RIP? Pitchfork

I know it’s not dead, not yet, but it certainly feels like the end. With Marc Hogan’s piece in Rolling Stone, “Pouring One Out For Pitchfork” and Linnie Greene writing The Official Pitchfork Obituary, it feels gone.

Every time I open the page I wonder …will it load? I’m surprised and happy to see new reviews going up daily, so far, and then remember production schedules. When will they run out? Watching from the sidelines for over a decade, even though I was never part of Pitchfork, just a reader, I feel a profound sense of loss over the layoffs, restructuring, union busting, and realignment. Whatever the fuck you want to call it.

If you read this blog, or any music blog, music press, you are aware that Condé Nast has shut down and union busted all over the Pitchfork masthead, laying off the the glue of the site, the features editors, the ones who were still doing it, waiting for the call to come from inside the house. According to what I’ve read, Pitchfork union was told that there would be no layoffs before the holidays and now there are layoffs. To all the writers and editors: I am so sorry for the loss of your jobs. But also: thank you for doing what you did. You changed the course of music, music journalism, and the way I consume music and music writing.

When I started this website over a decade ago to show that “I could do it too” I referred to Pitchfork as The Fork, because I was in my early 20s and who did they think they are?! (They’re Pitchfork.) I called it The Music Internet and I started (and kept) blogging on WordPress because I wanted to be a part of the conversation. I wanted to have something to say. I have something to say.

Through it all, Pitchfork was my touchstone, an anthology of what was being listen to, written about, discussed, and given the time. I didn’t always agree with it, no one will, and it sparked a lot of dumb posts (again, I was in my early 20s) in the blog rock era, whatever the hell that was. It was posts about gatekeeping, about Ariel Pink (he crowd surfed on me at the 930 Club) and the indie world’s then-obsession with him (I genuinely liked Before Today you guys!!! That shit takes me back!!!), it was me doing a Worst Of 2012 list and putting Channel Orange at the top of that list (my 20s!). (Look: Frank Ocean isn’t for me. I appreciate his output and whole deal, I am just not the audience for those sounds.) I was going to a lot of shows around Washington, D.C., where I lived and worked in corporate music programming at SXM, and writing about them online for myself: The Men, Megafaun, Mac DeMarco (when I got dragged to that show, horribly sick, there were 12 of us there and I sweated out what was probably the flu), Bon Iver, Washed Out (snooze fest), Youth Lagoon (more snooze), Toro Y Moi (he used projected water inkblots and it was some real hippie shit, people) Dirty Projectors (Swing, Lo!), Titus Andronicus (Pat Stickles read my blog post, and we got in a twitter fight over it), Japandroids, FJM (the Fear Fun show at The Black Cat is a landmark memory), The Orwells, Action Bronson at the Howard Theater, WU LYF (I will love them forever), UMO, White Denim, …the list goes on. I felt just on the cusp. I wanted to belong. (There I said it.) But never did. I hate being told what to read or write about, especially if I’m being assigned a music review. Those were always like pulling fingernails, and for free. My heart was never in it. I wanted to say what I wanted, and still do, and not give any fucks, and still do. (I’m still here!) I complained a lot about Pitchfork, ahem, The Fork, and like many things in that era of my life, my overly public attitude about these things likely kept me away from participating. (I was a scene of a person, and it was a mess.) I’ll never know because I never tried. I’m just some fan, what can you say.

But I started this site to, lol, reply to Pitchfork. I had something to say. I wanted to contribute. I still do. And I’m still here, in charge, for free. Let’s blog.

I wrote to escape my job, and wrote at work in my cube. I would write before work (what is that witchcraft?!): wake up, make and drink an entire french press of coffee, and read the front page of The Music Internet, write something, hit publish, go to work, share it, and watch a few people chime in (eventually). Briefly, I wrote for a site called Chunky Glasses (that approached me, having found my site) and edited my voice so bad even my dad called to say some blog about an indie band (god knows what I was writing about, oh wait it was likely Titus Andronicus) didn’t sound anything like me. I used clippings from this site to apply to graduate school…and it worked. I submitted pieces about Odd Future and gatekeeping and my vinyl collection and got into an MFA program (and away from my corporate, soul-sucking music programming job, the most fulfilling work I’ve ever known!). I wrote about Jack White releasing a song by balloon, about my monster fangirl crush on Jack White, and how I crossed state lines two different times to see him on the Blunderbuss tour (that album is really good, you guys, it’s a shame his solo stuff sucks now. He needs to stick to producing.). I was at the inception of the Firefly Festival in Delaware (Hi, I’m In Delaware) and he took his shoes off in the rain; it was the all-male band, and I understood in that moment why women throw their underwear at rock stars. (I spent a lot of time on this site writing about JW.) Then Spectrum Culture found me (through my site) and didn’t offer to pay me to review Jonathan Rado’s debut LP, Man Man’s On Oni Pond, and some other stuff. But then I stopped writing for free and started writing for myself, again.

