Very well put, Mark. A critic's duty is to criticize constructively, not presume to know better than the artist who conceived the project - excellent point.
I have some trouble with the Dog Eat Dog album but love some of the individual tracks, for instance. But never would it occur to me to say "Joni should not have made this record," or "What was Joni thinking?!" I know what she was trying to do and appreciate it because I love her mind. To her it may have succeeded marvelously but it's naturally not going to tickle everyone's fancy. The same goes for any given album. It's a fine line between opinion and criticism and an even finer line between criticism and denigration. The key is to be constructive, objective and thoughtful when analyzing your feelings for another person's creation, always keeping in mind that it's an expression of another individual's interior world - their thoughts, their vision, their ideas - and that the critic, therefore, has a tremendous responsibility to be thorough in his or her analysis. Right? -Andrew Yahoo! Mail Plus Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
