Bad Music Writing

I just read another interview with Deya Dova (scroll down for my effort) and I have to say I'm pretty appalled.

The writer spends the opening four or five lines talking about the fact that he has a British accent. When you only have what appears to be 500 words, you have to make ém count and I'm terribly sorry but as a reader I don't really give a shit what your accent is like or what effect it had on the person you are interviewing.

The article is supposed to be about Deya's new album, but the writer goes on to talk at great length about where the artist grew up and what effect that had on her earlier music, and where she lives now and what effect that has on her music. He (could be a she as they only give the first initial of their first name) does cover how nerve-wracking it was for Deya to give creative control of her creations to the other producers to remix the tracks before coming to a pretty garbled conclusion about how the artist found it all an interesting process.

There is not one mention of the list of fascinating producers involved. Not one mention of any of the tracks that have been remixed and how they differ from the originals. There is not one mention of the wide variety of genres covered. There is a tag line telling us where we can buy the album from, but what is the point in that if the reader has no idea of what the album actually is? There is simply no indication of what kind of music we are talking about. It's half a page of completely missed opportunity.

I've not heard of this writer before (I've since read an article they did with Deadmau5 and although better written they still made a couple of basic mistakes) but I suspect that they might be a rookie. I suspect they know nothing of Deya's earlier music. These things could both be overcome by some relevant questions though. The article is about the album - talk about the album, or at least ask questions about it. There is simply no relevant information in the article. And don't even get me started on the poor use of quotes and sentence structure.

But at least we do know the writer has a British accent.

My big problem is that I can't really complain to the magazine because I don't want to appear to be promoting the album (I have already written my own piece for another mag as well as an album review), and I am about to start writing for this very magazine so I don't want to risk pissing anyone off. The writing was bad enough but the editor, really, should have done something about it. They should have binned it and asked for a re-write with actual information in it. They should have pointed out that at no point does the reader get any idea of what the music is, other than electronica. Deya herself mentions the words trance and progressive house but no cue is taken to find out what other sounds are in the mix.

I don't know what they thought they were writing or why the editor let it go through, but I do know that it made me Grumpy... maybe I should rant about it in a Grumpy column. Although it's a bit dodgy slagging off other writers, innit.