Revisionist (Music) History

Pitchfork recently announced that they were re-scoring 19 albums-or rather they would if they could.

The intro to the article sets it up this way:

The truth is we are always litigating how we feel about a piece of music, revising opinions based on context, culture, who we’ve become, who we once were. We can’t change what we said, but we are almost always changing how we feel about it in ways both small and large.

I agree that how we feel about music—or specific records— is constantly shifting. There are records I loved 20 years ago (or even earlier this year) that I can’t stand today. Likewise, some grow on you with time. Nothing new or different here.

And yet I can’t help but think that changing what we said is precisely what the site wants to do.

These adjustments are born out of conversations we have all the time here on staff, much like the conversations you, our dear opinionated reader, have as well. They are hypothetical, which is to say, not canon, but rather a fun little diversion, a conversation-starter

Framing it as a fun little exercise provides more cover than if they’d simply said they want to revise reviews. That would’ve at least been intellectually honest.

This article comes across the same way as when someone tests the waters asking something, only to say it was a joke if received poorly.

As I read it, I kept being reminded of the kid that hates a record, only to see it become huge. Suddenly they liked it all along (or vice versa).

I get that everything is ephemeral—especially online— but putting a record critique in writing is a commitment. It’s an opinion, but one based on their mix of objective and subjective criteria that were fixed in place at the time of writing.

It’s something that a reader assumes a reviewer will stand by

Of course, it’s okay for tastes to change, or for a reviewer to miss the mark. What is not okay is taking license to permanently alter that record to reflect the zeitgeist.

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Flashback: