I am now a year (plus a couple of weeks) into my first professional (non-academic) music writing job as a columnist for MusicRadar.
Most of the columns so far have been assignments from my editor Matt. Once I got the hang of things, I started pitching more ideas too, most of which Matt has agreed to. Here’s the breakdown so far.
Assigned by Matt:
- Is pop being dumbed down?
- Kraftwerk, “Autobahn”
- Three songs from Brat by Charli XCX
- Beyoncé, “Texas Hold ‘Em”
- Brian Eno, Ambient 1: Music For Airports
- Prince, “When Doves Cry”
- Paul McCartney, “Wonderful Christmastime”
- Bob Dylan, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”
- Why pop bangers are so weird
- Oasis, “Wonderwall”
- Jeff Buckley, “Lilac Wine”
- Amy Winehouse, “Back to Black”
- Billie Eilish, “What Was I Made For”
- Tracy Chapman, “Fast Car”
- The Beatles, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”
Things I pitched:
- Roberta Flack, “Killing Me Softly”
- Doechii, “Denial is a River” and “Boiled Peanuts”
- Sabrina Carpenter, “Espresso”
- Chappell Roan, “Good Luck Babe!”
- My top five Phil Lesh basslines
- Michael Jackson, “Wanna Be Startin’ Something”
Matt chooses the titles, images and pull quotes. He occasionally trims things for length or clarity, but otherwise his editorial touch is light. There isn’t really a schedule; something happens in the news that gives Matt or me a column idea, I turn it around in a week or two, it goes live on the site within a day, I get paid immediately, everybody’s happy.
Sometimes I draw on older writing, but most of these columns have been brand new material. Matt has assigned me several songs I was unfamiliar with or had just never thought about. (Looking at you, “Wonderwall.”) These have been my favorite columns to write, as it turns out. I would not have necessarily done all that analysis of Charli XCX songs on my own initiative, but now they are staples of my theory, aural skills and music tech classes.
A student asked me how I got this gig, and the answer is that Matt approached me. So, I guess, write a personal blog for twelve years and then someone might ask you to start doing it professionally? The form and tone are mostly how I would be writing anyway, but I do have some models that I draw on: Song Exploder, The Number Ones, 500 Songs, and Paul Thompson’s YouTube channel. This is not a list of every music writer/analyst I like, just the ones who are working in a format that is most similar to what MusicRadar wants from me.
So where is this going? I have no idea. Music journalism doesn’t seem any more sustainable or promising in the long term than music teaching does. But here I am. No part of this journey has been planned so far, so why start now?
I’ve read quite a few of these columns, my favourite is the science of dumb pop music. It was good to see the critical analysis of the first paper as there do seem to be many ways in which the way they thought about their analysis was not as safe as they might have hoped. Re. complexity, I wonder if this is more usefully examined from the listener’s perspective than from some metric. It is perfectly possible to have music that is technically complex but is not perceived that way and vice versa, and one would have to factor in the listener too. I also suspect that complexity for the listener is at least in part based on the interaction of the component parts, the instruments, and so on. Hope they hang onto you for more columns, it’s interesting work.
I agree with you, complexity is very much in the ear of the beholder. Your prior knowledge and experience is a huge factor. I used to find jazz to be completely mysterious, and now I only find it mildly mysterious, because I know a lot more about it. Music science would love to remove listener subjectivity from consideration, it would make their job a lot easier, but there is not much hope of ever doing that. Not all humans even hear octaves as being equivalent. The same person can experience the same piece of music differently at different times of the day. It’s an irreducibly high-dimensional problem.
You do a bloody good job