Posted under Music Quotations
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” - Laurie Anderson
This is sooo true. Which is ironic, since this whole site consists of writing about music, but it’s still true nonetheless. I write about it because it’s fun to do so for me, but I have no illusions that anything I write really matters. Imagine if all the music criticism, commentary etc in the world just disappeared, and only the music itself remained. Would we really be worse off? Not much, IMO.
Sure, some music-related writing is very valuable. Like technical ‘how’ to’ type stuff - how to play the violin, how to write four part harmony, how to build a music website - that kind of thing. That all helps musicians to develop their skills. But I don’t think any other category of music writing really matters much. Bio/autobiographies and artist interviews can be very interesting (sometimes in a useful sense, sometimes just as entertaining gossip fodder), so I’d miss them if they weren’t around. But the majority of criticism and opinion? The world and most musicians would be better off without it, I think. This quote highlights its irrelevance perfectly.
