Back in 2021, Pitchfork released a list of 19 albums with updated ratings that they made sure to state were not canon, whatever that means. The introduction to the list waxes poetic about how our feelings about art are always changing, but makes a point to close on the fact that they’re not actually altering the reviews as they were originally published, just sharing some new perspectives. Apparently critique is fluid and malleable but only not really.
I was thinking about this list again after last weekend’s discourse regarding the new boygenius album, The Record, which was mostly well-received (even Pitchfork itself gave the album 8.2/10) - but there are always going to be detractors. I feel almost proud that I managed to avoid seeing what people were actually complaining about, and instead mostly witnessed a load of conversation on social media around the value of music criticism.
Generally, I think criticism has value. When I was creating sports stories for Sports Illustrated Weekly, the feedback I was getting from the rest of the team was invaluable to me - especially because we were a group of people who liked to consume this kind of content, not just make it. Any critique you solicit from your actual audience or customer base is going to be valuable - provided they’re willing to be honest with you.
I would never in a million years refer to what I write here (or anywhere for that matter) as “criticism”. I am not a musician; my assessment of what I do and do not enjoy in music is based entirely in how it makes me feel and has nothing to do with music theory or knowledge of instruments (although, my audio background will prevent me from enjoying something that’s mixed bizarrely.) The thing about exploring music based on your feeling is that it exists in a series of singular, fleeting moments and is therefore ever-changing, unlike the art itself which is static. How could I possibly give a rating to Sign O’ the Times or The Shape of Punk to Come when tomorrow I might (and almost definitely will) feel completely differently about it?
I like to get my music recommendations from three places - first, I have a soft spot for BB6 radio in the UK. Their late night (local time) programming got me through a lot of bad times over the past 7 years and I’ve found a lot of fantastic bands and songs that way. Most often, though, new things that I fall in love with are a result of someone directly telling me to try it. Many friends of mine have created playlists where we just drop anything “new” (read: new-to-us) into a giant receptacle for anyone to revisit or explore at will. My text messages are full of direct links to songs on streaming platforms - often with absolutely no explanation of why I should listen. But if someone took the time to send me something, I can only assume they are either a) wildly passionate about it or b) it made them think of me - both options being equally motivating. The third place I source new things to fall in love with is a new method, something I only started doing recently, but it’s kind of revolutionized the way I feel about music.
I’ve put a list together of artists and albums that I either didn’t listen to when they first came out, or did and couldn’t stand. Extra points if all my friends loved it, or it was from a band I adored but for some reason the music didn’t move me at the time. This is exactly how I ended up falling in love in 2022 with the fourth studio album from My Chemical Romance - Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. When the album was first released in the fall of 2010, I was not even remotely interested. I had been a massive MCR fan for more than 15 years, and felt disappointed in this release - it wasn’t what I wanted from them at all. It’s easy to look back now and think that a combination of my changing music tastes and that thing we do when we’re young (and hopefully grow out of) where we demand that bands never evolve past their major hits set me up to dismiss Danger Days before it was even released. I remember telling people after seeing them for the last time in 2011 that they’d become a pop act, catering to a much younger demographic and that I needed something harder/weirder/cooler. Yes, I’m cringing as I write this, dear reader. For shame.
Twelve years later, I gave the album another chance for no other reason than I knew the band was playing several of the Danger Days tracks on their reunion tour and I didn’t want to sulk through those songs like a child. I was already trying to be open-minded about the experience; I wanted to enjoy myself the entire time. My favorite band in the whole world had gotten back together and were playing huge shows nine years after breaking up (and two years after a global-fucking-pandemic, by the way); I was not going to let my feelings about 15 tracks stop me from having the best time of my life. Spoiler alert: I fell in love. Hard.
I have to come back, now, to my earlier point that art itself doesn’t change but you do. There are a lot of bands from my teenagers years whose lyrics don’t just suggest but clearly champion misogynistic or homophobic tendencies. At the time, we sang along - loud - but now as society and we as individuals have changed our attitudes and learned to lead with empathy. Those lyrics feel sour in our mouths even though the songs themselves may be intrinsically intertwined with key moments of our formative years. The reverse is what happened to me with Danger Days. It turns out that I wasn’t ready for that album. At 23 years old, I wasn’t in the headspace for what My Chem was offering me - I didn’t really know what loss was or longing or love; I had not grown up.
Can I now clearly see a natural evolution from The Black Parade to Danger Days? Of course. I also see a reflection of current society in the post-apocalyptic world imagined by the band. I see our consumerism, alienation, and oppression in the lyrics - “fame is now injectable”, “I think we’d rather be/burning your information”, “not a victim of a victim’s life”. But there are other things in there, too - love and hope and friendship. After the U.S. leg of the tour was over, I found myself drawn to the track “The Kids From Yesterday” because of the chorus. I could not help but see a parallel between myself and the words “you can only hear the music when your heart begins to break”. We’ve all been through a lot the last few years, and in the twelve-and-a-half years since the album was released, I’ve had my heart broken many, many times. Is that why it moves me now? What if I’d closed myself off to this all those years ago and never bothered to try again? I’d have missed out on so much, and something that I can now say that I love. What if I’d given a rating to this album (probably a -2; I was so obnoxious back then) and had to stick with it for the rest of my life?
I highly recommend going back to things you wrote off a long time ago and giving them another spin. You never know what you’re going to find. That’s not to say there aren’t going to be songs and albums that you put on and go “no, I still hate this.” There’s nothing wrong with not liking something, either. But to write something off entirely and forever, that’s like being a music critic who forgets what the Byrds stole from the bible:
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.”