Music Journalism Unit

1. Music Journalism Unit

2. "Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read.” Frank Zappa

3. Music criticism comprises the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of music and its performance. • Popular music journalists write about music and artists in various fields, from jazz and folk music to rock music, rhythm and blues, hip-hop and pop. • Popular music journalism has a tendency to focus on additional, non-musical topics such as fashion, style and lifestyle and youth culture generally. Magazines featuring such journalism include Rolling Stone and New Musical Express. Music websites such as Pitchfork also feature quality criticism.

4. Textual Analysis:How Do We ‘Read’ A Song? You may not think of a song as a text, but it has all the elements you would find in other more traditional literary mediums, such as: • A Story/Characters/Setting, etc. • Words • Structure • Literary Techniques, e.g. Rhythm/Rhyme/Alliteration/Imagery, etc. It is even possible for an instrumental piece to tell a story, for instance, in classical music.

5. How does a music journalist listen to music? A music journalist analyses music in terms of: • musical content(melody, beat, arrangement, etc) • lyrical content(subject matter, themes, tone, etc) • external factors(artist’s lifestyle, image, reputation, etc)

6. “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” Elvis Costello (…although he claims not to have invented the phrase and no-one knows for sure who did!)

7. The rare art of good music journalismIt's not, as some have claimed, a ridiculous pursuit. But it's not easy to find. The quip "writing about music is like dancing about architecture – it's a stupid thing to want to do" is usually attributed to Elvis Costello. But the great songwriter has denied saying it and I don't blame him – it's a daft thing to say. In a recent article for the Guardian, John Harris caught the excitement of great rock journalism: " …the fast-turning pop-cultural wheel, ink coming off on your fingers, the old idea of the righteous and precious existing in the midst of cheapness and absurdity …“ An excerpt from a Guardian article by John Keenan.

8. The Power of the Music Video You are going to watch a music video and analyse its effectiveness in conveying the ideas of the song.

9. You are going to write a 100 wordpiece on the video for 7Nation Army by The White Stripes. • Be imaginative: make the words on the page describe what you see and hear. • Experiment with the structure of your 100 words – vary sentence structure and paragraph where effective. • Write as the video plays and don’t write once it’s over.

10. Time To Dance About Architecture You are going to write an 800 word piece of music journalism. You can be either positive or negative but you must go into depth to explain your point of view. The piece can take any of the following formats: • A single/album/music DVD review • A report on a concert • An interview (slightly trickier...) • A personal experience essay where a song ‘sound-tracked’ what was happening.