Writing about music is like dancing about architecture, according to an oft-plagiarized criticism of criticism. At least, it's meant to be a criticism, though I've always heard it more as a maxim about how awkward and difficult this pursuit can be. But no less rewarding, when done well, than dancing a tango outside, rather than inside, DISNEY HALL. Lot of people writing about writing about music this week for some reason. Maybe as the job market for writing about music itself dwindles, writing about writing about it is all that's left. SARAH CAHILL, a classical pianist and critic, traces how the space for her reviews in the EAST BAY EXPRESS shrunk from one and a half newspaper pages per review, to a half page, to less, while she simultaneously struggled internally with "a game of MAD LIBS, where you endlessly combine adjectives like 'luminous,' 'metronomic,' and 'vibrant' with nouns like 'vibrato,' 'pyrotechnics,' and 'adagio movement.'” But those Mad Libs had a crucial audience. "Composers and musicians needs validation," she writes. "They need to feel their work is understood." MARK COLEMAN charts his entry into the field in the late 1970s and early '80s, learning from early masters like LILLIAN ROXON and ROBERT CHRISTGAU and from the UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN's anarchic MICHIGAN DAILY. He found what he didn't know he was looking for: "passionate engagement with music that I shared and an ever-questioning mind that I could only hope to emulate." At the other end of the spectrum, MICHAEL HANN, who has left the GUARDIAN after a decade-plus overseeing its music coverage, charts his exit in an era of analytics, cynicism and reviewers whose "main purpose, so far as I can tell, is to provide star ratings for press advertisements and to enable artist managers to feel content their client is getting coverage." You could make most of those complaints in any era, but point taken. Hann still thinks music writing "is in good health," with new and different storytellers regularly appearing in print and online. But reading Hann say that his site publishes "endless stories about ADELE and BEYONCÉ and KANYE WEST... because people read them" makes me sad. There are plenty of good reasons to write about those major artists, but "because people read them" isn't one of them, not at a serious journalistic enterprise. Follow the music. Leave the content farming to the content farmers. More thoughts on the current state of the music-writing game on the I LOVE MUSIC message board's Rolling Music Writers' Thread... I love the WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE. I love SONNY ROLLINS. This story is fantastic. But you can't rename the bridge any more than you can rename YANKEE STADIUM or SIXTH AVENUE (Avenue of the Americas LOL).