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 Princess Stomper

Another manifesto

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Citizen Smith

by Princess Stomper

None of you give a shit about what I am thinking. Your sole purpose, when reading anything I write, is to judge in terms of how it affects you. Do you think you’ll like this record? Will you learn some interesting trivia from this article? Will this rant articulate something you were thinking but never found the words to say?

Music writers engage in an endless battle with the readers. Yes, the music is embedded in the article, but it’s just too much effort to CLICK on the link, now, isn’t it? You might waste precious seconds of your life, only for the inevitable disappointment when it turns out to be twee and dull.

Yet there’s always that fear, isn’t there? The worry that you might be missing something really special. Something that will ignite in you an inspiration to do something – form a band, write a blog, just buy the album or go to the show – and it’s my job to persuade you to take that chance. Go on, waste a few seconds! You were only going to be spending them looking at cat videos, anyway.

I got into a very silly argument with an editor once because I used the word “gorgeous” to describe an artist. It was unprofessional. I am not ‘professional’; I am an evangelist. I have the zeal of a missionary when I describe the music that I love because it is Too Damn Important to be ignored. Click on the link or lose your soul, sucker!

Silence might be sexy, but music is gorgeous. It’s vital and sensual and distracting and something to fall in love with. When someone is on a stage, baring their soul and occasionally thrusting their hips, are you going to respond to that with dry and flaccid prose?

Music is not boring, so framing that embedded link in tedious academic discourse is a fucking insult to that music. You know how you felt watching Almost Famous, and how contagious Patrick’s enthusiasm was? How his sheer unfettered joy when hearing those songs made you want to punch the air and dance around the living room? That’s what it’s about. I want to infect you all with an epidemic of passion. I want you to feel what I feel, hear what I hear, see what I see. I want you – even if you are a straight man – to tremble with unbridled lust towards that snake-hipped leather-clad rock god for just one second; just as for a fleeting moment I too fell for Ari Up when Everett True wrote about her.

Music deserves nothing less than your ardent passion. If we critics indulge in florid prose it’s because the music we hear makes us want to write fucking poetry about it. It’s too important to relegate to micro-points-out-of-10. It’s too important to coast along on regurgitated press releases. It’s too important to take a back seat to the writer’s ego. It’s too important to get caught up in editorial politics or pressure from advertising staff.

This is music. It deserves nothing less than our sincerest efforts to get you to click on that bloody link – because that link is just too important for you to miss.

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