Music Journalism As A Gateway To Empathic Listening

By: Leslie Ken Chu | Art by: Michael Rancic

When thinking about gatekeepers who mediate how audiences experience music, journalists usually spring to mind first. The job is frequently reduced to critics making sweeping generalizations about a work after a couple of cursory listens, then assigning a numerical or letter rating that the writer might change their mind about between filing the article and the article going online or to print. But music journalists possess a transformative power beyond being “tastemakers”—they open up new, empathetic ways for audiences to hear and understand music. Most importantly, the more writers understand a music’s history, the more deftly they can avoid replicating oppressive power dynamics, such as by calling out cultural appropriation.

“As we approach more and more ahistorical time, music journalism can help create an archive and a record of what is happening,” says Toronto-born country and folk musician Simone Schmidt, who works primarily under the stage name Fiver. “Similarly, music journalism can push past a sense of linear time or break with the canon and create pathways for people to listen back to older music.”

But the state of media—with the CBC cutting 10 percent of its workforce, the sales and subsequent gutting of Bandcamp, followed by the restructuring and layoffs at Pitchfork, the shuttering of Jezebel, and the pausing of admissions to Canadian journalism programs due to low enrolment, to name a few recent developments—compromises writers’ ability to exercise music journalism’s transformative power to its fullest. Faced with a lack of resources and bargaining power, music journalists—most of whom are freelancers—are more beholden than ever to their own set of power dynamics that influence how they work. Even those with some collective agreement, like CBC, Bandcamp, Pitchfork, and Jezebel, have had that power eroded. Publicists restrict access to coverage opportunities if they’re unhappy with something written about their clients. Editors reject pitches too critical of artists or industry trends, including the very apparatuses that enforce these same power dynamics.

Cedric Noel understands the issues and pressures that music journalists face from both a writer’s and musician’s perspective. While majoring in journalism at St. Thomas University, the Nigerian-born, Montréal-based purveyor of drifting pop-rock wrote about music for the campus paper, The Aquinas. Post-university, he ran an online magazine in Fredericton and worked in community radio, where much of the programming was music-based.

“There’s a lot of headline-chasing in a way that has made me lose interest in the form a little bit,” says Noel, who observes an increasing tendency to focus on musicians’ personal lives or their collaborative relationships. “I would just love to see more writing about music and more critical analysis about what is happening with the sounds that we’re listening to. And this doesn’t have anything to do with gear or anything,” he clarifies, aware that personalities and narratives are more accessible topics than gear, recording, production, and theory. “That stuff can become pretty niche even among musicians,” Noel says of gear in particular. “I’m not surprised we don’t see a ton of it.”

Schmidt also wants to see less “parasocial idolatry” in the form of narrative fare about artists’ lives. Schmidt recalls the time they appeared on a podcast to promote the reissue of Forest of Tears by their band One Hundred Dollars: “The host had invited us to speak under the pretense that the album we put out in 2008 was important, but he just wanted to talk about my collaborator’s personal health history. It was so boring and so frustrating—thoughtless and invasive.”

A similar incident occurred when Schmidt and bandmate Nick Dourado did an interview for their latest album, Fiver with the Atlantic School of Spontaneous Composition, which also featured Bianca Palmer and Jeremy Costello.

“At the time, it was the pandemic, and I was engaged in organizing a popular campaign. I was explicit about not wanting to talk about that,” Schmidt notes. 

For 70 minutes, Schmidt and Dourado discussed their process and how each member drew from their distinct musical practice—only for the subsequent article to focus on Schmidt’s work in social movements; the writer even quoted from their parting conversation and private emails. 

“I felt like a big loser. It looked like I was using my political work to market my music, which is a disgusting thing to do. Both my music and politics were disfigured. For those lines to be blurred by a journalist after I many times asked them not to focus on it is so disrespectful.”

