Xgau SezThese are questions submitted by readers, and answered by Robert Christgau. New ones will appear in batches every third Tuesday. To ask your own question, please use this form. January 29, 2025The Consumer Guide in the streaming era, the A Lists (the missing years), softening on Madonna and Taylor (but in different ways), spending time (see: fleeting) relistening to Randy Newman. [Q] I know some of the terms you use to describe your own profession are semi-ironic, but I also know you've taken the "Consumer Guide" title quite literally at times, assessing albums (especially compilations) in terms of their "bang for your buck" ratio and dismissing others as ripoffs. Some reviews make reference to the physical format of the music, noting the number of discs or bonus tracks available. I'm curious about how the changing format of music in the streaming age might have changed your perspective on the "worth" of music to the consumers you're advising. I know you still have a preference for owning the physical editions of albums and reviewing those when you can (though at least a couple albums you've reviewed recently have had no physical release at all), but does the thought that an increasing share of your audience might be exclusively streaming ever influence your thoughts about what an album might be worth to them? (For the record, I'm not one of those streamers.) -- Kurt Grunsky, Toronto [A] Consumer Guide quote unquote is no longer as much a descriptor as a brand—a rather profitable one for its (de facto) owner, me, that is unlikely to be nearly as remunerative for anyone who purloins it. Since I make it a practice to if possible buy the CD version of any album that sounds like a potential pick after a (streamed) play or two, it costs me money I wouldn't be spending if it wasn't making me more money (though I'm sure I'd still buy some physicals). One reason it's been so successful is that I don't fake or exaggerate my responses, which is one of many skills I've mastered in the course of the decades I've been doing it, and in addition I know from experience that owning the physical improves the accuracy and detail of my responses and judgments, sound quality and the surprise factor built into my regular practice of sticking multiple discs into my changer in the confidence that I'm unlikely to remember what's coming next. Can this go on till I'm 90, which for many reasons is unlikely? Maybe, maybe not. In seven or eight years perhaps I'll know and perhaps I won't. In the meanwhile I'll help people not waste time on music I believe is likely or not to be worth said time. [Q] I know your A Lists come from the original Consumer Guide books, but is there a reason you never compiled one for the 2000s/2010s? I've enjoyed sifting through the '70s/'80s/'90s ones and I'd like more. -- Alex Rubio, A Suburb in Dallas. [A] You could consult the Dean's Lists, which started with the Pazz & Jop poll and continue to this day. But there are no 21st-century Consumer Guide books because nobody offered me money for one. As I assume you know, in 2001 Tom Hull created robertchristgau.com, which rendered future CG books unprofitable for sure—for book publishers and to a lesser extent for me, since especially given all the new reviews a '00s book would have had to add to my journalistic oeuvre I would have been sweating blood for my piddling advance. In the end, as things worked out, the website Hull invented and sweated over out of pure friendship functioned to spread my renown (and also his own, which was well-earned indeed). Without it I doubt And It Don't Stop would exist. So my thanks to him, not for the first time. And also to the readers it vouchsafed me. On the web site are the 21st Century Dean's Lists along with my ballot for Rolling Stone's best of the 2000s poll, and there was a 2010s Dean's List right here on And It Don't Stop. [Q] Your review of Madonna's debut was published on December 27, 1983 but it mentions the music video of "Borderline" that was only released three months later. I assume you edited the original text, since the grade was also changed from B to A minus. The single was Madge's first top ten entry on the US Billboard Hot 100 and, apparently, the reason of your change of heart as well. I would love to know if there is more to the story? -- Adam, Montreal [A] It probably means I wrote and/or revised the debut review to begin with or with book deadline approaching when I was preparing the '90s CG book. You will note that the next two Madonna albums are both B's merely. So it's my guess, and a guess it is only, that having softened on Madonna throughout the '80s I either wrote in toto or refurbished to to one degree or other a retrospective review of the debut at that time. [PS: Most of the Consumer Guide columns preserve the original reviews, offering links to the database where reviews and/or grades were later revised. However, in a regrettable short cut, the reviews in the Dec. 27, 1983 column were, as an internal comment puts it, "hoisted this from database; should check against original." The "Additional Consumer News" was added, but the reviews were never reverted to match the print column. My intention has always been to restore the original columns -- I don't see any need to preserve typos and flat-out errors, but standard policy is to accurately reflect changes of opinion and chronology. I don't know how many files still exist like this: offhand, I'd guess between 10-20 out of nearly 600 in the directory, possibly more, but not many. This case particularly bothers me, because I remember a lot of rock critics writing exceptionally nasty reviews of Madonna's early work, so I've actually gone looking for the missing review, was confused not to find what I hazily remembered, and hadn't noticed the reason it was missing. — Tom Hull] [Q] Dear Robert, Have you had a chance to see The Eras Tour? Have you warmed up to any of "Taylor's [rerecorded] Version[s]"? What about Midnights or TTPD: The Anthology? Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays. -- Nicholas Wanhella, North Vancouver, British Columbia [A] I've seen Swift precisely once and would probably make it twice if some bizzer or publicist approached me with a freebie, not to mention two. Nor do I care enough about her music to compare alternative versions absent word-from-the-right-mouth. I started giving her props in 2008. I respect her in principle. I think her last album was self-indulgent at best. Life isn't as long as I am old. [Q] Once a kid for whom Randy Newman was played this-and-that-way in his household growing-up, with little care for which song belonged to which album, now an adult who in retrospect thinks you underrated those three '70s-'80s albums, it was pleasing to read your mea culpa in the Robert Hilburn book I bought as an Xmas present for my mother—who introduced "Marie" and me all those years ago. I'm a fan of your Randy writing, including that "Newman's lyrics [ . . . ] create ironic tension between his own self-evident sophistication and the naivete of his personas," but also that his "unabashed cynicism" eventually "became an annoyance." Tell me, what has changed for you now about those albums? -- Dean Sterling Jones, Belfast [A] Those weren't mea culpas, just simple experiments, because Hilburn wanted me to write something and I seldom do that kind of thing off the top of my head (except maybe sometimes in, er, Xgau Sez). Said to myself I haven't heard these in years (because given my line of work there are many good-to-excellent records I never hear again post-review except maybe in December when I'm putting the Dean's List together, which I hope doesn't disillusion you but is just simple time management) so here's a way for me to play three pretty good records I haven't heard in years and call it working. Enjoyed them all more than I anticipated, probably but not definitely played them all at least twice and whammo, knew what I could write for Bob (H not C). Which took at least an hour or two because writing takes time. As of course does music. It exists in time, which is always fleeting. December 26, 2024Moral compasses and the election, coming soon to Bluesky, morning TV avoided, the second sex comes first, Randy Newman upgrades, and song by song by Christgau. [Q] Harris is the establishment. Trump is viewed by his voters as a counter-establishment force, albeit uncontrollable, self-centered, and potentially dangerous. I also have to disagree with you on your assessment of KH as a public speaker . . . she rambles on, often changing her policies to please the crowd in front of her. Voters sensed, correctly, her duplicity and lack of a moral compass when discussing Israel or the Ukrainian issue. -- Ricardo Pini, New Zealand [A] May I suggest that unless American politics is your academic specialty or something you refrain from gross generalizations about a nation half a world away from yours. It's certainly true that today's active Democrats have a collegiate/academic tinge/orientation that diluted or strained their moral compass and damaged their appeal to large swaths of the working-class electorate. But the "establishment" is the people with too much money, not the people who inflect a major field of discourse. As far as Harris's lack of moral compass is concerned, do you really believe that being compelled to do some sort of impossible balancing act as regards Palestine, an issue regarding which only a sliver of the American electorate and indeed political class knows how to "solve" unless making Netanyahu and his apparatchiks vanish in thin air suddenly becomes practicable, is what cost her the election? What cost her the election was her gender, her color, her classiness, and the Dems' failure to address the economy in a clear and plausible way. [Q] Asking as someone who used to follow you on Twitter, but decamped from there around the time the current owner changed its name to X, have you considered starting a new account on non-X/Twitter social media? I'm personally partial to Bluesky, but there are plenty of other options (Mastodon, Threads, maybe even Instagram). Bluesky in particular has picked up a large number of users who left X/Twitter after the US election, including journalists who've reported getting more engagement on their posts on the former than the latter. (Elon Musk has confirmed that the X/Twitter algorithm has been reworked to downgrade tweets with off-site links, which has hampered journalists trying to get people to read their work.) Anyway, I guess I miss you on social media even though you've never been a big user of it. Glad you've got the Substack thing going, though. -- Rob Tomshamy, Tulsa [A] I never quit Twitter/X because I wanted to be able to check something whose buzz there interested me, which I doubt I did half a