Are critics defined by their misses?

I recently subscribed to the Rhapsody music service and was noodling around with its catalogue—great fun!—discovering, much to my delight, that many of the albums have attached at the bottom of the playlist a quotation drawn from the reviews of Robert Christgau (among others), the long-time reviewer from the Village Voice. It is great fun to pull down some of my favorite music and find little gems—both adulatory and savagely disparaging—presumably written by Christgau at the time of each album’s release.

I’ve also noted some spectacular misses, or at least, misses in my humble opinion. For example, it would be one thing to pan Elite Hotel, Emmylou Harris’ second collection released in 1975, but Christgau goes a step further, suggesting that the 28-year-old Harris offers not much beyond good taste and a middling, pretty voice. He wrote,

This flows better than the first [1968’s Gliding Bird], but it also makes clear that Emmylou is just another pretty voice, a country singer by accident. I mean, Linda Ronstadt has the best female voice in country music, and even she doesn’t satisfy the way an original like Dolly Parton or Loretta Lynn does. And since there’s not a cover version here that equals its prototype, all she accomplishes with her good taste in material is to send you scurrying for the sources. I prefer Donna Fargo. Not Lynn Anderson, though. (Grade: C+)

Besides the fact that I think Elite Hotel is a fine collection of music—though not Emmylou’s best (that comes on her second release of 1975, Pieces of the Sky)—it seems that Christgau’s overreaching and hasty dismissal would be the height of critical arrogance. By the time Emmylou released her first collection of ‘greatest hits’ in 1978, Mr. Christgau had somewhat changed his tune, noting of the collection:

Lucky for Emmylou I don’t know as much about country music as she does—the Louvin Brothers’ “If I Could Only Win Your Love” and the Carter Family’s “Hello Stranger” may well render her versions forgettable. But as it is, hers sure are pretty, like almost everything here, sung with undeniable care and charm. She also defines Dolly Parton’s previously unrecorded “To Daddy,” as great a song as that great songwriter has ever come up with. And does all right by Chuck Berry. (Grade: B+)

Maybe it wasn’t apparent to music critics in 1975 that Emmylou Harris was about to embark upon one of the greatest stretches of creativity any country music recording artist ever had (her eight-album stretch from Elite Hotel to Cimarron), but to dismiss a relatively young artist who had just recorded her first collection in seven years—and second overall—seems a bit harsh.

But when a critic misses and gets things wrong, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything in particular, I suppose. Nobody’s right all the time. I must say, though, it does make me want to go back and review Christgau’s essays. Given his sensibility and focus, I wouldn’t think of Christgau and country music in the same sentence, but if Rick Rubin can resurrect Johnny Cash’s career, why not Christgau as country music’s ‘great explainer’, as distasteful a thought as that may be? But then again, with his preference for Donna Fargo over Elite Hotel, I probably needn’t entertain that thought very seriously.