Max Pilley
Max Pilley is a freelance music journalist and critic who connects live performances and new releases to the broader stories of rock and alternative music. He has worked full-time as a freelance writer since 2016, with bylines at the Guardian, NME and The Telegraph, alongside a debut book that examines R.E.M.’s catalogue album by album. His coverage at NME ranges from detailed festival reports and live reviews to fast-turnaround news, deep-dive features and year-end lists, often framing artists within their creative legacy and the scenes around them.
Live reports and festival coverage
Pilley regularly covers live sets and festivals, with a particular focus on how performances feel for both artists and audiences rather than just what appears on the setlist. His report on Kings Of Leon headlining the first State Fayre Festival tracks the emotional tone of the night through onstage quotes and the idea of the show as a homecoming, using the performance to introduce a new event on the festival calendar. His work beyond NME includes festival reporting such as his Green Man Festival 2017 piece, reflecting an interest in multi-day events where indie, alternative and experimental acts share space on the same bill. Across these pieces he highlights atmosphere, crowd response and the narrative of a performance within an artist’s wider touring and recording cycle, making live reports useful for understanding where a festival or tour sits in a band’s story.
Artist news and the rock canon
A significant strand of his work covers news around established and influential artists, often tying announcements back to the history of rock and the evolution of recorded sound. His coverage of Prince’s Purple Rain receiving a new Dolby Atmos mix for its 40th anniversary treats the technical update as a way of revisiting a landmark 1984 album and its ongoing impact. He has written about Jack White surprise-releasing a new album via Third Man shops and encouraging fans to share it, focusing on the unusual distribution strategy and the relationship between artist and audience built through analog-first channels. His book on R.E.M., which walks through the band’s discography album by album, underlines how comfortable he is situating new developments within decades of alternative rock history. Taken together, this body of work shows a reporter who treats legacy acts as living, evolving artists and uses news hooks to revisit why their work matters.
Features, lists and cover stories
Pilley writes longer-form features and lists that survey wider trends, not just individual releases. His “50 best songs of 2022” piece for NME is framed as a definitive list of tracks that defined the year, implying close listening across genres and an editorial approach that balances mainstream impact with critical interest. He also contributes cover features, such as the NME Australia story on Lip Critic, where he traces the band’s journey and performance style as they “take center stage”, giving space to newer acts who are reshaping punk and electronic-leaning rock. This mix of lists and profiles shows that he can zoom out to map the year’s standout music or zoom in on a single artist’s trajectory, with an emphasis on narrative detail and the sound of the records themselves rather than industry gossip.
Punk, alternative and politically charged acts
Alongside coverage of major rock names, Pilley spends time with punk, hardcore and politically sharp artists. His NME review of Chubby and the Gang’s debut describes west London hardcore punks capturing “lightning” on record, underlining his interest in raw, energetic guitar music from newer bands. He has written about Kneecap’s album Fenian reaching number two in the UK charts, a story that sits at the intersection of chart success, Irish identity and politically loaded lyrics. Elsewhere he covers crossovers between music and screen culture, such as the news that Debbie Harry and Pamela Anderson are set to play mother and daughter in an indie comedy film, using casting announcements involving musicians to explore how artists move between mediums. Across these stories he returns to artists who push at social or stylistic boundaries, whether through hardcore punk, politically charged hip-hop or unexpected film roles, and treats their work as part of the broader alternative tradition he writes about in depth.
Working across news, reviews, lists, features and books, Pilley’s coverage is distinguished by the way it threads individual stories into a larger picture of rock and alternative music. He is comfortable writing about marquee names like Prince and Jack White, emerging acts like Lip Critic, and scene-specific bands such as Chubby and the Gang or Kneecap, often using each assignment to show how sound, context and audience connect. For anyone tracking how festival sets, surprise releases, reissues and breakthrough albums fit into the long arc of guitar-driven and alternative music, his work at NME and elsewhere offers both immediate reporting and a clear sense of the bigger narrative.
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.