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WRITING ABOUT MUSIC IS HARD—AND THIS BOOK PROVES IT 101 TIMES OVER
It’s happened to all of us who read about rock music: you come across a piece about a hot music scene and the writer thinks they’re being clever by exclaiming, “There must be something in the water!” Or maybe a couple of musicians have started a new project that’s “risen from the ashes” of their previous band. There’s a million of those dumb things that rock critics say. Well, OK, maybe just a hundred and one. And they’re all duly immortalized in legendary rock journalist Michael Azerrad’s Rock Critic Law: 101 Unbreakable Rules for Writing Badly About Music.
Fed up, in a bemused sort of way, with all these well-worn tropes of the trade, Azerrad began tweeting them with the hashtag #RockCriticLaw, and the author’s righteous tirade struck a chord with both readers and writers of rock criticism, who greeted each new dispatch with gales of derisive laughter or self-flagellating mea culpas. Written as a set of inviolable rules to be followed only by the very worst writers, Rock Critic Law is a wickedly droll exposé of the hackneyed metaphors, knee-jerk clichés and lazy thinking that have long dogged music journalism. In Rock Critic Law, Azerrad has collected the worst offenders.
Merciless, snarky, and loving underneath it all, Rock Critic Law is redeemed by artwork from OG-Seattle-scenester-turned-renowned-illustrator Edwin Fotheringham. The rock & roll love child of Elements of Style and The Devil’s Dictionary, Rock Critic Law is a unique appreciation of music writing from one of its own.