Robert Christgau
Robert Thomas Christgau (/ˈkrɪstɡaʊ/ KRIST-gow; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known[1] and influential music critics,[2] he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became an early proponent of musical movements such as hip hop, riot grrrl, and the import of African popular music in the West.[1] Christgau spent 37 years as the chief music critic and senior editor for The Village Voice, during which time he created and oversaw the annual Pazz & Jop critics poll. He has also covered popular music for Esquire, Creem, Newsday, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Billboard, NPR, Blender, and MSN Music, and was a visiting arts teacher at New York University.[3] CNN senior writer Jamie Allen has called Christgau "the E. F. Hutton of the music world – when he talks, people listen."[4]
"Christgau" redirects here. For other uses, see Christgau (disambiguation).
Robert Christgau
Robert Thomas Christgau
April 18, 1942
New York City, U.S.
- Music critic
- essayist
- journalist
1967–present
1
Christgau is best known for his terse, letter-graded capsule album reviews, composed in a concentrated, fragmented prose style featuring layered clauses, caustic wit, one-liner jokes, political digressions, and allusions ranging from common knowledge to the esoteric.[5] Informed by leftist politics (particularly feminism[6] and secular humanism), his reviews have 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 at The 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), and Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s (2000).[3] Multiple collections of his essays have also been published in book form,[3] and a website published in his name since 2001 has freely hosted most of his work.
In 2006, the Voice dismissed Christgau after the paper's acquisition by New Times Media. He continued to write reviews in the "Consumer Guide" format for MSN Music, Cuepoint, and Noisey – Vice's music section – where they were published in his "Expert Witness" column[8] until July 2019.[9] In September that year, he launched a paid-subscription newsletter called And It Don't Stop, published on the email-newsletter platform Substack and featuring a monthly "Consumer Guide" column, among other writings.[10]
Early life[edit]
Christgau was born in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City,[11] on April 18, 1942,[12] and was raised in Queens,[13] the son of a fireman.[14] He has said he became a rock and roll fan when disc jockey Alan Freed moved to the city in 1954.[15]
After attending public school in New York City,[14] he attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1962 with a B.A. in English. At college, his musical interests turned to jazz, but he quickly returned to rock after moving back to New York.[16] Christgau has said that Miles Davis's 1960 album Sketches of Spain initiated in him "one phase of the disillusionment with jazz that resulted in my return to rock and roll."[17] He was deeply influenced by New Journalism writers such as Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe. "My ambitions when I went into journalism were always, to an extent, literary", Christgau later said.[18]
Personal life[edit]
Christgau married fellow critic and writer Carola Dibbell in 1974[116] and they have an adopted daughter, Nina, born in Honduras in 1986.[128] He has said he was raised in a "born-again Church" in Queens but has since become an atheist.[129]
Christgau has been long, albeit argumentative, friends with critics Tom Hull, Dave Marsh, Greil Marcus and the late Ellen Willis, whom he dated from 1966 to 1969. He has mentored younger critics Ann Powers and Chuck Eddy.[116]
