Laura Molloy
Laura Molloy writes about musicians as characters in motion, with a focus on how scenes, fan communities and personal histories shape the sound as much as the songs themselves. At the music desk of the New Musical Express, she covers current releases, legacy acts and live culture, with a particular eye on how artists build mythologies around their work and how those stories land with listeners.
Interviews that frame artists through community and creative worlds
Molloy’s core work at the masthead is in-depth artist interviews that situate musicians in the scenes and communities that sustain them. She profiles emerging acts such as Ratbag for the NME Cover franchise, exploring the horror-inflected universe around the project and the creative community the artist has built rather than treating the interview as a simple promo slot. She writes similar narrative-led cover features that give space to young artists to define their own terms, blending questions about sound and lyrics with discussion of collaborators, visual identity and fan culture. This approach recurs across her interviews beyond the masthead, where she focuses on culture and lifestyle angles for titles such as Dazed, i-D, Teen Vogue and Wonderland, often asking what it feels like to live inside a particular creative world rather than only cataloguing output.
News and features on releases, legacies and industry flashpoints
Alongside long-form interviews, Molloy files regular news and feature pieces on music releases and artist developments. At the masthead she covers announcements such as Wu Lyf’s official retail release of “A Wave That Will Never Break”, treating them as moments in a longer narrative around cult bands and their archives rather than isolated headlines. She tracks new singles and tours from contemporary artists, including coverage of country and rock acts announcing records and live dates, and she follows ongoing stories around specific projects through multiple updates when they evolve over time. Her work also extends to legacy artists, for example reporting on Debbie Harry’s comments about who she would like to play her in a Blondie biopic and using that as a way into questions of image, memory and how musicians frame their own stories late in their careers.
Cultural criticism at the intersection of fandom, fame and public perception
Outside straight news, Molloy takes on cultural criticism that asks what mainstream pop phenomena mean for listeners and for the artists at their centre. In writing on Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department”, she examines how the album has stirred conflict among fans and critics, and interrogates the tension between the singer’s pursuit of superstardom and her discomfort with the scrutiny it brings. Across her music writing and broader culture and lifestyle work, she often approaches big names through the lens of audience reaction, online discourse and the emotional weather around a release, rather than only chart performance or review-style evaluation. This gives her coverage a consistent interest in how fame, media narratives and fan expectations collide, and in how artists navigate that pressure in real time.
Cross-beat work in culture and lifestyle
Alongside her music desk output, Molloy contributes across wider culture and lifestyle topics. She writes for outlets including Dazed, i-D, Teen Vogue, Wonderland and others, with coverage that spans youth culture, style and entertainment. That cross-beat experience shows up in her music journalism in the way she folds in visual aesthetics, subcultural style cues and social context, especially when she is writing about younger acts whose work sits across music, fashion and internet culture. Whether the subject is an underground band, a pop superstar or a long-established icon, her pieces tend to look beyond the track list to the wider worlds these artists inhabit and the people who move through them.
4 more music journalists.
Aisling Murphy
Aisling Murphy is the theatre reporter and critic at The Globe and Mail. She stands out for writing about theatre as both art and infrastructure, with coverage that links new Canadian stage work, awards culture, and pop-inflected criticism. She covers theatre, music, and pop culture in a detailed, conversational style, moving between reviews, reported features, and analysis of the systems that shape what gets produced. Her beat includes the Dora Awards, Toronto stages, new writing, intimate productions, and smaller venues, as well as controversy where artistic decisions meet politics and community response. Before The Globe, she was senior editor of Intermission Magazine, and her bylines include The New York Times, Toronto Star, CBC Arts, and the Baltimore Sun.
Alex Hudson
Alex Hudson is Editor-in-Chief of Exclaim! and leads coverage of music’s links to sports, literature, and technology, with a strong focus on Canadian artists. Hudson reports on how music intersects with other fields, not as a separate industry. Recent coverage has included Blue Jays pitcher Max Scherzer on how playing piano saved his career, Ottawa Bluesfest’s Canada-wide soccer watch party, Lakes of Canada’s Margaret Atwood-inspired album Transgressions, Hannah Mary McKinnon on The Beaches influencing her rock-themed novel, and Alexander Nilsson’s 1001 Albums Generator as a tool for broadening music discovery beyond algorithmic recommendations.
Alexis Mikulski Ruiz
Alexis Mikulski Ruiz is a commerce writer whose distinct focus is the buying and streaming side of music, entertainment and lifestyle, helping readers decide how to watch major events and what to purchase around them. She is an e-commerce specialist at Rolling Stone, covering products, platforms and deals tied to award shows, festivals, sports and everyday culture. Her beat blends music streaming guides with shopping and product recommendations across fashion, beauty, tech, food, wellness and drinks. She reports through experience-focused service journalism, using lists, comparison roundups and step-by-step guides to answer concrete questions about how to stream major cultural moments, where to shop and which products to choose. Her background includes commerce and lifestyle writing for consumer publications such as Esquire, Men’s Health, Good Housekeeping, Oprah Daily, Women’s Wear Daily and Billboard.
Allie Gregory
Allie Gregory maps how audiences encounter new music by tracking the practical pathways of releases, tours, festivals, platforms and projects. She is a managing editor and news writer at Exclaim!, where she is a primary editorial contact for forthcoming releases and news tips and helps shape the outlet’s daily agenda around new music and its broader entertainment context. Her reporting centres on timely album and tour announcements, live logistics and festival programming across indie, metal, country, pop and adjacent film and streaming news. She writes direct, information-heavy pieces that foreground calendars, support acts, set times and programming structures, while also producing longer-form interviews, cultural stories and staff-pick recommendations that connect artists’ work, controversy and creative campaigns to how audiences encounter music and entertainment on the road, at festivals and on screens.