Melissa Ruggieri
Melissa Ruggieri brings a national, big-tent view of popular music that connects arena-scale spectacle with close attention to artists’ careers and craft as the national music writer at USA TODAY. With more than two decades on the beat, she draws on thousands of concert reports and interviews that range from legacy performers to current chart-dominating stars. Her work spans reported features, reviews, rankings and podcast analysis, giving a consistent, high-energy picture of how major artists, tours and industry moments land with fans and reshape the wider culture.
Big-tent pop, rock and stadium tours
Ruggieri’s most visible work centers on large-scale tours and marquee performances, where she tracks how artists build and refresh stadium shows over time. Her USA TODAY archive includes extensive coverage of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, from record-breaking runs and closing-night milestones to the ways the production and set list turn a career retrospective into a cultural event. She follows rock acts in similar detail, covering AC/DC’s return to U.S. stages and documenting routes, opening dates and ticket access as the band launches its first tour in years. Her reporting frequently moves between preview and review, such as pieces on Mariah Carey’s Christmas tour and Josh Groban’s Las Vegas shows, where she mixes nuts-and-bolts information for ticket buyers with descriptive accounts of sound, staging and audience response.
Coverage of Adele’s Las Vegas residency, Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft tour and Coldplay’s Moon Music tour shows the same combination of set list attention, production detail and sense of how a show fits into each artist’s current chapter.
Her story on Ed Sheeran opening his LOOP Tour, including his onstage hints about stepping back to focus on being a parent, reinforces how she uses live shows to capture both a night’s performance and the career decisions being signaled from the stage. Madonna’s provocative opening performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, spotlighted in her byline, reflects her interest in live television moments that function as extensions of tour-scale production values.
Legacy acts, holiday traditions and artist histories
Beyond current pop tours, Ruggieri regularly writes about legacy artists and the long arc of their catalogs.
Her work includes coverage of biographies and retrospectives such as a book on Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie, where she draws out the “complicated life” behind familiar songs. She applies the same lens to classic recordings, treating releases like Chicago’s 1971 Kennedy Center concert album as landmark documents and explaining what makes them musically and historically significant. Her reporting on Cher, Peter Frampton and Mary J. Blige at Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductions highlights how veteran performers use these stages to reframe careers and claim their place in the canon.
Holiday music is another recurring strand: she writes about some of the “worst” Christmas songs, revisits perennial hits and reviews tours by artists such as Mariah Carey and Little Big Town, tying seasonal shows to broader traditions and fan expectations. When Dolly Parton’s impact came into focus after her death, Ruggieri joined USA TODAY’s The Excerpt to talk through the stories, values and catalog that made her broadly beloved, reinforcing her ability to connect individual songs and anecdotes to a long career arc.
Even in collaborative features, such as coverage explaining why Earth, Wind & Fire anchored the song “September” to a specific date, her contributions fit a pattern of tracing how particular tracks enter the cultural lexicon and stay there.
Music on screen, documentaries and biopics
Ruggieri extends her music reporting into film and television, with a steady focus on documentaries and biopics that follow artists beyond the stage. At Tribeca Festival she has covered new music documentaries, using interviews and festival reporting to explain why these projects are having a moment and what they reveal when cameras stay with musicians offstage. On The Excerpt, she walks through major titles and discusses how directors like Questlove approach archival material as both fans and historians, giving listeners context on creative choices and historical framing. Her role in coverage of the Michael Jackson biopic “Michael” underscores this beat: colleagues cite her as an ideal reviewer because her earlier work has already ranked Jackson’s fifty greatest songs and mapped how they appear in the film.
Across these pieces, she tends to situate music films within an artist’s larger narrative, weighing how well projects capture a performer’s catalogue, contradictions and connection with fans rather than treating them as disconnected entertainment products.
Awards shows, year-in-music analysis and industry shifts
Ruggieri is also a go-to voice for awards coverage and year-end synthesis, where she treats events like the Grammys as snapshots of broader trends. On The Excerpt she analyzes ceremonies that feature artists such as Bad Bunny, Kendrick Lamar and Lady Gaga, paying attention to who wins, how live performances land and how the show reflects headlines around immigration, identity and cultural tension.
She has discussed how a year like 2025 gave fans both established stars such as Bad Bunny and Taylor Swift and rapid advances in artificial intelligence, exploring how new tools might change what counts as music and how artists respond.
