Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau contributes regular music reviews to All Things Considered.
Christgau began writing rock criticism for Esquire in 1967 and became a columnist at New York's Village Voice in 1969. He moved to Newsday in 1972, but in 1974 returned to the Voice, where he was the music editor for the next 10 years. From 1985 to 2006, he was a senior editor at the weekly as well as its chief music critic. He is best known for the Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll, for over 30 years the nation's most respected survey of rock-critical opinion, and his Consumer Guide column, where he began to publish letter-graded capsule album reviews in 1969. The Consumer Guide is now published by MSN Networks. Christgau is also a senior critic at Blender.
Christgau has taught at several colleges and universities, most extensively NYU, where after stints with the English and journalism departments, he now teaches music history in the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music. In 1987, he won a Guggenheim fellowship to study the history of popular music. In 2002, he was a senior fellow at the National Arts Journalism Program, where he is now a member of the national board. He was the keynote speaker at the first EMP Pop Conference in 2002, and a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University in 2007.
Christgau has published five books: the collections Any Old Way You Choose It (1973) and Grown Up All Wrong (1998), and three record guides based on his Consumer Guide columns. He has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The London Times, Playboy, The New Yorker, Video Review, Blender, Spin, The Nation, Salon, Believer, numerous alt-weeklies and many other publications. Most of his writing can be read on his website, robertchristgau.com. His capsule reviews are also part of the editorial content at the online music service Rhapsody.
Christgau was born in 1942. He attended New York City public schools and got his B.A. from Dartmouth in 1962. He married Carola Dibbell in 1974. In 1985, they became parents of a daughter, Nina.
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Hayes Carll made a stir in Americana music with his self-released 2004 album, Little Rock. Music critic Robert Christgau says that Carll has matured some since then, and that maturity sounds good on him. Carll is good for a laugh, but Christgau says his sensitive side puts his new album, Trouble In Mind, over the top.
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London-based 20-year-old Kate Nash is one of many British women poised to make pop breakthroughs in the wake of Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse. But music critic Robert Christgau thinks she's special, in large part because she's ordinary.
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Willie Nelson is 74; Ray Price is 81; and Merle Haggard is a mere 70. The three of them have collaborated on a new double-CD, Last of the Breed. But despite the many years that the trio share between them, the music is pretty fresh.
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A Swedish duo who employ synthesizers and a dark, even macabre point of view may not be to every listeners' taste. But The Knife, whose CD Silent Shout was a favorite among music bloggers and Web sites like Pitchfork, may be an exception. Among the darkness, there is a lighter side.
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The Clipse are two brothers named Thornton from Virginia who in 2002 had a hit single called "Grindin'" that they never managed to follow up. Our music critic Robert Christgau tells us about their travails.
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Robert Christgau reviews the latest CD from vocalist Maria Muldaur, best known for her quirky 1970s pop tune "Midnight at the Oasis." Her new CD is Heart of Mine: Maria Muldaur Sings Love Songs of Bob Dylan. Reviewer Robert Christgau says Muldaur put the passion in these tunes in a way most singers don't match because they probably didn't know Dylan put all that passion there in the first place.
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The Hold Steady is led by a very wordy, not-so-great singer named Craig Finn. The group's latest CD is Boys and Girls in America — a title taken from a line by Jack Kerouac. The line goes, "Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together." Critic Robert Christgau says that despite the band sounding a bit more like Bruce Springsteen, the characters are strong and indeed quite sad.