[A] 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.

[A] 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.

[A] 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.

[PS: Most of the Consumer Guide columns preserve the original reviews, offering links to the database where reviews and/or grades were later revised. However, in a regrettable short cut, the reviews in the Dec. 27, 1983 column were, as an internal comment puts it, "hoisted this from database; should check against original." The "Additional Consumer News" was added, but the reviews were never reverted to match the print column. My intention has always been to restore the original columns -- I don't see any need to preserve typos and flat-out errors, but standard policy is to accurately reflect changes of opinion and chronology. I don't know how many files still exist like this: offhand, I'd guess between 10-20 out of nearly 600 in the directory, possibly more, but not many. This case particularly bothers me, because I remember a lot of rock critics writing exceptionally nasty reviews of Madonna's early work, so I've actually gone looking for the missing review, was confused not to find what I hazily remembered, and hadn't noticed the reason it was missing. — Tom Hull]

[A] 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.

[A] 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.