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Robert Christgau | |
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.jpg) Christgau in 2010 | |
| Born | Robert Thomas Christgau (1942-04-18)April 18, 1942 (age 83) New York City, U.S. |
| Occupation |
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| Alma mater | Dartmouth College |
| Period | 1967–present |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 1 |
| Website | |
| robertchristgau | |
Robert Thomas Christgau (/ˈkrɪstɡaʊ/KRIST-gow; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most influential music critics,[1][2] he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professionalrock critics and later became an early proponent of musical movements such aship hop,riot grrrl, and the import ofAfrican popular music in the West.[2] He was the chief music critic and senior editor forThe Village Voice for 37 years, during which time he created and oversaw the annualPazz & Jop critics poll. He has also covered popular music forEsquire,Creem,Newsday,Playboy,Rolling Stone,Billboard,NPR,Blender, andMSN Music; he was a visiting arts teacher atNew York University.[3]CNN senior writer Jamie Allen has called Christgau "theE. F. Hutton of the music world—when he talks, people listen."[4]
Christgau is best known for his terse, letter-gradedcapsule album reviews, composed in a concentrated, fragmented prose style featuring layeredclauses, caustic wit,one-liner jokes, political digressions, and allusions ranging fromcommon knowledge to the esoteric.[5] His writing is often informed byleftist politics (particularlyfeminism[6] andsecular humanism). He has generally favored song-oriented musical forms and qualities of wit and formal rigor, as well as musicianship from uncommon sources.[7]
Originally published in his "Consumer Guide" columns during his tenure atThe Village Voice from 1969 to 2006, the reviews were collected in book form across three decade-ending volumes–Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981),Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990), andChristgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s (2000).[3] Multiple collections of his essays have been published in book form,[3] and a website published in his name since 2001 has freely hosted most of his work.
In 2006, theVoice fired Christgau after the paper's acquisition byNew Times Media. He continued to write reviews in the "Consumer Guide" format forMSN Music,Cuepoint, andNoisey (Vice's music section) where they were published in his "Expert Witness" column[8] until July 2019.[9] In September of the same year, he launched a paid-subscription newsletter calledAnd It Don't Stop, published on the email-newsletter platformSubstack and featuring a monthly "Consumer Guide" column, among other writings.[10]
Christgau was born inGreenwich Village inManhattan, New York City,[11] on April 18, 1942.[12] He grew up inQueens,[13] the son of a fireman.[14] He has said he became arock and roll fan when disc jockeyAlan Freed moved to the city in 1954.[15]
After attending public school in the city,[14] Christgau attendedDartmouth College graduating in 1962 with a B.A. degree inEnglish. At college, his musical interests turned tojazz, but he quickly returned to rock after moving back to New York.[16] He has said thatMiles Davis's 1960 albumSketches of Spain initiated "one phase of the disillusionment (in him) with jazz that resulted in my return to rock and roll."[17] He was deeply influenced byNew Journalism writers includingGay Talese andTom Wolfe. "My ambitions when I went into journalism were always, to an extent, literary", Christgau said later.[18]
I am interested in those places where popular culture andavant-garde culture intersect. As a critic, I want to achieve a new understanding of culture in both its aesthetic and political aspects; as a journalist, I want to suggest whatever I figure out to an audience in an entertaining and provocative way.
Christgau wrote short stories, before giving up fiction in 1964 to become asportswriter and later, a police reporter for theNewark Star-Ledger.[20] He became afreelance writer after a story he wrote about the death of a woman inNew Jersey was published byNew York magazine.[21] He was among the first dedicated rock critics.[22] He was asked to take over the dormant music column atEsquire, which he began writing in June 1967.[23] He also contributed toCheetah magazine at the time.[24] He then became a leading voice in the formation of a musical–political aesthetic combiningNew Left politics and thecounterculture.[24] AfterEsquire discontinued the column, Christgau moved toThe Village Voice in 1969, and he also worked as a college professor.
