Music reviewers don't need to exist.

Trying to describe music in words is about as effective as making a painting of your emotions.

You might as well try to describe music in pictures:

You can read a 2,000 word description of a song and you still won't know for sure what it sounds like, at best you'll have a vague idea. Even if somebody is very precise and says "the bass motif's a romanesca while the street funk is performed in legato" you won't exactly be able to hear the song in your head. A music review, AT BEST can only tell you whether the critic liked the album or not. It can't tell you what the album actually sounds like nearly as well as listening to the album can.

If a reviewer calls a song "fast and catchy" that describes like 30 percent of all the songs in existence. If a reviewer gets more specific and calls it a "fast, catchy and bratty post-feminist anthem" that still describes like 30 percent of all the songs in existence.

Beyond extreme generalities like saying whether an album is fast, mid tempo or slow and whether it is under or over produced, a music critic can't tell you anything about the way the music sounds simply because music is not told, it is heard.

At least the reviewer can do a good job describing the lyrics! Unfortunately, there's hardly ever a good reason to analyze an album's lyrics. That's because, in any given genre, almost all albums discuss the same topics in the same ways:

The reviewer can just say "this is an emo band" and we already know what the lyrics will be about. If an album reviewer analyzes lyrics, all of his reviews will become the same one review over and over again:

You can't properly describe the sound of the songs with words and there's no point in talking about the lyrics of the songs since most lyrics are interchangeable, so the only thing that's left for music reviewers to discuss is the bands' personal life. That's why nowadays, professional music reviews are written in the style of tabloid gossip. They're basically just gossip masquerading as music criticism. They all start with something like:

After Anita Dickson had her massive country hit "The Cowboys have Disappeared (so I’m fucking the dog)" the animal-humping-honey divorced her husband and decided to enjoy her newfound liberation by making her first disco album. After her core fan base rejected this new sound the troubled hillbilly singer famously fell into a heavy depression and became addicted to OxyContin. Now she’s back!

Three years later, Anita Dickson’s first post rehab album sounds like a countrified attempt to win back her old fan base. Those fans should be especially relieved to know that first single "Oops I did it Again (fucked the dog that is)" is done in the exact same style as her old hits…

If you read that whole piece of tabloid fluff pretending to be music criticism, you'd still have no idea what Anita Dickson's new album sounds like. If you saved your time and actually listened to Anita Dickson's single from her myspace page, you'd know much sooner and surer whether or not her carnal, canine fuckfest singalongs are right for you.

Of course, it is always possible that reviewers mostly write about the musicicans' personal lives instead of their music (in what is supposed to be a music review) because their personal lives have scandal and excitement while their music is bland and barely worth mentioning.

Click here to read some extra hate mongering on music reviewers that I thought wasn't good enough to make the article but wasn't bad enough to delete.