Maria Sherman

Maria Sherman covers global popular music and the forces reshaping its industry, filing news-driven, culture-aware stories that run in The Globe and Mail via the Associated Press wire. She approaches music as both business and social text, explaining institutional changes while centring artists and the communities around them. Her work on this beat spans breaking news, interviews, and features that connect major music events to broader questions of representation and media.

Music media and the changing industry

Sherman reports on structural shifts in music media, examining how corporate decisions affect criticism, discovery, and artist careers. In her coverage of Pitchfork’s absorption into GQ, she details what is lost when a dedicated music publication is folded into a fashion and style brand, focusing on the outlet’s long-standing influence and the implications of layoffs for the editorial ecosystem. She uses that story to show how consolidation in media can change who gets covered and how seriously music is treated, framing the move as part of a larger trend in which specialised “music media” is subsumed under lifestyle or general-interest platforms.

She also tracks changes inside key music institutions such as the Grammy Awards, explaining how rules and categories evolve and what that means for new artists. In her piece on the Grammys adding five new categories and lengthening the eligibility timeline for best new artist, she parses procedural changes into clear, accessible language, connecting them to industry debates about fairness, visibility, and what “new” means in an era of long-tail careers and social media discovery. Her focus is on how such shifts can redefine pathways for recognition and reshape the incentives for labels and performers.

Awards shows and landmark performances

Sherman regularly writes on high-profile performances and award shows, using them as windows into contemporary culture. Her coverage of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime appearance highlights how a mass-market spectacle can deliver a message of unity and reflect the diversity of the country watching, treating the show as both entertainment and a statement about who belongs in America’s biggest televised stage. She situates musical set pieces within broader conversations about identity and politics, showing how artists use major platforms to speak to and for their audiences.

Award ceremonies and televised events are not just calendar entries in her reporting; they are inflection points where institutional choices, creative risk, and public reception meet. In following the Grammys’ evolving category list and eligibility rules, she gives artists and industry readers a clear view of how behind-the-scenes decisions might affect nominations, campaigns, and future performances, underscoring the connection between policy and the stories audiences ultimately see.

Artist stories, health, and career milestones

Sherman’s beat includes close attention to the lives and careers of individual musicians, particularly when health or longevity comes into focus. In her reporting on Billy Joel’s disclosure of a brain disorder diagnosis, she foregrounds the artist’s reassurance that he is “okay” and not “deathly ill,” balancing newsworthiness with sensitivity to how health information is framed for fans and the public. The piece treats Joel’s statement as both an update on a veteran performer and an example of how musicians manage rumours and concern while continuing their work.

She also profiles artists in formats that invite them to reflect on their own histories, tastes, and creative decisions. Her Q&A with “Weird Al” Yankovic covers new music, his view of rising pop figures like Sabrina Carpenter, and a decade of his album Mandatory Fun, using the conversation to trace how a long-running satirist stays relevant in changing pop landscapes. Across these stories, she combines accessible interviews with context about each subject’s place in music history, making career milestones legible to both dedicated fans and general audiences.

Voice across music and culture outlets

Beyond her Associated Press work carried in The Globe and Mail, Sherman builds a broad portfolio across major music and culture publications. She is described as a music and culture journalist whose bylines span NPR, Billboard, BuzzFeed, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Elle, Complex, Village Voice, NME, MTV, SPIN, and Vulture/New York Magazine. This range reflects her ability to move between hard news, criticism, and fan-focused pieces while keeping music at the centre.

Her work is also recognised in discussions of literary music journalism, where she is cited as a global music writer whose reporting and long-form writing treat popular music with the depth often reserved for literature. Across outlets, she writes about pop, rock, and alternative scenes with a particular interest in how fandoms, media structures, and institutional decisions shape the stories that reach listeners. The result is coverage that consistently links artists’ day-to-day news to the larger systems and communities that sustain contemporary music.