Advertisement

This is why it's not really about Sarah O'Holla at all, though I certainly sympathize with how she feels post-scrutiny. And in her defense, I want to say something: Coming at music like you don't know dick about it (pun intended) is a valid way to approach it. It's not traditional criticism, but it's useful. I've always hated the sense that there is only one way to talk about music. Decades of male-centric rock criticism — the obsessive, cataloging, record-collecting, liner-notes driven, grading variety — reminds me that we could use more writing that approaches music innocently. Too often, we forget what records are for anyway — cleaning your house, getting ready on Saturday night, going out for drinks, FUCKING DANCING. This is anathema to the traditional critic, who couldn't give a fuck what you play the record for, but this is why most people don't give a fuck how a record has been reviewed, either. Critics often appear to write to other critics, and that is why criticism often deserves every punch in the softballs it gets.

Advertisement

I bow to Christgau and Marcus like the rest of 'em like a good girl — but nothing made me want to write about music more than Rock She Wrote (co-authored by Ann Powers), the collection of decades of visceral, real-time, reckless first-person female takes on records and shows by people like Kim Gordon and Patti Smith. Buy it.

Advertisement

And as a counter to O'Holla's version of writing up records you've never heard, check out Anna Minard's "Never Heard of 'Em" column at The Stranger, which approaches records as a curious outsider: Anna Minard claims to "know nothing about music." For this column, we force her to listen to random records by artists considered to be important by music nerds.

Most people think art should be accessible, not to be put on a pedestal or pinned down or traded like baseball cards, but to be experienced viscerally. And so of course Minard feels the same sense of "doing it wrong" that plagues O'Holla's efforts.

Advertisement
Advertisement

I am not suggesting that this is a uniquely female way to approach music. I'm not saying women don't love liner notes and cataloging and trivia and record collections in temperature-controlled rooms. I have more records than my husband, who was in a nerd rock band and was also an audio engineer. I'm saying when women come at something men have traditionally left them out of, they can bring new insights and attitudes and considerations that expand the body of work in useful ways and that should not undermine anything. (See: Martha Gellhorn and war correspondence). This shouldn't be a criticism or "wrong" way to write about music.

Advertisement

Funny enough, the other day I heard about this feminist punk band blowing up called (wait for it) Perfect Pussy. In a recent interview with the singer Meredith Graves, I learned that she's also written about music, and she confirmed the same frustration with the same old insular way of writing about music that I grew up with and tried to deviate from:

Do you enjoy writing about music? 
Sort of. My favorite magazine has always been Maximum Rocknroll – I've been reading it since I was 12. But some of the people that review records for Maximum lived for that punk thing of, 'I know more about music than everybody else.' The only way you can review music is by saying it sounds like this band, then you get the fucking record and it doesn't sound anything like that. I want to hear, 'I listened to this record and it made me go out into my garage and eat half a box of ho hos and smash stuff.' That will get me to listen to a record. I think there needs to be a shift in music writing. Actually, no. I think everyone should be able to write about whatever they want, but I would like to see more people writing about music that write about it differently. I just want to hear about how the record made you feel.

Advertisement

Image via Ramona Kaulitski/Shutterstock.