Robert Christgau?

I thought Christgau was essential to rock criticism in the '60s-'70s and to some degree in the '80s. And he certainly, he knows more $10 words that most rock critics and how to string them together.

I would hardly take his preferences as gospel, and I disagree as much as I agree, but he's a good writer and doesn't just take pot shots for the sake of laughs (well, not always, anyway).

However, as the '80s wore on, I found him less convincing. The problem, I think, is that Christgau is always searching for the next new thing. And that ultimately boxes you into a corner. Because sometimes the thing you already know, but done well, is the best thing. And the more you know, the thinner are the returns if you continually try to look for untrampled earth.

So Christgau turned further and further from traditional forms as time wore on, and I found him less and less relevant to me.

 

I knew it!

If I am an asparagus reviewer, it's not about whether I personally like asparagus. A substantive review is about whether the asparagus is at its peak, was picked too soon or too late, was cooked well in a classic recipe or in a new and interesting way that will be influential. We can make all sorts of factual statements about all of those things whether or not we like asparagus. We can look back and say that that asparagus review was way off-base and misguided and biased (i.e., wrong). IMO, Christgau as a reviewer (among other weaknesses) was too often caught up in himself and his own politics/reputation/power. He made nasty superficial one-liners aimed at cooks he didn't like personally rather than offering substantive analysis of their cooking. (I must stop now because I've clearly gotten carried away with your metaphor).

There was a time when he was in a small circle of people whose views mattered and who helped make/ruin reputations. He's now largely irrelevant.

 

Not elitist, but if he really thinks Miranda Lambert's side project is one of the best albums of 2011 then we can add "out of touch" to his list of flaws.

 

So, people who agree with you feel that way because they have given thoughtful consideration to the music. People who disagree with you are misjudging the album and criticizing it for reasons that have nothing to do with the music? No offense, but that's quite arrogant, to suggest that only opinions with which you agree are based on rational and objective consideration.

The fact is, opinions cannot be right or wrong. I think sometimes people become frustrated with that; they feel their opinions are better than those with which they disagree, and want to "prove" the correctness of those opinions. Since there is no way to objectively prove something that is entirely subjective, they resort to rhetorical strategies, trying to devalue opinions they disagree with by suggesting they are insincere, based on lack of understanding, or derived from biases. In other words, attacking the source of the opinion since you can't disprove said opinion.

Ultimately, the only way a critic can be "wrong" is if they lie about their opinions, and I see no evidence Christgau has done that. And as I posted earlier in this thread, the value of a critic is not measured in how "correct" they are in their opinions, but in how well-written and entertaining their writing is.

 

hey, you're the expert!

 

It's largely a thankless job, that's for sure. Almost any review you write, especially a negative one, is going to make somebody mad, let alone five decades of them.

 

Then how about a local critic who's heard 20 bands in his life and is adamant that the lousy combo down at the bowling alley in his little town is the finest band in America? I maintain that some things are empirical when it comes to assessment of music.

 

One's opinion can certaintly get more reasoned.

 

just checkin' . . . 9 critics listed at meta-critic gave this release an 84 (on average), and regular people rating it averaged 9.1 on a scale of 10.

have you actually heard it? (honor system, of course.

her latest release (Miranda Lambert, not the side project) got what reads to be roughly a 90-100 level review TODAY in the New York Times (bastion of country mainstream) . . . BUT i guess you're still right re: adding another flaw to Christgau's ledger.

 

I've heard Lambert's solo stuff but, admittedly, not the side project. Critical aggregators such as Metacritic provide an interesting perspective, but still prove little other than popularity. And I've not found the "regular people" on Metacritic to be a very discerning bunch.

 

By "out of touch" above I meant not that he had flown the coop from understanding what people like, but rather that's he's increasingly hitching his post to pedestrian fare and often rejecting challenging work out of hand. Which is fine, but shows me I don't really need him when I can get gushing opinions of pedestrian fare from any writer online.

 

He dissed Curtis Mayfield way back in the day, and had to go back and revise all of his grades upward in the later editions so he wouldn't look so foolish.

 

good post . . . i've been impressed by her from the start, and i don't listen to country radio at all.

as to Meta-critic, i don't think it reflects popularity so much as it rounds off the "outliers" that are always out there reviewing stuff for somebody (armchair.com? i don't think it exists--but it might) . . . certainly, publications what to review things that people are actually interested in (popular?), but given the massive unhinging of the center of popular culture, there's somebody looking at reviews of even the most obscure--and somebody else aggregating it all.

