how do we stop Robert Christgau from editing every wikipedia page he can get his hands on and interjecting his worthless opinions on?
He is completely rampant, some pages on artists only have two paragraphs, with one being a description of the band, and the other Robert Christgaus review of that band.
he just writes reviews for people that don't like reviews
dude was smart enough to get into dartmouth when he was like 17 and he still ended up pioneering the modern day nu male
He set the trend for every hack with a creative writing degree to decide they were a music critic.
The dude wanted to be a novelist but he didn't have the talent to create anything good so he devoted his life instead to shitting on actually talented people.
we can't, he's unstoppable
>fantano eloquently gives his reasons why he likes/dislikes an album
>wikipedia doesn't count him
>Christgau writes a nonsensical 10 word review
>gets to be on every album page
Well, he can't seem to get over having his ass kicked in high school by football jocks.
Korn [Epic, 1995]
The cover art depicts a little girl cowering as the shadow of a menacing hook-handed rapist draws near. The band loves this image and exploits it in all their trade ads as Sony flogs their death-industrial into its second year. They also sing about child abuse--guess what? They're aggin it. But if their name isn't short for kiddie porn, then the band should insist on a music video where they all get eaten by giant chickens. C+
>doesn't actually review the music
>instead he reviews the cover art while accusing the band of being pedophiles
Crosby, Stills, and Nash [Atlantic, 1969]
Rated by request, I've written elsewhere that this album is perfect, but that is not necessarily a compliment. Only David Crosby's vocal on "Long Time Gone" saves it from a special castrati award. Pray for Neil Young. B+
So basically, he says this was shit and he only rated it a B+ due to peer pressure.
>ivy league
>related to intelligence
>I've written elsewhere that this album is perfect, but that is not necessarily a compliment
Stop giving this fag attention.
Coup D'Etat [Capitol, 1982]
Now that they've copped to heavy metal tempos, they could last as long as Judas Priest, although since the HM hordes do demand chops, Wendy O. might be well advised to try singing with her nether lips. Not only can't she carry a tune (ha), she can't even yell. Inspirational Thing She Says Backward on Outgroove: "The brainwashed do not know they are brainwashed." Inspirational Message Scratched on Outgroove: "You were not made for this." D-
Gee, this is awfully...sexist for a guy who's always whining about misogyny in music.
idolator.com
this has been an issue for a decade
Fantastic Fedora [Capricorn, 1974]
Sub-average white band. C-
On Avery Island [Merge, 1996] :(
In The Aeroplane Over The Sea [Merge, 1998] :(
>A 'Neither' rating indicates an album that may impress the casual listener with consistent craft or an arresting track or two. And then it won't.
He is right about NMH though.
A Farewell To Kings [Mercury, 1977]
The most obnoxious band currently making a killing on the zonked teen circuit--not to be confused with Mahogany Rush who at least spare us the reactionary gentility. Imagine a power trio Kansas or Uriah Heep with the vocals cranked up an octave. Or two. D+
lol
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway [Atco, 1974]
I wanted to call this the most readable album since Quadrophenia, but it's only the wordiest--two inner sleeves covered with lyrics and a double-fold that's all small-type libretto. The apparent subject is the symbolic quest of a Puerto Rican hood/street kid/graffiti artist named Rael, but the songs neither shine by themselves nor suggest any thematic insight I'm eager to pursue. For art-rock, though, it's listenable, from Eno treatments to a hook that goes (I'm humming) "on Braw-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw-dway." B-
this
> be pathetic, scrawny pussy in high school
> get bullied by CHADs because it's fucking easy
> spend 50+ years exacting your revenge on the music they listened to and everything it influenced
Christgau may be one of the most pathetic people I've ever heard of
>fantano
>eloquent
Come on dude, he just dribbles out adjectives. He never says anything about the overall structure. He's a hack.
Christgau is a cunt
That's literally the opposite get some fucking taste, dude. You're listening to a guy who thinks Nicki Minaj is the greatest musician of the past decade.
>Gira mailed Christgau a bag of cum after he reviewed Filth
>immediately stopped reviewing Swans
Lol
Topkek
I'd actually take this guy over, say, Fantano or anyone on Pitchfork. At least his douchiness is actually entertaining.
