Sympathy for the Music Journalist—This Week On VICE: Members Only

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I have been a music journalist, professionally, for about 15 years. Once upon a time, that sentence would inspire a chorus of BOOOO’s or a series of lifestyle condemnations about what a penniless, spiteful existence it is and how “those who can’t, teach.” Or, on a good day, someone might ask who’s the most famous person I’ve ever interviewed and I will say, with a disproportionate sense of achievement, that I have pissed in Robbie Williams’ home toilet. (Laugh all you want, that goes down a treat among British women aged between 45 and 60.)

These days, if you tell people you’re a music journalist they just shoot you a quiet look of pity, or else frown and say something like “Really?” or “What’s that?” Point being: It is a bad career choice no matter how well the industry is doing. The thing is, when I was 11 years old I watched Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs in Almost Famous deliver the line, “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.” So, really, I had no choice… which is rather unfortunate in 2026, because “music journalist” is rapidly hurtling from the “endangered jobs” list towards “extinct.”

The latest piece of bad news in a decade of bad news for music journalism arrived last week, when BrooklynVegan, Alternative Press, Revolver, and Goldmine were gutted by their parent company Veeps. A few hours after the news broke that nearly all staff at each publication had been laid off, Veeps’ founders—Good Charlotte’s Benji and Joel Madden—joined Hilary Duff on stage at Madison Square Garden for a joint rendition of their hit 2003 single “The Anthem”. How did the outro go again? “Another loser anthem?” Yeah, sounds about right.

Out of curiosity, we got in touch with ex-staff and freelancers for some of those publications and asked them to reappraise Good Charlotte’s discography. Of their breakthrough second album The Young and the Hopeless, Paige Owens, former Editor-in-Chief of Alternative Press, writes:

“For better or for worse, The Young and the Hopelesshas outlived the scene that made it. ‘The Anthem’ and ‘Lifestyles of the Rich & the Famous’ remain alternative radio staples, anthems of Emo Nites across the country, surviving alongside the bands and songs that built the community Good Charlotte seem so hell-bent on controlling. Twenty-four years later, nostalgia has proven far more enduring than the album itself ever deserved to be.”

Read all the reviews below to find out if any of them are entirely positive:

We Got Former Alt Press and Revolver Writers to Review Good Charlotte Albums

There is one pocket of the music industry that’s doing incredibly well, however, and that is: bad music. And I don’t just mean music of dubious quality, like UK Poo or Macklemore. I mean music so bad it goes incredibly viral and ends up landing the persons responsible a record deal with a major label subsidiary, which is exactly what has happened to “satirical” rap-metal artist Kill Karl.

Perhaps you have seen him, swearing outrageously(!) into a phone camera set up on a tripod at home, looking like Pixar designed a line cook based on Serj Tankian. Keen to learn more about the how and why behind Kill Karl, VICE’s Adam Christopher Smith got in touch with Jake Kodweis, the musician and producer responsible for inventing the most grating musical figure since Nizlopi. For context, Adam writes:

“Jake lives in Upstate New York. He used to be in a band called (yes) Gonculator who were signed by an independent label when he was 19 (and, it appears, once performed on the same bill as Rufus Wainwright…), and later got into producing and engineering. Around 18 months ago, he launched his Kill Karl project on an unsuspecting public and at the end of last year released a debut record called SUCK ON MY ALBUM (one can only imagine what Rufus would make of all of this). He says Karl is a satirical character who is intended to be deliberately provocative. Perhaps this is why you might think his music sounds like it’s been precision engineered to inflict upon law-abiding civilians the kind of optimized torment usually reserved for black site jihadists.”

Discussing the genesis of the project in his own words, Jake offers the fairly comprehensive explaination:

“I grew up in an environment of people who are into musical theater.”

Read the full interview with Kill Karl below: