American pop culture is in need of good criticism. The Left has lost the guts to do it, which puts the Right in the position of questioning what the entertainment industry is selling us.

A takedown of Taylor Swift , for example, recently went viral, and it’s notable where it appeared. Written by Armond White of the conservative National Review, the piece was brutal: ”The Swift circus doesn’t replace the thrill of originality and profundity that accompanied the advent of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Supremes, the Jackson Five, which Gen Z knows nothing about,” White wrote. “Instead, Swift specializes in degraded girl-pop — teenage solipsism, the silliness that kids will ideally outgrow. Yet her songs corrupt puppy love into jejune sophistication.”

White then ends with a warning: “Boomer parents may want to let [Swift fans] have their fun — same as toying with matches and playing in the traffic. But here’s a frightening fact of the Swifties phenom: These kids seem ready for a leader, anxious for totalitarianism. It will take a counterrevolution to repair Swift’s moral, aesthetic, and political damage.”

The liberal media jumped on this, calling it “unhinged” and “nonsense.” Yet White’s shellacking reminded me of an older, better time in music criticism, when journalists were not afraid to criticize pop stars, even globally famous ones such as Taylor Swift. So many of them are now deemed untouchable. When was the last time Beyonce, Olivia Rodrigo, Madonna, or Bruno Mars got torched in a tough and perceptive way? It’s part of the new atmosphere where certain groups, politicians, and celebrities are untouchable religious idols. It’s not healthy in a democracy.

The music paper I was addicted to in college was Britain’s Melody Maker, edited by the great Alan Jones. The weekly’s aesthetic can be summarized in a story Jones did about Lou Reed, who was then a rock superstar. “When I turn up at the offices of Arista Records to interview Lou Reed for the first time,” Jones writes, “I’m taken aside and told quite firmly that certain questions I may have for Lou are off-limits.” Reed then hits Jones with “an obligatory barrage of colorful abuse, a well-practiced nastiness that makes me laugh rather than terrorize me, which seems to be his intention. It makes for a bumpy first 20 minutes.”

Then Reed “suddenly softens, offers me a drink, pouring startlingly large measures of Johnnie Walker Red into a couple of glasses and handing one to me.” Jones then makes his move: “I decide to ignore the instructions I’ve been given and ask him whatever the [expletive] I want. Which I do, Lou quickly getting into it.”

How fresh, defiant, and lively this is compared to today’s press releases and the swarming fans who attack online at the slightest tarnishing of their gods. We’ve forgotten that criticism can itself be a creative act. In his terrific memoir Afternoons with the Blinds Drawn, Suede singer Brett Anderson recalls the power of the music press when his band was just getting going in the early 1990s. A crucial moment in the band’s early life came in 1990. Suede was on tour opening for a popular band called Kingmaker. The gig was attended by Steve Sutherland, a writer for Melody Maker. His review praised Suede, saying that having Suede as a supporting act was putting “pearls before swine.”

Sutherland went on to distinguish between those who were actually fans of great rock 'n' roll and the bland corporate types who will swallow anything — the equivalent today of the BTS army or Beyhive.

The music press, and the entertainment press in general, was much braver in 1990 — and their independence and guts made artists better. Anderson is spot-on here: “I think the piece was ultimately a creative act. Sutherland knew that he was doing something more important than pissing a few people off when he wrote it. He knew he was being outrageous, unpopular, unpleasant and unnecessarily vitriolic but he also knew that his goading would ultimately inspire bands to strive to improve.”

He goes on: “Nowadays, despite a few notable exceptions, most publications seem too afraid of offending their demographic to have any worthwhile opinion, apparently supporting whatever is in their best interest regardless of its artistic worth, blandly approving of marketing campaigns and fearful of their shareholders.”

Armand White’s firebombing of Taylor Swift may have been too pungent in places. I actually like her music and think she has written some great songs . Yet White’s blast was a bracing reminder that free people are allowed, indeed have an obligation, to criticize their artists.

Mark Judge is an award-winning journalist and the author of  The Devil's Triangle: Mark Judge vs. the New American Stasi . He is also the author of God and Man at Georgetown Prep, Damn Senators, and A Tremor of Bliss.