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Hi. I'm Robert Christgau.  I've written about rock and roll, popular and semipopular music, and popular culture since 1967. This is my website, and herein you will find as much of my writing as we can put up. This includes my Consumer guide to over 12,000 records, my books, essays from my Village Voice  Rock&Roll& column, other music writings, book reviews, and more.

Bovenstaande tekst staat op de homepage van de Amerikaanse popjournalist Robert Christgau. Actief sinds 1967. Een journalist uit het rijtje David Marsh, Greil Marcus, David Fricke, Charles Shaar Murray en Bert van de Kamp.

Hij heeft een eigen systeem bedacht om albums van een waardering te voorzien.

Hieronder staan twee lijsten met zijn topplaten (per 16 maart 2006).

103 albums met een A+ (An A+ record is an organically conceived masterpiece that repays prolonged listening with new excitement and insight. It is unlikely to be marred by more than one merely ordinary cut.)

en 633 met een A (An A is a great record both of whose sides offer enduring pleasure and surprise. You should own it.).

Klik hier voor toegang tot zijn website

The Grades  Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the '70s, 1980

An A+ record is an organically conceived masterpiece that repays prolonged listening with new excitement and insight. It is unlikely to be marred by more than one merely ordinary cut.

An A is a great record both of whose sides offer enduring pleasure and surprise. You should own it.

An A- is a very good record. If one of its sides doesn't provide intense and consistent satisfaction, then both include several cuts that do.

A B+ is a good record, at least one of whose sides can be played with lasting interest and the other of which includes at least one enjoyable cut.

A B is an admirable effort that aficionados of the style or artist will probably find quite listenable.

A B- is a competent or mildly interesting record that will usually feature at least three worthwhile cuts.

A C+ is a not disreputable performance, most likely a failed experiment or a pleasant piece of hackwork.

A C is a record of clear professionalism or barely discernible inspiration, but not both.

A C- is a regrettably successful exploitation or a basically honest but quite incompetent stab at something more.

A D+ is an appalling piece of pimpwork or a thoroughly botched token of sincerity.

It is impossible to understand why anyone would buy a D record.

It is impossible to understand why anyone would release a D- record.

It is impossible to understand why anyone would cut an E+ record.

E records are frequently cited as proof that there is no God.

An E- record is an organically conceived masterpiece that repays repeated listening with a sense of horror in the face of the void. It is unlikely to be marred by one listenable cut.

Key to Icons    Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s, 2000

An A+ is a record of sustained beauty, power, insight, groove, and/or googlefritz that has invited and repaid repeated listenings in the daily life of someone with 500 other CDs to get to.

An A is a record that rarely flags for more than two or three tracks. Not every listener will feel what it's trying to do, but anyone with ears will agree that it's doing it.

An A- is the kind of garden-variety good record that is the great luxury of musical micromarketing and overproduction. Anyone open to its aesthetic will enjoy more than half its tracks.

A B+ is remarkable one way or another, yet also flirts with the humdrum or the half-assed.

A *** Honorable Mention is an enjoyable effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well treasure.

A ** Honorable Mention is an likable effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well enjoy.

A * Honorable Mention is a worthy effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well like.

A Neither () may impress once or twice with consistent craft or an arresting track or two. Then it won't.

A Choice Cut () is a good song on an album that isn't worth your time or money--sometimes a , more often a . Some ()s are arbitrarily personal, others inescapably social. Sometimes one is so wondrous you'll be tempted to spring for the high-priced package anyway. More often it would fit sweetly onto a compilation you can only pray will include it.

A Dud () is a bad record whose details rarely merit further thought. At the upper level it may merely be overrated, disappointing, or dull. Down below it may be contemptible.

A Turkey ({Tu}) is a bad record of some general import, although no artist should be saddled with more than two in a decade. What distinguishes a {Tu} from a is that it's reviewed and graded. I'm aware of no {Tu} lower than D, and a few even get a B, a grade reserved for Voice Dud of the Month, whereas the annual Turkey Shoot works down from B-. But such distinctions are, as the saying goes, academic. In this age of grade inflation, all of 'em flunk.