The PopJustice forum closure
Last weekend Popjustice.com announced that the site's forums are coming to an abrupt close at the end of April. People had been kind of apocalyptic about the forum's surely-doomed fate for a while now: between Popjustice itself being a shadow of its former self and the site creator/forum leader Peter being pretty much MIA, new registrations having been closed for years and the semi-frequent crashes over the past half a year, a lot of the incredibly tightly-knit community treated their daily lives with a dose of gallows humour. But the announcement was still a complete surprise, coming with absolutely no warning - and as the forum's last two weeks have become members-only, the final moments are kept out of sight for us who never had the chance to register but lurked regularly.
The sad thing about this is that it means one of the last remaining bastions of forum-based, active, in-depth music discussion in the internet is now effectively gone. Popjustice as a site championed pop music long before it became cool for mainstream media to do so, giving the spotlight both to Big Pop Girls of any given era as well as young upstarts who'd soon cultivate cult fanbases courtesy of the site. The site's still massively active forums became populated by insufferable music nerds who'd spend hours each day discussing and dissecting music as nerds are wont to do - except these geeks just happend to adore pop music instead of more traditionally nerdy genres. Popjustice, and more importantly the forums, did more for the critical appreciation and evaluation of pop music than any performative poptimist article on Pitchfork, by giving space for passionate fans to share their love and insight. I genuinely reckon that anyone who outright dismisses pop music and pop fans should have spent a week reading those forums and realising that all us music dweebs are just as passionate in the exact same way even if some prefer creating fake singles campaigns for flop pop albums instead of tracking down every Bob Dylan bootleg.
It was a genuine fantastic read and I lurked there on a daily basis, keeping tabs on the various song rates (I'll never see the conclusion of the Big Pop Girls 2025 song rate! Probably "Abracadabra"), controversial pop moments and the shock and excitement after every new release or performance. Never had the chance to register (first didn't want to, then could not), but just as a fountain of knowledge and pure music discussion in an era where that is becoming increasingly rare it was invaluable - I sincerely hope someone there is webarchiving the COVID-era Madonna rate which is still one of the greatest, most informative, most passionate "deep dives" of an artist I've ever seen and which fully unlocked Madonna for me. That's what guts me the most - the fact that this kind of source of love and information is barring its doors. I simply love reading music discussion and back in the day I'd lurk on so many different kinds of music forums from eurodance to metal, just absorbing how people with different tastes dissect music and enjoying passionate fans share their interests. That's getting so rare as both blogs and forums are a rare breed, replaced by... social media hot takes and youtube vloggers more interested about their brand and being the First! rather than the music itself.
I have heard murmurs that the forumites are planning to set up a brand new forum to continue where this left off. Maybe this time I'll actually register.
RIP Popjustice. In tribute, I'm embedding the video which I half-curiously clicked in the J-Pop thread in May 2009 and which introduced me to one of the best pop albums of the 2000s.
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