music, defined.
you're welcome.
we just wanted to share.
Meet The Team
Lexi Medina
Helllloooooooo! My name is Lexi Medina and I’m a senior at UGA. I’m studying journalism and hope to one day work in the music festival industry, as that’s where I spend most of my time anyways. I travel all across the country chasing lineups with some of my favorite artists being Bassnectar, Tame Impala and Ariana Grande (all over the place, I know.) For me, nothing beats the feeling of standing in a crowd with people just as excited as you to be there and being ready to shout the words to all of your favorite songs. When I’m not festivaling, you can find me Instagramming my brunch at Holler & Dash in Atlanta, photographing my friends or traveling the world with my best friend.
Brandon Drick
Hello! My name is Brandon and I’m a senior Journalism major at the University of Georgia’s Grady College. Some of my fondest memories here in Athens have involved dancing foolishly at concerts, singing unforgivingly off-key and meeting some fantastic people. I really want to give back to a world which has given me so much by becoming a music critic. Music connects people in such a beautiful way and so many bands have given me guidance throughout the years. When I struggled to curate pieces for my studio art class, bands like Balmorhea were my creative muse. In an angst-riddled college career, Car Seat Headrest offered comfort. The Shins encouraged me to embrace the zany parts of my personality and The Story So Far taught me that there are more than three shades of the color blue. I am very passionate about connecting people through music and I want to share that with you now. I have a Spotify playlist called the “Goodie Bag” which offers songs by lesser known artists to jam dance to on those long car rides. I hope you enjoy!
Sam Jones
Hi. My name is Sam Jones and I’m a Coldplay apologist. You may have known that just by looking at me. As much as I want to fight it, there’s some things you have to accept about yourself. Did I know what I was getting into when I listened to my first “The Fray” record in middle school? Did I know that it was the first step down a slippery slope of piano-driven arena-pop-rock that I will never fully escape from? Did I know that the first time I heard “Fix You” I would not just enjoy it, but I would feel something? No. Because if I knew any of that I wouldn’t be standing before you today. People ask me if I regret it. The sappy lyrics. The whiteness of the music. The Chris Martin of it all. And a small part of me does. It’s why you’re all looking at me like that right now. Don’t think I don’t know that look, you are not the first and you won’t be the last. But there’s a greater part of me knows that if I never unironically listened to an album called Mylo Xyloto, I might not be listening to Big Thief now. Sure it’s not the path everyone takes. And it’s never one I intended to take. But our past makes us who we are and we can’t run from it. We have to face it head-on. If we do, this could be para-para-paradise on earth. At least, I hope it can. Anyway, here’s a playlist that absolutely doesn’t have any Coldplay on it, everything after 2011 is trash even for them.
Billy Wright
I'm a journalist out of the University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. Music has the power to intensely connect us with our emotions and the first time I felt this was in high school with David Byrne’s “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.” Since then, I have had similar experiences with Wilco, David Bowie, Frankie Cosmos and Bob Dylan among others. Music has many purposes: to make us smile or cry, to dance wildly with others or alone in your bedroom, but right now I just finished watching “The Taiwan Oyster,” a dark comedy following two drunken expats on their misadventure through Taiwan, so right now music should be adventurous, slightly melancholic and utterly southern. What started as a cross-section between Southern American and Taiwanese cultures quickly heeded to the former. So giddy up and yeehaw and all of that.
our role.
Lexi
Ah, the critic. There is so much to be said for that characterization, but I think that it’s applicable to just about everything in life.
Since taking this class, my eyes have been opened to the world from a perspective I never thought I could have. I have learned to observe things closely, listen for that perfect sound and savor every single bite. I have learned to harness what it means to criticise, but appreciate, or not appreciate as the case may be.
We need the critic so that the voices and opinions in our heads can be written or spoken aloud. So often, we have conversations about what we love or what we hate, but never seem to articulate them in a shareable manner – just keeping them in our own, personal thoughts. But the critic is the middle man to make it all come true.
We need the critic for balance and appreciation, for guidance and for deterrence. We need the critic to understand what we, ourselves, think and seek in our daily lives but are just waiting on someone else to say it first.
They come in all shapes and sizes, from Yelp! all the way up to the New York Times. They are your sisters, your teachers, your waiters and your coworkers. The critic is someone to appreciate and someone to listen to – for those that take time to voice their opinions really have a point to make.
Who knows, maybe you’ll even be one yourself. When you take a step back to look at the little details, you may be surprised at what you have to say.
Brandon
The role of the critic has left me running in circles. In many ways, I see the critic as a tastemaker guiding their audience towards new avenues and stoking in-depth thinking towards the media we consume. Moreover, the critic is also a friend talking about something they are passionate about and stirring emotions from the reader. We learn to appreciate, investigate, and find new perspectives with the things we enjoy.
The professional critic takes on a unique role in that their work revolves around representing a particular perspective. We innately get excited at the idea of debate. Even my own critical writing class had a platform of debate over something as small as which pizza place is the best. It can be competitive but it can also be fun. Deciding whether you agree or disagree about the merit of the latest movie or music album is also exciting.
Having a critic means having a voice. It also means having a guide of sorts. Not everyone is going to know how to analyze media, but critics push you in the right direction. We value their opinions; their aura of expertise which helps curates sentiments we seek to share with others. It’s in the vein of: maybe you didn’t like this movie but you can’t quite explain why. Critics can help finish the thought for you.
The realm of the critic presents many open doors and there’s no pre-requisite or prior experience required to become one. As I consider how often we perform as a critic in everyday life, it makes my head spin. We look to critics to represent our ideas, to create tastes. More importantly, we look to them to understand more about the media we love.
Sam
The role of a critic is to take the objective qualities of a piece of art and put them into a subjective context so that readers can understand what the piece of art is trying to say, how it says it, and how that makes you as the reviewer feel. If readers can understand the critic’s consistent subjective feelings on art, then they can take the objective qualities presented and create their own subjective feelings based on input from that critic’s lens.
I think that what this creates is a “Mean of Expectations.” If you have only ever watched the same five bad movies, your mean of expectations for what a movie should be is low. That means that, to the hypothetical person with this limited and narrow view of movies, one average movie is going to be the best movie in the world. Why? Because of the six movies they’ve now seen, this is the best. Critics inherently have a higher Mean of Expectations for art simply because they consume more of it. If a person who listens to a ton of music reviews an album and says it’s good then you know that record has, at the very least, passed a higher bar for satisfaction than for the average music consumer. That’s why there’s a sense of validity given to critics’ opinions in the first place.
Your job as a critic is to then establish that your mean of expectations is high enough to provide an opinion that actually carries weight. If you can communicate that along with well reasoned and consistent opinions in an entertaining way, then you’re succeeding in being a critic.
Billy
The critic’s voice is more vital now than it has ever been. In the internet era, where anyone and everyone is making content, it is becoming increasingly difficult - more so impossible - to sort the good from the mediocre, the great from the bad and the terrific from the terrible. The critic’s role is to help guide the audience through the overwhelming amount of content that is thrust upon the public. They are our Charon, ferrying us through a mass of music, movies, tv shows and pop culture, shaping our choices and damning the fates of content producers in 1000 words or less.
The critic’s voice is powerful, therefore they are obligated to review in a fair and open light. They are responsible for telling the masses what is new, what is exciting and what is worthy of public discourse.
I believe a critic should aim to start a conversation in every review they write. That conversation should be based on the work they are reviewing, but extend far beyond into personal and public ramifications. They should aim to spark debate among their audience, because, after all, they are just one voice, one opinion. And their opinion should not, and is not, the final word in the matter. It should be the first word that is up for debate, alternate interpretations and opinions. That is the role of the critic, but also the role of the audience. Because what is the point of art, if it doesn’t make us feel a certain way, or think a certain way. If effective, art needs to provoke its audience, and a good critic will see this, and start a conversation surrounding it.
I see a critic’s voice as impactful. It can tell us what to watch, or how to feel about a piece. But ultimately, the role of the critic is to start a conversation, so that collectively, as a culture, we may decide what is worth exploring further.