Jevon Williams
ENG 1101
Rhetorical Analysis
Music writing is something that can not be taught, so it is a pointless exercise in a way to write a book called How to Write About Music.However, while you can’t teach anyone how to write beautiful prose about this melodic art form, you can encourage, shape and structure lessons to empower the reader to write about music. As Rick Moody states in his timely foreword to the book: “The lack of a dominant template is one of the many similarities between the music writing of the seventies, let’s say, and the music writing of our own time, is the lack of a prevailing format.”
He’s Right! There are hundreds of magazines in the twenty-first century, thousands of music blogs, YouTube channels, journals, etc. all clamoring for well-written articles, think pieces and musings on popular and not – so-popular music.
If writing for a blog, there are no more rigid word count restrictions; the possibilities are endless and it’s intimidating. Yet while the way we listen to and consume music has changed so much, an album’s basic concept remains the same.The exercise of defining and praising an album is therefore still a very true and sought-after method of writing music. Reviewing an album is not an easy task.
“The critic both uses and is sometimes blind to his prejudices and ideals – the more you know about yourself and how you process what you’re writing and given that self-knowledge, the better … Don’t write as someone who doesn’t care about what you care about.”