And then I started experimenting. I told myself music writing can be anything you want it to be. This is when I stopped paying attention and started writing about music in a new way, bringing music questionnaires into my nonfiction workshops and …getting away with it. I wrote a lot about hip-hop and Kendrick Lamar, and put it on my site because why the hell not. I’m in charge here.

I wrote, briefly, for Philly dot com, mostly about White Fence (psych rock forever) and Kurt Vile. But when the Vile review went live a commentor said I had misspelled the album’s name throughout and in the headline, and no one caught it. I had to email them, begging for them to change things. Being unedited and unpaid and unchecked sounds great, but it’s not. It’s taken me years to learn how to edit myself (lol) (sleep on it!) but I’ve never been much of an editor, and I’ve never actually worked with one. Can you tell?

(During graduate school I was an intern for The Talkhouse for 10 months, unpaid! They said uhhh there would likely be a job. There wasn’t. I did free work for them and got to meet Michael Azerrad, one of my heroes (never meet your heroes) and discovered the music journalism of Zachary Lipez who is a genius and I’ll read anything he writes. I don’t have the money to subscribe to Creem but it is fitting he is there. I fucking love it.)

I never tried to review for Pitchfork. I once pitched The Pitch but failed and never went back. Freelancing has never been my game. I am not the kind of person that can do work and eventually get paid. I like a paycheck, and I like to punch in and punch out. I stopped writing about music conventionally and stopped reading reviews. I lost touch. I spent a year writing a manuscript called I’m Gonna Be Almost Famous about how much I wanted to be William Miller when I grew up, about how left out I felt, how just on the sidelines my life felt as a music writer. It later became an essay, which I published here, because I barely tried to “place” it or pitch it because I still have no idea what I’m doing, refuse to confirm or be told what to write, so I just blog it. (I did pitch it to an actual editor I took a summer workshop with who connected me with someone at Longreads. They said no.)

In 2019 I started contributing to Albumism, a site that never paid me for my work, for years. (To my knowledge no one makes money from it, not even EIC, founder, and writer Justin, which sucks but also: free content?) When I pitched my list of anniversary write-ups, all twenty of them were “accepted.” Because I was a dumbass, I didn’t realize four or five few thousand word (completely unedited, not fact- or spell-checked) pieces a month was a uhhh bad idea, or overwhelming, until the deadline list hit me. I cranked them out and wrote some of my most favorite stuff over there: on Floyd’s The Wall, on Scorsese and Let It Bleed, on Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York, on Bitte Orca, lots of Zeppelin, my dad, Neil Young, The Go! Team, and my Abbey Road Is The Most Psychedelic Beatles Album retrospective.

(Court & Spark is turned 50 on January 17th, 2024, and something I wrote in late 2018 is being edited and republished right now, poppin’ off online.)

Wow this is turning into a long list of all the places that never paid me for my writing and work. What an experience. The point of these stories is, Pitchfork was a guiding light. Whether or not I liked it or agreed with it, it was there. The steady hand. What are people listening to? How are we writing about these sounds? I watched it change from white boy guitar rock into the queer, multi-genre, international coverage site that we know today. I used to judge people based on their music tastes. It was my whole personality for a while, and took a long time to unlearn. I know most of it is still in me, but I know how to use my edit button now. (Not on the blog though, haha, suckers.) Working in music programming, blogging during blog-era music, (whatever the fuck that is, still, I don’t know… it seems to mean a certain “era” now, ten years later. JFC.) I was all miffy when I started this blog, yelling into the void WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE?! Well, they were Pitchfork.

