I have no idea what a majestic piece of music sounds like, yet albums by the Courteeners, Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, Coldplay and Elbow all fall under the majestic category, music critics don't like to compare bands to other bands because they fear their peers will, accuse them of being lazy... apart from in example 2.
2. _________ are Like_____ crossed with _______ /at a party/funeral/in a gym/ having a fight/ on crack/heroin etc.
On the back of the Moldy Peaches debut and ultimately their only proper album, kindly wrote a review template for critics on the back cover of their album, the template has remained an important part of the lazy critics review.
Unfortunately I could only find the front cover image.
The ____ are like _____ on ____ was also unearthed by Stewart Lee and Richard Herring as a tool for lazy hacks. eg. 'The Flaming Lips are like Electric Light Orchestra on Acid'. Or Eminem is like Vanilla Ice on crack.
This is one of a very limited and very specific set of rules that are used particularly by tabloid reviewers. Tabloid reviewers also give every album 4 or 5 stars.
3. Visceral, Etheral etc. (trans) " I am a pretenteous fucking twat
4. Sub Genre-isation.
Journalists and music journalists are always trying to create new genres and sub genres, they do it so often that you could use the metaphor of them throwing their own shit at a very public wall, lets, for arguments sake suggest the great wall of china, they throw lump after lump of their own turd in the hope that some of it sticks... Dance music is a particular ball ache to keep up with. house. that was simple, then came techno, or maybe the other way round. Then came tech-house a fusion of the two then breakbeat, then tech breaks, then drum & bass, drill & bass, tech step, 2 step garage, funky house, deep house, chill house, chill core, acid house, acid techno acid trance, liquid drum & bass, jump up drum & bass, Jungle Booty Bass, Hardcore, happy hardcore, New Skool breaks, big beat, nu beat, rare groove, acid jazz, old skool breaks, minimal house, click house. All literally because a coked up journo hack at mixmag failed to have anything meaningful to write about, so he imagined a new 'scene' with a radical form of new music which didn't sound all that different to the others. See? I've got about 300 words just from listing the bullshit on the spot made up sub genres in one form of music... I could easily move onto brit pop, brit hop, krautrock, nu-folk etc etc etc...
John Peel didn't give a shit about all these stupid buzzwords.
I was going to carry on finding more music critic cliche's but then I typed in 'music critic cliches' on a google search and it turns out someone has pretty much already written out the same things as me in a blog almost word for word. let him fucking sue me. I'd written most of this before I saw that blog anyway.
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