Stylus Calls It A Day

Maybe I'm a little behind the news, but I saw a link at Large-Hearted Boy this afternoon that Stylus was shuttering their doors. The site might not have been my first stop every morning, but I always found plenty of interesting and thought-provoking articles and lists there. They fought the good fight; they shall be missed. (If you're unfamiliar with the site, here's a link to some of their self-selected better pieces.)

Among the reminiscences on the site is a letter from senior writer Nick Southall to editor-in-chief Todd Burns , and I'll be damned if it's not the saddest, truest thing I've read in a long time about guys who write about music because that's what they *have* to do:

You know what probably the saddest thing about Stylus closing is; I don’t know what I’m going to do with that first flush of excitement when I hear a great new record anymore... Where am I gonna put that energy? On a blog that nobody reads? What am I going to do now?
You know I’ve just bought a house (and a kitten!) with my girlfriend, and my day job’s getting busier and more demanding by the hour; maybe it’s time to put away these foolish childish things like writing about music idealistically. Maybe I just need a break? I say that at least once a year regardless, when the end-of-year burnout hits and I spend January and February in a fug wondering why I bother. I dunno...
Part of me is looking forward to just being a music fan with no pretensions and no responsibility. Part of me doesn’t think I can. My relationship with records might become less vampiric, if I’m lucky; no longer trying to suck the marrow out of them and regurgitate it with html tags and words and grades. A lot of the time churning out stuff has been hell, like a never-ending homework assignment. Only now it has ended. Fuck.
I don’t really know what else to write. All we ever wanted to do with Stylus was write about music as honestly as possible. I think we can say that this is almost all we’ve ever done. Thanks.

That pretty much sums it up for us guys in the trenches, no?

Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall's blog)