipulator,' 'hustler.'" Seattle Post-Intelligencer. November 15, 1996.
• Pergament, Alan. "Buffalo kid before he became a star." The Buffalo News. December 15, 1999.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mark Kemp

• Southern Roots and Healing: E-mail Interview with Mark Kemp, Rockcritics.com.
• Video interview with Mark Kemp about "Dixie Lullaby," Part 1 Part 2, Part3, Nashville Public TV's "A Word on Words" with John Seigenthaler.
• Radio interview with Mark Kemp about "Dixie Lullaby", North Carolina Public Radio station WUNC's "The State of Things," with host Melinda Penkava.
• Radio interviews with Mark Kemp and others on the state of the New South, Baltimore Public Radio station WTMD's "Clear Reception," with host Sheri Parks (Kemp is the second interview on this show.)
• Country music writer Chet Flippo on "Dixie Lullaby", CMT.com.
• Mark Kemp's Simon & Schuster Biography
• Dixie Lullaby page at University of Georgia Press