With so much music journalism focusing on anything but the music, Schmidt laments, “I often feel like I don’t know what I can learn from dominant and mainstream music writing.” They’ve also witnessed smaller outlets become increasingly stretched for labour and thus unable to publish much that catches Schmidt’s interest.

Schmidt hungers for journalism that functions as a corrective to this: long-form coverage of musicians discussing their process and their craft and historical expertise in genres readers may not understand. For instance, Schmidt lauds Afropop Worldwide for providing political context to musicians, albums, and genres from Africa and the African diaspora.

“People who love the genres and understand the histories of the genres in which I’m writing tend to understand the music more and can ask me really interesting questions about the music I’m making,” Schmidt says. “A good music journalist can build upon a reader’s musical literacy and share their unique interpretation of an artist’s work,” they continue, likening music journalists to crate-diggers searching for gems to present to the world. 

“It’s a good thing to foster a culture of real listening. How do young listeners learn how to do that in a moment where TikTok is shortening attention spans? Beats me, but music journalists could try to foster the long listen.”

Like crate-diggers, music journalists can draw attention to overlooked music. This opportunity is especially crucial today, as major streamers cajole listeners with an illusion of bottomless choice. “[Music journalism] is potentially a pathway for the music maker to be heard and to travel with their music,” Schmidt says.

Electronic musician Vi Levitt, aka KERUB, agrees. The Toronto-based artist began developing their own music taste in junior high via niche online circles built around anime fan communities. They also frequented torrent sites, downloading random files because they couldn’t read Japanese, Mandarin, or Cantonese. “As someone who listens to a lot of music that isn’t in English, without music journalism and even without platforms like Bandcamp, I wouldn’t know about half the music that brings me joy on a daily basis,” Levitt says.

“We need publications, because otherwise it’s just machines controlled by bald men in Sweden,” Levitt adds. “Even if I don’t always agree with what’s being written, it’s still something I think that we need and we need to continue to respect.”

Schmidt, Noel, and Levitt all agree that thoughtful criticism doesn’t have to be positive—it just needs to show that the writer has spent time with the music. It’s a bonus if the writing helps them hear or understand a piece of music—including their own—differently or notice a detail or quality they missed.

Although Noel doesn’t dwell on bad reviews, he says, “Something that might irk me is if there’s no substance to it, if it’s clear that they pulled quotes from the press release—which I probably wrote,” he adds with a chuckle. “I would love to get a really in-depth critique of the music because every time I put something out, I feel like I see a lot of the flaws in it, and it’d be interesting to see what the other flaws are.” 

Noel has a clear idea of the feelings he tries to imbue in his music. “So when somebody comes out of left field with, ‘This reminded me of this,’ or, ‘I definitely thought you were listening to this,’ it’s pretty cool because it shows the music that we all make is maybe more versatile than we might assume it is.” 

It also helps him understand where the writer’s coming from and what their influences are: “Obviously, we can only really pull from what we know.” 

Being aware of the disconnect between where he and the writer come from makes it easier for him to let negative comments roll off his back.

Levitt compares reviews to the mixing process. “I give my stems to a mixing engineer, and we talk about my ideas and how to best put forth those ideas. If I’m talking to someone who really cares about the music or even is just listening to it for review purposes to get money, that’s still another set of ears with an entirely different perspective. They may or may not have just as profound revelations about the things I created as I did while creating it.”

To Levitt, thoughtful engagement with their work is sometimes as simple as a listener taking a moment to acknowledge that a piece of music reminds them of something else. It’s a small act of resistance against the flooding rush of streaming music. 

“You don’t engage with music on a more personal level,” Levitt points out, criticizing music fed to listeners by algorithms. “Thoughtful engagement is a counterbalance to the way we’re encouraged to listen to music nowadays, which is very hyper-capitalistic: just continue to consume and never think about it.”

Asked what they consider to be thoughtful music journalism, Schmidt cites Kurt Newman’s deep dive into Fiver’s Audible Songs from Rockwood in experimental-music publication Musicworks, which featured the album as its summer 2023 cover story—even though the record came out in 2017.

