Are Music Critics Becoming Less Critical?

Or, a meditation on when critics and the public agree.

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When Critics and People Agree

For the last 6 weeks, the top song on the Billboard Hot 100 has been Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night”. Though I’m intrigued by this song because it is a country song and country songs rarely top the Hot 100, I wouldn’t say I like it. The song builds and builds but never comes to the catharsis that I’m awaiting.

My opinion must be incorrect, though. “Last Night” and Morgan Wallen are wildly popular. Millions of people can’t be wrong, right? The history of popular music is testament to the fact that millions of people can be wrong. Things can become popular that ultimately leave little impact.

That said, I’m not interested in waging war on pop music. I’m in love with and fascinated by the power of pop music. (In fact, I’ve tried to make it.) What I’m interested in is how often critical and commercial tastes align.

For this inquiry, I’ve decided to look at two sources: Billboard and Pitchfork. Billboard has been the music industry’s premiere trade magazine for over 100 years. Their most notable service is generating charts of the most popular songs and albums sliced and diced every which way possible. One of those charts is published annually and ranks the most popular songs of the previous year.

Pitchfork is supposed to stand in contrast to Billboard. Around since 1996, they have dubbed themselves “The Most Trusted Source in Music” and are known for their highly critical album reviews. If Billboard is the kid at school who loves everything on the radio, then Pitchfork is the kid telling you that most popular music stinks and you should be listening to “real music” like the Velvet Underground. Like Billboard, Pitchfork also publishes year end lists. Pitchfork’s lists claim to capture not the most popular but the best music from the previous 365 days.

So, how often do Pitchfork and Billboard agree? Put another way, how often do critics agree with the general public? To measure this, I’ve taken Pitchfork’s annual top songs list from 2006 to 2022 and noted how often a song on their list (i.e., a critic’s choice) is also on Billboard’s list (i.e., the people’s choice).

Across the last two decades, overlap between these two lists ranges from 3% to 21% with the median sitting at 10%. What that means is that on average ten critical choices will overlap with the public’s choices each year. In short, though there isn’t vast overlap, critics aren’t in complete disagreement with the general public.

The other interesting thing about this chart is that it’s not really moving upward or downward over time. Critics, it seems, aren’t beginning to align with the public more or less frequently. Furthermore, Pitchfork isn’t suddenly including more popular songs. The median Billboard year end Hot 100 rank for songs in Pitchfork’s top 100 typically sits around 29.

As I was crunching the numbers for this analysis, the thing that continued to intrigue me were songs that critics and the public both loved. Songs like Rihanna’s “Umbrella”, which Pitchfork ranked number 5 in 2007, the same year it got to number 2 on Billboard’s annual chart. Or Fetty Wap’s “Trap Queen”, which snuck into Pitchfork’s top 20 while getting all the way to number four on Billboard’s 2015 chart. Or even Bad Bunny’s “Tití Me Preguntó”, which cracked the top 30 for both Pitchfork and Billboard in 2022. When artists can unite fans of such varying tastes for three to five minutes, they’ve stumbled upon something magical.

A New One
"The Universe" by Róisín Murphy
2023 - Art Pop

You might get the sense from the thumbnail that Róisín Murphy’s “The Universe” is a zany, brainy piece of music. You’d be correct. But instead of describing it myself, I’ll defer to Pitchfork, who recently named it a best new track:

Zapping in and out of the mix, the singer adopts an ultra-processed, Arklow-via-Long Island accent to narrate her internal dialogue: marveling over a psychedelic sunset, gawking at the sight of her captain abandoning ship. It’s a bonkers detour, so she swerves into an even weirder direction: interpolating “Row Row Row Your Boat.” You can’t quite call “The Universe” smooth sailing, but following Murphy’s bottomless weirdness is its own remarkable ride.

An Old One
"No Other" by Gene Clark
1974 - Country Rock

In 1974, Gene Clark, one of the former members of The Byrds, released his fourth solo album, No Other. Though hundreds of thousands of dollars were poured into the making of the record, it was largely ignored by the general public and critics. His label’s relationship with the album went much further than apathy, though. Asylum Records head David Geffen reportedly tossed a test pressing of it into the trash.

Sometimes critics are wrong. Sometimes the public is wrong. And sometimes record executives are wrong. In this case, all three were. Clark’s No Other is a psychedelic, folk-infused meditation on the duality of man that has since been hailed as a masterpiece. The title track is a good summary as to why.

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