Robert Christgau

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Born on April 18, 1942, Robert Thomas Christgau (born April 18, 1942) is an American essayist and music journalist.

During 37 years as the chief music critic and senior editor for The Village Voice, he initiated and oversaw the annual Pazz & Jop poll.

Christgau has also covered popular music for Esquire, Creem, Newsday, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Balling Stone, NPR, Blender, and MSN Music from 1969 to 2006.

He has published three books based on those columns, including Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), as well as two collections of essays.

He continued to write reviews in this style for MSN Music, Cuepoint, and Noisey—Vice's music section, where they were published in his "Expert Witness" column until July 2019, when the final edition was published.

Among other things, he launched "And It Don't Stop" a paid-subscription newsletter that was published on email-newsletter website Substack and featured a monthly "Consumer Guide" column in September.

Early life

Christgau was born in Greenwich Village, New York City, on April 18, 1942, and the son of a fireman, was raised in Queens, New York City. When disc jockey Alan Freed came to the city in 1954, he said he became a rock and roll fan.

He attended Dartmouth College in 1962, earning a B.A. after attending public school in New York City. In English, the translator is a narrator. His musical passions at college shifted to jazz, but he quickly returned to rock after heading back to New York. Miles Davis's 1960 album Sketches of Spain sparked in him "one stage of the disillusion with jazz that culminated in my return to rock and roll," Christgau said. Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe, among other New Journalism journalists, strongly influenced him. "My aspirations when I started writing were always literary," Christgau later wrote.

Personal life

Christgau married fellow writer and essayist Carola Dibbell in 1974; the couple's adopted daughter, Nina, was born in Honduras in 1986. He has said he was born in a "born-again Church" in Queens, but he has since become an atheist.

Christgau has been long, although he was arguing with opponents such as Tom Hull, Dave Marsh, Greil Marcus, and the late Ellen Willis, who lived from 1966 to 1969. Ann Powers and Chuck Eddy, for example, have worked with younger activists.

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Career

Christgau wrote short stories before giving up fiction in 1964 to become a sports reporter and later a police reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger. After a story he wrote about the death of a woman in New Jersey was published in New York magazine, he became a freelance writer. Christgau was one of the first committed rock critics. He was asked to take over the Esquire dormant music column, which he began writing in June 1967. At the time, he worked for Cheetah magazine. He became a leading figure in the emergence of a musical-political aesthetic that blends New Left politics and counterculture. Christgau was a professor at a college and worked as a columnist after Esquire stopped publishing the column.

In a 1968 piece he commented:

Christgau accepted a full-time job as a music critic for Newsday in early 1972. In 1974, he returned to The Village Voice as a music editor. He coined the term "Rock Critic Establishment" to describe the rise in fame of American music critics in a 1976 essay for the newspaper. His essay had the parenthesized headline, "But Is That Bad for Rock?" He named Dave Marsh, John Rockwell, Paul Nelson, Jon Landau, and himself as representatives of this "Establishment."

Christgau was with The Village Voice until August 2006, when he was fired shortly after the paper's purchase by New Times Media. Christgau, who first published his review of Moby Grapes Wow in 1968, became a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone fired Christgau in 2007, but the magazine continued to be published for another three months. He joined Blender, where he was listed as "senior critic" for three issues and then "contributing editor" for three issues beginning with the March 2008 issue. Before joining Rolling Stone, Christgau had been a regular contributor to Blender. He continued to write for Blender until the magazine was discontinued in March 2009.

In 1987, he was given a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of "Folklore and Popular Culture" to explore the history of popular music.

Christgau has also written frequently for Playboy, Spin, and Creem. He appears in the 2011 rockumentary Color Me Obsessed about the Replacements.

He taught at the California Institute of the Arts in the formative years. He served as an adjunct professor at New York University's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music in 2007.

In August 2013, Christgau revealed that he is writing a memoir in an article published on Barnes & Noble's website. Christgau debuted a monthly column on Billboard's website on July 15, 2014.

Christgau is perhaps best known for his "Consumer Guide" columns, which have been published more often in the Village Voice than ever since July 10, 1969, as well as a brief period in Creem. Each edition of the "Consumer Guide" in its original form contained approximately 20 single-paragraph album reviews, each with a letter grade ranging from A+ to E. These reports were later collected, expanded, and extensively revised in a three-volume book series, the first of which was released in 1981 as Christgau's Record Guide to the Seventies; Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the Nineties (2000).