In her USA TODAY work she writes about Beyoncé’s Grammy nominations as a bridge between country and pop, showing how genre categories evolve when major figures cross boundaries. Pieces on Billie Eilish’s designation as Apple Music’s Artist of the Year and other recognition moments fit the same pattern of treating trophies as part of an ongoing negotiation between artists, platforms and audiences. Her coverage of events like the Grateful Dead’s selection as MusiCares Persons of the Year and Alex Van Halen’s book about life with Eddie Van Halen keeps legacy and industry institutions in view even as newer sounds emerge.
Experience, formats and reporting style
Ruggieri’s staff biography describes more than twenty years of music journalism and notes that she has covered thousands of concerts and interviewed artists ranging from Billy Joel to Taylor Swift, grounding her current national role in long-running, front-line reporting. Professional profiles emphasize her background as a music and entertainment reporter, critic and editor, with particular strength in music and theater coverage and criticism.
She has created and led dedicated music sections at prior outlets, building digital franchises that pull strong audiences for news, reviews and features.
At USA TODAY she writes across multiple formats - news stories, reviews, artist interviews, rankings and explainers - and regularly appears on podcasts to unpack major music stories, which keeps her voice present in both text and audio. Public profiles linked to her name show an active presence on social channels associated with her USA TODAY role, reinforcing that she views engaging with fans and readers as part of her coverage rather than an add-on.
Recent bylines on topics such as the discovery of a hidden John Lennon song in Beatles archives and a high-impact MTV Video Music Awards opening performance by Madonna show that, even when she shifts subjects, she stays focused on moments where music history and current spectacle intersect.
4 more music journalists.
Andrea Dresdale
Andrea Dresdale manages entertainment content at ABC Audio and covers music-driven pop culture for news and audio platforms. Her beat centers on chart-friendly pop, new releases, mainstream artists, awards, residencies and industry milestones. She also reports on legacy acts, anniversaries, nostalgia, remixes, live performances and music’s links to film, television, streaming and social media. Her notable coverage includes Taylor Swift, BTS, The Weeknd, Madonna, The Beach Boys, Bruce Springsteen, Patty Smyth and Miley Cyrus. Her work has appeared through syndicated ABC Audio coverage on outlets such as WRMF, KS95 and Hot 96.7. Dresdale writes concise, timely pieces for radio audiences. She frames songs, tours, specials and career moments through cultural impact, fan appeal, commercial momentum and lasting relevance. Her stories connect current hits with music history and show how artists maintain attention through new releases, collaborations and reinterpretations.
Andrew Weber
Andrew Weber uses accountability reporting to examine who benefits from decisions shaping Austin’s music ecosystem. He reports for KUT as a government accountability reporter and works as a freelance reporter and associate editor for KUT News across the public radio network. His music coverage focuses on musicians’ pay at festivals, health care, mental health services, venue relief and working conditions. He treats SXSW as a workplace and economic system, reporting on low fees, sponsorships, boycotts and the political choices behind the festival. He also covers government and institutional issues, including KUT’s relationship with the University of Texas and the firing of general manager Debbie Hiott. His reporting ranges from nonprofit support systems to experimental sound art. He plays music on the side and brings digital storytelling experience, including an Edward R. Murrow award for social media work.
Andy Greene
Andy Greene is a senior writer at Rolling Stone who stands out for long-form interviews and narrative features that follow artists across entire careers. He focuses on music, especially classic rock performers, live shows, tours, and band dynamics. He runs the interview series Unknown Legends and King For a Day, which center on veteran musicians, sidemen, collaborators, and singers who replace legendary frontmen. He also writes cover stories and major features on high-profile figures, including Radiohead, Howard Stern, Bill Withers, Nathan Fielder, Steve Perry, Pete Townshend, and Stephen King. His reporting relies on access, detailed questioning, and a deep command of rock history. He also writes about film and television when they connect to music and culture.
Anna Grace Lee
Anna Grace Lee is a Vogue reporter who covers pop musicians and celebrities through fashion, weddings, and lifestyle culture, focusing on dresses, events, pets, and subcultures rather than industry news. She writes scene-driven features that place entertainers in vivid settings, from villas to underground food markets, and treats music-adjacent stories as fashion and craftsmanship narratives. Her Dua Lipa Sicily wedding coverage shows how she frames a wedding dress as a haute couture moment and a pop-cultural milestone, emphasizing design, making, and handwork. Her Millie Bobby Brown miniature poodle piece reflects a consistent interest in celebrity pets, fandom, and off-stage persona. She also reports lifestyle features like Brooklyn’s buzziest underground cheese sale, embedding in niche food scenes. At Vogue she contributes to weddings, celebrity, living, and Met Gala coverage, and maintains a portfolio of culture and lifestyle work built around entertainment-adjacent storytelling.