The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic

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Jessica Hopper s music criticism has earned her a reputation as a firebrand, a keen observer and fearless critic not just of music but the culture around it With this volume spanning from her punk fanzine roots to her landmark piece on R Kelly s past, The First Collection leaves no doubt why The New York Times has called Hopper s work influential Not merely a selection of two decades of Hopper s most engaging, thoughtful, and humorous writing, this book documents the last 20 years of American music making and the shifting landscape of music consumption The book journeys through the truths of Riot Grrrl s empowering insurgence, decamps to Gary, IN, on the eve of Michael Jackson s death, explodes the grunge era mythologies of Nirvana and Courtney Love, and examines emo s rise Through this vast range of album reviews, essays, columns, interviews, and oral histories, Hopper chronicles what it is to be truly obsessed with music The pieces in The First Collection send us digging deep into our record collections, searching to re hear what we loved and hated, makes us reconsider the art, trash, and politics Hopper illuminates, helping us to make sense of what matters to us most. Download The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic author Jessica Hopper – kino-fada.fr When I was 22, 23, I lived in East Hollywood in a horrible apartment with mold on the ceiling and a ratty carpet It was an embarrassment, but looking back on it, it was where I needed to be at the time I worked at a bookstore and I would get home from work at 1am But that was never the end of my night I was too keyed up to sleep right away, so I d get a case of domestic beer Budweiser was my brand back thenwhat , and stay up until 4, 5am, drinking, reading, and most of all, listening to When I was 22, 23, I lived in East Hollywood in a horrible apartment with mold on the ceiling and a ratty carpet It was an embarrassment, but looking back on it, it was where I needed to be at the time I worked at a bookstore and I would get home from work at 1am But that was never the end of my night I was too keyed up to sleep right away, so I d get a case of domestic beer Budweiser was my brand back thenwhat , and stay up until 4, 5am, drinking, reading, and most of all, listening to albums.The records that were important to me then were The Stooges Fun House, Tom Waits Closing Time, and above all else, Van Morrison s Astral Weeks I consider the release of Wilco s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot to mark a kind of turning point for me, when I started to emerge from this weird self imposed exile and start actually living my lif...My review for the Chicago Tribune The show business saying everyone s a critic came into common usage in the middle of the last century, but it s arguably never beentrue than now In our era of Yelp and , Twitter and Facebook, every literate person with a reliable Internet connection can opine on every commodifiable element of human experience.So why write criticism professionally, and why write criticism on a writer who is herself a professional critic The title of Pitchfork sen My review for the Chicago Tribune The show business saying everyone s a critic came into common usage in the middle ...As someone who grew up reading collections of music articles growing up, it took until seeing Jessica Hopper s that I realised I had literally never read one by a female As she s quick to point out, despite the title, she isn t technically the first, but that doesn t mean that they were commonly available.So, we start with Emo Where The Girls Aren t, which was penned just as I was the d...I m in two minds about this collection of essays There s some great stuff in there, and I really like what Hopper stands for and her style of music criticism that goes beyond technicality and into the sociocultural impacts of music A really poignant piece was the one on R Kelly is music a moral experience can we ever separate a song from the artist who made it, the words they speak and the broader context of it , and I found the piece about advertising x musicians really interesting I did I m in two minds about this collection of essays There s some great stuff in there, and I really like what Hopper stands for and her style of music criticism that goes beyond technicality and into the sociocultural impacts of music A really poignant piece was the one on R Kelly is music a moral experience can we ever separate a song from the artist who made it, the words they speak and the broader context of it , and I found the piece about advertising x musicians really interesting I did...Wonderfully written, a little scattershot, very readable I learned so much about music that I ll never listen to.Jessica Hopper is a bad ass Not just for speaking her truth about all aspects of popular music and not so popular music and not just for being a woman in the male populated music critic industry Her eloquent and descriptive opinions are bad ass Her words themselves are bad ass Her writing sure as hell is, and so is her obvious fearlessness I knew nothing about Jessica Hopper...I want to go back in time and give this to 15 year old me Required reading for all teen girls showing a real interest in music.I will be the first to admit that I know close to nothing about music The other day I asked my coworker if Billy Joel was a country singer , so as much as I d love to say I would even be able to identify a Nirvana song if it came on the radio, the few singers I had heard of that were featured in this collection were basically Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga So I m just working with the idea that Jessica Hopper knows what she is talking about, and she does She proves her credibility in each piece no I will be the first to admit that I know close to nothing about music The other day I asked my coworker if Billy Joel was a country singer , so as much as I d love to say I would even be able to identify a Nirvana song if it came on the radio, the few singers I had heard of that were featured in this collection were basically Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga So I m just working with the idea that Jessica Hopper knows what she is talking about, and she does She proves her credibility in each piece not just as one of the major female music critics but one of the major critics period I love the feminist message she delivers that women...Ugh Jessica Hopper is the woman I want to be My entire adolescence, music felt like my bloodline, yet my taste always felt caught up in some boy I was trying to impress I felt as though my own opinions were merely shadows of the real critics the Soft Boys who really knew what was up, whose voices I read as truth on Pitchfork and r Indiehead Jessica Hopper was the first voice in music criticism that resonates with me in a pure and authentic and feminine way She is bad ass and knows her shit Ugh Jessica Hopper is the woman I want to be My entire adolescence, music felt like my bloodline, yet my taste always felt caught up in some boy I was trying to impress I felt as though my own opinions were merely shadows of the real critics the Soft Boys who really knew what was up, whose voices I read as truth on Pitchfork and r Indiehead Jessica Hopper was the first voice in music criticism that resonates with me in a pure and authentic and feminine way She is bad ass and knows her shit and won t be put down by anyone...There s a point about 80% through this collection where one of the pieces has the author remarking on the pieces she s been paid for in the past year too many short and ultra short takes and not enough long reads to be satisfying And as a reader I felt the same way the longer pieces were the best ones But it s also a reminder that to survive as a music writer at all these days must be a struggle As for the shorter profiles, I haven t read music writing in ages I remember, reading these There s a point about 80% through this collection where one of the pieces has the author remarking on the pieces she s been paid for in the past year too many short and ultra short takes and not enough long reads to be sat...

The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic
  • 27 June 2017
  • Paperback
  • 201 pages
  • 0983186332
  • Jessica Hopper
  • The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic