I am not a critic: an open letter to the band Lovedrug

I am totally not a book reviewer. Or any sort of media reviewer for that matter, in any capacity.

I’ll be forever haunted by two of my experiences. It was about my junior year of college, and I thought I might explore being a media reviewer. That’s what college is for, trying things, making mistakes, finding out what you might or might not be good at. And for maybe two years, I had a brief stint over at BlogCritics pretending I was indeed a media reviewer.

I won’t link those reviews here. I was twenty-three – nobody should be held accountable for the things they do and say when they’re twenty-three, don’t you think? For crying out loud, I wrote a blog called “Peace and Jellybeans”!!!

And so I wrote this review for a band called Lovedrug, and their album Pretend You’re Alive. They were really a decent band, and the review itself was mostly positive, except for some small critiques that were ungrounded and that I was really not qualified to give. Who the heck was I to think I knew better?

But have you ever heard of them? No? Is it because I wrote that less-than-shining review when I was twenty-three and full of myself and all high on getting free review copies of albums and books?

Lovedrug, if you’re reading, it was a great album. I’m sorry if it’s my fault you aren’t more famous. You should be, because your album was really, really good. My favorite song was “Spiders”. I also loved “Blackout”, “Paper Scars”, and “In Red”. But the whole album is a hit, really.

Kind of like old-school Goo Goo Dolls, don’t you think?

Pretend You’re Alive is here. You should totally buy it.

And from this point on, I’m sticking with what my mother used to tell me, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

But then, saying nice things can come back to bite you in the butt too. Also during that beloved time as a media reviewer, I wrote a very positive review for book, The Perfume Factory. It was a charming little book. Both my hubby and I liked it quite a bit. Knock-on effects of that? I guess I did a pretty decent job on the review, because dude pimped it ALL over the place.

So now if you Google my name, you won’t get past the first page without finding my review of that book. And you know, maybe that’s not the first thing I want people to find when they’re searching for me, since I want to be an author myself some time soon.

I guess I didn’t know that when I was twenty-three.

So lesson learned – the internet lasts forever, kids! And the things you put out there when you’re twenty-three will stick around to haunt you forever, even if only on your conscience.