Daphne Carr is the series editor for the Best Music Writing series. She blogs at Fun Boring, and her book in the 33 1/3 series on Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine will be out in September.

This interview was conducted by email in February.

Do you think writing about music occupies a different cultural place than writing about other kinds of pop culture?

Carr: Music occupies a different cultural space than do other forms of fine art (for sure) and mass-distributed art because it is ubiquitous in contemporary life, it permeates nearly every moment of our public lives (with or without permission) and is part of much of our private lives. Along with that music is also a form of communication that privileges the poetics and emotional content as much or more than denotative meaning, which makes it a rich "text." Of course there is also music as a culture, music as a social context or as an element that heightens the meaning of social gatherings for many people, which makes it important when writing about how we live our lives and make sense of the world. So there are a lot of ways that music is different than any form of art fixed in material or any work that exists in restricted spaces. I could go on and on...

One of the things I love most about BMW [the Best Music Writing anthology] is that many of my favorite pieces come from writers who do not consider music to be their primary object. There is a sense that anyone who has cultivated a writing style and who has passion and time can write a great piece about music, whereas I think some of the other fields of art like literature, film, and fine art have more canonical theoretical approaches one is supposed to have mastered before beginning to criticize.

What do you think the role of writing about music is? Is it entertainment? Is it art in its own right?

Carr: Of course music writing can also be entertainment, and can also be art. It's a huge field with so many different kinds of writers in it, from poets to content writers. As far as music criticism goes, one of the primary skills of a critic is to be a filter. It's the "we suffer so you don't have to" model, a division of labor where critics give attention to things that the less active, less obsessive listeners would or could not.

I’m curious if there’s a type or kind of criticism that you especially despise, or that you feel is not doing what criticism should do. (I noticed on your blog you were dreading the onslaught of Michael Jackson tributes this year.) Is there an example you could give maybe of a critic or a piece you especially dislike?

Carr: A note about the question - I consider music criticism just one small sub-field of "music writing."

Well, there is one thing I won't tolerate when I read music writing for the book, and that is work that is obviously, unquestionably racist, sexist, or homophobic. Of course there is a big difference between reporting on artists or scenes in which these attitudes exist, which I consider to be an important and underdeveloped part of music writing, and the writer him or herself advocating hate.

The only other thing in criticism I despise is writing that recreates either press releases or preexisting reviews. If I see the same sets of adjectives used in multiple reviews, I start searching to see what the first source was and how much more of the content and style is similar. It’s astounding how often writers do this. It's lazy, immoral, and embarrassing to and for the whole writers' community. Also I was not dreading the onslaught of MJ pieces, only the fact that we can't publish all the good ones. If a publisher wants to do it, contact me and I will either give you all the pieces or I can help you put the book together myself. Seriously, that book should happen.

Stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow. Photo of Carr from the Happy Ending Reading Series.