One of today’s most hazardous jobs is ‘music critic.’ Here’s why

It used to be that a music critic's job was to offer outside insight into the work of an artist, offering guidance to music fans. Doing that today comes with big risks.

Back when music was expensive and required effort to acquire, people did their research before opting to buy an album or single. That meant turning to the record review section of magazines like Rolling Stone, Spin, Mojo, Q, or dozens of others.

Each had a staff of critics whose job was to pick apart the music and offer opinions on whether a specific release was worth your time and money. Some of these magazines even published the collected works of their critics.

Music fans trusted — depended on — the writings of Robert Christgau (Rolling Stone, Billboard, Village Voice, Playboy), Lisa Robinson (CREEM, The NME, Rock Scene, Vanity Fair), Nick Kent (The NME, The Face), David Fricke (Rolling Stone), Paul Morley (The NME, BLITZ), Greil Marcus (Village Voice, Rolling Stone), and of course, Lester Bangs (CREEM, Rolling Stone), who probably did more to elevate rock criticism to a respected artform than anyone else.

They and others helped fans connect more to the music, taught us about the star-making machinery, and helped us make sense of things.

Old-school record reviews were not only enlightening but also entertaining. Take, for example, this review of Lou Reed’s — ahem — difficult-to-listen-to, get-me-out-of-my-record-contract release, Metal Machine Music. It appeared in CREEM magazine in 1975.

And it wasn’t just their opinions we valued; they contributed to culture. In 1971, Dave Marsh was the first to use the word “punk” to describe a certain type of raw rock’n’roll in a CREEM article about ? and the Mysterians. The BBC’s Stuart Maconie is credited with popularizing the term “Britpop.” Chrissie Hynde applied lessons learned from her time as a journalist at The NME to the formation of The Pretenders. The Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant did the same after working at Smash Hits.

One of the first types of online music sites involved publishing reviews (or at least opinions) of new releases. Perhaps the most renowned and notorious of these was Pitchfork, which made it clear that they had no trouble skewering anything submitted to them. The best/worst review that appeared among its posts — a 2006 critique of Jet’s Shine On album — featured no words at all. The message, however, was very, very clear.

Critics were supposed to be fearless in their opinions, unafraid to call ’em as they saw ’em. Dave Marsh, for example, was consistently ragging on John Bonham’s skills as a drummer even as he was being lauded as one of the greatest of all time. Lester Bangs hated Black Sabbath, calling the lyrics on their debut album “inane.”