YOU DON'T BELIEVE WHAT YOU WRITE
YOU'RE AN IMPOSTER
If you want entertaining doucheness why not scaruffi? At least he has actual opinions instead of shitty post-modern attempts at critiques.
Dressed To Kill [Casablanca, 1975]
I feel schizy about this record. On the one hand, it rocks with a brutal, uncompromising force reminiscent of a stripped-down, heavied-up Dave Clark Five or MC5 and the songwriting is very much improved over albums one and two. On the other hand, the lyrics dimly recall the liberal fantasy of rock concert as Nuremberg Rally, with sexism at its cruelest hinted at in songs like "Room Service" and "Ladies in Waiting", a situation made more ominous by the band's refusal to bare the grinning faces beneath the makeup. That may be just the effect they intend, although for the worst of reasons. You damn well know that if they didn't have their eye on maximum commerciality, they'd call themselves Blowjob. B-
Honestly, Gira was a douche. The album got a B+, isn't that good enough for him?
Little Earthquakes [Atlantic, 1991]
She's been raped and she's written a great song about it, the quietly frightening acapella "Me and a Gun". That means she's not Kate Bush. But although I'm sure she's her own person and all, Kate Bush's market share she'd happily settle for. C+
Under the Pink [Atlantic, 1993] *bomb*
Boys for Pele [Atlantic, 1996] *bomb*
From The Choirgirl Hotel [Atlantic, 1998] *bomb*
Strange Little Girls [Atlantic, 2001]
"'97 Bonnie and Clyde" *choice cuts*
>Little Earthquakes [Atlantic, 1991]
>She's been raped and she's written a great song about it, the quietly frightening acapella "Me and a Gun". That means she's not Kate Bush. But although I'm sure she's her own person and all, Kate Bush's market share she'd happily settle for. C+
Tons of punk/alternative/indie chicks claim to have been raped. A lot of them probably weren't.
Àgaetís Byrjun [Fat Cat, 2001]
Once there was a sensitive, conceited young fellow named Jonsi Birgisson who lived on a permafrost island surrounded by a cold, dark sea. Jonsi was a well-meaning person who loved music, and he yearned to put more warmth in the world even though he wasn't exactly sure what warmth was. Not just "throwing an electric blanket on the corpse of electronica," that he knew. Jonsi longed to blaze "inspired new avenues in sonic landscapes," to deliver "shamelessly tear-stained epics" in "the falsetto cadence of angels," to turn "4AD-styled, sepia-toned instrumental passages" into "awe-inspiring new-religious mantras." Stuff like that. He did all this and more on a thematically linked work where some of the sonic landscapes were entrancing (although not warm). Because he was conceited, sometimes he would announce that these soundscapes were destined to change musical history, and then sometimes mean people would make fun of him. But he always had the perfect retort. "You have to admit I'm smarter than Enya," he would say. And about that he was certainly right. B
( ) [MCA, 2002]
?_;@$.is C
Takk. . . [Geffen, 2005] *bomb*
See previous about his shitty postmodern critiques.
Sigur Ros were just another bad Radiohead wannabe band.
I tried listening to TLLDOB. I made it about a quarter of the way through before giving up.
Berlin [RCA Victor, 1973]
I read where this song cycle about two drug addicts who fall into sadie-mazie in thrillingly decadent Berlin is a . . . what was that? artistic accomplishment, even if you don't like it much. Well, the category is real enough--it describes a lot of Ornette Coleman and even some Randy Newman, not to mention a whole lot of books--but in this case it happens to be horseshit. The story is lousy--if something similar was coughed up by some avant-garde asshole like, oh, Alfred Chester (arcane reference for all you rock folk who think you're cool cos you read half of Nova Express) everyone would be too bored to puke at it. The music is only competent--even Bob Ezrin can't manufacture a distance between the washed-up characters and their washed-out creator when the creator is actually singing. Also, what is this water-boy business? Is that a Buddhist cop? Gunga Din? Will Lou lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it? C
Yes. Yes he is.
Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables [Cherry Red, 1980]
I want there to be more punk rock, I do, I do. I want there to be more left wing new wave actually. By Americans, I swear. But not by an out-of-work actor with Tiny Tim vibrato who spent the first half of the '70s creating rock cabaret. And it sounds as if, although I'm being generous here, that Jello Biafra started listening to the Stooges in 1977. C-
This review is altogether wrong, he's mixing up DK with a different San Francisco punk band that had an openly gay frontman. Jello Biafra was 13-14 in the early 70s, he couldn't possibly have been inventing rock cabaret back then.
I recall from one of his columns that he spent a good deal of 1980 writing "Consumer Guide to the '70s" and maybe banged out that review in a haste in between other tasks and didn't bother to proofread it. He said he didn't review a lot of albums in real time that year and instead binge-listened to 1980 releases near the end of the year.
Street Songs [Columbia, 1985]
The head Journeyman's cameo on Aid For Africa gave me an idea of what I'd missed out on, which was the musical equivalent of gastroenteritis. Pat Boone never learned his lesson, so why should Steve Perry? Oversinging signifies not soul, but will and desperation. Not docked a notch for good intentions and in case Sam Cooke has finally taught him a lesson. B-
>We Are The World
>comes out early '85, almost a year after Street Songs (April 1984)
I bet he ignored SS for months and after hearing this song, belatedly went and shit out a review.
muh nu-male
Let's Dance [EMI America, 1983]
Anyone who wants Dave's $17 million fling to flop doesn't understand how little good motives have to do with good rock and roll. Rodgers & Bowie are a rich combo in the ways that count as well as the ways that don't, and this stays up throughout, though it's perfunctory professional surface does make one wonder whether Bowie-the-thespian really cares much about pop music these days. "Modern Love" is the only interesting new song, the remakes are pleasantly pointless, and rarely has such a lithe rhythm player been harnessed to such a flat groove. Which don't mean the world won't dance to it. B
Stephen Stills [Atlantic, 1970]
Steve Stills always projects an effortless swing and his tradeoffs with Eric Clapton on "Go Back Home" are classic. There's only one thing that remains undefined--oh wait, it's the songs. C+
Stephen Stills 2 [Atlantic, 1971]
Steve Stills has always come on as the ultimate rich hippie--arrogant, self-pitying, shallow, sexist. Fortunately he's never quite reached his true potential, but flashes of brilliance remain--the single, "Marianne", is very nice especially if you don't listen too hard to the lyrics, but there's more to the order of an all-male chorus with jazz horns singing straightly and in perfect unison the phrase "It's disgusting" over and over. Keep it up SS, it'll be a pleasure watching you fail. C-
Manassas [Atlantic, 1973]
In which Stills finally gets his shit together and deigns to cooperate with real musicians in a real band. Some cuts on this four-sided set even echo in your head if you play them enough. Only problem is, you're never sure where the echos are coming from. C-
Stills [Atlantic, 1975]
In which Stephen Stills recycles his "favorite set of changes/good for a couple of songs". His supporters will find that endearing, I know. They may even dig him copping a lick from Alice Cooper later on in the lyric. But me, I find it pathetic. C-
Obviously this man didn't listen to Xanadu OR cygnus because those two songs are a God send
Greatest Hits [Chess, 1975]
Freddie King's renown as the inventor of electric blues guitar is a reward for his shameless Anglophilia--here documented on "Palace of the King". Forget what Anglophiles claim of his recent work--the man's been coasting for years. The R&B sides he cut in the '60s for (of all things) King Records are acute. Here he makes do with a bunch of Leon Russell and Don Nix boogies, the vocals blurred, the guitar all fake and roll. C
this was actually a good review though
Freddie King was cool, come on this isn't fair.
