Music critics pass up reviewing major pop artists over fear of backlash

[LaLuna 12,732]

1 hour ago, Poker said:

The whole idea of a review of an album doesn’t make sense to me. I think it needs to stop.

Not just albums, but arts in general. Personally I never read movie reviews either. If a movie looks interesting, I'll watch it, if it sucks, then too bad, not the end of the world. Not gonna lie, when I was younger I wanted to be a music or movie critic, but now I realize how useless that kind of job is 

[mightyriverz 2,587]

the barbz are a gang and they deserve "death to all of them" as in Wendy Williams

[Cameltoe Chariot 15,139]

The way you can't criticize a single thing about Beyonce without her fanbase immediately declaring you a violent racist... I believe it.

The only fanbase these critics DON'T have to worry about is Gaga's - no one criticizes her more than Little Managers™️ 

[phantasmas 10,473]

How are these critics gonna be afraid of a bunch on tw!nks behind a keyboard 

[Teletubby 148,457]

1 minute ago, phantasmas said:

How are these critics gonna be afraid of a bunch on tw!nks behind a keyboard 

stans can get personal information, phone numbers to harass critics. Jillian Mapes, who rated folklore 8/10, received phone calls in the middle of the night and death threats from Swifties because Taylor's Metacritic score fell.

[Meat 18,962]

18 minutes ago, phantasmas said:

How are these critics gonna be afraid of a bunch on tw!nks behind a keyboard 

Because of stuff like this:

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/nicki-minaj-vaccine-twitter-b1922754.html?amp

https://globalnews.ca/news/4323399/nicki-minaj-fans-attack-canadian-writer-wanna/amp/thank 

[2School4Cool 6,434]

I know that it sucks to read a bad review of your favorite album, you get defensive of it and say the critic is wrong, that happens. But for there to be such major backlash that critics refuse to review albums says a lot about how cruel people can be when it comes to musical opinions. Just because an album gets a bad review doesn’t mean the album is bad, just because an album gets praise doesn’t mean you have to like it. But threatening to destroy the career of the critic who gave a harsh review is too much.

Not that this is the same thing, but even on this site I feel the need to say “don’t hate me” or justify my taste in music when it’s something this site doesn’t generally like. Can’t we all just stay in our lane and listen to what makes us happy? People take music too seriously, we can’t control how a song makes us feel or how our ears respond to it. 

[GAGAVENUS 591]

Been saying this and it's crazy how relatively newer acts like Dua and Harry (his solo career only three albums in) are praised so much for songs that sound nice but don't bring much to the table at all

[GAGAVENUS 591]

It's also interesting how Gaga is not immune to bad reviews...they hold her to such a high standard that it's almost flattering because they take her seriously

[freebit 6,240]

The best thing to do if you're an honest critic is not have a twitter, though that might be hard these days because social media acts as a promotional tool, and writing is not exactly an easy profession to make money in. 

As far as music critics go, in one way I do sympathize with them, on another hand I think a lot them tend to fall in line with each other, and if something is "uncool", then a music critic is far more likely to just go with the rest of their peers (Ed Sheeran, Charlie Puth). They seem to have far less of a backbone than film critics IMO. I wonder if some of that might have to do with this being after effects of film ciritcs like Pauline Kael who used to critique other critics and call them out if she found they were being too pretenious or riding a unnecessary hate bandwagon. She especially would go in on all those auteur theory dudes, quote their articles, and make them look stupid.  Music criticism has never had that kind of reckoning. 

I think there are solutions for this 21st century problem: don't go on twitter, maybe come up with a fake name, or have "staff of Rolling Stone" as the byline or whatever. I do wonder if negative reviews or positive reviews get more clicks? I would think negative reviews would actually get more engagement, which is what the publications want. It will be interesting to see if the publications start trying to protect their writers from doxxing. I think it would probably be in the critics and publications best interest. Though, I could see where there could be a situation where a writer ends up making a name for themselves by being fearless. 

2 hours ago, Cameltoe Chariot said:

The way you can't criticize a single thing about Beyonce without her fanbase immediately declaring you a violent racist... I believe it.

The only fanbase these critics DON'T have to worry about is Gaga's - no one criticizes her more than Little Managers™️ 

This reminds me of when I was writing about why I think Beyonce got so much backlash about wearing the TIffany diamond compared to Gaga and got called racist.  (Basically my opinion was that the criticism of her was coming from actual African fans who were disapointed in her, vs. Gaga who never remotely dipped her toe into the blood diamond or colonization discourse. I included no criticism of Beyonce at all, literally just stated what I saw happening on twitter. )

15 minutes ago, GAGAVENUS said:

It's also interesting how Gaga is not immune to bad reviews...they hold her to such a high standard that it's almost flattering because they take her seriously

I wonder if some of this has anything to do with how her PR is. Just remembering that whole dustup of Taylor's team giving a journalist tickets and perks. Said journalist left a middling review with some criticisms of Taylor's concert - once there was no quo, there was no more quid for that journalist, lol.

[Suuus 5,632]

7 hours ago, 27monster27 said:

Exactly this. There is a review from NME for Britney's debut album where they said that they wanted her to grow up on drugs or something like that.

Oh wow thats absolutaly disgusting 

[Suuus 5,632]

3 hours ago, Meat said:

Because of stuff like this:

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/nicki-minaj-vaccine-twitter-b1922754.html?amp

https://globalnews.ca/news/4323399/nicki-minaj-fans-attack-canadian-writer-wanna/amp/thank 

This is such a ****ed up and vile thing to do nicky minaj should be ashamed of herself 

[Luv u Sum 2,347]

11 hours ago, alfio said:

If a critic refuses to write an honest review over fear of backlash, they should just quit???

Or... they can still write with integrity while the magazine protects the author by not publishing their name. This makes the magazine stand firmer on their reviews.

missing the point entirely 

[androiduser 7,438]

Gaga haters claim that critics are afraid of Gaga stans

[alfio 97]

9 hours ago, Mr Mendes said:

Nobody should have to choose between their job and their mental health and safety. The issue does not lay with the critics, it lays entirely with stans.

While I agree with you on this, this is very idealistic. The bitter reality, however, which the magazines (and the article) also accepted, is that they cannot police the stans (bec no one can) and their critics has to write a overly praising reviews instead of being honest.

When the integrity is being compromised, and what was written is dishonest, it is not doing the job as a critic. Hence, I said they should just quit entirely.

Since we cannot police the stans, what the magazines are failing to do is protecting their critics. Which is why I suggested that they should own up to the honest review as an institution instead of putting somebody's name in the publishes.