Why reviews lost their sting - and what matters more, the song or the record?

Our pencil-chewing, critical assessment of this week’s news gets mainly * and *** reviews, among them … …. Sting v Summers & Copeland over Every Breath You Take, the goose that laid the golden egg … what John Lennon would have thought about the ‘cancelled’ track on Some Time In New York City … when did “critically acclaimed” come to mean unpopular? … the knock-about days when a critic was “a jerk, a crank and a spoilsport” … Jonny Greenwood’s dad was a bomb disposal expert? Pete Doherty’s mum was a Lance-Corporal in the Royal Army Nursing Corps? … what matters more, the song or the record? ... Anthony Fantano, Rick Beato and the rise of the YouTube rock review … “negative comments about a famous act’s new album are like graffiti on the walls of a hallowed institution” … Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait, Andrew Ridgeley’s Son Of Albert (“half a star”) and the lost age of the crushing review … and “you never mention Depeche Mode!”Find out more about how to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Om Podcasten

Mark Ellen and David Hepworth have been talking about and writing about music together and individually for a collective eighty years in magazines like Smash Hits, Mojo and The Word and on radio and TV programmes like "Rock On", "Whistle Test" and VH-1.Over thirteen years ago, when working on the late magazine The Word, they began producing podcasts. Some listeners have been kind enough to say these have been very special to them. When the magazine folded in 2012 they kept the spirit of those podcasts alive in regular Word In Your Ear evenings in which they spoke to musicians and authors in front of an audience. Over these years they've produced hundreds of hours of material. As of the Current Unpleasantness of 2020, they've produced yet hundreds of hours more with a little help from guests kind enough to digitally show them around their attics such as Danny Baker, Andy Partridge, Sir Tim Rice and Mark Lewisohn. For the full span of the Word In Your Ear world, visit wiyelondon.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.