Xgau Sez: January, 2025

The 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.