Who is … Thomas Treo?

He is an Ekstra Bladet tabloid music critic who is notorious for not really liking any artists … unless they are Bob Dylan.

 

He can’t be that bad.

Last week we mentioned his one-star review of Burhan G’s latest album, but there are many other gems to be found in Treo’s bad review catalogue.

 

Like what?

He gave “discount-diva” Medina  one star, saying her singing made you want to run far, far away. The best thing he had to say about the “vulgar pop bitch” Rihanna’s musical performance at this year’s Roskilde was that the sound was relatively low. He once called Justin Bieber a “pathetic wimp” and received death threats from crying teenage girls on horse enthusiast forum heste-nettet.dk.

 

So have there been other angry responses?

When Lana Del Rey played in Copenhagen in April, Treo gave her one star, titling the review ‘Lana Del Rey: Nasty Cock Tease’ and advising everyone who had tickets for the “meowing sex kitten’s” next concert to sell them immediately. Those words were too foul for Facebook and people accused Treo of being a jealous, untalented little man who was angry because he never learned to play an instrument himself. It led to the other newspapers asking if Ekstra Bladet should allow its critic to use such crudity.

 

Should they?

Well, few realised the reasoning behind Treo’s wordplay, since Lana Del Rey had opened the concert with the line “My pussy tastes like Pepsi Cola”. Treo’s harsh language is his response to a music industry that otherwise seems to have no trouble accepting lyrics of ugly images and F, S, C, P and N-words to sell records.

 

What happened then?

Treo never commented on the accusations, but his editor defended him and pointed out that his bad reviews are extremely popular with the readers.

 

So the trash talk will continue?

That is what people want to read. And his reviews are not always bad after all. He just gave the complete album collection of the “Jewish rock messiah”, Bob Dylan, five stars and wrote: “It doesn’t get bigger than this.”