Margeaux Labat Proves Taste Still Matters

If you’re one of the few people who still works as a critic, as I do, you tend to hear the same thing over and over: Why would anyone need criticism or curation in a post-taste age? Anyone can sample anything they want, at any time; snobbery has been out of fashion for a good 10 years, if not more, so any old musical confection can be downed easily, without any lingering aftertaste of guilt.

To my ears, that argument is not just stupid, but untrue, too: poll your friends on any given night and you’ll find that they’re bored of getting served the same music by algorithms every other day, unsure of how to trawl for new music to listen to, and unable to contextualize said music when they do find it. It’s times like these when people with exceptional taste, who can drag you out of the swamp of unlimited streaming and set you back on your path, are more necessary than ever – which might explain the success of 26-year-old music curator and writer Margeaux Labat.

Over the past few years, Margeaux has found a cult following who treat the recommendations she posts on TikTok and Instagram as gospel. Unlike any number of other “MusicTok” figures, who might assume that a Phoebe Bridgers recommendation is the pinnacle of underground cool, Margeaux’s taste is genuinely unique and unpredictable; her regularly updated 2024 playlist, for example, draws in everything from 2000s Florida indie band Brittle Stars to Bonnie Raitt to the conceptual 90s Japanese lounge project Doopees. The consistent thread that runs through Margeaux’s recommendations is that they’re always worth listening to. “People have algorithm fatigue,” she says, video calling from her apartment in New York. “Algorithmic recommendations can be formulaic – if a person is creating a playlist, there’s always the potential for chaos, which is kind of fun.”