Ellen Willis - Rock Criticism

Rock Criticism

Willis was the first popular music critic for The New Yorker, between 1968 and 1975. As such, she was one of the first American popular music critics to write for a national audience. She got the job after having published only one article on popular music in the underground magazine Cheetah, "Dylan," in 1967. In addition to her "Rock, etc." column in the New Yorker, she also published criticism on popular music in Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, and for liner notes and book anthologies, most notably her essay on the Velvet Underground for the Greil Marcus "desert island disc" anthology Stranded (1979). Contemporary Richard Goldstein characterized her work as "liberationist" at its heart and said that "Ellen, Emma Goldman, and Abbie Hoffman are part of a lost tradition-radicals of desire."

She was a friend of many contemporary critics, including Robert Christgau, Georgia Christgau, Greil Marcus, and Richard Goldstein. Christgau, Joe Levy, Evelyn McDonnell, Joan Morgan, and Ann Powers have all cited her as an influence on their careers and writing styles. In 2011, the first anthology exclusively devoted to Willis's popular music writing, Out of the Vinyl Deeps (University of Minnesota Press), arrived. Willis "celebrated the seriousness of pleasure and relished the pleasure of thinking seriously," a review in The New York Times said. It was announced that a conference at New York University, Sex, Hope, & Rock 'n' Roll: The Writings of Ellen Willis, celebrated her anthology and pop music criticism on April 30, 2011.