Sam Jennings

“The internet has now had about three decades to hobble print journalism, scatter established criticism to the wind, and reduce almost everything else to advertising.”

“That transgressive Boomer counterculture Sontag once championed may have devolved into a thousand marketable Gen‑X subcultures by the Nineties.”

“Within the next 10 years, Pitchfork would go on to become the internet music review site par excellence, averaging one million monthly readers.”

“In 2006, Pitchfork even managed to create its own significant music festival in Chicago (and later in Barcelona, too),”

“Just as the last 15 years or so of pop culture can be seen as an aggressive overcorrection against that stereotype,”

“Pitchfork itself has spent the last decade and a half slowly winding down into post‑Web 2.0 irrelevance.”

“In 2015, Condé Nast bought the site,”

“Anna Wintour promptly folded the company into GQ two years ago.”

“On 20 January 2026 — 30 years into its reign as the last bastion of genuine music criticism — Pitchfork announced it would be transferring to a subscription model,”

“In 2019, the site began issuing extremely positive reviews of old Taylor Swift albums,”

“Two years later, it offered an editorial — maybe the lowest point in the site’s entire history — entitled “Pitchfork Reviews: Rescored” in which the editors offered about twenty re‑dos of old reviews,”

“In 2000 review of Radiohead’s Kid A for the site famously garnered a bit of negative, mocking attention — yet the fact that the site awarded the album its rare perfect 10.0 rating,”

“the site’s 3.3 review of the Jacksonville indie band Black Kids’ first record — which consisted of a single picture and a frowning face emoji, along with the word “sorry”— as a major reason for the b…”

“the 0.0 rating it awarded to the Australian band Jet’s 2006 record Shine On:”

“Schreiber himself left in 2018, replaced by Puja Patel, who served as general editor until 2024.”

“In 2002, the site had declared the great cult band Pavement’s yearning slacker classic “Gold Soundz” the best song of the Nineties: in 2022, it was now Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” — and not even the ori…”

“As of this January, to go back and actually read any of this history now requires a $5 subscription.”

“The site’s ecstatic review for Arcade Fire’s debut 2004 record Funeral”