Neil Griffiths
Neil Griffiths combines frontline music coverage with editorial leadership, focusing on how contemporary artists, festivals, and releases connect across the wider scene. He is Editor-in-Chief at Rolling Stone Australia & New Zealand and a music journalist whose work spans live reviews, features, interviews, and audio formats for the masthead. His reporting emphasises performance, discovery, and conversation, rather than simple news rewrites.
Festival stages and live coverage
Griffiths is closely tied to the title’s festival and live music output, contributing to sections dedicated to Australian music festivals, live reviews, and photo-led packages. His pieces sit in strands such as “Australian Music Festivals”, “Live Reviews”, and “Pictures”, signalling a focus on documenting performances and the atmosphere around them rather than just listing line-ups. Across this work he tracks how bills are curated, how artists translate their records to large stages, and how specific events shape the narrative of a touring season.
The emphasis on live settings positions him as a reporter who is interested in the energy of shows and the way audiences experience music in real time.
Fresh Sounds and emerging artists
A recurring theme in Griffiths’ archive is new and emerging talent, reflected in his contributions to “Fresh Sounds” coverage. Within that strand he writes about artists early in their trajectory, framing them inside broader shifts in genres and the industry rather than treating them as isolated discoveries. His work touches on forward-looking topics such as a “Future of Music 2025” feature, indicating an interest in how technology, platforms, and business models will affect the careers of the acts he highlights.
This combination of spotlighting individual musicians and addressing structural change makes his emerging-artist coverage valuable for stories that need both a human angle and an understanding of where the music landscape is heading.
Interviews and culture features
Beyond live and discovery pieces, Griffiths contributes interviews and culture features through strands marked “Rolling Stone Interview” and “Culture”. These stories focus on musicians and other creative figures, exploring their process, influences, and place in contemporary culture rather than only promoting a release. His coverage of collaborations such as Kylie Minogue’s work with Snow Patrol on “These Alarms” shows a preference for narratives where established acts take creative risks and cross over into new creative partnerships.
Across this side of his work, he links personal stories, creative decisions, and fan reception, giving readers a clear sense of why a project matters at this moment in music.
Editorial leadership and audio formats
Griffiths’ reporting is underpinned by his senior role steering Rolling Stone Australia & New Zealand’s editorial direction. As Editor-in-Chief, he shapes coverage priorities, tone, and the mix between breaking news, long-form features, and scene-wide analysis. His experience spans more than a decade in media roles as an editor, writer, content creator, digital producer, and presenter, which gives his work a practical understanding of how stories play across platforms. Outside the page, he hosts music-focused podcasts including The Plug with Neil Griffiths and Rolling Stone Uncut, using long-form conversations with artists and industry figures to extend the masthead’s coverage into audio.
This combination of editorial oversight, written reporting, and podcast hosting means his byline often carries both the detail of a working journalist and the perspective of someone responsible for the broader shape of the outlet’s music coverage.
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.