This Might Not Be Your Thing, But...

a.k.a. Obligation versus objectivity in music journalism.

Last week, an artist manager here in Barcelona (who’s also an old friend) sent me a link to the debut LP from a new act he’s working with, and included the following note:

“Not sure if it’s your cup of tea, but he’s one of the new generation of electronic acts coming from Spain.”

He was right. I didn’t much like the music, and have no plans to cover it. I doubt the guy who sent it to me will be particularly surprised or disappointed by that, and as PR platitudes go, what he wrote was nothing out of the ordinary, although his honesty (i.e. the upfront acknowledgment that I may not actually like the album in question) is something I’d actually love to see a lot more often. (As someone who usually receives hundreds of promo emails per week, the vast majority of them making over-the-top claims about the paradigm-shifting nature of the music being presented, I feel confident saying that pretty much anything that’s said within the context of a PR pitch should be taken with an enormous grain of salt.)

At the same time, this particular pitch wasn’t entirely innocuous. There’s a subtext to it, one that basically says, “You may not like this, but you should know that this artist is important, so regardless of how you feel about the music, maybe you ought to cover it.” To be clear, I don’t think that the email—or any of the countless similar ones I’ve previously received—was meant to be malicious or dismissive, but it does convey a perspective that feels increasingly common in today’s cultural landscape: that the job of music journalists is not to rely upon (let alone share) their own thoughts and opinions, but to report on and amplify artists, trends, sounds and stories that are already making waves out in the world.