Pitchfork gives music 6.8

Here's the links for Maggie and my presentation on the Onion's satire of Pitchfork.

This is the actual Onion article.

This is Pitchfork's review of "I Am... Sasha Fierce."

And these are the review tropes that we came up with:

-reference to an obscure band

-mainstream pop cultural reference, usually undercut and ironic -- instead of presenting one reference, contrast two to bolster the critic's reputation

-comparisons with artist's other albums -- looking for evolution -- the word sophomore is often used

-present set-ups followed immediately by a joke that's usually sarcastic and glib

-measuring quality with a quantified system -- arbitrary methods such as stars (sometimes out of four, sometimes out of five) -- what makes a 6.0 album .3 better than a 5.7 album?

-tendency to psychoanalyze the artist and why he or she is making the music -- usually reviews contain little or no discussion of the music itself -- why is this acceptable in music reviews but not reviews of literature or film?

-more likely to knock something down that support something -- not necessarily ratio-wise, but the language used to criticize is stronger than that used to compliment (Wilson is an example of this)