From early on in his emergence as a critic, Christgau was conscious of his lack of formal knowledge of music. In a 1968 piece he commented:
I don't know anything about music, which ought to be a damaging admission but isn't... The fact is that pop writers in general shy away from such arcana askey signature andbeats to the measure... I used to confide my worries about this to friends in the record industry, who reassured me. They didn't know anything about music either. The technical stuff didn't matter, I was told. You just gotta dig it.[25]
In early 1972, Christgau accepted a full-time job as music critic forNewsday. He returned toThe Village Voice in 1974 as music editor.[26] In a 1976 piece for the newspaper, he coined the term "Rock Critic Establishment"[27] to describe the growth in influence of American music critics. His article carried the parenthesized subtitle "But Is That Bad for Rock?"[28] He listedDave Marsh,John Rockwell,Paul Nelson,Jon Landau and himself as members of this "establishment".[27] Christgau remained atThe Village Voice until August 2006, when he was fired shortly after the paper's acquisition byNew Times Media.[26] Two months later, Christgau became a contributing editor atRolling Stone (which first published his review ofMoby Grape'sWow in 1968).[29] Late in 2007, Christgau was dismissed byRolling Stone,[30] although he continued to work for the magazine for another three months. Beginning with the March 2008 issue, he joinedBlender, where he was listed as "senior critic" for three issues and then "contributing editor".[31] Christgau had been a regular contributor toBlender before he joinedRolling Stone. He continued to write forBlender until the magazine ceased publication in March 2009. In 1987, he was awarded aGuggenheim Fellowship in the field of "folklore and popular culture" to study the history of popular music.[32][33]
Christgau has also written frequently forPlayboy,Spin, andCreem. He appears in the 2011rockumentaryColor Me Obsessed, aboutthe Replacements.[34] He previously taught during the formative years of theCalifornia Institute of the Arts. As of 2007, he was an adjunct professor in theClive Davis Department of Recorded Music atNew York University.[35]
In August 2013, Christgau revealed in an article written forBarnes & Noble's website that he was writing a memoir.[36] On July 15, 2014, Christgau debuted a monthly column onBillboard's website.[37]
Christgau is perhaps best known for his "Consumer Guide" columns, which have been published more-or-less monthly since July 10, 1969, in theVillage Voice,[38] as well as a brief period inCreem.[39] In its original format, each edition of the "Consumer Guide" consisted of approximately 20 single-paragraph album reviews, each given a letter grade ranging from A+ to E−.[40] The reviews were later collected, expanded, and extensively revised in a three-volume book series, the first of which was published in 1981 asChristgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies; it was followed byChristgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990) andChristgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s (2000).[38]
In his original grading system from 1969 to 1990, albums were given a grade ranging from A+ to E−. Under this system, Christgau generally considered a B+ or higher to be a personal recommendation.[41] He noted that in practice, grades below a C− were rare.[42] In 1990, Christgau changed the format of the "Consumer Guide" to focus more on the albums he liked.[38] B+ records that Christgau deemed "unworthy of a full review" were mostly given brief comments and star marks ranging from three down to one, denoting anhonorable mention",[43] records which Christgau believed may be of interest to their own target audience.[44] Lesser albums were filed under categories such as "Neither" (which may impress at first with "coherent craft or an arresting track or two", before failing to make an impression again)[44] and "Duds" (which indicated bad records and were listed without further comment). Christgau did give full reviews and traditional grades to records he pans in an annual November "Turkey Shoot" column inThe Village Voice, until he left the newspaper in 2006.[38]
In 2001, robertchristgau.com–an online archive of Christgau's "Consumer Guide" reviews and other writings from his career – was set up as a co-operative project between Christgau and longtime friendTom Hull; the two had met in 1975 shortly after Hull queried Christgau asThe Village Voice's regional editor for St. Louis. The website was created after theSeptember 11, 2001, attacks when Hull was stuck in New York while visiting from his nativeWichita. While Christgau spent many nights preparing pastVillage Voice writings for the website, by 2002 much of the older "Consumer Guide" columns had been inputted by Hull and a small coterie of fans. According to Christgau, Hull is "a computer genius as well as an excellent and very knowledgeable music critic, but he'd never done much web site work. The design of the web site, especially its high searchability and small interest in graphics, are his idea of what a useful music site should be".[45]
