Robert christgau

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Three live shows from Xgau Sez: February, Consumer Guide: February, Robert Christgau. Most Popular.

Robert christgau

I have massively mixed feelings about the album reviews by Christgau. From enthusiastic agreement to "this review is morally reprehensible", depending. And all shades between. My one specific comment to offer is - after reading some hundreds of his reviews since the 60s, I suspected, but didn't positively know, that Christgau was not a musician of any sort. He just seems to never talk about the kinds of things musicians tend to notice or particularly appreciate or deprecate in music - at least it seemed that way to me. This was confirmed to me in his own words in one of his articles about his career as a music reviewer. Whatever my gripes about him, I do think he's worth reading. He now can be found still churning out reviews via Substack. Anderton 10 posts. MathOfInsects 7 posts. KuruPrionz 7 posts. Nowarezman 5 posts. September 29,

Bob Dylan, robert christgau. This particular analysis has a couple of very glaring flaws, IMO, right down to the thesis itself.

Among the most well-known [1] and influential music critics, [2] he began his career in the late s 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. Hutton of the music world — when he talks, people listen. 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. At college, his musical interests turned to jazz , but he quickly returned to rock after moving back to New York. I am interested in those places where popular culture and avant-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 to become a sportswriter , and later, a police reporter for the Newark Star-Ledger.

Minstrelsy was a horrifically racist enterprise, founded upon white-from-black appropriation; it also stands as a launching pad for the entire tangled, rotten, potentially liberating history of American popular music, from the blues through rock and roll, hip-hop, and whatever other composite style comes next—for all of the pop music any of us have ever loved. Fun is a big part of why. That assessment is less true now than it was then, and this is at least partly a testament to how successfully Christgau has spread the gospel of fun ever since, not only in the pages of the Voice but in rock magazines, such as Rolling Stone and Creem , and general-interest outlets, such as Newsday and Esquire. Along with his fellow-pioneer rock critic Greil Marcus , at Rolling Stone , and Ellen Willis , at The New Yorker , Christgau developed a pop-with-politics aesthetic that, not unlike rock and roll itself, foregrounded freedom and democracy. At the time, there were more Beatles than there were mainstream popular music critics. Christgau soon abandoned narrative journalism, but that tightness of structure remained a notable strength of his writing.

Robert christgau

Three live shows from Xgau Sez: February, Consumer Guide: February, Robert Christgau.

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Power pop legend. It ignores rhythm and lyric density and songs where the harmony IS the melody and songs where the concept of melody is misapplied entirely and songs in other languages and so on. In the mids, he adopted the last name Saadiq, which means "man of his word" in Arabic. As he explained, "I made [ Renaissance ] my number two for the simple reason that a effort by an accordion-led Ukrainian rock-oldies band touched me even deeper. I was playing his Boats Against The Current album at the weekend. YardByrd , Mar 12, at AM. Various artists Sugar Hill Records. These days, few dispute it. A great next-phase—New Wave pop song, one that deserves to come out of the trunk. In early , Christgau accepted a full-time job as music critic for Newsday. If I lived my life via Spotify's algorithm, I would conclude that "all music sounds the same" because the algorithm is trying to push music on me that actually does sound the same.

Among the most well-known [1] and influential music critics, [2] he began his career in the late s 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.

Further information: Tony! Wikimedia Commons. You're basically drawing the line to the "left" of wherever that practice is and claiming that's everything there is. Enter your email: Please enter a valid email address. Kind of a shrug, in the end, but a pretty one. Popular Posts Anderton September 29, That's his legacy more than anything, I think, and why many other people have recorded his songs. Please help by adding reliable sources. Also George Zipf's book, Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort , which features a section on regularities within language, looks promising too in terms of being applicable to music. Nowarezman September 30, See also: Lucy Pearl. Follow on. A junkie song by a non-junkie: As far as I know, a unique idea.