Infidels [Columbia, 1983]
All the wont and care that Dylan put into this album shows--musically, that is, "License to Kill" being the only dud. His distaste for the daughters of Satan has gained new voluptitude of tone--showing neither hatred or pity or contempt, he approaches women with a solicitousness that's strangely chilling, as if he knows what a self-serving scumbag he's being, if only subliminally. Nevertheless, the man has turned into a hateful crackpot, from equating Jews with Zionism to the muddled disquisition on international labor to the ital al Hassidim that inspires no less than three superstitious attacks on space exploration. God only knows (and I use that phrase advisedly) how far he'll go if John Glenn becomes president. C
Love Will Keep Us Together [A&M, 1975]
One expected a lousy album, but not this lousy. Their good sense in appropriating Neil Sedaka's unused hit arrangement was a one-shot: the rest of the time they spread the middle of the road so thin they make "Rainy Days and Mondays" sound like "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting." Admirers of the single should invest in a copy of Sedaka's Back. D-
>Captain & Tenneille
Hey, nobody was expecting Motorhead here.
unequivocally this
>buhhh Christgau too smart 4 me I need my hand-holding structural reviews as if I never heard the album in my life
god P4K babbies are atrocious
Scaruffi isn't douchey just autistic and his writing is stale. 40% of his reviews are just namedropping other bands that have similar traits or played the same note at one point
But you can find a copy or two of LWKUT at any thrift store next to the Andy Williams Christmas albums. :^)
maybe 4 of them weren't, but there's easily way more who haven't claimed and have
>doesn't actually review the music
>"They also sing about child abuse"
did you even read the fucking review?
>Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting
That song is okay...it's not great though.
The River [Columbia, 1980]
All the standard objections apply. His beat is still clunky, his singing overwrought, his sense of significance shot through with Mazola Oil. He's too white and too male, though he's decent enough to wish he weren't; too unanalytic and fatalistic, though his eye is sharp as can be. Yet by continuing to root his writing in the small victories and large compromises of ordinary joes and janies whose need to understand as well as celebrate is as restless as his own, he's grown into a bitter empathy. These are the wages of young romantic love among those who get paid by the hour, and even if he's only giving forth with so many short fast ones because the circles of frustration and escape seem tighter now, the condensed songcraft makes this double album a model of condensation--upbeat enough for a revery there, he elaborates a myth about the fate of the guys he grew up with that hits a lot of people where they live. A-
...
...
Oddly enough, there's seemingly no photos of him from the 80s anywhere. There's 70s pics and more recent pics, but no 80s ones at all.
This is the guy who thinks _metal_ is overwrought and nihilistic.
"The fact that he's the one who decided who gets exposed in New York was sort of getting on our nerves. Christgau started getting bugged by people like Tim Sommer, who really wanted to write about us. And Christgau says "Yeah, I don't see it." So finally he decided to do an article on us, and he gets this guy named Picarella, and it was a really nasty thing they wrote about us. I wrote him a letter that was a diatribe, and his letter back said that it didn't matter. After that I wanted to do a song about slicing up Christgau, and it turned out to be the advice-to-the-lovelorn "Kill Yr Idols". So we put that out and people started digging on it. And I was getting calls from people like Giorgio Gomelsku, who wanted to put on an anti-Christgau festival. My feeling was that we'd said our piece; there was no need to keep attacking the guy. One night he went to see the Replacements and some kid tried to light him on fire. He blamed it on us. "Bands like Sonic Youth are telling kids to kill me." he wrote. And he was getting really paranoid. He wrote me a letter saying "Don't ever expect to see your albums in 'Christgau's Consumer Guide', and I wrote back 'Boo fucking hoo.'"
i only know one music critic desu
Ozzy Osbourne
Distinctions Not Cost Effective [1980s]: I have no interest in his albums, but I do appreciate how he mooned the PMRC every chance he got. And his egg-frying scene in Penelope Spheeris's "The Decline of Western Civilization: The Metal Years" is a classic.
Amazing how this Rolling Stone review of "The Ultimate Sin" contrasts. Unlike Christgau, this reviewer "got" Ozzy and what he was really about, which was that he wasn't a bad guy or anything, just a kind of lovable overgrown kid who's still mentally 10 years old.
The few times when he writes a detailed review, it's a cringy as fuck piece like the one he did for Damita Jo.
robertchristgau.com
Or this one for Dirty Work, an embarrassingly awful album that even diehard Stones fans have disowned. It's an album they had to do to fulfill a contractual obligation and the songs are mostly just the band singing about how much they want to kill each other.