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In December 2006, Christgau began writing his "Consumer Guide" columns forMSN Music, initially appearing every other month, before switching to a monthly schedule in June 2007. On July 1, 2010, he announced in the introduction to his "Consumer Guide" column that the July 2010 installment would be the last on MSN.[46] On November 22, he launched a blog on MSN, called "Expert Witness", which featured reviews only of albums that he had graded B+ or higher, since those albums "are the gut and backbone of my musical pleasure"; the writing of reviews for which are "so rewarding psychologically that I'm happy to do it at blogger's rates".[47] He began corresponding with dedicated readers of the column, named as "The Witnesses" after the column.[48] On September 20, 2013, Christgau announced in the comments section that "Expert Witness" would cease to be published by October 1, 2013, writing, "As I understand it, Microsoft is shutting down the entire MSN freelance arts operation at that time ..."[49]
On September 10, 2014, Christgau debuted a new version of "Expert Witness" onCuepoint, an online music magazine published on the blogging platformMedium.[50] In August 2015, he was hired byVice to write the column for the magazine's music section,Noisey.[8] In July 2019, the final edition of "Expert Witness" was published.[9]
In September 2019, at the encouragement of friend and colleague Joe Levy, Christgau began publishing the newsletter "And It Don't Stop" on the newsletter-subscription platformSubstack. Charging subscribers$5 per month, it has his monthly "Consumer Guide" column,podcasts, and free weekly content like book reviews. He was skeptical of the platform at first: "Basically I told Joe that if I didn't have enough subscribers to pay what I made at Noisey by Christmas I was going to quit. I wasn't going to do it for less than that money. I had that many subscribers inside of three days." By May 2020, "And It Don't Stop" had more than 1,000 subscribers. Christgau was ambivalent about the platform at first, but has since found it "immensely gratifying" explaining that, "A man my age, who is still really intellectually active? It is tremendously flattering and gratifying that there are people who are ready to help support me."[48]
Between 1968 and 1970, Christgau submitted ballots inJazz & Pop magazine's annual critics' poll. He selected Bob Dylan'sJohn Wesley Harding (released late in 1967),The Who'sTommy (1969), andRandy Newman's12 Songs (1970) as the best pop albums of their respective years, andMiles Davis'sBitches Brew (1970) as the best jazz album of its year.[51][52][53]Jazz & Pop discontinued publication in 1971.[54]
In 1971, Christgau inaugurated the annualPazz & Jop music poll, named in tribute toJazz & Pop. The poll surveyed music critics on their favorite releases of the year. The poll results were published in theVillage Voice every February after compiling "top ten" lists submitted by music critics across the nation. Throughout his career at theVoice, every poll was accompanied by a lengthy Christgau essay analyzing the results and pondering the year's overall musical output. TheVoice continued the feature after Christgau's dismissal. Although he no longer oversaw the poll, Christgau continued to vote and, since the 2015 poll, also contributed essays to the results.[55][56]
Each year that Pazz & Jop has run, Christgau has created a personal list of his favorite releases called the "Dean's List". Only his top ten count toward his vote in the poll, but his full lists of favorites usually numbered far more than that. These lists–or at least Christgau's top tens–were typically published inThe Village Voice along with the Pazz & Jop results. After Christgau was dismissed from theVoice, he continued publishing his annual lists on his own website and atThe Barnes & Noble Review.
While Pazz & Jop's aggregate critics' poll are its main draw, Christgau's Deans' Lists are noteworthy in their own right. Henry Hauser fromConsequence of Sound said Christgau's "annual 'Pazz & Jop' poll has been a bona fide American institution. For music writers, his year-end essays and extensive 'Dean's List' are like watchingthe big ball drop in Times Square."[57]
These are Christgau's choices for the number-one album of the year, including the point score he assigned for the poll. Pazz & Jop's rules provided that each item in a top ten could be allotted between 5 and 30 points, with all ten items totaling 100, allowing critics toweight certain albums more heavily if they chose to do so. In some years, he often gave an equal number of points to his first- and second-ranked albums, but they were nevertheless ranked as first and second, not as a tie for first. The list shows only his number-one picks.
