Archives
Browse the complete Stylus Magazine archive, 2002–2007. Nearly 2,000 reviews, features, and columns.
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Music Reviews
Six random ones from the archive — Refresh · Surprise Me!
Movie Reviews
Six random ones from the archive — Refresh · Surprise Me!
Sections & Columns
| Start Here | |
| Articles — Longform before longform | ~240 |
| Year-End Lists — Annual top albums, songs, and staff picks | 70 |
| Recommends — Curated showcase of A and A- rated reviews | 707 |
| Deep Dives | |
| Seconds — The one moment in a song that makes it | 193 |
| On Second Thought — Revisiting albums with fresh ears years later | 314 |
| On First Listen — Hearing a canonical artist for the first time | 31 |
| Label Profiles — The story behind the labels | 36 |
| Artist Profiles — Long-form artist features | 28 |
| The Bluffer’s Guide — Everything you need to pretend you know | 9 |
| Hi! — Mike Powell’s artist conversations | 14 |
| Interviews — Conversations with artists and producers | 80 |
| Opinions & Arguments | |
| Vs. — Head-to-head battles between cultural rivals | 11 |
| Pop Playground — Pop culture commentary, essays, and polemics | 136 |
| Playing God — Rebuilding a flawed album from scratch | 57 |
| The Diamond — Did 10 million people get it right? | 12 |
| Other Reviews | |
| The Singles Jukebox — Weekly panel reviews of the UK Top 40 | 174 |
| Beatz By The Pound — Techno, dubstep, house, and dub | 51 |
| J-Pop Will Eat Itself — One man’s descent into J-Pop | 22 |
| Left Hand Path — Monthly extreme metal | 10 |
| Around the World in 80kbps — Global pop chart singles | 8 |
| The Rubber Room — 7"s, 12"s, EPs, and non-album releases | 94 |
| Scraping the Barrel — The promos nobody else claimed | 10 |
| Tape Hiss — Cassette tape reviews | 24 |
| Getting Personal | |
| Dead Letter Office — Todd Hutlock’s letters to Jimmy | 31 |
| Soulseeking — Essays about the experience of loving music | 48 |
| Staff Top 10 — Personal lists from the writing staff | 194 |
| Get Miles — Music-and-travel dispatches from Southeast Asia | 5 |
| Blogs & Pods | |
| Staff Blogs — Informal posts from the writing staff | ~3,000 |
| The Stypod — One song, one essay, one download | 665 |
| Stycast — Curated DJ mixes and music shows | 359 |
| The Turntable — The original group blog, launched July 2003 | 474 |
| Beyond Music | |
| TV Nation — Music critics on prestige TV | 11 |
| A Second Take — Revisiting films that deserve reassessment | 18 |
| Scenes — Close readings of individual movie scenes | 15 |
| A Kiss After Supper — How directors use pop music in film | 21 |
| Book Reviews — Music books and beyond | 6 |
| Film Festival — Festival coverage and dispatches | 4 |
| YouTube / ITube / WeTube — Curated YouTube clips with commentary | 19 |
| Under the Covers — Album artwork and packaging analysis | 9 |
| Album Art Challenge — Identify the album cover, win a mixtape | 48 |
Some Other Stuff, Starting With The Commentariat
|
4,971
total comments
|
1,076
unique commenters
|
293,262
words written
|
293,262 words is roughly the length of War and Peace. All of it typed into comment boxes on a website about music.
51% of commenters posted exactly once and never returned. Meanwhile, 3% of users wrote 37% of all comments.
Staff only contributed 6% of the discourse — the readers ran the conversation.
The Regulars (top commenters)
| cwperry | 158 | |
| florenz6 | 130 | |
| meatbreak | 127 | |
| bassman08 | 102 | |
| IanMathers [staff] | 102 |
The Grading Curve
| A+ | A | A- | B+ | B | B- | C+ | C | C- | D+ | D | D- | F |
| 25 | 236 | 447 | 669 | 760 | 596 | 376 | 374 | 170 | 149 | 83 | 62 | 90 |
Across 4,171 graded reviews, the most common grade was B (760 reviews), followed closely by B+ (669). Only 25 albums earned an A+ — while 90 got an F.
The staff gave more than three times as many Fs as A+s, which tells you everything you need to know about music critics.
Some More Data Visualizations
Rigorous statistical analysis, applied to things that do not warrant it
Southampton FC Results as Mentioned by William B. Swygart in Singles Columns, 2002–2007
A peer-reviewed analysis of football results inserted into pop music criticism
| Match | Score | Result | Swygart’s emotional state | |
| v Portsmouth | 3–0 | W | Pure delight. Wove each goal into chart entries. | → |
| v Liverpool (away) | 2–1 | W | Cautiously optimistic. Editor called him out for saying “we.” | → |
| v Tottenham | 1–0 | W | Casually pleased. | → |
| v Blackburn | 3–2 | W | Gleeful. Dubious penalty; Tony Gubba outed as Saints fan. | → |
| v Northampton (FA Cup) | 3–1 | W | Tearful joy. “Nothing can stop us now. Probably.” | → |
| v Portsmouth | 2–1 | W | Clutching at straws. “We Are 17th!” | → |
| v Arsenal | 2–2 | D | Ecstatic then crushed. Van Persie equalised in the 90th minute. | → |
| v Middlesbrough | 2–2 | D | Wry amusement. Redknapp leaving Pompey for Saints. | → |
| v Crystal Palace | 2–2 | D | Deflated. “Not much to shout about.” | → |
| v Everton | 0–0 | D | Bored. Resigned. | → |
| v Chelsea | 0–4 | L | Bitter sarcasm. “Welcome Stephen!” (own goal on debut) | → |
| v Newcastle | 0–1 | L | Irritated. Called Shearer “a git.” | → |
| v Middlesbrough | 0–1 | L | Deflated, but silver lining: Hoddle sacked. | → |
| v Blackburn / Chelsea / Bolton | 3–2 / 1–2 / 2–1 | WLW | Exasperated. “Infinite ARRGH.” Covered chaotic Sturrock sacking week. | → |
Record: W8 D4 L4 across 15 Singles Jukebox columns. Correlation between Southampton’s league position and the positivity of Swygart’s singles reviews: r = 0.03 (not statistically significant, but we checked).
