Liberty Dunworth
Liberty Dunworth covers the rock, metal and prog world with a focus on how an artist’s history shapes the music they make now. She is a staff writer at NME, contributing news, features and reviews across the magazine’s music coverage. Her work combines breaking stories, interviews and live reporting with a strong emphasis on context and the evolution of scenes and sounds.
Rock, metal and prog reporting
Dunworth’s core beat is the broad rock, metal and prog landscape, and she treats it as a living ecosystem rather than a narrow genre lane. Her news pieces track announcements, line-up shifts and new releases from guitar-driven artists, from collaborations like Goodnight, Texas teaming up with Metallica’s Kirk Hammett on the single ‘Runaways’ to updates from long-running bands. She draws on a wide time span of references, covering classic acts such as Fleetwood Mac through Lindsey Buckingham’s openness to rejoining the group, alongside contemporary bands whose roots lie in folk-rock, metal and progressive traditions. Professional bios describe her beat as “all areas of the Rock, Metal and Prog world,” and her output reflects that range in practice.
Within this terrain she pays particular attention to archival material and the way older recordings resurface in the present. Her NME work includes reporting on artists opening their vaults and revisiting past projects, such as coverage of Billy Corgan’s plans to release unreleased Zwan material. She also contributes to broader lists and round-ups like NME’s selection of 50 albums of 2023, which frame individual records inside a bigger narrative about how the year’s music captures the “full human experience.” The tone in these pieces is direct and factual, but she tends to foreground artistic intent and creative continuity rather than pure promotional angles.
Interviews and narrative features
Interviews are a major part of Dunworth’s work, and she uses them to build narrative features rather than simple Q&A transcripts. Her interview with Nia Archives explores the resurgence of jungle, the producer’s work with Jamie xx and plans for a “happier” new album, situating the conversation inside a wider revival of breakbeat culture. Coverage of Blondie sees her drawing out details from Debbie Harry and Chris Stein on the timing and direction of their next album, tying new material back to the band’s legacy and long career. In a profile of Lindsey Buckingham, she traces his reflections on his time in Fleetwood Mac and his willingness to return “in a heartbeat,” linking personal history to the unresolved future of the band.
She also spends time with artists and creative teams around major live events. At a celebration tied to The Cure, Dunworth interviewed festival promoter John Giddings, photographers Kevin Cummins and Richard Bellia, and writer Simon Price, using their perspectives to tell the story of the event and its visual culture. Elsewhere, she talks to members of rising bands such as The Last Dinner Party, capturing fan response to albums like ‘Prelude to Ecstasy’ and the dynamics around their rapid ascent. Across these features she tends to weave multiple voices into a single narrative, emphasising how different collaborators and eras intersect around a project or performance.
Live reviews and scene coverage
Dunworth’s reviews focus on what a performance says about an artist’s current phase as much as how the show sounded on the night. Her review of Manic Street Preachers at the Royal Albert Hall in March 2026 combines setlist detail with commentary on how the band’s history and fanbase shaped the atmosphere of the concert. Around festivals and special events she often acts as both reporter and interviewer, documenting the mood, the curation and the visual identity of a show alongside the music itself. This approach positions live coverage as part of an ongoing story about bands, scenes and the audiences that sustain them.
Her scene reporting extends beyond traditional rock venues into spaces where different cultures meet. Social posts and syndicated content show her covering multi-artist bills and themed nights, often with a focus on how legacy acts share stages or narratives with newer performers. The recurring thread is a concern with context: she describes not just what happened, but where it sits in an artist’s catalogue and in the broader timeline of the genre.
Game soundtracks, documentaries and lists
Alongside her core beat, Dunworth frequently covers music where it intersects with other media, particularly games and film. Syndicated NME pieces show her reporting on an Ocarina of Time remake and an Undertale orchestral soundtrack tour, tracking how iconic game scores are being reimagined for live audiences. Her work at MusicTech further develops this interest in the intersection of music and technology, contributing news and features for a specialist outlet in that space. On Guitar.com, she has written about a documentary exploring Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles career with Wings, using the project to examine how archive footage and new interviews can reframe a familiar story.
List-making and retrospectives form another strand of her portfolio. The 50 albums of 2023 feature at NME places individual records inside a curated narrative about the year’s most essential listening, blending critical judgement with an eye for how albums will be remembered. Combined with her historical bent in interviews and news, these pieces underscore a through-line: she is interested in how music is documented, reissued, reframed and canonised across time, whether that means a classic rock record, a cult game soundtrack or a new release that might become a future reference point.
4 more music journalists.
Abigail Kellett
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Adam Lyon
Adam Lyon is a digital audience and content editor whose news beat sits at the intersection of Ayrshire’s cultural life, business environment and public affairs. He works for the Ayr Advertiser and as Digital Audience & Content Editor for Newsquest in the west of Scotland across multiple weekly titles. He covers Ayrshire news with a strong thread of music and local culture alongside business, courts and public affairs. He reports on music when it has a clear community or national hook, treating songs as news events rather than reviews. His business work explains how local firms and retail policy shape town centres. His court coverage uses round-ups of sheriff court cases to show patterns and outcomes. He also fronts video previews and is active in a football supporters trust community.
Adam Maidment
Adam Maidment is a senior What’s On and LGBTQ+ reporter whose work links big-name gigs, new venues and cultural flashpoints to everyday fan culture and inclusion. He covers music, nightlife and the wider cultural scene for the Manchester Evening News, focusing on how concerts, openings and immersive events land with real people and communities. His beat spans live music, arenas and stadiums, new restaurant and bar openings, food reviews, exhibitions, street art and nightlife infrastructure, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ audiences and neighbourhoods. He reports on venue ambitions and problems, cultural institutions and equality issues, and franchise-led experiences, using straightforward, on-the-ground reporting and clear description. Drawing on a background in community reporting, he looks for underrepresented perspectives and uses social media, analytics and local sourcing to find stories where culture, identity and place meet.
Alison Brinkworth
Alison Brinkworth is a freelance journalist who treats music as a gateway into place, history and everyday life, often through exhibitions, performances and city-centre events. She covers music within the wider cultural and lifestyle scene, leaning toward accessible, on-the-ground stories framed by familiar artists, venues and local attractions. Her work often focuses on music exhibitions and attractions built around well-known performers, alongside theatre reviews, live events and city attractions. She brings a lifestyle, travel and human-interest sensibility, using interviews and personal stories to show how people spend their time. With over 25 years of experience across print, digital, social media and internal communications, she writes clear, factual, audience-facing articles with dates, locations and organisers, suited to listings, guides and practical recommendations.