The following is something I wrote up a few months ago while trying to consolidate my thoughts on what to tell more-novice writers when they ask “But why can’t I write about every track?” Keep in mind this shows me trying to speak for Sputnik as a whole, but is also my personal opinion, so feel free to chime in as well as discussing my own reasons. Enjoy.

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Track-by-track reviews are frowned upon on Sputnikmusic. Why? Because, at best, the site tries to be “professional.” And, obviously, there are different definitions on what makes a review that way, but the one generally agreed-upon rule is that explicitly track-by-track reviews don’t look good, especially beside full paragraph-by-paragraph album analyses. There are a number of explanations for this, and I’ll include a few here. First, track-by-track reviews typically have really, really short paragraphs. Which can be fine, but in almost all types of critical writing paragraphs should have at least a few sentences. We all probably learned this in elementary school: intro sentence, three body sentences, concluding sentence. And that’s probably the bare minimum, and usually even that’s not enough – typically, my paragraphs are about 8-12 sentences, which I think is a pretty good length as it’s beefy but not threateningly long. To reiterate: track-by-track reviews lead to too-short paragraphs, which really doesn’t look well-written and complete.

Second, track-by-track reviews are almost always incredibly disjointed. A review should have some sort of coherent structure (and no, brief intro – every track – brief conclusion is not a coherent structure), and if the writer is jumping from track to track without connections then the review becomes really difficult to follow. After all, it’s the writer’s job to make the review readable – the reader doesn’t have to read the review at all. If the review flows nicely from beginning to end, then that’s a major plus and everyone goes home happy. Believe me, figuring out how to do this takes a good bit of experience, but a writer has to work out of his comfort zone to figure out his reviews will flow easily. And, in the end, a good writer will usually realize that track-by-track reviews are really damn hard to tie together.

Third, no music blogs/sites with much credibility do track-by-track reviews. Aside from staff/contributor reviews on Sputnik, look at Pitchfork, Resident Advisor, Tiny Mix Tapes, Consequence of Sound, or any of the other dozens of really good sites all across the Internet. Look at any print magazines, like Under the Radar, Mixmag, etc. None of them do track-by-track reviews – the only established place who does track-by-track reviews is iTunes. Which is fine if you want to write for iTunes, but we’re not trying to emulate them because the reviews there are usually incredibly biased to the point of inducing nausea no matter the album. Again, this is because full-length reviews are easier and more satisfying to read, among other reasons.

Fourth, and probably most importantly, Sputnik consists of album reviews. Not reviews of every track on an album – album reviews. If you get lost in each individual track, it’s easy to miss the overarching themes, elements, and techniques found throughout, and it’s important to zoom out and view the album as a whole (though it can be good – and sometimes necessary – to focus on certain tracks). The format of the review basically allows the writer to say whatever he wants relating to the album. His/her job is to guide the reader through the review he/she has written, and with any luck expose the reader to a convincing opinion. The track-by-track stifles the review format, allowing for a very tight, “objective” interpretation of the album only, essentially squeezing all life out of the music. That’s not what we want.

Hopefully this helps you, the aspiring writer, to understand the site’s collective rationale when it says, “TBT IS BAD, NEG.” There’s a reason it’s such a prevalent mindset, and as you write more I hope you begin to understand it as well – someday you might be the one writing a post like this! Good luck, and keep on writing.