Pour One Out for Pitchfork
Preferably an artisinal brew from a witches’ colony in remote You-Can’t-Get-There-from-Here-ia.
Anna Wintour announced January 17 that she would be folding indie music site Pitchfork into, of all brands, GQ.
GQ?
Like, the men’s magazine? The men’s celebrity and fashion magazine?
The same GQ that called Serena Williams its “woman” of the year, not its “woman of the year.” That GQ?
Pitchfork was founded in 1996, and I first heard of Pitchfork shortly after from my sister, who was in the habit of listening to indie records much cooler than mine. (IYKYK).
I remember Pitchfork as being smugly and gatekeeping-ly too cool for everyone. Targets were myriad: Steely Dan (“‘making pudding’… describes this genre blending”), The Pixies (“without regard to songwriting at all”), Moby (“one of Eminem’s punchlines”).
Its brutal takedowns were legendary, and half the fun of reading the site. Critic Camilo Arturo Leslie took out three artists in one brutal paragraph while reviewing a Courtney Love bootleg album:
“I’d sooner listen to Yoko’s bobcat-in-a-meatgrinder screeching than put this one on for pleasure. Say what you will, but if their roles were reversed, Yoko would never have shacked up with Trent Reznor. Then again, Courtney Love might very well have driven John Lennon to suicide.”
Pitchfork has lightened up a bit as it’s aged, but it has retained its dedication to reviewing music of all kinds, from the obscure to the heights of popularity. I could count on Pitchfork to point me to great music I hadn’t heard of, even as it trashed albums I loved.
Notably, Pitchfork reviewed all kinds of music for all kinds of fans. Women, people of color, country, pop, rock, rap, classical — Pitchfork did it all. With too-cool-for-school disdain for everyone.
How can Pitchfork maintain that same dedication to all types of music when it’s now part of a magazine geared toward just 50% of the population?
“The only I can come up with is how ridiculous it would be if Vogue was absorbed by Rolling Stone,” writes music journalist Alison Bonaguro on LinkedIn.
Pitchfork was acquired by Conde Nast (aka Anna Wintour, same parent company as GQ and Vogue) in 2015. It sounds like the company is struggling to turn a profit at Pitchfork, but this choice is disappointing and really stings.
So for Pitchfork, and for all the women and non-GQ readers who feel excluded by this decision — I pour out a glass and propose a toast:
To Anna Wintour. Rating: 0.0.
