Tim Laurie

I Want Candy: Agency and Evaluation in Music Criticism

Tim Laurie
University of Sydney

Music scholars frequently make evaluative claims about particular artists or genres, especially when considering the value of ‘popular’ music. This paper problematises the relationship between critical frameworks and objects of study, by investigating the agency of musical works in articulating the terms of their own comprehension, interpretation and reception. I examine Gilles Deleuze’s critique of knowledge and abstraction in The Logic of Sense and argue for a more creative engagement with musical practices that moves beyond the conditions of truth and evaluation by highlighting the specificity and singularity of musical events. This also involves a displacement of the role of philosophy itself in music criticism, and I articulate the need for a reciprocal relationship between critical discourses and musical practices. Recordings by Bootsy Collins and Kim Fowley are then examined as examples of reflexive artistic engagement with the terms of music criticism and its genre codification.