Former New York Times journalist John Rockwell writes about being pressured to be positive or, in his case, negative by editors. His Grey Lady editor equated negativity with controversy and more readers, and subsequently pushed him to make a negative Joni Mitchell review even more scathing:
I remember a piece I wrote about Joni Mitchell’s CD of orchestrally accompanied versions of some of her finest songs. I hated it: I thought it was pompous and leaden. But an editor came up to me eagerly after he’d read what I turned in and pushed me to expand it and sharpen it. Being negative, in his eyes, was equivalent to being sharp and controversial; it would boost buzz and readership.
I am embarrassed to admit that I went along with his suggestion, and the piece ran as a wildly over-played full-page blast against an artist whom I had long admired (with the inevitable caveats).
Rockwell later got his comeuppance a few months later, when Mitchell upbraided him by phone.
It’s the reverse of the Jann Wenner Bob Dylan Rule. If you’re gonna trash it, then really trash it. Nobody wants three stars. They want one or five. Bold statements on the extremes make much more of an impact than middle-of-the-road ones. As a publicist, I noticed more action for records that got a 4.4 than albums that got a 6.4. It’s why so much music criticism seems like binary code now. Ones and zeros. It’s good or it sucks.
I wonder how much this goes on. We all know about editors feeding records to the writers who are most likely to write positive reviews. Any writers out there pushed to go negative?
Forgive my ignorance, but could someone please review the “Jann Wenner Bob Dylan Rule” for me? Thanks.
I once had a CMJ review of a Suede album (dog man star) spiked because I didn’t like it (a far cry from the debut, IMHO), but they were prominently featured on that month’s CD, and they needed an enthusiastic review.
But that’s in a different category of editorial corruption, I suppose.
Fuck, he’s forgetting that it’s more fun to go one way or the other. I’m probably young and stupid, but it makes me feel alive to write either a rave or a jeremiad. Obviously you shouldn’t go too ad hominem, but if an artist who (by that point) basically IS an institution is doing a victory lap, I think it’s fine to stick your foot out a little further just to make things intersting.
@misledyouth33: The rule is demonstrated by Rolling Stone’s four star review of Mick Jagger’s Goddess in the Doorway: if they are canon/classic acts putting out new music, they will be fawned over, drooled over, and then blown in print.
and herein is the reason that i can never trust yelp.
@Thesemodernsocks: Actually, it was a FIVE (out of five) star review. Meanwhile, the user ratings on RS’s website give it exactly half that.
I’ve got a picture in my head of Wenner, sitting in front of a basement computer in the wee hours, typing up one of those fevered, anonymous blog rants about how The Dark Knight is the greatest movie EVER and anybody who disagrees is a COMPLETE MORON who needs to realize the AWESOMENESS that is (insert fanboy fetish object here)…
@perfectomix: Let’s not forget it was a five star review written by Mick’s best buddy Jann himself. How many reviews has that guy written in the past decade, anyway?
I work mostly in mainstream country, and have a long-held theory that the preferred rating within this particular genre is three or three and a half stars. If it’s four or five that means it’s too distinctive and might not get played on the radio.
@Chris N.: I find that absolutely horrifying. Stuff like that reaffirms my decision to never listen to mainstream country. No offense to your lifelihood, of course.
@Chris Molanphy:
I agree the debut is better, but I’ve noticed Dog Man Star is always the Suede album that pops up on best of the decade lists. Weird.
@cookiedough: Horrifying but not surprising (to me, anyway). Heck, I remember a recent TV commercial for one of the local classic-rock radio stations that actually had a “listener” (an actor, but same effect) thanking the station because “they don’t play any of that obscure stuff!” (actual quote, if my memory’s right)
Obviously, “obscure” was their code word for “anything that hasn’t already been played to death and burned into your memory for all time.” So my first thought was, “you guys are actually *proud* that you play the same stuff endlessly?! And are using it as a basis to attract listeners?”
And my second thought was my realization of how many people I’ve known who, yeah, actually like to hear the same damn stuff, day after day etc. (Especially in the classic-rock realm, where some people don’t seem to realize that interesting music was still being made after 1985. A local program director once made a total fool of himself regarding this issue)
Anyway, yeah, it’s pretty much what we’re gonna get when they’re trying to attract the broadest possible audience while minimizing “risk.”
I once heard a very horrible (but credible) story of a fine music journalist getting canned at a major entertainment mag for writing a shitty John Mayer review…
…it had something to do with the mag’s ties to Mayer’s label…
You’ve all heard about DeRogatis getting fired from Rolling Stone for trashing the second Hootie album, right? If you haven’t, it’s a chapter worth reading in his collection of columns from the 90s. (No, I’m not DeRogatis and I don’t know him.)
The magazine, by the way, wound up rewriting the review to give the album a glowing… three stars.
@T’Challa: I would love to hear that story. Care to elaborate?