ABSTRACT
The previous chapter concentrated on the formal aspects of rock writing; however, little has been yet said about the actual evaluation the writers do: the kind of judgement they pass on the chosen records, the criteria they use in the course of this judgement and the general way they write about the sounds and words written and/or sung by certain artists. Contrary to common belief, few rock critics spend a lot of time in actually assessing what they hear. Rather, they discuss the phenomena surrounding a particular artist or album – Joni Mitchell’s changing lovers or Bob Dylan’s motorcycle crash – and thus contribute to the way the artist is subsequently perceived. The actual nuts and bolts of composition, arranging, singing and playing are often shunted to the side while critics write about their own, subjective feelings regarding the record and the artist in question. Using the definitions of Lucy Green (1997:5-6), music critics are thus interested in the delineated meanings (the cultural and subjective context) of music and not in its inherent meanings (the interrelationships of musical materials) as such. There is also a tendency to confuse the two, so that delineation (for instance, the appearance of the musician) is taken to reflect an inherent quality of the music.
