To be fair, the early writers were all mostly 20-somethings, and I think we can all remember how insufferable a 20somethings opinion is.
A number of them went on to become very good music writers.
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Not Pitchfork but I remember when MUZIK Magazine reviewed Rob D Clubbed to Death, they said “anybody could sample their parents classical record collection” then gave it 2 out of 5 stars.
What a massive misjudged that was,
I’m so glad I ignored that review and bought the vinyl anyway.
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I gave up on Pitchfork years ago. I used to use it to create an “albums to buy” list that I’d gradually dwindle as I found CDs on sale. They went through a phase of appearing incredibly try hard and that’s when I gave up on them. They would heap praise on all sorts of rap/hip-hop material and pour scorn over any sort of indie/electronic type stuff. Now I’m sure there’s some decent rap/hip hop out there but it’s just not for me so I thought fuck it and moved on.
My new approach is to lean on Rough Trades Edit (https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/rough-trade-edit). They usually give a small blurb about the band/album and content is usually pretty varied. Feel like it does enough to keep me on top of things.
As for bad reviews, it’s a sidestep, but my word Peter BRadshaw and his movie reviews do my tits in. The man is a whalloper.
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Oh, no, sir, not biting 
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This is my favourite Pitchfork review, and quite possibly the meanest:
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I enjoyed that way more than I should have
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Classic.
My other favorite was when they were opining on a bunch of groups at a festival or something (this is off of memory) and everyone was getting a decent blurb and then Greta Van Fleet comes up and it’s just “I’m sure they’re nice lads.” or something to that effect. Absolute savagery.
It’s easy to shit on reviewers. In the same vein, needledrop has had some controversial takes in the past, some of which he backed off on.
It’s not easy, because you can’t get it right, it’s all subjective at the end of the day. What the profession is, for me at least, is to put me on to some great music. I’m gonna see the good albums and want to listen, I’m still gonna form my own opinions about something.
If you see a bad review and you won’t listen because of that, I think thats more on you.
Obviously a music reviewer can be better or worse on a scale. But you dont want to end up like IGN and give everything a 7.4 to not piss anyone off.
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That one is great. This is my favorite:
It opens with:
Greta Van Fleet sound like they did weed exactly once, called the cops, and tried to record a Zeppelin album before they arrested themselves
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Those snarky bad reviews just strike me as an exercise if how to be mean in a clever way. Why even bother reviewing albums that the writer finds beneath them? Could very well be the case with that Aphex review…
Gotta love that you posted the top 10 most read reviews from Pitchfork to damn them and the top 3 have link-follow counts from Elektronauts
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For me this is just beyond the pale
I find that if you don’t scroll past the numbers, it’s okay for my old man lazy music research
I realized I didn’t stay on-topic…
You won’t find this on their website. And for good reason (a lot of those early reviews didn’t “survive” the move over to new formatting…conveniently)
ummm…
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Streaming has killed music journalism. Why would you read someone’s ramblings about an album when it’s so easy to hear it yourself (usually)?
There is a loss, in that there are a few great music writers; and if you stop reading critics you might not be persuaded to give things a chance that aren’t immediately appealing to you. But the bulk of music criticism has been crap.
There’s still a place for publications like The Wire that are less driven by what’s current, that have genuinely good and expert writing, and that showcase music you probably won’t hear about by other means.
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A couple blogs I would read from time to time a long time ago, so long I don’t even remember what they were as far as I recalled had more interesting writing / reviews than pitchfork but those music blog days are all but over. Actually, I just stumbled upon a somewhat interesting article about music blogs on LinkedIn of all places.
I read a few reviews on on many websites and they seem to be copy / paste of the press release ( typically full of bullshit ).
Listening to the albums has no relation to the praise / nonsense in the reviews
Pitchfork isn’t the only culprit…
This is one of the funniest Pitchfork reviews - and I hate Tool and this album so it was very satisfying to me at the time lol
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