Getting emotional: Emotions and ‘journalistification’ in Norwegian music reviews, 1981–2022

Abstract

Whether emotional experience should be part of a critic’s evaluation has been a central but contentious issue in the history of music criticism. In this article, I trace how music critics in Norway treat emotions through three stages from the historical transition from an ‘aesthetic’ to a more ‘journalistic’ paradigm of arts journalism. I analyse an archival dataset from the dailies ‘Aftenposten’, ‘Dagbladet’, ‘Bergens Tidende’ and ‘Arbeiderbladet’/’Dagsavisen’ in 1981, 2001 and 2022. The qualitative analysis reveals that, paradoxically, emotions became more prevalent and explicit at the same time as the ‘journalistic’ paradigm, which is characterised by the strategic ritual of objectivity, became more present in the reviews. I argue that the way the journalistic paradigm increasingly intersects with emotion in these reviews has theoretical implications for the study of arts journalism and the subgenre of music criticism, challenging the dichotomy between emotions and objectivity that exists in both journalism studies and the history of music criticism.