Introduction
This page includes tips and recommended resources for finding published music criticism. For help with writing music criticism, consult the Writing Guides listed on the Getting Started page of this guide.
Music criticism can be defined "by means of dissemination, intended readership, and the nature of its content. The term has been used to denote many different types of writings, from theoretical analyses and historical surveys to biographies and socio-cultural studies. The image most frequently evoked by the phrase “music criticism,” however—at least in widespread public perception—is of relatively brief writings in serial publications intended for general readerships that evaluate the quality of musical performance and/or composition." (Helgert, Lars. "Criticism." Grove Music Online. January 31, 2014. Oxford University Press.)
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The Cambridge History of Music Criticism
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Call Number: Online Resource and Music & Performing Arts Library - ML3880 .C26 2019The Cambridge History of Music Criticism goes beyond the better-known accounts, reaching back to medieval times, expanding the geographical reach both within and beyond Europe, and including key issues such as women and criticism of recordings, as well as the story of criticism in jazz, popular music and world music.
Search Tips
There are many tools available to discover different types of music criticism. Think first about what type of criticism you're looking for, then identify the ideal tool. Are you looking for a book-length piece? Search the library catalog. Are you looking for a shorter piece published in a periodical like Rolling Stone? Search a database.
Consider searching by:
- specific music critic (e.g. Danyel Smith or Greg Tate)
- specific artist or group (e.g. Living Colour or Chuck Berry)
- the term "criticism" or "musical criticism"
Recommended Tools and Resources
The databases and other tools listed below index periodical publications (journals, newspapers, magazines) so that you can search for individual articles on a topic or by a specific critic. They are grouped by tools that are publication specific (Ebony magazine), culturally specific (African American newspapers), or music specific (music periodicals). Check out our A-Z Databases list for more databases or the History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library's Newspaper Database for access to specific publications.
Publication Specific
Note: if you're trying to determine what kind of access the Library has to a specific magazine or journal, a journal search through the library catalog is your best bet. It will tell you if we have online access (which platform(s) and years included) or print access. See the Finding Journal Articles page for more details.
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Black Music in Ebony: an annotated guide to the articles on music in Ebony magazine, 1945-1985
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Call Number: MPAL Stacks - ML128.B45 V36
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Rolling Stone Archive This link opens in a new windowThe backfile of Rolling Stone, from its launch in 1967 to the present. One of the most influential consumer magazines of the 20th-21st centuries, it initially sought to reflect the cultural, social, and political outlook of a generation of students and young adults. It has been a leading vehicle for rock and popular music journalism, as well as covering wider entertainment topics such as film and popular culture. Major journalists and authors to have contributed include Hunter S. Thompson, Patti Smith, and Tom Wolfe.
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Village VoiceVarious online and print coverage.
Presents the Village Voice, a weekly publication that covers New York City life and the arts. Offers access to news, classifieds, and features. Provides information on films, music, arts, and writing.
Culture, Time Period, or Region Specific
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African American Periodicals This link opens in a new windowAfrican American Periodicals, 1825-1995 features more than 170 wide-ranging periodicals by and about African Americans.
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ProQuest Historical Black Newspapers This link opens in a new windowA custom search across the full text of the following ten African-American newspapers:
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Atlanta Daily World (1931-2010)
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Defender (1909-2010)
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Cleveland Call and Post (1934-2010)
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005)
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Louisville Defender (1951-2010)
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Amsterdam News (1922-2010)
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Norfolk Journal and Guide (1916-2010)
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2010)
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2010)
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Baltimore Afro-American (1893-2010)
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Atlanta Daily World (1931-2010)
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America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new windowSearch or browse early American newspapers including titles from all 50 present states. Includes: Early American Newspapers, Series 1 (1690 - 1876), Early American Newspapers, Series 2 (1758 - 1900), Early American Newspapers, Series 3 (1829 - 1922), Early American Newspapers, Series 4 (1756 - 1922), Early American Newspapers, Series 5 (1777 - 1922), Early American Newspapers, Series 6 (1741 - 1922), Early American Newspapers, Series 7 (1773 - 1922), Early American Newspapers Series 10 (1730-1900), Early American Newspapers Series13 (1803-1916), Early American Newspapers Series 14 (1807-1880), Hispanic American Newspapers (1808 - 1980), African American Newspapers (1827 - 1998), African American Newspapers Series 2 (1835 - 1956), Ethnic American Newspapers from the Balch Collection (1799 - 1971), Caribbean Newspapers, Series 1 (1718 - 1876) and American Business: Agricultural Newspapers (1788 - 1894).
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Alternative Press Index This link opens in a new window
The Alternative Press Index is a subject index to over 300 alternative, radical and left periodicals, newspapers and magazines. The Index is international and interdisciplinary, spanning the social sciences and humanities, with its central focus on the practice and theory of socialism, national liberation, labor, indigenous peoples, gays/lesbians, feminism, ecology, democracy, and anarchism.
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Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new windowIncluded are journals, magazines, and newspapers from ethnic and minority presses. The current collection, Ethnic NewsWatch™, covers 1990-present, and the historical collection, Ethnic NewsWatch: A History™, spans 1959-1989. Ethnicities include: African American/Caribbean/African; Arab/Middle Eastern; Asian/Pacific Islander; European/Eastern European; Hispanic; Jewish; Native People.
Digital Primary Source Collections
The following collections include digitized primary sources relating to specific themes, including popular magazines of the time that published music content.
