Hattie Lindert
Hattie Lindert covers contemporary music and pop culture with a focus on release news, artist milestones, and the points where entertainment overlaps with wider current events. Her work runs on MSN and across major entertainment newsrooms, and she moves easily between pop, R&B, rock and awards coverage rather than staying in a single lane.
Release news across pop and R&B
Lindert spends much of her time on short, news-driven pieces about new music from high-profile artists. On MSN, her coverage of Jorja Smith’s upcoming album What Are the Odds fits a pattern of tracking fresh releases from contemporary R&B and soul performers and treating album announcements as discrete stories. She has also reported on Charli XCX’s album Music, Fashion, Film, including its advance singles “Rock Music” and “SS26,” showing an interest in pop acts that sit near the center of online music conversation as well as the details of how a project is rolled out. These pieces are built around the basics—title, timing, and key collaborators—but sit within a broader catalogue that keeps readers current on what major artists are about to release.
Alongside current pop and R&B, Lindert writes about releases and milestones for more established names. Her reporting on the Eagles, cited in coverage of the band’s history and late-career activity, places legacy acts alongside rising stars in her beat. The mix of Jorja Smith, Charli XCX and the Eagles points to a brief that is defined more by news value and reader interest than by strict genre boundaries: she follows what is happening across the spectrum of popular music, from chart-focused projects to the next chapter for long-running bands.
Legacy acts and cultural memory
When Lindert writes about classic artists, she treats them as part of an ongoing story rather than as closed chapters. Her coverage of the Eagles ties the band’s present activity back to their place in rock history, offering readers both the immediate news hook and a reminder of why these musicians still matter. Similar work around other longstanding figures in pop and rock speaks to a recurring interest in how legacy artists maintain relevance, whether through tours, new releases, or major career moments being reassessed.
This strand of her work distinguishes her from a purely forward-looking music news writer. By keeping legacy names in rotation alongside newer acts, she helps audiences track how yesterday’s stars continue to shape today’s music landscape, and gives communications teams working with heritage artists a reporter who understands how to frame those stories for general-interest readers.
Awards, film and the entertainment news cycle
Lindert’s beat extends into awards and film-adjacent entertainment, giving her a broader view of culture than music alone. She has reported on Will Smith’s appearance at the AAFCA event honoring his film Emancipation, covering the acceptance of the award in the long shadow of the Oscars slap. In pieces like that, she foregrounds the news event—who attended, what was said, why it matters—while acknowledging that the story sits within a much larger public narrative.
That awards and film coverage rounds out her music reporting by placing artists in the wider ecosystem of celebrity, industry recognition and public scrutiny. It shows she is comfortable handling sensitive reputational context around high-profile figures, and that she writes with an eye on how a single moment plays against the last year or two of headlines.
Human-interest reporting beyond entertainment
Although music and entertainment are her primary focus, Lindert has also taken on human-interest stories in hard-news settings. Her piece “This Ukrainian Software Engineer Uses Drones to Help Destroy Russian Tanks” profiles a technologist working on the front lines of the war in Ukraine, bringing together individual biography, technology and conflict in a single narrative. The article reflects an ability to translate complex, high-stakes situations into accessible reporting grounded in one person’s experience.
That kind of work adds a layer of range to her portfolio. It shows she can shift from the relatively controlled environment of album rollouts and awards ceremonies to unpredictable, fast-moving international stories, and still deliver clear, concise copy. For communications teams, it marks her as a journalist comfortable in both lifestyle and news contexts, with a consistent focus on the people at the center of each story.
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.