Why the Music Critics Keep Writing

It was easy to interpret that garish green affront as a harbinger of doom.  

Rolling Stone, once the magazine of record in music, had launched a “homepage takeover,” complete with a matcha-moss colorway, to celebrate the release of Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl.” My first impulse was to deem it payola, but a more likely explanation is that Rolling Stone is trying, like any outlet, to survive in a time of crashing traffic by tapping into Swiftie enthusiasm to generate clicks. The bargain appeared to be that this rabid stan energy would be so lucrative that it would help fund the rest of the magazine, which, one would hope, is primarily composed of deeply considered music reporting and criticism.

That cope withered under the reality of what was published that day: an unsettlingly laudatory, PR-ified five-star review of “The Life of a Showgirl,” which begins with a list of Swift’s accomplishments that would work well in a pitch deck assembled by her team. Swift, critic Maya Georgi opined, has “stood atop the pop world glittering in a sequined midnight-blue bodysuit,” “mesmerized stadiums,” and most crucially: “locked it down with a cowboy like her in football star Travis Kelce.” (Georgi’s effusive review felt perniciously similar to another genre of stan media I’ve written about).

Thankfully, Rolling Stone’s overbearing positivity was an aberration. “Showgirl” became a moment for the critical class at other publications to flex, with some even using Rolling Stone’s hagiography as a foil. 

In her review, Pitchfork’s Anna Gaca wrote, “it is simply untrue to claim, as Rolling Stone did on Friday, that ‘Showgirl’ represents ‘new, exciting sonic turns,’” before pivoting to a deserved whack at “Wood,” a potential career worst for Swift: “Granted, there’s never been another Taylor Swift song that sounds so much like the Jackson 5’s ‘I Want You Back’ … with the spiritual energy of bachelorette-party penis décor.” Ellen Johnson appraised the new album’s ailments for Paste, and didn’t mince words: “The subject matter isn’t [Swift’s] stumbling block. ‘Lyrical hallucination’ might be a more apt diagnosis.”