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Girlhood: Magazines and Print Culture, Module I This link opens in a new window
Girlhood: Magazines and Print Culture is a collection of graphic annuals, comics, magazines, and periodicals marketed towards girls and young women. Content is sourced from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, and includes titles such as Tiger Beat.
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Popular Culture in Britain and America This link opens in a new windowThis online resource offers access to a wide range of printed and manuscript sources, visual material, ephemera and video clips. The material covers key topics and major events of the period, including: student activism across Europe and the US; the Vietnam conflict; the fight for civil rights; women's liberation; fashion, consumerism and youth culture; the music scene; book, magazine and film censorship.
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1980's Culture and Society This link opens in a new window
Features zines, newspapers, ephemera, oral histories, films, and photographs created within diverse 1980s cultural movements in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. Focuses on the voices of under-represented groups, grassroots organizations, and countercultural movements, addressing themes such as sexuality and identity, Black resistance movements, Indigenous land rights, subcultures, and health and social issues.
Music Specific
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Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive This link opens in a new windowAn archival research resource containing the essential primary sources for studying the history of the film and entertainment industries, from the era of vaudeville and silent movies through to 2000. The core US and UK trade magazines covering film, music, broadcasting and theater are all included, together with film fan magazines and music press titles. Magazines have been scanned cover-to-cover in high-resolution color, with granular indexing of all articles, covers, ads and reviews.
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Music Periodicals Database This link opens in a new windowA database with full-text and abstracts of articles on music. Includes indexing for music articles and obituaries from the New York Times and The Washington Post. Covers nearly all aspects of music, including scholarly studies and popular trends. Coverage: 1874 - present.
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Da Capo's Best Music Writing seriesNot exactly a book-length work, but the titles in this series collect a specific year's finest writing on rock, hip-hop, jazz, pop, country and more, published all in one volume.
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33 1/3 Series33 1/3 is a series of short books about popular music, focusing on individual albums by artists ranging from James Brown to Neutral Milk Hotel. Each album occupies a specific place in music history, so each book-length treatment takes an individualized approach. 33 1/3 is widely acclaimed by fans, musicians, and scholars alike. We have online access to all of these through the Bloomsbury Music & Sound platform and a significant portion of the series is available in print.
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Flyboy 2: the Greg Tate reader
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Call Number: Main Stacks - 781.6408996 T187f2016Since launching his career at the Village Voice in the early 1980s Greg Tate has been one of the premiere critical voices on contemporary Black music, art, literature, film, and politics. Flyboy 2 provides a panoramic view of the past thirty years of Tate's influential work. Whether interviewing Miles Davis or Ice Cube, reviewing an Azealia Banks mixtape or Suzan-Lori Parks's Topdog/Underdog, discussing visual artist Kara Walker or writer Clarence Major, or analyzing the ties between Afro-futurism, Black feminism, and social movements, Tate's resounding critical insights illustrate how race, gender, and class become manifest in American popular culture. -
Liner Notes for the Revolution: the intellectual life of black feminist sound
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Call Number: History, Philosophy, & Newspaper Library - ML3556 .B74 2021Daphne A. Brooks explores more than a century of music archives to examine the critics, collectors, and listeners who have determined perceptions of Black women on stage and in the recording studio. Brooks tackles the complicated racial politics of blues music recording, song collecting, and rock and roll criticism. With an innovative perspective on the story of Black women in popular music-and who should rightly tell it-Liner Notes for the Revolution pioneers a long overdue recognition and celebration of Black women musicians as radical intellectuals. -
The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic
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Call Number: MPAL Stacks - ML3534 .H667 2021Throughout her career, spanning more than two decades, Jessica Hopper, a revered and pioneering music critic, has examined women recording and producing music, in all genres, through an intersectional feminist lens. The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic features oral histories of bands like Hole and Sleater Kinney, interviews with the women editors of 1970s-era Rolling Stone, and intimate conversations with iconic musicians such as Björk, Robyn, and Lido Pimienta. -
Rock and Roll Always Forgets: a quarter century of music criticism
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Call Number: Main Stacks - ML3534 .E29 2011Chuck Eddy is one of the most entertaining, idiosyncratic, influential, and prolific music critics of the past three decades. His byline has appeared everywhere from the Village Voice and Rolling Stone to Creem, Spin, and Vibe. His interviews with subjects ranging from the Beastie Boys, the Pet Shop Boys, Robert Plant, and Teena Marie to the Flaming Lips, AC/DC, and Eminem's grandmother are unforgettable. -
Rock Criticism from the Beginning: amusers, bruisers, and cool-headed cruisers
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Call Number: Oak Street Library (Request Online) - 781.66117 L64rRock Criticism from the Beginning is a wide-ranging exploration of the rise and development of rock criticism in Britain and the United States from the 1960s to the present. It chronicles the evolution of a new form of journalism, and the course by which writing on rock was transformed into a respected field of cultural production. The authors explore the establishment of magazines from Crawdaddy! and Rolling Stone to The Source, and from Melody Maker and New Musical Express to The Wire. -
Totally Wired: the rise and fall of the music press
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Call Number: Communications Library - ML160 .G67 2022Totally Wired charts the coming of age of music publications covering the contemporary bands, trends, and scene. This book offers a history of the journalists who described the wild landscape of the rise of rock and its evolution from the 1950s to the 2000s, through R&B, pop, the Summer of Love, punk, and beyond.
