One of those articles where someone starts with a conclusion and spends an age trying to back it up, doesn’t really manage it, but sticks with their original conclusion anyway.
I think Pitchfork did have a certain amount of power back then, but it was more to do with their ability to give a sizeable leg up to certain types of slightly more left-field acts. Best examples are probably the likes of Animal Collective, who I can’t imagine would have garnered the kind of attention they received around S Jam and MPP without sites like PF obsessing over them initially and thus causing the dusty mainstream mags to give them the time of day.
If they panned an artist it didn’t necessarily mean the end of them, most of the albums mentioned in that article were just utter tripe and were deservedly ignored, but there were countless other acts who they gloried in mocking who nevertheless became massive. Take KoL for example, the highest mark an album of theirs (they’ve released six) has received on that site is 5.4. Same story with The Killers.