No one in this time and place has the time to sit and listen uninterrupted for sixty minutes to anybody's music. I think Robert Christgau is the last record reviewer on earth who listens to eight records a day twice before giving his opinion on it ... Christgau is the last true-blue record critic on earth. He gave us an A-plus. That's pretty much who I make my records for. He's like the last of that wholeLester Bangs generation of record reviewers, and I still heed his words. He gets my vision, and I'm cool with that. But half these people, they readPitchfork, and they base half their opinion and quotes on that.
"Christgau's blurbs", writesSlate music criticJody Rosen, "are like no one else's–dense with ideas and allusions, first-person confessions and invective,highbrow references and slang".[26] Rosen describes Christgau's writing as being "often maddening, always thought-provoking. ... WithPauline Kael, Christgau is arguably one of the two most important Americanmass-culture critics of the second half of the 20th century. ... All rock critics working today, at least the ones who want to do more than rewritePR copy, are in some sense Christgauians."[26]Spin magazine said in 2015, "You probably wouldn't be reading this publication if Robert Christgau didn't largely invent rock criticism as we know it."[112]
Douglas Wolk said the earliest "Consumer Guide" columns were generally brief and detailed, but "within a few years ... he developed his particular gift for 'power, wit and economy', a phrase he used to describe theRamones in a dead-on 37-word review ofLeave Home". In his opinion, the "Consumer Guide" reviews were "an enormous pleasure to read slowly, as writing, even if you have no particular interest in pop music... if you do happen to have more than a little interest in pop music, they're a treasure."[38] While regarding the early columns as "a model of cogent, witty criticism", Dave Marsh in 1976 said "the tone of the writing is now snotty–it lacks compassion, not to mention empathy, with current rock."[6]
Fans of Christgau's "Consumer Guide" like to share lines from their favorite reviews. Wolk wrote, "Sting wears his sexual resentment on his chord changes like a closet 'American Woman' fan" (from Christgau's review of the 1983Police albumSynchronicity). "CallingNeil Tennant a bored wimp is like accusingJackson Pollock of making a mess" (reviewing the 1987Pet Shop Boys albumActually); and "Mick Jagger should fold up his penis and go home" (in a review ofPrince's 1980 albumDirty Mind).[38]
In 1978,Lou Reed recorded a tirade against Christgau and his column on the 1978 live album,Take No Prisoners: "What does Robert Christgau do in bed? I mean, is he a toe fucker? [...] Can you imagine working for a fucking year, and you get a B+ from some asshole inThe Village Voice?"[113][114] Christgau rated the album C+ and wrote in his review, "I thank Lou for pronouncing my name right."[115]
In December 1980, Christgau provoked angry responses fromVoice readers when his column approvingly quoted his wifeCarola Dibbell's reaction to themurder of John Lennon: "Why is it alwaysBobby Kennedy or John Lennon? Why isn't itRichard Nixon orPaul McCartney?"[116] Similar criticism came fromSonic Youth in their song "Kill Yr Idols". Christgau responded by saying "Idolization is for rock stars, even rock stars manqué like these impotentbohos—critics just want a little respect. So if it's not too hypersensitive of me, I wasn't flattered to hear my name pronounced right, not on this particular title track."[117]
Christgau has namedLouis Armstrong,Thelonious Monk,Chuck Berry,the Beatles, and theNew York Dolls as being his top five artists of all time.[118] In a 1998 obituary, he calledFrank Sinatra "the greatest singer of the 20th century".[119] He considersBillie Holiday "probably [his] favorite singer".[120] In his 2000Consumer Guide book, Christgau said his favorite rock album was eitherThe Clash (1977) orNew York Dolls (1973), while his favorite record in general was Monk's 1958Misterioso.[121] In July 2013, during an interview withEsquire magazine's Peter Gerstenzang, Christgau criticized the voters at theRock and Roll Hall of Fame, saying that "they're pretty stupid" for not voting in the New York Dolls.[122] When asked about Beatles albums, he said he most often listens toThe Beatles' Second Album, which he purchased in 1965, andSgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.[123]
