Topic: Is it just me, or are pop music reviews an incredibly stupid practice?

I'm talking about the kinds of music reviews you see in metacritic's "Music" section.

Now, reviewing music isn't an inherently stupid practice, but when I read these "reviews", I think I get dumber. There are rarely any references to the actual musical qualities of the music, you know, like most game, movie, and TV reviews have. Instead, they are just long drawn out ways of saying "I liked it" or "I didn't like it". They mostly talk about the lyrics and occasionally mention the feelings evoked by particular songs.

Very little is ever said about the artists range, the combination of instruments, chord progressions, musical influences, among many other things that have to do with, you know, MUSIC.

Yeah, they're pretty pointless when the music itself was produced with rather generic beats and synthie sounds that barely have any impact to begin with.
But the issue with music reviews in general is that it's kinda difficult to explain how range, instrument usage, playstyle, or even techniques make songs more professional. Today's taste doesn't care about professional music anymore, it's gotta be simple enough so even a seashell can hum it. Some subvert this "winning" formula, but it's often not even worth the effort anymore.

My main issue with them is like what Kaze said, music is hard to review and even harder when it's simplistic so reviews tend to devolve to the writer's "witty" commentary and incredible biases towards/against the singer. You can't get through a Britney Spears album review without some reference to her mental issues and couldn't find a Chris Brown review after his fallout with Rihanna that wasn't trying to take him down several pegs. Most of the time I get to the end of the review and felt like I read nothing but rambles and if it weren't for the score, I'd never tell from the text whether they actually liked the freaking song or not. Reviews seem to function better for things like books, movies, and games that have more of a tangibility and expected structure to them. Music... eh.

I don't read music reviews, but iTunes reviews seem to focus on the actual music (lyrics and everything) than the professional reviews you guys are talking about.

Pop music reviews aren't the only stupid thing.
Pop music is just as bad

Well said. Yeah, I don't mind discussing music, but music reviews are...not my cup of tea.

There aren't as many things you can judge objectively with music as there are with movies and video games. With movies you can judge the special effects, character development, etc. but with music I feel like it's just someone's opinion.

As is character development? It's subjective. How much special effects affect soemthing can be subjective too. Any review is someone's opinion, that's what a review is.

I think the point is the opinion is based on less tangible things - its difficult to pinpoint exactly why you like something one way or another, at least from what I've experienced. And it tends to rely more heavily on personal experiences when you can figure it out. The review feels much less relevent when the opinion relies so much more on relating to the individual. It takes a good writer, and those are hard to come by with any type of review.

There are exactly as many things you can judge objectively with music as there are with movies and video games.

Frank Zappa said "writing about music is like dancing about architecture" - I agree with that.

Writing about music is incredibly difficult - it is hard to convey a feeling so personal as the enjoyement (or lack of it) of listening to an album. You are used to videogame journalism, which is based on a number of gives. Ex, bad controls are bad and make the game worse. Repetition might be bad and could affect the game. Technical mistakes are not welcome. In music this doesn't exist. You may get records with awful recordings (Black Sabbath), bad musicianship (Nirvana) or killer technical mistakes (Velvet Underground) and they are still amazing records.
And too much name dropping in music review is not good protocol, or at least, I don't like it - it's probably functional to the reader, but you might end up accidentally accusing the author of plagiarism or devaluing his/her originality. Of course it's ok to name some influences or other artists as a reference point, but I tend to get pissed when I read reviews that go "this track sounds like Hendrix, while this other track sounds like T.Rex" etc.

Pop music is the worst of all because all pop records use the same recording techniques, the songs are all written by the same bunch of corporate idiots, the lyrics all share the same themes and the singers all have the same voice - there is literally nothing to talk about. The only reason they still review this crap is to fill the blank space on magazines.

Well said. There really are less constants in music...excpet pop music. It doesn't get much more constant that pop.