The competition for clicks often makes the game of online music journalism feel a bit like a drag race: the first one there wins. And like a drag race, sometimes, people hammer the gas early.
Rihanna's Anti is rumoured to drop sometime today, but an overeager editor down at Mic, perhaps drunk on turkey, pressed go on a pre-written review yesterday before the author had even heard the album. Then, compounding the boo-boo and further evidencing the breakneck rhythm of internet news, Yahoo aggregated the story — which, who knows, is probably an automated bit of code at this point — blasting the writer's rough notes even deeper into cyber space. Both sites have since removed the article (but we have a screenshot below).
The reviewer's draft leaves hilarious fill-in-the-blanks like "[FEATURED ARTISTS]" and "[NUMBER OF TRACKS]" and "[LYRICS]." It's a template, a shell, and for the most cynical, the mechanics of quick hit web-based music writing denuded. Proof positive that reviews are dead, some have cried.
Or maybe, we're the dummies and its actually an ingenious meta-review, itself criticizing the pallid state of art criticism and its atrophied audience in the age of the ever-refreshing Twitter feed (which is ticking away in the background set to #Rihanna, making sure Anti doesn't really appear before I finish this article).
Yahoo accidentally publishes a Rihanna review before even hearing the album by chris hampton | Chart Attack.
