Music
Analysis of Music Listicles — An Exercise In Pedantry
Examining artists with only one or two albums
I spend a fair bit of my time listening to music. To complement that, I read widely about music.
To be more accurate, I once read a lot, but nowadays, not so much. The format or style of music writing has changed substantially. I can’t remember the last time I bought a music magazine. Now I wake up to daily emails delivering headlines and short pieces about happenings in the music world. I have to dig a little deeper to find a substantial piece that is well beyond the attention span of the TL;DR crowd.
The list article, or listicle, is one of those types of writing (I am hesitant to call it journalism) that took off not that long ago and has become ubiquitous or pervasive with the gradual infestation of clickbait across the world’s media. We have all seen it, and most of us have probably clicked on a few links too. Articles like You won’t believe the top five crazy things Axl Rose keeps in his pantry — sickening! or similar!
Many seemingly reputable publications turned to the listicle dark side long ago. Rolling Stone magazine is one publication that utilises the format, thankfully without the dodgy sensationalism. I find some of the magazine’s listicles quite useful…
