Two generations of American music lovers have grown up listening with Robert Christgau, attuned to his inimitable blend of judgment, acuity, passion, erudition, wit, and caveat emptor . His writings, collected here, constitute a virtual encyclopedia of popular music over the past fifty years. Whether honoring the originators of rock and roll, celebrating established artists, or spreading the word about newer ones, the book is pure enjoyment, a pleasure that takes its cues from the sounds it chronicles. A critical compendium of points of interest in American popular music and its far-flung diaspora, this book ranges from the 1950s singer-songwriter tradition through hip-hop, alternative, and beyond. With unfailing style and grace, Christgau negotiates the straits of great music and thorny politics, as in the cases of Public Enemy, blackface artist Emmett Miller, KRS-One, the Beastie Boys, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. He illuminates legends from pop music and the beginnings of rock and roll―George Gershwin, Nat King Cole, B. B. King, Chuck Berry, and Elvis Presley―and looks at the subtle transition to just plain “rock” in the music of Janis Joplin, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and others. He praises the endless vitality of Al Green, George Clinton, and Neil Young. And from the Rolling Stones to Sonic Youth to Nirvana, from Bette Midler to Michael Jackson to DJ Shadow, he shows how money calls the tune in careers that aren’t necessarily compromised by their intercourse with commerce. Rock and punk and hip-hop, pop and world beat: this is the music of the second half of the twentieth century, skillfully framed in the work of a writer whose reach, insight, and perfect pitch make him one of the major cultural critics of our time. “Applying the language and ideas of academic critical theory to popular music and adding a good dose of gonzoesque irreverence, Robert Christgau, the senior music critic at The Village Voice , created a brand of music writing that inspired a small but fierce group of critics at alternative weeklies. The subjects in Grown Up All Wrong ...include Elvis Presley, the punk girl band Sleater-Kinney, the rap artist KRS-One, the country singer George Jones and the minstrel singer Emmett Miller, among many, many others. He writes on each with equal erudition, examining the artists and their music as both cultural products and influences. No pop act is too weird, arty, commercial or schlocky for Christgau's contemplation...The result is brilliant.” ― Laura Jamison , New York Times Book Review “Robert Christgau has earned his title as the dean of rock journalism by being honest--a critic who criticizes...A first-person eyewitness to rock's rise to glory, Christgau pens hundred-word mini-essays that leap sublimely from rock to rap to punk to soul to world music. Diving deeper into his favorite artists, the lengthy essays compiled for Grown Up All Wrong --culled mostly from [his] Voice columns--reveal a depth of understanding about...pop music, both as art and commercial proposition...Because Christgau prizes what the music means over what it sounds like or how well it sells, nearly every essay is readable, regardless of how well you know the artist.” ― Mark Athitakis , Salon “Robert Christgau loves rock--its fans, its 'big beat,' and last (but not most) the musicians themselves--and he loves rock's complicated, rebellious potential. Grown Up All Wrong collects decades of his declarations of love--from Nat King Cole to Sleater-Kinney--as they appeared in the Village Voice . Ranging from as short as one paragraph on 'Why the Beatles Broke Up' to 14 pages of homage to the early Stones and a gonzo essay about the Replacements that begins, 'I mean, fuck art,' these essays capture just how it feels to listen to all that noise, contradictions and all.” ― Village Voice “Since the sixties, when he conceived rock criticism as a glorious expressive form free of high-art headaches, Robert Christgau has interrogated pop music with self-invented rigor. A critic and editor for more than twenty years at the Village Voice , Christgau propels a thorny complex of aesthetics, business and politics into his own Formula One commentary... Grown Up All Wrong discusses seventy-five artists in a collection of essays. They fall into groups about pioneers (Nat 'King' Cole, Elvis), Sixties legends (Hendrix, Aretha) and Seventies phenoms (Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Wonder); other sections highlight punk, hip-hop and pop. The book ends warmly, with looks at Neil Young, George Clinton and Al Green, all of whom, like Christgau, are now in their fifties and wide awake.” ― James Hunter , Rolling Stone “Hailed by many as the dean of American rock criticism, Christgau, senior music critic of The Village Voice , is arguably the person most responsible for making [rock] criticism a serious discipline...It is as a cultural critic...rather than as a 'rock writer' that Christgau tackles popular m