• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Lieff Ink

TELL YOUR STORY

  • About
  • Services
    • Writing • Editing
    • PR
    • Writing Tutor
  • Words
  • Press
  • Blog
  • Clients
    • Client List
    • Testimonials
  • Contact
  • Book
    • Accolades
    • Reviews

The First Collection Of Criticism By A Living Female Rock Critic

April 1, 2020

While author Jessica Hopper is definitely a sharp writer, she is more than a rock critic. Her subjects encompass a variety of genres including Chance the Rapper, Lana Del Rey, Pearl Jam, Coachella, grunge, Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson’s hometown, Nirvana’s 20th Anniversary boxset, Miley Cyrus, Bruce Springsteen, St. Vincent, and The Raincoats, among many others. I can relate to her in many ways – and not only because we appreciate a wide array of music. Before I read that at the time of the book’s publication (2015), she was the Senior Editor of Pitchfork, I knew she had been in publishing for a while. She describes Van Morrison’s “Beside You” as “a fierce, rambling pledge” in which he uses “a torrential cadence of nearly unintelligible half-sentences that sound like they could be directions someplace.” She then talks about how a different version of the song appears on the album T.B. Sheets which is significantly tamer than the “drinkin’-straight-from-the-bottle, succulent, lo-fi, four-bar, party-blues hip sway of the original.” Her writing is refreshing, thoughtful, and clearly indicates that she’s both a critic and music fan. A die-hard fan. In fact, she says “there is a void in [her] guts which can only be filled by songs” and I believe her.

Throughout her collection of articles, she talks about a variety of topics including the long-debated question of whether it’s acceptable to ignore what certain songs are saying just because the music is good. She also points out that Lady Gaga (in 2011) “teases out the fantasy of the pop star by never dropping the act – she’s like a superhero, never appearing out of uniform.” While she has done a lot of transforming since 2011 that has made me a fan of hers, I remember when Gaga was all about the glam and how she was always making a scene. Hopper describes one of her outfits as being mostly accessories rather than garments of clothing and I laughed out loud. On another note, her description of Bruce Springsteen’s music is spot on: “grand, lovelorn tunes of cars and girls and memories that were easy to relate to.” She explains that even though Born to Run is the more famous album, The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story is the “complete package” because Springsteen exemplifies “the craftsman capable of putting all your too-familiar restlessness into a song you’d want to hear a thousand times.” Amen.

In 2005, Hopper attended Coachella for the first time and absolutely lights it up for the sham that it is and I love it. While I’ve been to a festival or two – Warped Tour (which Hopper also writes about) in high school and the short-lived Mile High Music Festival in Denver over a dozen years ago – I think festivals are the biggest scam in live music. They are billed as events where attendees can see “so much music” in one place under the ruse that they save money by seeing a long list of artists at one venue. It’s complete bullshit because inevitably there are too many people, too much beer, it’s too hot, everything is too expensive, and unless you really commit and camp out at one stage the entire time and never use the disgusting port-a-johns, you never actually get a good seat at any of the shows. No thanks. So when Hopper describes the mile-and-a-half-long walk from the parking lot to the venue I knew we were on the same page: “I had a hard time crediting Coachella with being America’s only European-style festival, as it’s often described; instead, the nobody-asked-for-it eclecticism of the many small attractions called up the ghost of Lollapaloozas past.” She also notes that as soon as Coldplay frontman Chris Martin started talking about how their new album might be the best of all time, she took it as her cue to leave. I would have left with her.

One aspect of Hopper’s collection that I’m unclear on is whether or not she is a grunge fan. She makes a ton of references to the genre and the people who make/made it great but it’s hard to decipher if she actually likes the music. For example, she spends two-and-a-half pages on Pearl Jam’s 20th Anniversary concert and devotes most of those pages to talking about how well Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell aged (may the latter rest in peace). But then she devotes fifteen pages to the making of Hole’s Live Through This. Later in the book, three pages are spent discussing the ridiculousness of the 20th Anniversary boxset of Nirvana’s Nevermind. I love Nevermind but she makes some solid points. She describes Kurt Cobain as “the anointed grunge Buddha” who is “as big now as he’s ever been, which is to say nearly ubiquitous.” And that was in 2011. While she acknowledges that “Nirvana’s supersize ghost lingers in our hearts,” she thinks the multiple mixes, versions, outtakes, and packages of the album is more about squeezing money than celebrating the music. I agree but I’m still a Nirvana fan and will always be a grunge fan. I’m still not sure where Hopper stands.

All of that being said, she clearly understands the music business. In a 2013 article, she writes about how bands/artists who allowed their music to be in commercials used to be considered sellouts but doing so is now a “crucial cornerstone of success” because magazine covers and radio play no longer cut it. Hopper also includes some interesting facts: Eight out of ten of the most-followed humans on Twitter are musicians and nine out of the ten most-viewed items on YouTube are music videos. Two clear examples of music’s influence on social media and vice versa.

While her feminist perspective is woven throughout the book, it doesn’t hinder the fact that she is a witty, intelligent writer who wants her readers to consider all types of music and why people do or do not listen to certain bands, artists, songs, and albums. The cover of the book says it all because the whole thing is words and that is all she needs. I appreciate her thought process and that she loves music – even when she doesn’t completely understand it.

Laura

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Blog Archive

  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010

Footer

Laura Lieff was named Colorado Mountain College’s 2017-2018 Part Time Staff Member of the Year for her work as a writing tutor and teaching assistant.
Laura Lieff was named Colorado Mountain College’s 2017-2018 Part Time Staff Member of the Year for her work as a writing tutor and teaching assistant.

Work With Me

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
lieff-ink-logo_updated-2
  • About
  • Services
  • Words
  • Blog
  • Client List
  • Contact

Copyright © 2023 · PO Box 1228 Edwards CO 81632 · info@lauralieff.com