Idolator

When Rolling Stone plunked down the first review of Guns N' Roses Chinese Democracy last week, we stacked it up against Chuck Klosterman's 2006 April-Fool's review of the album from Spin, and found a lot of similarities. Well, in a development that everyone should have probably expected, Klosterman himself has reviewed the album for The AV Club—which, of course, invites a comparison between his pre-listen writeup and what he thought after actually hearing the 14 tracks that Axl Rose has been laboring over for the past decade-plus. Chuck vs. Chuck, mano a mano, after the jump. More »

Rolling Stone published its official review of Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy today, and reading it made me think to that day some two and a half years ago when Spin, ever the prankster, tried to pull an April Fool's joke by running a Chuck Klosterman-penned review of Axl's magnum opus, despite it being only sort of close to finished at that time. So I decided to read both reviews back-to-back, and what I saw—well, it inspired me to give all of you a little test. Can you tell David Fricke's real album review from the one that was written with tongue in cheek? Let's find out! More »

Inspired by James Mollison's The Disciples, which collects photos of music fans "mimicking the manners and dress of their particular heroes," Chuck Klosterman has written another think piece in which he a) describes the awkwardness of interviewing rock stars, b) recalls his own milquetoast adolescence, c) drops Best Week Ever riffs in the most pretentious manner possible ("I had never realised that the defining quality of a diehard Radiohead fan was the wearing of a diagonal strap across one's torso. What does that even mean? What do these people hear on Bodysnatchers that makes this visual determination so self-evident?"), d) makes an ASS out of U and ME ("at its highest levels of achievement, rock'n'roll is supposed to serve as 'lifestyle music' It should have the potential to inform every single decision about being alive. And for these photogenic goofballs, it obviously does"), e) drops a list and f) leaves for Uranus ("Yet within the competitive context of life, these fanatics are almost certainly the winners"). Note that "interacts with the freaky goons he's describing" is not included. More »

With complex theories endlessly bandied about and "vinyl is back!" prayers going unanswered everywhere, leave it to Chuck Klosterman to drop a common-sense take on the decline of the music industry. It's not about poor product, or poor corporate structuring. People just don't want to spend money on stuff they can get for free. "Because four-minute digital-song files are relatively small (and thus easily compressed), ripping tracks for free became the easiest way to eliminate an extraneous cost. It wasn't political or countercultural, and it had almost nothing to do with music itself. It was fiscally practical. It was the first, best solution." More »