 

It is a great place to look to find out about outliers as well as popular stuff. Metacritic's grasp doesn't go as far as it could; but, like you suggest, for some acts/records there may be one or two people total even writing about it. I check out Metacritic regularly and enjoy reading the spectrum of opinions there, from "love it" to "hate it." Back when I was writing my own music blog I included an entry that examined Metacritic aggregations of all the things I'd written about, to show my opinion in comparison to that of the larger writing scene. I was surprised by some results, and also found that about 30% of the stuff I wrote about wasn't covered by Metacritic at all (admittedly, though, much of it was from before the site launched).

 

Agreed. I don't listen to modern country at all really, but somewhere along the line I heard her song "Gunpowder and Lead," and it felt more inspired by punk and riot grrl than "Fist City"-era Loretta Lynn. It had a passion that is lacking in most popular music today. Ms. Lambert has definitely got something, and in that particular performance, she wields a cocksure swagger and confidence that exudes as much rockstar gravitas as any actual rockstar today. I see more Karen O in her than Carrie Underwood.

 

If the small-town critic was making false claims about his level of knowledge or experience, I would say he deserved criticism for that. But I would not say his opinion was wrong, if he sincerely believed it. Everyone has differing levels of knowledge and experience, and I think it's fair to take that into consideration in determining how much value you personally want to place in someone's opinion. But I don't think it's fair to completely dismiss someone's opinion as wrong based on factors like that.

What do you think is the best album of all time? If I'd asked you the same question ten years ago, would you have given me the same answer? If not, does that mean your opinion ten years ago was "wrong" because it was based on less knowledge and experience than you have now? Do you think you will still have the same opinion in twenty more years, and if not, does that mean your opinion now is wrong?

Ultimately, if breadth and depth of listening experience was what made a person more "correct" in their opinions, then we'd all have to defer to Christgau, since he's likely listened to more records than any person on this forum. But (obviously) I don't think that is the case.

 

You make good points, but I ultimately disagree that it's unfair to dismiss someone's opinion. Must I hold every amateur, limited writer's opinion in great esteem simply because it is their opinion? No. I can review the list of options, eliminate those that don't please me, and move on. Just as I have eliminated Christgau from the list of whom I find important.

 

Pretentious and in love with his own verbosity. Which makes him a bore - to me.

 

Although I always enjoyed Christgau's analyses of the records he hated, I completely understand why he switched to the bomb ratings in the early 90s. It wasn't laziness, it was a matter of priorities. Basically, as he explained in his 90s book, he wanted to spend more time listening to music, and writing about the good stuff, and less time analyzing and writing about music that didn't float his boat. It's damn hard to write meaningful, incisive or clever reviews in 65 words (as a writer myself, I can attest that writing short can be much harder than writing long), and if Christgau felt that it was a better use of his time to assign a bomb to a Miley Cyrus album than to spend a couple of hours dissecting it, I understand. (I also understand why an artist and the artist's fans might want a more detailed accounting of what Christgau didn't like, but we don't always get what we want...)

 

I'm not saying that it's unfair to dismiss someone's opinion. I'm just saying it's inaccurate to dismiss it by saying it is "wrong." If you want to say "I don't pay any heed to this person's opinion because he usually disagrees with me and we clearly have different tastes" that's totally fine with me. It's claiming that your opinion is objectively superior that I would take issue with. Either that or making unfounded accusations that another person's opinion is insincere, or based on biases, or derived from a failure to understand the music.

 

i would say that that was the premise of the big rock critic, that their opinions were objectively superior to that of the regular schmoe.

 

That being the case, he ought to simply not "review" those records at all, then. As I've said before, a critic's first responsibility is to be entertaining or thought-provoking to the reader. The bomb ratings offer absolutely nothing of value in those areas. The reason a critic has their job is not because their opinions hold more value than anyone else's, but because their writing ability is superior to that of the average person in some way. What's valuable about Christgau (and any other good critic) is his writing, not his opinion. One of his bomb reviews has only the latter and not the former, making it worthless.

 

Of course I'd never say that someone's opinion is wrong; however, their assessment could be wrong.

 

I wish Christgau hadn't felt compelled to review so many albums.

If he had devoted more time and space to his reviews, I might have enjoyed his writing more.

 

"Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" -- Ernest Hemingway