Probability That a Comment Thread Will Mention Radiohead
Even though the review has nothing to do with Radiohead
2.8%
Of 759 non-Radiohead article threads, 21 contain at least one comment mentioning Radiohead.
Sample offenders:
• Coldplay — X & Y — “There must be a name for this genre spawned by Radiohead and Coldplay”
• Keane — Hopes and Fears — someone needed to taxonomise them relative to Radiohead
• Tool — 10,000 Days — someone brought up Radiohead
• Kelly Clarkson — My December — “Radiohead’s ‘Exit Music for a Film,’ which is basically a proto-Starbucks”
• The Brave One (a movie review) — “I ride the subway every day, sometimes listening to Radiohead”
• Band Logos (a Pop Playground column about fonts) — outraged that the bear logo was omitted
• Coldplay — X & Y — “There must be a name for this genre spawned by Radiohead and Coldplay”
• Keane — Hopes and Fears — someone needed to taxonomise them relative to Radiohead
• Tool — 10,000 Days — someone brought up Radiohead
• Kelly Clarkson — My December — “Radiohead’s ‘Exit Music for a Film,’ which is basically a proto-Starbucks”
• The Brave One (a movie review) — “I ride the subway every day, sometimes listening to Radiohead”
• Band Logos (a Pop Playground column about fonts) — outraged that the bear logo was omitted
The Radiohead constant holds across years, genres, and article types. It is inescapable. It is the background radiation of mid-2000s music discourse.
The Adjective Distribution: A Heatmap of Crutch Words by Writer
Frequency of key adjectives across 4,182 music reviews. Darker = used more often. All complaints should be directed to the editor who didn’t stop this from happening in the first place.
| Burns | Southall | Lee | Mathers | Miller | Powell | Parrish | Passantino | Cober-Lake | Gaerig | |
| transcendent | 4 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| derivative | 4 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 0 |
| visceral | 5 | 6 | 11 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| tedious | 2 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| lush | 2 | 7 | 10 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| sprawling | 0 | 1 | 9 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| seminal | 3 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| angular | 1 | 8 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| unflinching | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| ethereal | 2 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 7 | 1 | 7 | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| abrasive | 5 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
Key findings:
• Cosmo Lee used “visceral” 11 times and “lush” 10 times across 115 reviews — a very textural, physical vocabulary. No one else comes close.
• Nick Southall used “angular” 8 times to describe 8 different bands.
• Mike Powell used “tedious” 5 times in 93 reviews, making him the most reliably unimpressed writer on staff.
• Derek Miller and Peter Parrish tied at 7 uses of “ethereal” each, independently arriving at the same crutch word.
• Cosmo Lee used “visceral” 11 times and “lush” 10 times across 115 reviews — a very textural, physical vocabulary. No one else comes close.
• Nick Southall used “angular” 8 times to describe 8 different bands.
• Mike Powell used “tedious” 5 times in 93 reviews, making him the most reliably unimpressed writer on staff.
• Derek Miller and Peter Parrish tied at 7 uses of “ethereal” each, independently arriving at the same crutch word.
“Derivative” appeared in 85 reviews across all writers. Reviews graded B- or lower used it at twice the rate of higher-graded reviews (3.1% vs 1.5%). At the F grade, the rate jumps to 7.8%. It was never a compliment.
Writer Output by Moon Phase, 2002–2007
Do review grades change during a full moon? A rigorous investigation.
New Moon
First Qtr
Full Moon
Last Qtr
A/A+
A-/B+
B
B-/C+
C/C-
D/F
Average grade by lunar phase:
| New Moon | B | (avg 3.12 / 4.0) |
| Waxing Crescent | B | (avg 3.08 / 4.0) |
| First Quarter | B | (avg 3.14 / 4.0) |
| Waxing Gibbous | B | (avg 3.10 / 4.0) |
| Full Moon | B | (avg 3.11 / 4.0) |
| Waning Gibbous | B | (avg 3.09 / 4.0) |
| Last Quarter | B | (avg 3.13 / 4.0) |
| Waning Crescent | B | (avg 3.11 / 4.0) |
Correlation between lunar phase and review grade: r = 0.002 (p = 0.97). We checked. We really checked. There is nothing here. The average grade is B regardless of what the moon is doing. The moon does not care about your album.