Pop crit: what is it good for?

"Absolutely nothing!" bellows Phil Freeman over at Bagatellen.

The meat of the article is summed up in this paragraph:

But the pop edifice remains impassive, impenetrable. The pop industry is as indifferent to its sycophants as it is to its would-be assassins. The only time the industry registers concern is when sales drop, and there’s no demonstrable correlation between reviews and sales. (This isn’t a purely music-biz phenomenon, either; The Cat In The Hat, to pick but one example, did land-office business despite uniformly, unrelentingly savage write-ups.) On the other hand, a well-placed review of a struggling death-metal band can mean the difference between 5000 and 10,000 CDs sold, and that’s no small difference.

See also comments at bottom of page.

This article has garnered a lot of attention in the blogosphere, but it also underlines the problematic nature of pop criticism that bothers Freeman so much. In the article in question, a damning survey of the music of 1985, we read this methodology:

I have based the following on three sources:

1. The Gallup UK Top 40 singles charts of 1985. All singles to enter the Top 40 during 1985 are listed thus:
Single: title (date of chart entry | highest chart position reached)

2. The NME critics end-of-year Top 50 singles chart, entries in which are listed as:
Single: title (NME | position ranked in chart)

3. The NME critics end-of-year Top 50 album chart, similarly listed:
Album: title (NME | position ranked in chart)

Do these sources really stake out enough of the music world to justify the screaming, Comic Book Store Guy headline 1985: THE WORST YEAR FOR MUSIC EVER? I think not.