As someone who’s had a good deal of experience as a music critic and as a musician, I disagree. Not saying one’s better than the other, but in my experience, they’re different in almost every respect.

Also, I think Gleason’s wrong – or, better, misleading. I think advocacy of work which turns critics on is, other things being equal, a far more important job than being an enemy of work which doesn’t. And I would far rather read a thoughtful and dispassionate analysis than anything from someone who, no matter how much he or she loves music and lives for it, is has nothing to offer beyond that enthusiasm.

“There is another thing, really the most important of all. We should expect love. Corny? Not at all. The best critics love the art they criticize, become impassioned advocates of work which turns them on and dedicated enemies of the fake, the puerile and the dull. I would rather read someone who loves music and lives for it than the heaviest brain’s analysis. And that kind of criticism is the hardest to write.”

- Ralph J. Gleason, “Perspectives: Pitfalls For the Critics,” Rolling Stone, March 29, 1973

Anyone that listens to music quickly learns what they like and what they don’t like- that’s simply personal opinion. For me, the desire to critically write about music comes from my absolute amazement when it’s done well. The passion for music forced me to have to question/analyze/deconstruct that which I felt fell short and explain why so that I could better seek out more of what I loved. Sharing that with like-minded individuals came second. The critique simply was an extension of the passion and love I have for what I think is the good stuff.

In many ways, the critique itself is not much different than the piece of art that we are analyzing. Readers are going to weigh in on whether they like it or not based on its own engaging merits, the point(s) it makes and the strength of its argument. Done well, it can sway and move the reader. Done poorly, as Barry alluded to, it just consists of thumbs and stars.

What’s generally being derided as “criticism” if, of course, just thumbs up/thumbs down reviewing–and the less detailed, the more likely it’s out there. And as the internet proves every day, there’s not much qualification for that.Meanwhile, “being critical” suggests “saying negative things about this or that” to many, as well, from which the notion that critics are out there intent on tearing down art or artists has spread.

Any critic worth a dime and time is out there (including here) trying to expand response to art (like, say, country music, for instance) and to shed some light on how to appreciate it more–including a way to think critically about it that’s constructive. It takes some education and some talents and every now and then, even some insight. Nobody has to read it, or like it, it just needs to be meaningful and engaging enough to some people will.

And then there’s a different question: what readers and audience members critics like to pay attention to.. But never mind that.

About 30 years ago a friend referred me to a quote by the famous Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Chekhov. In a letter he wrote in 1890, Chekhov said:
“When people talk to me of what is artistic and inartistic, of what is dramatic and not dramatic, of tendency, realism, and so on, I am bewildered, hesitatingly assent, and answer with banal half-truths not worth a brass farthing. I divide all works into two classes: those I like and those I don’t. I have no other criterion, and if you ask me why I like Shakespeare and don’t like Zlatovratsky, I don’t venture to answer.” The quote can be found in “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov” edited and with an Introduction by Lillian Hellman.

Who has time to listen to everything?

I’ve gotten turned on to certain artists from reading reviews–Chris Knight, Dale Watson, Don Walser, Corb Lund, Rosie Flores are a handful. (On the other hand, I’ve also bought some discs based on positive reviews and flung them out the window of my car at 70 mph after one listen–i.e. Bruce Robison, Buddy Miller).

Hey, you win some, you lose some.

The only critic I listen to is me. My taste in music and what I buy is for my own pleasure regardless of what some supposed expert says about it.

I have never understood the arena of music critique. To think that one would choose what they like based upon another party’s thoughts is completely foreign to me.

I do not claim to be an expert on other’s opinions because frankly I don’t give a damn.

And my point was that you don’t need to make dubious statements about what other people’s complaints about current country music are. You’re an authority on what your complaint is, and you articulate it pretty well; on what and how widely shared others’ complaints are, not so much.

My point was that I really do think the main critical outcry about current Country music is less about it’s sonic evolution and more it’s lyrical evolution. I wasnt trying to stick words into people’s mouths, but my main complaint about the songs Blake and others are recording is that they just arent very good songs. They are boring, say nothing and are designed to be nothing but background noise as people sludge through their jobs.

What attracted me to Country music in the first place is it always seemed like one of the genres that had something to say. Tom T. Hall, Bob McDill, Hank Cochran, Shel Silverstein, etc. had something to say and there was depth and meaning in their words. The song writing is what attracted me to Country Music and more and more it feels like the current group of Music Row favorites are just meaningless, thoughtless filler.

Thankfully we live in an age where music we love is just a click away.