Emily Wilson
Emily Wilson writes about how contemporary music holds space for people living through harm and change, pairing close listening with a clear eye for power, trauma and recovery. A writer and journalist and regular contributor to The Music, she focuses on features and criticism that follow how albums comfort listeners, confront predatory cultures and reshape communities. Her work sits where songs, survival and social context meet, and she carries that approach across longform music writing, artist profiles, essays and fiction.
Albums as shelter and reckoning
Wilson’s most visible music project is a book-length study of Stella Donnelly’s debut album, written for a volume in the 33⅓ Oceania series. In that work she examines how the record both comforts traumatized listeners and attacks predatory behaviour, treating an acclaimed indie album as a lens on changing cultural norms rather than only a career milestone. The description of the book emphasizes her interest in power imbalances and cultural hegemony, and in tracing how a single album can help shift a country’s conversation around violence and accountability. That same concern with dread, hope and structural pressure runs through her feature on Pond’s album Terrestrials for The Music, where she dwells on the record’s futuristic yet retro feel and the way its non-linear sense of time mirrors unstable circumstances. Across these pieces she treats albums as spaces where listeners process hostility and absurdity, and she writes about them as lived environments rather than just collections of songs.
Features and criticism on contemporary artists
At The Music, Wilson contributes features and reviews that foreground the emotional and conceptual stakes of new releases. Her Pond cover story delves into how the band “wade through dissatisfaction” toward a form of hope on Terrestrials, balancing description of psychedelic textures with attention to the anxieties underpinning the record. She is credited not only on the longform feature but also on associated album coverage, underscoring that she moves comfortably between narrative profiles and focused critical write-ups. Rather than treating musicians as distant subjects, she writes about them as collaborators in working out how to live under pressure, asking what their records do for people who feel overwhelmed, restless or out of step with their surroundings. The music itself is never secondary: she lingers on tone, structure and sonic references while still steering the reader back to what those choices mean for the worlds these artists are building.
Writing on trauma, recovery and youth
Outside The Music, Wilson has built a substantial body of work on trauma, recovery and growing up, which feeds directly into the way she hears records. She runs the Substack publication slow babes, dedicated to personal essays that include accounts of addiction, recovery from trauma and portraits of emerging artists in her local scene. That project trains the same sensitivity she brings to albums on lived experience, giving her practice a memoiristic and community-focused dimension. Wilson also writes regularly for a sexual health publication, where she contributes pieces that address intimacy, consent and the realities of young people’s lives. The clarity and directness required in that context echo in her music journalism: she writes about songs and records without euphemism, and she is comfortable naming the harm and healing that underpin the work she covers.
Essays, fiction and literary recognition
Wilson’s range extends beyond criticism into literary and cultural outlets. She contributes essays to a publication known for reflective, text-driven work, which gives her space to explore art and feeling at length outside strict review formats. Her short fiction appears in both online and print journals, including established venues for contemporary writing, and she has been recognized as the youngest finalist for a national short story prize. That background in fiction shows up in the way she structures her music pieces: she favours arcs, scenes and carefully chosen details over list-like rundowns, and she writes with an eye for character, setting and mood. Across formats, she keeps returning to how people survive, make sense of harm and find small, stubborn forms of joy, whether through a landmark indie album, a psychedelic rock record or a quiet personal essay.
4 more music journalists.
Abby Webster
Abby Webster zeroes in on the storytelling side of contemporary pop, writing for Billboard about how songs build worlds around K-pop groups, fictional pop stars and ambitious soundtracks. She covers K-pop projects through close, song-by-song features, like her track-by-track piece with SEVENTEEN’s Vernon and The 8 on their EP ‘V8,’ and fan-centered lists such as “7 Best Moments from BTS’ Long-Awaited Return.” She treats soundtracks and fictional acts with the same rigor, mapping the inspirations behind “The Vampire Lestat” soundtrack and profiling in-universe groups like HUNTR/X and Saja Boys as if they were chart acts. Through Chart Beat stories on projects like “KPop Demon Hunters,” she connects these releases to industry strategy, global fandom, and the business systems that turn pop narratives into durable IP.
Alex Suskind
Alex Suskind is a freelance writer and editor who covers music with concise news stories and curated release lists. He focuses on new songs, album roundups, and archival access, from Carly Rae Jepsen’s “On Wires” to Neil Young opening his full catalog to residents of Greenland. His reporting stays close to the release cycle and foregrounds the core hook of each story. He has written for Pitchfork and has freelance work in Vulture, The Guardian, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and The Atlantic. He also covers broader arts and culture, but his music beat is built around what is newly out now or newly available.
Ali Shutler
Ali Shutler links chart pop, alternative music and fan culture with the ways songs move through festivals, streaming platforms and games. He is a freelance culture journalist specialising in music, writing news and features for NME and other music and culture titles. He covers breakout chart acts, legacy artists whose catalogues are resurfacing, and how audiences rediscover songs via TikTok, streaming or in‑game soundtracks. His reporting on streaming-era pop and live festival moments tracks virality, catalog access and fan behaviour as part of the story of a track. He also examines music, gaming and visual art crossovers, treating game soundtracks and artist-led campaigns as part of a wider cultural map. Alongside this, he profiles emerging chart artists for outlets including The Telegraph, Vice, The Independent, Dork and Upset, focusing on early-career trajectories and fan culture.
Annette Sharp
Annette Sharp is a veteran gossip and entertainment columnist known for direct, opinion-led coverage of celebrity power struggles and reputational crises across television and the music industry. She now writes high-profile columns for the masthead, after a decade on a well-read gossip column and a move to News Corp in 2008. Her real beat is the friction between public image and behind-the-scenes behaviour on flagship TV programs, including breakfast shows, reality formats and other long-running franchises. She focuses on who drives conflicts, who is exposed and who benefits, using ratings history, production decisions and industry mechanics as context. Sharp covers on-air personalities, executives, advisers and musicians, treating television and music as workplaces with competing egos, contracts and alliances, and blending reporting, media commentary and critique in a narrative column format.