Should music critics 'pivot to video'?

Meet the YouTube music critic who runs whilst reviewing records.

Probably not all of them, but there are some people evolving music criticism onto new mediums. To understand what it's like to be a "creator" on YouTube, we spoke to Jimmy Watkins, who gave up his career as an athlete (he reached the 800m final in the World Indoor Athletics Championships in 2006 and set a Welsh indoor record!) to play guitar for DiS favourites Future of the Left.

After leaving the band, he started a project called Running Punks with a friend which has become a community of music-lovin' runners. A spin off of this has been his videos where he reviews records, whilst running in the Welsh countryside.

In this conversation, Drowned in Sound founder Sean Adams continues his search for where music journalism is headed and explores where the idea for 'running reviews' came from, how Jimmy approaches them, when music writing got under his skin from (spoiler: it was music biographies and reading magazines in Tesco). We also touch upon Jimmy's upcoming documentary running across America and his new music project Joyce, which you can listen to on Bandcamp here.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Sean's Introduction: The Pivot to Video Journalism
• 00:56 The Running Review of The Art of Losing by The Anchoress
• 03:17 Understanding Journalism with Jimmy Watkins
• 04:55 The Evolution of Running Reviews
• 25:44 The Unique Appeal of Running Reviews
• 33:43 The Role of Music in Personal and Cultural Understanding
• 48:31 The Upcoming Projects and Final Thoughts

Links

• Subscribe: Jimmy's channel on YouTube here.
• Visit: Running Punks
• Drowned in Sound's newsletter has now left Substack and is available on our new website at drownedinsound.org