Albums were graded from A+ to E in his original grading scheme from 1969 to 1990. Christgau was generally regarded as a B+ or higher recommendation under this scheme, according to this framework. In practice, grades below a C are uncommon, according to He. Christgau redesigned the "Consumer Guide" in 1990 to narrowed the focus more on the albums he loved. Christgau's "unworthy of a complete review" were mainly briefed and star marks, with one down and one other denoting an honorable mention" of a product that Christgau believed would be of concern to their intended audience. Lesser albums were released under the headings "Neither" (which may have a top-notcher craft or an arresting track or two), before failing to make an appearance again) and "Duds" (which revealed poor results and were not released without further information). In an annual "Turkey Shoot" column in The Village Voice in November, Christgau gave complete reviews and high marks to musicians he pans until he stopped the paper in 2006.

In 2001, robertchristgau.com, an online archive of Christgau's "Consumer Guide" reviews and other writings from his career, was established as a joint venture between Christgau and longtime friend Tom Hull; the two worked together in 1975 shortly after Hull sacked Christgau as the Village Voice's regional editor for St. Louis. When Hull was stuck in New York while visiting from his native Wichita, the website was created after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Although Christgau spent many nights crafting previous Village Voice articles for the website, Hull and a select group of followers poured into the older "Consumer Guide" columns by 2002. Hull is both an excellent and knowledgeable music critic, according to Christgau, but he has never done much web site work. The web site's look, as well as its high visibility and lack of interest in graphics, is his idea of what a good music website should be like.

Christgau began writing his "Consumer Guide" columns for MSN Music in December 2006, first appearing every other month before moving to a monthly schedule in June 2007. In the introduction to his "Consumer Guide" column, he revealed that the July 2010 issue would be his last on MSN. On November 22, Christgau's "Expert Witness" blog featured reviews only of albums that had been rated B+ or higher, as the author's remarks are "so rewarding psychologically that I'm able to do it at blogger's rates." After the column, he began interacting with dedicated followers of the column, dubbed "The Witnesses." "Expert Witness" will be published by October 1, 2013, Christgau wrote in the comments section on September 20, 2013.

On September 10, 2014, Christgau unveiled a new version of "Expert Witness" on Cuepoint, an online music publication published on Medium. He was hired by Vice in August 2015 to write the magazine's music column, Noisey. The final edition of "Expert Witness" was released in July 2019.

Christgau began publishing the newsletter "And It Don't Stop" on the newsletter-subscription service Substack in September 2019, at the behest of friend and colleague Joe Levy. It has included his monthly "Consumer Guide" column, podcasts, and free weekly content such as book reviews. "I told Joe that if I didn't have enough subscribers to pay what I made at Noisey by Christmas, I'd have to resign," Christgau said at first. I wasn't going to do it for less than $45, so I wasn't going to do it. Within three days, I had so many subscribers." "And It Don't Stop" had more than 1,000 subscribers as of May 2020. At first, Christgau was skeptical about the forum, but has since discovered it to be "immensely gratifying" because "A man my age, who is still very intellectually curious." Knowing that there are people who are able to assist me is both humbling and gratifying.

In the annual critics' poll conducted by Jazz & Pop magazine, Christgau submitted ballots between 1968 and 1970. He selected John Wesley Harding (begun in 1967) and Randy Newman's 12 Songs (1970) as the best pop albums of their respective years, with Miles Davis' Bonfire (1970) as the year's best jazz album of its year. In 1971, Jazz & Pop was ceased to be published.

Christgau introduced the annual Pazz & Jop music poll in 1971, which was named in honor of Jazz & Pop. According to the survey, music critics surveyed their year's top hits. After compiling "top ten" lists submitted by music critics around the country, the poll findings were revealed in the Village Voice every February. Every poll was followed by a lengthy Christgau essay analyzing the findings and pondering the year's overall musical output during Christgau's tenure at the Voice. Following Christgau's dismissal, the Voice carried on the program. Though Christgau no longer ruled the country, he voted faithfully, and he's also contributed essays to the findings since the 2015 election.

Christgau has assembled a personal list of his top products each year for Pazz & Jop. Only his top ten votes count count was factored in, but his complete lists of favorites were much more than that. These lists – or at least Christgau's top tens – were normally published in The Village Voice alongside the Pazz & Jop results. Since Christgau was barred from the Voice, he continued to publish his annual lists on his own website and at The Barnes & Noble Review.

Although Pazz & Jop's aggregate critics' polls are the company's top draw, Christgau's Deans' Lists are also noteworthy in their own right. The Consequence of Sound's Henry Hauser found that Christgau's "annual 'Pazz & Jop' survey was a bona fide American institution. The big ball drop in Times Square is like for music writers, his year-end essays, and a lengthy 'Dean's List.'

The following are Christgau's picks for the year's top-one album, as well as the point score that was voted for the poll. Pazz & Jop's laws provided that each item in a top ten could be allotted between 5 and 30 points, with all ten items totaling 100, allowing critics to weigh certain albums more closely if they so desired to do so. Christgau has often scored an equal number of points to his first and second albums in some years, but not as a tie for first; this list only includes his number one picks.

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