a suggestion to music blogs

The albums above are current (and older) favorites of mine. On all of them, there are catchy melodies and interesting lyrics. Not world-/life-changing stuff, but enjoyable music that makes me happy. All (in some form or another) harshly criticized.

I'm not so happy when I read certain music blogs. I was angered recently by a review of Ryan Adams and the Cardinals new album "Cardinology" when a reviewer panned a few songs for being "radio-friendly". Okay, what's wrong with writing a song that doesn't alienate people? One song in question is called "Magick" and it's a pretty good song. It has chord changes and a catchy chorus. I tend to think that if you can write a song that will make people happy, then you've done something kind of good.

Not so with music sites such as Pitchfork (who overanalyze everything) and It's Hard to Find a Friend (who I generally love...save for this ignorant statement about Adams). IHTFAF even mentioned that Adams' album "Rock n Roll" was horrible. Not true. It was an artist who is normally in the alt-country genre branching out and making really good sounding classic rock. What's wrong with that picture? Nothing, except for the reviewer's inability to listen to these songs while at a stop light with his windows down and be seen by others as so much "cooler" and "different" for not liking what they like.

Am I saying that I don't want to be different? No. I'm not saying I do, either. I just want to like what I like. Why do we have to harshly criticize music (or anything personal) just because it is or isn't the way we see that it should be? In the case of music, let's just let it be. If you like it, good. If not, that's fine. But please stop being so pretentious. It's not cool. It's annoying.