Gary Ryan

Gary Ryan is a journalist at NME whose work centres on music, pop culture and the stories artists tell about their own careers. He is best known for writing NME’s recurring Does Rock ‘N’ Roll Kill Braincells?! feature, a quiz-style interview that tests musicians on their own history while surfacing anecdotes and context. Across this franchise and his broader features, he brings detailed knowledge of music history, an ear for career-defining moments, and a tone that balances humour with insight. His recent coverage includes festival reports on global pop stars such as Katy Perry performing at Rock in Rio Lisbon 2026 and teasing new material, showing he moves easily between legacy acts and current chart names.

Does Rock ‘N’ Roll Kill Braincells?!

Does Rock ‘N’ Roll Kill Braincells?! is Ryan’s signature NME feature and a clear anchor for his beat.

The format quizzes artists about key moments from their own careers, using specific questions about records, tours, awards and notorious incidents to unlock deeper stories. Installments with acts such as The Cribs, the Sex Pistols’ Glen Matlock, Heaven 17’s Martyn Ware and The Rapture show how he uses trivia as a frame for substantial oral history. The pieces mix precise recall of release dates, chart positions and landmark performances with a conversational tone that leaves space for reflection on reputation, mental health, industry shifts and personal turning points. Across the column, he demonstrates strong catalog knowledge and a particular interest in how artists process past hype, controversies and critical reception many years later.

Interviews with musicians and cultural figures

Beyond the quiz format, Ryan writes longer interview features that foreground the subject’s voice and situate their story within wider music history.

His profile of artist Klaus Voormann, for example, follows Voormann’s enduring friendship with The Beatles and touches on Beatlemania and lost instruments, combining personal anecdotes with fan-oriented detail about the band’s mythology. Other interviews with figures like Glen Matlock and Martyn Ware track trajectories from seminal bands through later projects, showing Ryan’s interest in how careers evolve over decades.

He often structures these pieces around a handful of pivotal episodes - being kicked out of a founding band, switching studios, navigating early fame - which allows him to explore both the emotional impact and the practical realities of working in music. His questions tend to be direct and specific, prompting subjects to revisit contested decisions, business arrangements and creative risks rather than staying on surface-level promotion.

Live music, events and scene reporting

Ryan also covers live music and major events, with a focus on what performances and gatherings reveal about an artist’s current phase or a city’s mood. A feature on Liam Gallagher’s debut solo gig breaks the show down into “things we learned”, using clear takeaways to convey how the set reintroduces Gallagher and what it signals for his post-band identity. His report on a Manchester vigil following a terror attack centres on collective responses and slogans, showing an ability to handle sensitive events while staying rooted in observed detail. He approaches festival and show coverage by isolating moments - crowd reactions, setlist choices, guest appearances, onstage remarks - that illustrate where an act sits in its broader story, a style that carries through to his work on contemporary pop performances like Katy Perry’s Rock in Rio Lisbon appearance. Across these pieces, there is a consistent interest in how audiences, cities and fan cultures interact with artists, rather than treating gigs as isolated reviews.

Lists, retrospectives and film coverage

Ryan contributes to NME’s large-scale list and retrospective projects, which draw on his deep familiarity with albums and films. In the outlet’s Best Albums of the Decade feature for the 2010s, he writes entries on specific records such as Haim’s “Days Are Gone”, positioning them within the decade’s trends and explaining why they endure. His work on The 20 best films of 2025 shows him applying a similar approach to cinema, highlighting key titles and noting how they capture contemporary themes or break new ground. These pieces underline his capacity to move beyond single-artist profiles and situate works in a broader canon, balancing fan-facing enthusiasm with concise critical framing. They also show he is comfortable handling cross-media pop culture, switching between music and film while keeping the focus on storytelling and impact.

Freelance reach and pop culture range

Alongside his NME work, Ryan writes as a freelance journalist with bylines in outlets including Big Issue, The Telegraph, Inverse, Vice, The Guardian, Metro and The Independent. His own portfolio highlights reporting that moves between music, television, film and social trends, such as a feature on Bob’s Burgers and its use of music, and a piece on microdosing psychedelics framed around therapeutic claims and cultural debates.

Earlier work includes coverage of political and civic moments like the Manchester vigil, indicating he is willing to follow stories where music intersects with public life. Taken together, his clips paint a picture of a reporter who treats music as a central thread running through wider pop culture, rather than a siloed beat.

For story placement, that range means he can handle purely artist-focused pitches as well as ideas that tie an act to television, film, nostalgia or broader cultural shifts.