dozen times, mostly on Carola's say-so. But that was when I thought Musk was a rich eccentric albeit the union-busting billionaire he'd proved himself at Tesla. But once he began flaunting his Trumpy antics I just never got around to quitting, which I soon will. He is vile, vain, actively revolting. Bluesky here I come. [Q] Regarding MSNBC and its "comforting" effect you cite, what's your comfort level with Joe & Mika's crawl to Florida? -- Frederick P Bulman, Massachusetts [A] I never watch morning TV and hence cannot count myself any special admirer or detractor of Joe and Mika, although as a marriage fan I approve of them in principle. As I understand it, they do a light, chatty show with the occasional political edge, which given the just-waking-up audience they serve presumably requires more cordiality than any of MSNBC's night people are inclined to provide. So if they want to make sure they're not cut out of America's newly elected ruling class, I don't see any reason to blame them. [Q] Hey Dean, it seems like there are a lot more at-least-moderately-successful female-fronted rock bands these days than there were in the past. Do you think that's true? And do you think there's a general aesthetic difference between the female-fronted bands of today and yesterday, that is itself notably different from the aesthetic differences between male rock bands of today and yesterday? Been listening to a lot of Wet Leg, Alvvays, and tUnE-yArDs these days—thanks for the recommendations. -- Griffin, Damiriscotta, Maine [A] Duh. I say as someone who regarded himself as a feminist even before he hooked up with Ellen Willis, mostly via a Canadian woman I dated from afar 1964-66, who gave me my copy of The Second Sex, women's bands do tend to have better sexual politics than all-male bands, thus evading what with so many male rockers can be a major annoyance factor, to put it mildly. Like I said, duh. [Q] Are there any revisions you'd make to your previous letter grades for Randy Newman's albums at this point, or do you still feel the same ways about them as you did back then? -- Ben Merliss, Bethesda, Maryland [A] As it happens, Robert Hilburn asked me to write something for his excellent new Newman bio, which I'm now 70 pages from finishing, and what I wrote was based on a relisten to the three Newman studio albums I'd given a B plus, all of which I quickly concluded I'd underrated. So make Land of Dreams, Little Criminals, and Born Again some kind of A. But let me add one thing I'm realizing from the Hilburn, which is that Newman like his famous uncles also devoted a lot of creative energy to movie soundtracks to which I've paid very little attention. While I recognize that movies need soundtracks and presume that Randy's are fine, I am not a guy equipped to appreciate them critically or enjoy them the way I enjoy song collections, even though most soundtracks include a few songs. [Q] Hi Bob — Considering the sweep and delight of your thousands of reviews of full albums, I found myself wondering: do you have any favorite pieces, or passages from pieces, that you've written on a single song? Thanks for your time. -- Jay Thompson, Seattle [A] There must be others, but two that occur to me are the piece I wrote about Chuck Berry's eternal "You Never Can Tell" for London's Sunday Times and the long takeout on Thelonious Monk's (and Johnny Griffin's!) "In Walked Bud" to close out the Monk piece collected in Is It Still Good to Ya? I also once did a whole Double Dee & Steinski piece that kind of qualifies. November 20, 2024Thoughts on Kamala and the election, Elton and listening time, Young Thug and trap, bohemia (what dat?) Billy Bragg and Woody Guthrie, and genius (again: what dat?). [Q] Dear Bob, I understand that you want someone to ask you a question about the election, so try this: Any takes on the election, Robert? P.S. I'd rather you not include your ongoing mea culpa for admiring Harris's articulateness, which you now recognize might have lost voters who thought she sounded too educated. Get over it. It wasn't your fault. -- Carola Dibbell, Manhattan [A] First of all, Harris was one of the most fluent prose stylists ever to run as a plausible presidential candidate—which despite her own considerable oratorical skills doesn't mean she was as impressive a speaker as Lincoln, Obama, Washington it says here, or the fireside FDR or as purely brilliant intellectually as at the very least Madison, who did after all play a major role in conceiving the Constitution we say we fight for and the Trumpers hope to wreck. She was also arguably the handsomest, especially if dumb-ass Warren Harding's square-jawed thing didn't turn you on. But what both impressed me and led me astray was what the polls told us was the 50-50 race it clearly wasn't—at least not in the electoral college. I was confident ordinary voters saw her brains and looks as an attractive positive, which they clearly didn't. On the contrary, let's specify the obvious. She was Black and female and both cost her. Sexism and racism. Definitive? Maybe not, and we'll never know how big they were for sure. (It is also worth bearing in mind, just as a quirky oddity if you prefer, that what I'd estimate were the two most intelligent plausible presidential candidates of my and your lifetimes were both of part-African heritage.) But in addition I'll note that my biggest personal political gaffe