MAGICAL MUSIC REVIEWER WITH THE PERSISTENCE TO GO THE DISTANCE
Karla Clifton is a Legend
In a small corner of the internet, an ending is bringing a new beginning.
I’ve recently written a review of 1001 Albums, not imagining it had anything to do with Karla Clifton.
For those of you not familiar with Karla, over the past few years she has been working her way through Rolling Stone Magazine’s top 500 albums, writing a review of each. It all began on the 6th January, 2021 with What’s Going On by Marvin Gaye.
Three years later, she’s hit #500. A titanic achievement in a world where it feels hard to stay committed to something for more than three hours.
At this point, her project is both at the end and at the beginning.
End in the sense that there will be no more reviews to write. It is a beginning in the sense of the project becoming a whole.
It is here that the similarities and differences 1001 albums emerge.
Thanks to many comments I received for my 1001 review, I had to refresh my thoughts about the book, as I realised a central problem was that it was lacking in personality.
If you check out Karla’s bio it is little more than “Writer, fake music fan.” I suspect this is an upgrade on her previous one which was simple “Fake Music Fan” if my mind isn’t playing tricks.
After 500 albums Karla might still consider herself a fake music fan, but fake music writer, not so much.
The project began with a Karla Clifton against the world vibe, well, at least against Rolling Stone Magazine.
Initially, each review ended with a small section called IS RS FULL OF IT?
By the end, this was gone. This made sense. In the end, Karla’s writing wasn’t about Rolling Magazine, their Top 500 List was simply a framework on which to hang her own fake music fan writing.
With the recent decline of Pitchfork there has been much hand wringing regarding the state of music criticism. Personally, I couldn’t care less. One of the great upsides of the internet has been the rise of alternative outlets for music criticism, whether that be Medium, Allmusic or X (formerly Twitter).
What this has effectively done is to break the hegemony of the mainstream media as the authoritative source of music criticism.There is no longer any authoritative source, the nature of music criticism has changed, and in taking on a more egalitarian flavour, I would argue it has changed for the better.
The self importance of the likes of Rolling Stone Magazine, ably demonstrated by Jann Wenner’s recent brain snaps, has finally begun to erode. No one gets to be a universal authority anymore, all the critic gets to offer is their take. From there, it’s up to the audience.
This is precisely the strength of what Karla has achieved here, it’s her take from start to finish. It’s also an object lesson to any writer on how a greater whole can be built one step at a time. The series is filled with wit, personality and for a fake music fan, Karla also managed to uncover previously unknown facts from some of my favourite albums.
This is demonstrated perfectly by the essay that got the whole ball rolling.
This is a great place to start. It also features an index of every single review.
Dive in!
Up Next, I’ll be selecting my 7 favourite reviews from the series.
