What is Valid Criticism of J-Hope's "More"?
For a few years now, I've been following a k-pop review blog called TheBiasList, and I really enjoy its content. Through my time as an avid follower, I've come to understand that Nick, the author, takes a very specific approach to reviewing music, one which stays pretty consistent throughout all of his reviews. Nick's focus is sonic: viewing a song as a product of production and vocals (read: sound) rather than as a product of writing, or visuals, or album direction. I really respect the focus of Nick's approach, and over the years, TheBiasList has introduced me to songs that I, as someone who prefers to focus on album direction, never would have paid much attention to otherwise.
In the comments under TheBiasList's review of J-Hope's "More", a war began when a few commenters, likely upset about the mid-7's score Nick gave the song, stressed that Nick should have focused on the lyrics instead. One commenter actually left their own criticism of the lyrics in the comments, after which they were harangued by the same commenters from before about not appreciating the music video enough. The criticism of criticism made by these commenters is frustrating to me because the viewpoint offered, in my mind, encourages a lack of variance in the way we look at media.
In literary criticism, there's this concept of critical lenses; basically, these are ways of approaching a text--instead of trying to take in every idea a text has to offer at once, you use a lens to focus your study. For example, I studied Hamlet through a feminist lens while my classmates took on other lenses, like psychoanalytical & Marxist. Some texts certainly lend themselves to different lenses; for example, the Webtoon The Remarried Empress provides ample opportunity for feminist analysis because of its central heroine(s) & focus on women's capability (and lack thereof) to maneuver within a patriarchal system, but opportunity to find evidence for an interpretation through the lens of queer theory is much smaller. That being said, I can do (and have done) analyses of The Remarried Empress through both of these lenses, and I don't think it's reasonable to say that only understanding a work through the most obvious lenses that can be applied to it is valid--I think both of my interpretations of the Webtoon are equally interesting, and my thoughts on the story would be much less interesting without the combination of both.
This brings us back to J-Hope. I completely understand the emphasis these commenters place on the lyrics; BTS themselves have frequently directed our attention to the stories told by their songs, and rap is generally a lyric-focused style of music, anyway. That being said, "More" is heavy on sonic experimentation, too, most noticeably with the garage-rock turn the chorus takes, so there is certainly material to work with when looking at the song from a sonic perspective. Rather than choosing to focus on sound because of some lack of intelligence, I consider it to be an artistic choice on the part of TheBiasList, one that adds to the lyrical and visual analyses done by others rather than detracting from them.
In conclusion: I don't think criticism through the most directly applicable lens of interpretation should be the only criticism respected. TheBiasList has a long history of offering criticism through a sonic lens, and I think it's wrong to say that Nick's look at "More" is invalid because of that. Like I mentioned earlier, I personally am more of an artistic vision enjoyer; I love strong concepts and cohesive discographies that tell a story, and I choose many of my favorite songs and albums based on this. As a result, my taste doesn't always overlap too much with Nick's, but I still find the criticism on TheBiasList to be an extremely valuable supplement to my thoughts on music. I think there's a lot to appreciate about it, so I hate to see cruel comments that step all over what I think makes the blog so wonderful in the first place.
