Love Quote by Kim Deal

Kim Deal is describing the moment a band stops being a scrappy, self-contained organism and becomes a product managed by the culture industry. The “name for themselves” isn’t just recognition; it’s when visibility triggers a sorting machine: labels, publicity, magazines, and algorithms all need the band to mean something quickly. That’s where the writers come in, “assigned to bands” like beats in a newsroom or routes in a delivery app. It’s a small phrase with a lot of bite: criticism isn’t framed as curiosity or listening, but as labor allocation.

Her point isn’t that taste is subjective (too easy). It’s that the infrastructure of music coverage practically guarantees mismatches. A writer who “loves hip hop but hate[s] guitar rock” isn’t morally wrong; they’re being asked to render judgment from outside the music’s emotional logic. The resulting review can feel less like critique than like a bureaucratic assessment: competent, maybe even clever, but fundamentally disengaged.

The subtext is a quiet defense of scene-based art against genre gatekeeping. Deal came up in a world where bands were understood in rooms, not in press packets. Once the band is mediated through “that kind of music,” it’s trapped in a taxonomic box: indie, alternative, guitar rock, whatever the era’s filing system demands. Her cynicism lands because it’s practical. She’s not romanticizing artists; she’s calling out a pipeline that turns listening into assignment, and enthusiasm into a liability if it isn’t “objective” enough.