Douglas Wolk wrote: "When he says he's 'encyclopedic' about popular music, he means it. There are not a lot of white guys in their 60s waving the flag forLil Wayne'sDa Drought 3, especially not in the same column as they wave the flag for aWillie Nelson/Merle Haggard/Ray Price trio album, an anthology of new Chinese pop,Vampire Weekend, andWussy..."[38] Christgau reflected in 2004: "Rock criticism was certainly more fun in the old days, no matter how cool the tyros opining for chump change in netzines likePopMatters andPitchfork think it is now."[124]
In a broad sense, Christgau says he responds to qualities of "tone, spirit, [and] music", disregarding, for instance, scholarly analysis of artists such asBob Dylan.[125] He readily admits to having prejudices and generally dislikes genres such asheavy metal,salsa,dance,[118]art rock,progressive rock,bluegrass,gospel,Irish folk,jazz fusion, andclassical music.[45] "I admire metal's integrity, brutality, and obsessiveness", Christgau wrote in 1986, "but I can't stand its delusions of grandeur, the way it apes and misapprehends reactionary notions of nobility".[126] In a 2015 interview, he described heavy metal as "symphonic bombast without the intelligence and complexity, although there's a lot of virtuosity. ... That music is so masculine in a really retrograde way; I don't like that at all. It seems to me to have a very 19th-century notion of power."[127] He said in 2018 that he rarely writes about jazz as it is "hard" to write about in an "impressionistic way", that he is "not at all well-schooled in the jazz albums of the '50s and '60s", and that he has neither the "language nor the frame of reference to write readily about them". This was even while critiquing jazz artists likeMiles Davis,Ornette Coleman, andSonny Rollins; he said "finding the words involves either considerable effort or a stroke of luck".[120]
Christgau has also admitted to disliking the records ofJeff Buckley andNina Simone, stating that the latter's classical background, "default gravity and depressive tendencies are qualities I'm seldom attracted to in any kind of art."[120] He is skeptical of the notion ofoutsider music, having described it in one of his Consumer Guide columns as "a hustle" perpetuated byIrwin Chusid, whom Christgau describes as a "tedious ideologue."[128] Writing in a two-part feature on music critics forRolling Stone in 1976,Dave Marsh bemoaned Christgau as a "classic, sad example" of how "many critics ... superimpos[ed] their own, frequently arbitrary, standards upon performers." Marsh accused him of becoming "arrogant and humorless–the raves are reserved for jazz artists, while even the best rock is treated condescendingly unless it conforms to Christgau's passion forleftist politics (particularlyfeminism) and bohemian culture." Marsh named another prejudice of Christgau's to be "apolitical ormiddle-class performers" of rock music.[6]
Christgau has been widely known as the "dean of American rock critics",[129] a designation he originally gave to himself while slightly drunk at a press event forthe 5th Dimension in the early 1970s.[45] According to Rosen, "Christgau was in his late 20s at the time – not exactly anéminence grise–so maybe it was the booze talking, or maybe he was just a very arrogant young man. In any case, as the years passed, the quip became a fact."[26] When asked about it years later, Christgau said that the title "seemed to push people's buttons, so I stuck with it. There's obviously no official hierarchy within rock criticism–only real academies can do that. But if you mean to ask whether I think some rock critics are better than others, you're damn straight I do. Don't you?"[45] "For a long time he's been called the 'dean of American rock critics'", wroteNew York Times literary criticDwight Garner in 2015. "It's a line that started out as an offhanded joke. These days, few dispute it."[130]
Christgau married fellow critic and writerCarola Dibbell in 1974[118] and they have an adopted daughter, Nina, born inHonduras in 1986.[131] He said that he grew up in a "born-again church" inQueens but has since become anatheist.[132]
Christgau has been long-standing, albeit argumentative, friends with criticsTom Hull,Dave Marsh,Greil Marcus and the lateEllen Willis, whom he dated from 1966 to 1969. He has mentored younger criticsAnn Powers andChuck Eddy.[118]
...Sketches of Spain, which in 1960 catapulted Davis into the favor of the kind of man who readsPlayboy and initiated in me one phase of the disillusionment ...
... there are things I don't like or get. Metal – I don't think metal's as bad as I hear it as being.
Hailed by many as the dean of American rock criticism...
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