Why Do We Care What The Critics Think? (I’ll Tell You)
It’s August 2006, I’m hanging around the no-longer-in-existence FYE on Transit & Wehrle, next to the Imax Theater. I pick up the new issue of Spin, immediately flip to the reviews section, and I’m dejected to notice that Tom Petty’s Highway Companion had only received two stars. I resisted the urge to hurl the magazine across the room, but I was decidedly unhappy. How could the be so down on my favorite artist ever? But more importantly, why did I give a fuck? It’s the question that fans, musicians, and probably even other critics have contemplated for decades: why do we care what the critics think? If we derive joy from an album, should we really be losing sleep over whether or not some freelancer from Rolling Stone thought it wasn’t any good? Ideally, no, but we care anyways. Because as music fans, we feel an intrinsic need to have our[...]