Too Many Songs, Too Little Time

There are many perks to being a music journalist. You are able to get early listens of albums from your favorite artists, interact with artists you may never otherwise get the chance to meet and help introduce a band to readers. It is fun to do and while there are many perks, many jump into the field because they love music. However, the one drawback is being inundated with so much music. There are millions of bands out there and generally when writing reviews, you are sent so many albums that many fall through the cracks and many times you don't truly recognize the greatness of certain records until a year or two later and you miss out on something truly great that your readers may have liked as well.

I have found myself at times being overwhelmed with the sheer amount of music I am exposed to and sometimes, but as far as problems go, it is a good one to have. The ease at which music can be sent to reviewers since the implementaion of digital press kits is astonishing. In any given year I could easily listen to close to a hundred albums and I generally try and approach each one with a new angle and sometimes that gets rough. Those who do not write album reviews may not know just how much work goes in to each one. You listen to the album multiple times to get a feel for the sound and which tracks you want to highlight before you even attempt to sit down and start reviewing. Also, writer's block is the album reviewer's nemesis and can set in at the worst of times. You would be surprised at the revision that goes in to achieving the final product and how many sentences are written before the words simply freeze up and you find yourself deleting the entire thing and starting from scratch.

However, the feeling you get when that review is finished and everything fits together and the feedback you get from readers makes the entire process entirely worthwhile. The only thing is, you have to keep writing almost constantly in order to combat writer's block and sometimes that is not always the easiest thing to do.