"My favorite characters on "The Muppet Show" were Statler and Waldorf, the two geezers who sat in an opera box, delivering instant reviews of the action onstage. (One logically unassailable judgment, from Statler: "I wouldn't mind this show if they just got rid of one thing . . . me!") On television, the film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert structured their show so that at any time at least one of them was likely to be exasperated, possibly with the other one."
"On MTV, the rock critic Kurt Loder was a deliciously subversive presence, giving brief news reports with an intonation that conveyed deadpan contempt for many of the music videos the network played. And the first music review I remember reading was in Rolling Stone, which rated albums on a scale of one to five stars, or so I thought. In 1990, the début solo album by Andrew Ridgeley, who had sung alongside George Michael in the pop duo Wham!, was awarded only half a star."
Critics were commonly seen as jerks, cranks, and spoilsports during childhood, embodied by Statler and Waldorf delivering instant opera-box reviews. Television critics like Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert often displayed exasperation, and MTV's Kurt Loder expressed deadpan contempt for many music videos. Rolling Stone album ratings shaped memories, including a half-star for Andrew Ridgeley's 1990 début solo album. Pop-music criticism claims serious analysis of a form many consider silly. In 1969 Robert Christgau began a Village Voice 'Consumer Guide' assigning letter grades to albums, taking pleasure in irritating rock-loving hipsters who opposed consumption and grading. Donny Hathaway's music was labeled 'supper-club melodrama and homogenized jazz.'
Read at The New Yorker
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