My favorite Pitchfork-adjacent story (which I’ll allow myself here because it’s my blog) is when I read Lindsey Zoladz’s review of Grimes’ Visions in 2012, and then continuously read anything she would write. (Oh my god, Claire, you’re going to have three children with Elon!!!!!!!!! WHEW! Wow. Writing that sentence is like watching The War Room (1993) and seeing James Carville with hair and a young Hillary while present life seizes before your eyes. It’s overwhelming.) After Visions, that’s when I started reading by byline. I was already reading anything BNM (back before it was Best New Album). I followed along in LZ’s Ordinary Machines column and had my Fiona awakening along with everyone else who hadn’t yet, and then realized we circled around each other, growing up in the same NJ area, she went to American and lived in DC while I was up to my neck in music libraries at SXM, and then she moved to NYC, and years later, I interviewed her for a project I never finished: an anthology of interviews with women music journalists. (I also interviewed Jenn Pelly. Jenn, your 33 1/3 on The Raincoats changed me.) Then she went from Pitchfork to being, briefly, New York Magazine’s pop music critic before a long run at The Ringer (or is that reversed?), and now she is at The New York Times. I love you, Lindsey, and can’t wait for your book, Fear of a Female Genius.

I have something to say, about music specifically. Which is why I blog. But also, I read. When I grew into manuscript writing, I lost my music writing bug. But when I was ready to start up again, reading Pitchfork reviews was like going back to ballet class to get back in shape: what are people talking about? How are they talking about it? What’s the structure here? What’s the sound of this review? What does this sound like? I will read anything that strikes my fancy, still, and usually always the lead review. Like choosing a wine, I read reviews of any record with a wild cover. What does it sound like? How do we talk about this?

Reading Pitchfork for all these years confirmed that to me that music writing can be anything you want it to be. Sometimes they are formulaic. And you’re not always going to agree with what they’re publishing. But reading Pitchfork for over a decade changed my relationship to music, to writing, and to music writing, three things that are the core of my identity. My theory about writing is: as long as the writing is great, the subject will be interesting. And my theory about music writing is: good music writing should make you want to listen to the record. I watched from the sidelines. I longed to belong. But now…to what?

I started this blog because I wanted to have a voice on The Music Internet; to be in conversation with The Fork lol long before Condé bought it. And then Condé bought it, which made me question their editorial power more. And now, this week Condé (Hi, Anna!) folded it under GQ (of all things!!!!!! because when I think GQ, I think music journalism!!!!!). The outpouring of love, grief, reward, disappointment, relief, profound sadness, job loss, and confirmation that the machine will eat us all is overpowering. If you have your own little corner of the internet–book internet, film twitter, sports ball–you know when something is happening, because it consumes you, it’s all anyone is talking about. Fans of all genres have come out to say how much the site has meant to them. All the writers I’ve been following for years (some older than me, mostly now they’re all younger, and worse, many my age: proof I didn’t work hard enough) are losing their jobs and I hope I get to keep reading their writing. I hope you are all taking care of yourselves. (I also hope you all start blogs.)

Jessica Hopper’s Instagram story this week really shook me to my core. Remember when she was EIC? I will follow you into hell, Jessica. These stories are bananas.

This meandering blog post is how much Pitchfork meant to me. A new era of The Fork is upon us. I don’t know what it will look like and it seems like no one does, not yet.

My favorite thing I hope that stays is the Sunday Review. I look forward to it every week. (OK, I read it nine times out of ten.) I want to learn about all the music. I want to find the missing link. I want to write a Sunday Review. How far ahead does the production schedule go?

Thank you to all the people who feel like my friends from the internet I just haven’t met yet: the Jeremys, Jill, Ian, Jessica Hopper, Lindsey, Jenn Pelly, Marc Hogan, Dylan Green, Amanda Petrusich, Mark, Alphonse, Stuart Berman, Nina, Philip, Eric, Madison, Julianne E., Brad Shoup, Andy, Marc, Judy Berman, etc etc etc. I’ve been reading you all along, and the other stuff you write and post. Thank you for your work. I can’t wait to see what comes next. Your work has meant more to me than I realize.

Music is also a conversation. Please let’s keep it going. That’s all I wanted to blog. Have something to say. Show me something. What’s your most dangerous music opinion? I’ll go first. The Beach Boys are a novelty band and their only good album is The Beach Boys Christmas Album (1964). @ me. I love you all.