I Won’t Miss Pitchfork
And they won’t miss me
I’m biased. Although I’d produced over 50 records during the Pitchfork era, their journalists only mentioned my work in passing a sprinkling of times. None of my seven full-length albums caught but a glance, let alone one of their coveted point ratings. My work exists outside the purview of Pitchfork-cool.
As an artist, music curator, and writer myself, I understand the need for snobbery to determine the lanes of operation. To be honest, the feeling is mutual. Pitchfork articles haven’t wound up on my radar much either.
Kvetching aside though, I deeply respect the impact that Pitchfork’s journalists have had on culture over the past 25 years. I’ve had my share of enlightening fun at their well-curated festivals too.
The recent news that Pitchfork’s parent company, the global media giant Condé Nast, will be folding the publication under their Men’s magazine GQ strikes me as both surprising and sad. GQ? Why would they want to alienate a large part of their fanbase who identify outside of male gender norms?
Meanwhile, the coinciding layoffs have left a group of talented journalists cut off from their work thinking and writing deeply about music; a disservice to their livelihoods and culture more generally.
Almost more surprising though, is that it took Condé Nast nearly a decade to make this move. I assumed all hell would break lose much more quickly after the 2015 acquisition.
Pitchfork has had an outsized influence, essentially serving as the tastemaker-in-chief for an entire generation of music fans and industry leaders.
Their efforts to become more inclusive have been admirable over the years. Back in 2004, when the NY Times published Kelefa Sanneh’s seminal piece “The Rap Against Rockism,” Pitchfork was still primarily focused on indie-rock. Within a few years though, as their readership exploded, they began to follow Sanneh’s lead and became more poptimistic. Throughout the 2010s they continued to increase coverage of various other genres too, even though rock always reigned supreme.
Through it all, my music discovery has generally happened elsewhere.
I don’t want serious, insightful music journalism to go away, and this seismic shift threatens that legacy, but I’m hopeful that it might also open new opportunities, perhaps back outside the influence of mega, global media companies.
Publications like Downbeat, Cream, Rolling Stone, Spin, and The Source each had their moment as the voice of a generation. Pitchfork has been no different, except for its role in defining that music journalism could function beyond physical paper. But after a quarter century, the venerable publication feels a bit like a relic from the halcyon days of music blogging.
I don’t have a crystal ball for what comes next, but I’m cautiously optimistic about the potential for something better, or at least good. Just as the concept of an online music zine probably seemed absurd to Boomers raised on Rolling Stone, I don’t doubt that Millennials, Gen Z-ers, and Gen Alphas are already, and will continue to, carve out spaces for music criticism (beyond TikTok) that we Gen Xers of the Pitchfork era won’t fully grasp. I’m curious to see where it goes.
In the meantime, I’ll continue to appreciate an occasional article like this recent Longform piece on Shitpost Modernism. Maybe I will miss Pitchfork a little bit.
