Knicker-Twisters and Other Things

Tom Ewing on “a couple of regrettable tendencies in Pitchforkwatching,” or “conspiracy theories from people who think they’ve ‘cracked the code’”:

1. The ever-creeping-upwards margin of what seems to constitute a “bad Pitchfork score”. Bloggers are twisting their knickers over a 7.6??? (Ed. note: This link is from me, not Tom)

2. The use of figures to “illuminate” the editorial process at Pitchfork as if it was some kind of mystical black box and only the use of statistics can crack the code. Seriously, go to ILM, find Scott’s username, search for posts by him – he is enormously open about Pitchfork’s decision-making. Of course you can still act conspiratorial about it and assume that ratings get changed all the time and the year end polls are rigged, but in that case stats won’t reveal the truth either.

The boring truth is that there are ‘inconsistencies’ between BNM and Pitchfork marks and end of year lists because they are the results of separate decision making processes:

Ratings are decided by the reviewer – conversations with the editors may or may not take place.

BNM is entirely an editorial mandate. My understanding – and that’s all it is, I’ve never reviewed or even pitched to review one – is that the idea of a BNM is that the site’s typical reader can buy this record secure in the knowledge they’re going to find it worthwhile, which explains why exceptional but inaccessible albums in (to P4K) fringe genres might get the mark but not the award.

Year end polls are, er, polls, which means they’re the collective decision of a bunch of people.

For DECADE end polls the “inconsistency” is absolutely a feature not a bug, since Pitchfork’s writing team includes several people who came to the attention of the zine precisely because they complained eloquently about things like 3.8s for Basement Jaxx.

Filed under: Pitchfork  Tom Ewing