And Liz Phair S/T. He wrote a whole essay on that one when the album is a fucking travesty by all standards.
Is there anything this guy actually likes.
Only Chuck Berry and the New York Dolls. And apparently shitty Janet Jackson albums.
To be fair, they sung about child abuse because the lead singer was molested when he was a kid
Just your typical old-fag.
Which say...
Follow The Leader [Epic, 1998]
Korn deny they're metal--that's Judas Priest, all four-four pomp and solos. They nevertheless demonstrate that the essence of metal--an expressive mode it seems will be with us for as long as ordinary whiteboys pity themselves, fear girls, and are permitted to rage against a world they'll never beat--is self-obliterating volume and self-aggrandizing display. Calling up death metal's signature groan to prove he's authentic, poor not actually abused Jonathan Davis clicks, creaks, groans, squeaks, squawks, and emotes his way through dull verses, eerie licks, strange bridges, and a hyperactive rhythm section. How much his fan identify with such verses as Cameltosis's "You trick-ass slut" and "I'll kiss your lifeless skin" is unclear. But I'm parent enough to hope they find a more fully-formed designate than someone whose idea of social commentary is netcasting softcore S&M to any teenager with a logon. C+
>poor not actually abused Jonathan Davis
Wow, this was a dick move on his part.
it is
t.nu male
Nobody's Daughter [Mercury, 2010]
A lot of people don't like her and I don't either for that matter. And it's also true that the oil spill is just another thing for her to pretend to care about. Thing is, I can use some new punk rage in my life and unless you're a fan of BP Petroleum or Goldman-Sachs, so can you. So who better to deliver the goods than a 45 year old woman who knows how to throw her weight around better than half the dweens, zitfaces, and tattooed road-dogs who make up the scene these days. B+
man Sonic Youth were total wimps. Also fuck them for exacerbating the "Yr" stylization epidemic. Now every edgy 19 yr old has to make a point to change every "your" to "yr"
>punk rage
This album sounds like Avril Lavigne B-sides.
Backstreet Boys [Jive, 1997]
I'm not claiming I would have gotten the message without a 13-year-old I know broadcasting it from her boombox. But keynoted by two guaranteed pop classics, one dance and one heart, this is genius teensploitation. I give half credit to songwriter-svengali Max Martin, who's put in time with Ace of Base. But as someone who still suspects Abba were androids, I award the other half to the Boys, without whose sincere if not soulful simulations of soul and sincerity Martin's slow ones would be as sickening as any other promise that's made to be broken. Together the team manufactures a juicy sexual fantasy for virgins who get nervous when performers grab their dicks and think it's gross when teenage ignoramuses copy the move. They deserve one. After all, it is gross. A-
At this point, all possibility of taking this man seriously as a reviewer ended.
Nah that was the piece he wrote on Damita Jo talking about how sexy the music was and how it got the blood flowing to the ol' groin. I'll leave it go that this was a 61 year old man writing that and instead focus on the more obvious that Janet Jackson's entire discography deserves a D or a bomb rating. If her name had been Janet Smith, she'd be working in a hair salon at the mall.
Ready to Die [Fat Opossum, 2013]
his first album worth noticing in longer than one need remember shows that even facing death along with his buddies, he'll cling admirably to the schtick that's served him so profitably for so long ("Job", "Dirty Deal") **
t. irrelevant music opinion
No, that's Robert Christgau
Reinventing the Steel [EastWest, 2000] *bomb*
are you just posting random reviews now?
Heck, he gave As to a bunch of Yoko Ono/POB albums when all of those should have also gotten a D or bomb rating.
oh I forgot user's, not Christgau's, music opinion is featured on hundreds of wikipedia articles
That album was garbage though. This is correct.
>being this plebian
Why does Sup Forums hate Yoko Ono so much? Plastic Ono Band did some crazy experimental stuff.
that Yoko post is ironic pasta
Because autistic shut-ins believe she singlehandedly destroyed the Beatles (protip: they were coming unglued regardless).
Ok, so in that case you don't get away with giving As to Springsteen albums for doing the same exact damn thing. Oh wait, Springsteen was a critical darling and you were required to like him.