About a year ago, a friend of mine asked a perfectly reasonable question when I told him that I was thinking about starting a music website.
“What’s your angle?”
I hadn’t really thought about an “angle,” per se, but essentially, the question – at least my interpretation of it – came down to “why?” Why me? What authority did I have as a writer, or as a music critic? Why did the internet need another middle-aged, white, middle class, suburban male sharing his opinion on anything – especially something so common as music?
I had no answer. I still don’t.
And yet, I’m doing it anyway…
I’ve been actively writing about music on the indispensable website RateYourMusic for over a decade, sharing lists of my favorite albums and songs to a limited grouping of “friends” (some of whom are actual, real-life friends), and the wider community of RYM users.
A few years ago, I noticed that some of these lists had generated tens of thousands of views – nothing major in the grand scheme of things, but kind of heartening for someone who has been releasing their own music into “the void” for over twenty years.
Eventually, I got the idea that it might make sense to migrate my efforts from someone else’s site to my own, not for any aspirations that it could “take off,” but because I thought it might be fun to cultivate my own little corner of the internet with something that I had full control over.
So, I’m gonna try it.
In the spring, I’ll begin sharing a project that is several years in the making – a recurring feature called A Century of Song, that will highlight 100 years of popular music through 1000 carefully chosen songs. It was this project in particular that convinced me that starting my own website made sense.
In the meantime, I’m going to start small, with reviews of some classic albums and blog posts about whatever comes to mind.
I don’t have any particular schedule or deadlines in mind, but my intentions at this point are to share at least one new article or blog post each week. The first is a long-form review of one of my favorite records, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society (1968).
Thanks for reading…
