Rachel Roberts
Rachel Roberts is a music journalist who focuses on guitar culture and artist-led stories, using concise news writing to surface the personalities, instruments and communities that shape contemporary rock and alternative music. She writes regular news pieces for Guitar, MusicTech and the Gibson Gazette, and extends that coverage across specialist titles including Kerrang!, Alternative Press and The Forty-Five. Her work sits at the point where players, gear and scenes intersect, with an emphasis on clear reporting and accessible, conversational prose.
Guitar news and artist stories at Guitar
At Guitar, Roberts’ core output is short, timely news coverage built around the people who play and obsess over guitars. In a piece on Kirk Hammett buying Neal Schon’s Les Paul for “half the price it was worth” and later offering to return it, she anchors the story in Hammett’s own words and uses that anecdote to explore the emotional weight instruments can carry as they move between players. The structure of that article is typical of her approach: she leads with a strong quote, clearly explains the context for non-specialist readers, and keeps the focus on how musicians talk about their gear rather than on technical specifications alone.
Across this kind of coverage she treats guitars as narrative objects, not just equipment. The emphasis is on what a particular instrument represents in an artist’s career, how it changes hands, or how it surfaces long-running relationships between players. That framing makes her news pieces useful for stories that need to connect artist mythology, guitar history and fan culture in a compact format.
Short-form reporting across specialist music titles
Roberts’ own professional profile notes that she “currently write[s] regular news pieces” for Guitar, MusicTech and the Gibson Gazette, which positions her squarely in fast-turnaround, beat-driven reporting for niche music audiences. At MusicTech and the Gibson Gazette she brings the same news sensibility to coverage where instruments, sound, and recording tools are central, distilling announcements and artist updates into straightforward, fact-led copy. The consistency of that work across three specialist outlets underlines a rhythm: she reports developments quickly, keeps stories tight, and foregrounds the detail that matters to players and gear-focused readers.
Beyond those regular news slots, Roberts’ bylines run through Kerrang!, Alternative Press and The Forty-Five, showing that she carries this reporting style into publications built around rock and alternative music communities. Her Instagram bio lists these titles together with Guitar and MusicTech, which reinforces the sense that she moves comfortably between guitar-obsessed readerships and broader alternative music audiences while keeping a similar tone and format.
Alternative artists, scenes and underrepresented voices
Roberts also writes longer artist-focused pieces that stay close to specific scenes. For The Forty-Five, she has covered Sløtface singer Haley Shea, focusing on the band’s return and trajectory, which shows her interest in contemporary alternative acts and the stories behind their career arcs. In Kerrang!, she has spotlighted LOUD WOMEN, a feminist punk collective, with the group publicly thanking her for “taking the time to spotlight LOUD WOMEN and all the crazy stuff we’re up to around the world.” These assignments point to a recurring thread: she uses her platform in rock-focused outlets to give space to artists and collectives that sit slightly to the side of the mainstream.
Those features complement her news work by broadening the frame from individual players and instruments to the communities around them. When she writes about artists like Haley Shea or organisations like LOUD WOMEN, the emphasis falls on momentum, activism and the practical realities of sustaining a band or movement, rather than on lifestyle gloss. That makes her a fit for stories that need to connect music-making with DIY culture, gender equity in rock, or the infrastructure behind emerging scenes.
Voice and approach
Roberts’ self-description as an “Edgy Carrie Bradshaw” for outlets such as Kerrang!, Guitar, MusicTech and the Gibson Gazette hints at a writing style that is direct, personable and slightly irreverent, while still grounded in reporting. Even in brief news hits, she allows artists’ own words to carry the narrative, choosing quotes that capture personality or humour alongside the key facts, as in her coverage of Kirk Hammett’s deal over Neal Schon’s Les Paul. Across her portfolio, the connecting line is a focus on musicians and scenes that are defined by guitars, volume and community, delivered in clean, unfussy copy that serves both dedicated gear-heads and broader alternative music readers.
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Abby Webster
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Alex Suskind
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Ali Shutler
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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.