Rock Critic Law

WRITING ABOUT MUSIC IS HARD--AND THIS BOOK PROVES IT 101 TIMES OVER It's happened to all of us who read about rock music: you come across a piece about a hot music scene and the writer thinks they're being clever by exclaiming, "There must be something in the water!" Or maybe a couple of musicians have started a new project that's "risen from the ashes" of their previous band. There's a million of those dumb things that rock critics say. Well, OK, maybe just a hundred and one. And they're all duly immortalized in legendary rock journalist Michael Azerrad's Rock Critic Law: 101 Unbreakable Rules for Writing Badly About Music. Fed up, in a bemused sort of way, with all these well-worn tropes of the trade, Azerrad began tweeting them with the hashtag #RockCriticLaw, and the author's righteous tirade struck a chord with both readers and writers of rock criticism, who greeted each new dispatch with gales of derisive laughter or self-flagellating mea culpas. Written as a set of inviolable rules to be followed only by the very worst writers, Rock Critic Law is a wickedly droll exposé of the hackneyed metaphors, knee-jerk clichés and lazy thinking that have long dogged music journalism. In Rock Critic Law , Azerrad has collected the worst offenders. Merciless, snarky, and loving underneath it all, Rock Critic Law is redeemed by artwork from OG-Seattle-scenester-turned-renowned-illustrator Edwin Fotheringham. The rock & roll love child of Elements of Style and The Devil's Dictionary , Rock Critic Law is a unique appreciation of music writing from one of its own.