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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The Minneapolis rapper known as Dessa doesn't have a typical hip-hop profile, but her talent more than compensates. Maggie Wander graduated from college at 20 and then worked as a medical writer. She's an outspoken fan of Jeff Buckley. And, under the name Dessa, Wander just released a terrific hip-hop album called A Badly Broken Code.
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Merrill Garbus is a ukulele-playing Smith College graduate with a long musical history in folk-based projects. Her recordings under the name tUnE-yArDs reflect her study abroad in Kenya, her work in puppet theater and her experience as a nanny on Martha's Vineyard.
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Oliver Sim and Romy Madley Croft are young Londoners who lead an extremely spare band called The xx. They touch on Kraftwerk and The Cure, but never equal their volume.
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The hard-living Poole sold 102,000 copies of a song in 1931. His work has been covered by the likes of Jerry Garcia, The Chieftains and Tom T. Hall. Nevertheless, Poole remains obscure. Singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III means to change that with a two-CD tribute to Poole called High Wide & Handsome.
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What can eccentric young New York singer-songwriter Nellie McKay have in common with notoriously normal Hollywood icon Doris Day? The comparison only begins with McKay's new album, Normal as Blueberry Pie: A Tribute to Doris Day.
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Astatke is a well-born Ethiopian who fell in love with jazz in the early '60s and has been making music ever since. His most impressive effort, critic Robert Christgau says, is his latest album Inspiration Information, which he created in collaboration with the British experimental funk musicians in The Heliocentrics.
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Critic Robert Christgau is impressed by the new album from the Malian vocalist, whom he calls Africa's most important female singer. Seya is her first release after a 12-year absence from recording, spent raising a son and running a hotel, farm and other businesses.
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A full decade after his landmark album Play, techno musician Moby has released an album called Wait for Me. Music critic Robert Christgau thinks it's almost worthy of its great predecessor. -
A full year out of rehab, the controversial rapper Eminem is back with Relapse, his first album since 2004. Curiously, he brings back an obscure rap subgenre called horror-core, and critic Robert Christgau thinks he should have stayed home a little longer.
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Eddie Argos, the 29-year-old leader of London band Art Brut, has made a career out of not growing up. On the group's latest album, Art Brut vs. Satan, that may be for the best, according to critic Robert Christgau.
