Hi, Mike - glad you're enjoying my writing. I hadn't read Bullard's piece before now, though I think I'd heard of it. There is no question criticism is becoming harder to find. Certainly it's harder and harder for writers of same to find anybody willing to pay for it. Many of the reasons he cites ring true - fans invest their whole identities in what they love, and in ways even stronger than my youth, they consider anything other than worshipful admiration to be an attack on themselves. And much consumption of art is relatively passive these days. Of course, those of us who really appreciate good critical insights have always been few in number - when I wrote for the Post-Dispatch, nobody told me to try to actually think about what I was saying. The reason for music coverage at all was to entice younger readers to grab the paper. So, it's possible that the audience for good criticism isn't shrinking, but the market isn't giving us opportunities to sneak it into bigger outlets.
Thanks for sharing your musical muse with us, Steve. I always discover a nugget (gold, not chicken) in there. Curious about your take on Gabe Bullard's opinion piece on criticism, why it's going away, and why we need it more than ever. https://open.substack.com/pub/gabebullard/p/canaries-in-cultures-coal-mine?r=tl65a&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email Thanks a lot, and keep up the good work.
Hi, Mike - glad you're enjoying my writing. I hadn't read Bullard's piece before now, though I think I'd heard of it. There is no question criticism is becoming harder to find. Certainly it's harder and harder for writers of same to find anybody willing to pay for it. Many of the reasons he cites ring true - fans invest their whole identities in what they love, and in ways even stronger than my youth, they consider anything other than worshipful admiration to be an attack on themselves. And much consumption of art is relatively passive these days. Of course, those of us who really appreciate good critical insights have always been few in number - when I wrote for the Post-Dispatch, nobody told me to try to actually think about what I was saying. The reason for music coverage at all was to entice younger readers to grab the paper. So, it's possible that the audience for good criticism isn't shrinking, but the market isn't giving us opportunities to sneak it into bigger outlets.
Brittany Howard has blossomed and grown in ways that I never saw coming.
Good work, my friend!