No Album Reviews in New Issue of Rolling Stone?

Ironically, the issue that provoked this latest round of RS bashing is entirely about music, from cover to cover.

 

To be fair. The days of any sort of bias in a RS review is long gone... basically every review seems to be paid by the label to give a good mark.

 

Trouser Press w/flexidisc

 

That's what happens when your readers have such a narrow scope of tastes...

 

The print version is almost certainly on the way out. I shelled out for a "lifetime subscription" back in the '90s (a bit less than 100 bucks), so I'll be looking for a refund.

Oh, and according to the mailing label, my lifetime runs out in 2053.

 

Maybe it's old hat to 'review' music, not progressive enough....

It's not PC enough to give reviews. You run the risk of hurting people's feelings...and we don't want that.

 

Right....I still haven't gotten around to reading that feature article about Halsey yet.

 

The latest issue, with Chuck Berry on the cover, has 5 album reviews.

 

It's because people are here, and checking music on Youtube and such. SHF is probably more relevant and music-focused than RS nowadays.

 

Don't you pretty much only listen to hard rock?

 

Mainly but a lot more than that.

 

Hmm. While we're at it, what does 20th Century Fox "mean"? It's not the 20th century, and Willam Fox is dead!

 

RS has become a pamphlet. The last few issues were little more than cover.

 

RS has been a rather weak lifestyle magazine with very occasional quality writing (most of it political) for years now; I've watched the record reviews get shorter and shorter and felt bad for the writers having to compress thoughts on anything down to 100 or so words. I got 300-400 when I used to freelance and that was hard enough. And you've hit on one of the biggest problems I had with criticism, which is that most stuff isn't particularly good or bad -- it's just there, and how do you write about that? There's constantly stuff I'm passionate about but it's hard to get assigned to the right stuff that you'd really be good at dissecting, and moreover often hard to persuade editors/publishers that anyone will want to read about it.

On another note, it's ironic to see a bunch of complaints about "safe spaces" at a message board that allows no discussion of politics whatsoever, but anyway...

 

What?

 

I replaced RS with MOJO and UNCUT many moons ago.....

 

I tend to think of it as the corollary of all the "I can't believe the election results" digs that came out towards the end of last year and still periodically spout up. We're not allowed to discuss the stuff, but passions are running high on all sides at the moment and the steam valve periodically spurts forth...

 

No need to worry, Harry Styles is the new Mick Jagger

 

I'm beginning to think that America cannot support a magazine devoted to music. Remember Spin, Vibe , Blender , Tracks - all of them fell by the roadside as print publications. The only thing that seems to last here are mags devoted to intruments, like Guitar World and Bass Player and Drum. Whereas the UK seems much better at creating a market for publications like Mojo and Uncut and Q, and smaller publications like Record Collector and Shindig. Hell, even magazines like Classic rock and Prog (published by the same company) went out of business and were shortly revived.

 

You may have noticed that Mojo and Q will switch covers for the American market if the UK cover subject is "too English". Mojo has often switched Paul Weller off the covers of the copies that come to the USA, and Q just this month switched Kasabian for the 1975.

 

Bring back Creem!

 

Remember they tried to revive Creem not that long ago- and that failed unfortunately

 

I didn't know that. Shame.

 

Before I left NY I went to 2 re-Launch Parties for Creem Magazine.

The last one (93 or so) I spent hanging with Jimi Hazel, Muzz Skillings and Joey Ramone.

 

This is just a stab in the dark, but I'm going to lay that at the feet of either:

a.) The US is too large with too many markets for a "nationwide" publication to have universal appeal; or
b.) Culture has been wrapped too tightly with politics and that's a losing game since you'll always be alienating at least half of your market by default AND anyone who wants their entertainment separate from the brass tacks of day to day life.

In the case of Rolling Stone, I think "b" plays heavily into its downfall. Well, that and the fact that it's a music rag that veered dangerously close to those checkout counter mags that advertised "12 sex moves that'll drive your man crazy" on more than a few occasions. Yeah, and their top 100 lists were ****e...

Did I miss anything?