RIPitchfork

Mixed feelings on the death of a taste making giant

Late last week, news broke that Pitchfork would be absorbed into GQ, as part of consolidation efforts by publishing villains Conde Nast. I have a lot of feelings about this. Pitchfork has never been my go-to, but it has always been a reference point and, at the very least, its reviewers were not afraid to go against public consensus. Pitchfork’s general ethos seemed, at times, to be contrarianism or provocatism, but other times they seemed sincere in effort to shine light on less popular artists and to eschew covering the biggest names in music. Let the below loose collection of thoughts serve as my eulogy.

My story with Pitchfork begins in the spring of 2009. I was 14 years old and really into Green Day. My excitement level for the then-forthcoming 21st Century Breakdown was actually at a pretty reasonable level but for the sake of this narrative, we will say that it was immeasurably high. Back in those caveman days, we couldn’t just stream new releases on Spotify and had to actually go out and acquire that shit. Or buy it on iTunes. But mom wouldn’t let me use the credit card on iTunes, so I pretty much had to buy CDs. Didn’t learn how to rip audio from YouTube videos until later.

ANYWAY, 14-year-old me wanted to hear this album so bad but he couldn’t. All he could do was look at reviews. In generally, they were on the mixed-positive side. Lotta 3s and 3.5s, ya dig? But there was one outlet who disagreed. Pitchfork, whose numerical score I can remember off the top of my head without even doing my usual cursory glance at Wikipedia. 4.8/10. Four. Point. Eight. Out. of. Ten. I was outraged. Who were they to stand in such stark contrast to the faceless music media juggernaut?

Flash forward: that summer, my grandmother took me to a Hot Topic in Anderson, South Carolina, where I finally got my hands on the album. I listened to it in the car on the way home, excited as can be. It was not very good. Maybe not a 4.8/10, but like, definitely not a good or even above average album, in my opinion.

That 4.8 has always stayed with me though, because I think it’s honestly an absurdity. Pitchfork’s scale technically ran from 1-10, but the inclusion of decimal points made it more akin to a 100-point scale. There was never any clear methodology to how scores were determined, they just seemed to go off a vibe check by the author. What separates a 4.8 from a 4.2? We can all agree that neither is a good score, right? What nebulous source can there be for that missing 0.6? On the other end of the scale, why is the 9.8 album not a 10?

At the same time, Pitchfork was perhaps the only music outlet that consistently made use of the full range of its scale. Go look at old reviews from Allmusic, Rolling Stone, Consequence, or any other major site. Just about every album by a major artist will receive, as a baseline, between a 3 and 3.5 out of 5. It’s a certain laziness that comes up all too often in criticism. The low end of the scale rarely comes into play, for reasons that are pretty readily apparent; if Rob Sheffield just really hates that new release from Taylor Swift, it’s not in Rolling Stone’s best interest to say so, lest they potentially miss out on the massive sales from a future Taylor interview on the cover. Pitchfork, by never attempting to be within the mainstream, was able to create at least a basic air of objectivity, though it was largely wasted by attempts at edge lord humor. In regard to Jet’s 2006 album, Shine On, Wikipedia says it best:

“Critical reaction to the album was mixed. British music magazine NME, for instance, called the record "another joyfully old-fashioned rock 'n' roll album immersed in the classics", while AllMusic gave the album 3.5 stars out of 5 as a solid if undistinguished second effort. In contrast, the American review site Pitchfork posted a review containing only a video clip of a chimpanzee urinating into its own mouth, along with a score of 0.0 out of a possible 10.

Yet, Pitchfork also inspired me to actually look for new music instead of what was being served up on the radio. “If these guys think Green Day sucks, let’s see what they think is better!” I cried, pubescent and gross. And the thing about it was, often as not, the music onto which Pitchfork heaped praise was more than worthy of my time.