“It took about five years for me to make that work, and knowing Kurt had been with the music for a long time meant that he had meaningful observations that were folded into his line of questioning. I constructed that record as a historical document—things become apparent over repeat listens,” Schmidt says. 

It was clear to Schmidt that Newman hadn’t simply repeated what they said about Rockwood; rather, he understood their work through his own lens. 

“The way that he wrote didn’t limit me to thinking, ‘Oh, he got it right,’ or, ‘He got it wrong.’ I was like, ‘Huh, interesting.’ That felt like true inquiry and time spent with the work. I really appreciated that.”

Newman’s piece exemplifies the value of breaking the press cycle— an album’s best chance of getting coverage typically falls within two weeks before and after its release date. Otherwise, press is usually tied to upcoming tour dates. 

“I imagine a column called ‘Six Months In’ where you review music… after listening to it for six months,” Schmidt proposes. “How much more would a writer have to say about it? What is it to age with music? What is it to have music with you for quite a while?”

Growing up when the internet wasn’t available in one’s bedroom or back pocket, Schmidt discovered music through their friends and siblings, and by attending live events. They also read magazines in stores and picked up free Toronto alt-weeklies like Eye and Now Magazine. But Schmidt lost interest in music journalism when they became a musician. 

“I realized the mechanics behind who gets coverage were corrupt, and [they] most often favoured musicians who were able to afford publicists.”

To Schmidt, paying for a publicist boils down to pay-for-play—acquiescing to and buttressing a gatekeeping complex that monetizes every aspect of music. “Once you figure out that that game is rigged, you don’t really care what someone who was being cajoled by the system to write about you has to say about you.”

Noel, too, feels disaffected by the churn of publicity-driven coverage. “I get that resources are thin,” he says, “but it is a journalist’s job to a certain extent to be objective about what they’re writing about, and I don’t see why that isn’t possible in music journalism too.” 

Musicians would also benefit. The more critically journalists engage with music, the more used to it musicians will become. 

“It doesn’t hurt to be a little more thick-skinned and also not take a review as the end-all and be-all,” Noel says. “But at the same time, if you are a journalist, you do have a responsibility to not destroy somebody’s career.”

Although Noel questions how much value music journalism currently holds as a critical means of engaging with art, he does see more important critical analyses of the music industry nowadays. But there’s still a downside to analyzing music as a capitalist system. 

“Again, it feels like a way to cater to a broader audience, a more quickly understandable way into music than talking about the actual compositional elements of a piece,” he points out. 

Meanwhile, Schmidt declares: “I hate the modes of commercial dissemination of music. I find them to be obstacles to great musicians to work. Insofar as music journalism plays into these systems—to the degree in which music journalism is that thoughtless and unaware of itself—I don’t think there’s a place for music journalism.” 

But Schmidt is speaking about music journalism as it stands today, not what it could be tomorrow. 

“Writers are such a gift—writers thinking about music, people who love music, people who’ve tracked scenes that no one else is taking care of, people stewarding long traditional lines of music, people who are paying precise attention to music and really see[ing] connections that other people who aren’t paying that attention wouldn’t be able to make. I think that’s a beautiful practice, and I hope it continues.”

Against Schmidt’s hope, Noel doesn’t write about music anymore. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I did it again, but sadly, I don’t have the time for it,” he laments. “The journalism industry has been suffering for a while now. I’m an example of it: I went into journalism in university and then I didn’t do that in the end, even though I really wanted to. There are so many facets contributing to the state of music journalism at the moment. I’m very empathetic to that as well.”

Over the years, Levitt has grown to know many music journalists through overlapping arts circles. They’ve also built connections with music journalists by attending shows and following writers online. 

“Y’all are under the same shit that we as artists are. ‘Music journalist’ and ‘artist’ aren’t exclusive labels. We all deserve to be paid better in a way that is respectable,” Levitt observes. 

“There are human hours in this. There’s something to respect because another person has put in time to do this.”