How an album review made me question the conformity of music journalism

Reviewing albums in 2019 is a slightly odd endeavour. You wonder sometimes if there’s any point – do people actually care what critics think of a full-length release, when statistics suggest they barely have the attention span to listen to the album itself? Yet it is still part of the job, and one that I enjoy as I sit down and spend quality time with a piece of music, and contemplate it for a while.

That said, there are also moments where reviewing an album can make you doubt yourself – such as when you seem to be on a completely different page to everyone else. This happened to me this week, when I pressed play on Billie Eilish’s album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?

There’s a lot of hype around music these days. Much of it is due to the hyperbole that dogs social media. You could also put it down to the fact that critics – and fans – are desperate to discover the elusive “next big thing”, whether to be there first or simply to see something they love go on to enjoy success.

However, I worry that it affects how critics approach the album review.

For the past year Eilish has been held up as one of the great hopes for the music industry. And sure enough, her new release has received enormous praise.

Maybe people genuinely did love this record; maybe for once my instinct for what I think is “good” music let me down. But as I played it, I was so wrong-footed, and felt so misled by the reviews and conversation around this artist, that I spent a sleepless night wondering whether I’d been overly harsh in my gut response.

But no. I went back to the album, had the same, almost physical reaction to the music, and went with my instincts.

I don’t doubt that many critics genuinely like this record. But this incident has revived my fear that we have found ourselves in a culture where we are so petrified of being the dissenting – or different – voice, that we are shy away from expressing our true opinions.

Music fans deserve better than sub-par albums. And they deserve more than critics who dole out praise where it is not warranted, simply because they don’t want to be the one standing on the outside.

Yours,

Roisin O’Connor
Music correspondent