is that I never glimpsed the economic factors I have no doubt cost Harris big because that seems to be how it worked all over the pan-Covid world. About that I was ignorant, to my and so many of my allies' disgrace. I've also been paying more mind than I ever thought I would to what is now, evocatively, labeled bro culture. As someone who would always rather read, listen to music, or both than resort to YouTube and/or the podcast world, I ignore both the way I avoid Rush and Kansas reissues, living without that market share, which for me is negligible economically—but not, it would seem, electorally. Now those motherfuckers scare me. Although I've long followed electoral politics in considerable detail, I don't have the expertise or vanity to make any prognostications here. I'm glad MSNBC is operative because I find it comforting—especially for the nonce Lawrence O'Donnell, whose detailed firsthand knowledge of DC in particular I've been finding informative and on occasion comforting. [Q] You reviewed a lot of Elton John albums throughout the '70s, arguably his creative peak, especially in America. Then you seem to lose interest at the same time his record sales start to slip, even though at one point you state that you're 'rooting for him.' He's certainly churned out a lot of patchy, uninspired pop albums throughout the '80s and '90s. However, since 2001 he did release some interesting albums such as Songs From The West Coast, The Union (with Leon Russell) and The Diving Board which harked back to his early Americana period. He and Bernie have written some great songs here. Interested to know your thoughts. -- Martin Taylor, Manchester [A] So you really think I should be searching out conceivable B plusses a quarter century old by someone I like and indeed respect but don't care about very deeply? Do the math if you like; I'll just estimate. Say Dean's Lists averaging well over 50 a year for 50-plus years. That's more than 2500, maybe 1800-plus hours worth of listening—at 12 hours a day, over half a year's worth played just once apiece, total by Elton John two. If a guest requested something, sure; maybe a best-of, I'm a good host. Would the right EJ song sound good in a movie? Sure. Do I have many other things to do with my ears? You bet. So long ago, after many sub-B plus albums, I stopped trying. Might I have missed something? Of course. Does this worry me? Not a whit. [Q] Hey Bob, how have you enjoyed Young Thug's latest album, Business is Business? I've been waiting patiently for your review, but I know that his music can take a while to get accustomed to, even for experienced listeners and longtime fans. Personally, I think it's pretty good. It strikes a balance between being more meaningful than So Much Fun and more exciting than Punk, ultimately yielding quality entertainment. The tracks that qualify as engaging, in order of appearance: "Gucci Grocery Bag," "Cars Bring Me Out," "Abracadabra," "Went Thru It," "Oh U Went," "Want Me Dead," "Mad Dog," and "Jonesboro"—neither track tacked onto Metro's version would make the cut. One excellent song in particular puts an inconspicuously spare Dr. Luke beat to good use, and although Business has its share of expendable tracks, it's got better production and less fluff than his first two officials. Am I missing something from the bigger picture? -- Cameron Dempsey, Bathurst, New Brunswick [A] Until your note I wasn't aware that Business Is Business existed. I'll check it out—in fact am streaming it as I write, and though it sounds OK that's not all that promising an omen. Trap has always been off to the side of my active musical interests and as well as those of most of my far-flung advisory network. Called "Gucci Grocery Bag" up on Spotify just now. Sounds OK but less than compelling so far. [Q] I'm not sure how to understand your definition of Bohemian culture. Is it a proletarian culture on the fringe of the bourgeoisie that refuses to stick to conventions? -- Jim McEwan, London [A] I've been writing about the history of bohemia for decades—my Book Reports collection has a whole section called "Bohemia Versus Hegemony." "Proletarian" is too Marxian and working-class a term, but it's certainly relevant. The two best books I've found are Malcolm Cowley's Exile's Return and Jerrold Seigel's Bohemian Paris. See my book pieces "Bohemias Lost and Found," "Constructed Social Scenes," "The Village People," and "Inventing Punk," all on my site. [Q] In a fairly recent Xgau Sez you mentioned one of my favorite albums ever, Mermaid Avenue, in relation to a Wilco question—and it struck me that as far as I recall it was the first time you'd made any reference to Billy Bragg since around when volume two came out nearly 25 years ago(!). Having treated myself to his celebratory Roaring Forty box set last year, I wanted to ask if you had any favorites of his, and whether you'd kept up to date with any of his post-England, half-English output: in particular the sublime Handyman Blues? I hope this finds you both well, and thank you for all you do. -- Fred Hodson, Suffolk, England [A] Sorry, but if you look at Bragg's Consumer Guide entry on my site you'll see that only one of his non-Wilco albums got even a B plus and, right, most weren't reviewed at all. This bodes ill for the Bragg-Xgau interface. And though Woody Guthrie himself does OK on my site, if you'll read the Voice essay on Guthrie (good to begin with but substantially improved I'd say in the rewrite I included in Is It Still Good to Ya?) I have my reservations about him as a musician too. I will check out the Bragg album you recommend, but I've never thought he was much of a recording artist per se. Both he and his obvious exemplar are wordsmiths first, and that very often impinges on their listenability. [Q] People use the term genius to talk about musicians. You recently referred to Gram Parsons as such. I thought "Yeah, I guess he was." So how do you define genius in pop music? And who are some choices who you consider geniuses that might surprise your readers? -- Dave W, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania [A] Defining genius is obviously impossible, but say this all-purpose exaggeration can encompass combinations of originality, productivity, acuity, and the equally undefinable beauty. These calls are best made spontaneously. Is, to choose a strictly random instance, the writer Carola Dibbell a genius? I personally would very much hesitate to say so in print if you hadn't given me the chance, but often I just look in her direction when she's merely my wife and think so and certainly I would happily argue that her sole novel The Only Ones qualifies as some kind of genius. Sifting on an impulse through the A shelf of my CDs, I say to myself Abba maybe if a fabrication can count, Cannonball Adderley some might say, King Sunny Ade absofuckinglutely, Adele millions of her adoring fans might well say, Terry Allen some of the few who've heard of him might conceivably say, Mose Allison some might say, the Allman Brothers their adoring fanbase might say, and now I'll stop in the hope that that's confusing enough for you. October 16, 2024At the Apollo, in the library, ABBA reconsidered (briefly), the end considered (also briefly, and not the one involving the Doors), thoughts on music writing, and a reading list. [Q] The other day I was reminiscing about the first time I saw a show by George Clinton & the P-Funk All-Stars (some of whom appeared on Parliament's "Flash Light," one of the first 45s I ever bought). It was 1983 at the Tulsa Theater (then known as the Brady Theater, changed in 2019 when they decided it was bad form to be named after a Klansman and a prominent segregationist), and I had a great time; among other things, it was my first exposure to "Maggot Brain," which completely blew me away. But one thing in particular I remember about the concert was being one of the few white people there (in contrast to a P-Funk show I caught decades later at the storied Cain's Ballroom, where the audience was about two-thirds white and most of the Black attendees were about my age or older). So . . . I was wondering if you'd had any similar experiences of being an ethnic minority at a live concert, especially early in your career or even as a teenager, and if you had any reflections on this. -- Rob Tomshany, Tulsa [A] As a '50s jazz fan who greatly preferred Black musicians to white ones, I was still often in the racial majority at jazz clubs. But as someone always aware that Black popular music coexisted more or less equally in aesthetic terms with even Beatles-era "rock" (the Supremes, hey), circa 1964 I started patronizing 125th Street's Apollo Theater, where I was seldom if ever the only white patron but was almost always in a distinct minority. In 1967 I published a substantial Wilson Pickett piece based on the Apollo experience you can find on my site and in Any Old Way You Choose It, though why the final sentence has an "I" where there should be a "me" I do not understand. [Q] In my early teens a librarian at the public library of my hometown in Sweden showed me Rock Albums of the '70s. That was my entry to lots A-album music since then. Thanks! I also had lots of fun reading your sarcastic reviews of ABBA, but did you know Jens Lekman once said he saw "Dancing Queen" as one of his favorite songs, actually a sad, tragic song, although ABBA "turned it into a stupid disco song." Can you sometimes relate like that to music you don't really like? And what is your relation to libraries? I happen to like their service, and work at one now. -- Joakim Westerlunc, Linkoping, Sweden [A] a) I love libraries, which made my life as a writer possible, and have been donating generously to the New York Public Library since I started itemizing my taxes circa 1966 (the American Friends Service Committee has been my other fave charity over the years). b) Though the Abba reviews in the '70s Consumer Guide book are pretty funny all things considered, I really have softened on them. A 1994 Australian movie called Muriel's Wedding was decisive in this. A real "pure pop" artifact. Have no doubt Lekman feels the same. [Q] Hello. I remember (or maybe misremember) that you'd changed your thoughts on ABBA in recent times. I base this on a comment made when being interviewed by Rob Sheffield on your 2015 memoir (again, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong). Like your recent review of a Queen compilation, would you consider ABBA bestseller, Gold? I'm not a fan personally but my nan was so I do have some attachment to their music. -- James McKean, Liverpool [A] See above. Don't know what kind of an A their GH might end up and don't have any other reason to nail the details, but an A minus or conceivably full A would seem right. A plus, highly unlikely. |