Roisin O'Connor
Roisin O’Connor is Music Editor at The Independent, leading the masthead’s music desk across news, features, reviews and long-form reporting. Her coverage treats music as a cultural beat and an industry story at the same time, linking artists and events to questions of power, inequality and the conditions in which music is made. She combines fast-turn news pieces with deeper investigations and commentary, giving readers both the headline and the context behind it. Her work is central to The Independent’s positioning as a prominent voice on contemporary music and the business around it.
Music news and industry issues
O’Connor steers The Independent’s music coverage, commissioning and writing news, long-reads, features, comment and festival coverage for the section. She focuses on the pressures and structural problems in the music world, including mental health, misogyny, the protection of grassroots venues and the post-Brexit landscape for artists and touring. These pieces look beyond individual careers to the systems that shape how artists work, earn and perform, making industry dynamics a recurring thread in her reporting.
Her coverage of major events such as the Grammy Awards, Brit Awards, Mercury Prize and Eurovision is framed not only as showbusiness but as snapshots of shifting tastes, power and representation in music. She also addresses the economics and policy environment around live music, using the fate of smaller venues and festival partnerships to illustrate broader trends.
Across this work she writes in a straightforward, news-led style that foregrounds evidence and quotes from within the industry.
Artist interviews and live coverage
O’Connor’s reporting is heavily driven by direct engagement with artists, from global headliners to emerging acts. She has interviewed major names across genres, including Metallica, Liam Gallagher, Lewis Capaldi, Shania Twain and 50 Cent, positioning those conversations within wider debates about fame, longevity and creative control.
Alongside these marquee interviews she uses the same platform to champion up-and-coming artists, treating discovery and career-building as core parts of the beat rather than side content. In live coverage she tracks defining moments on stage, such as Harry Styles receiving a standing ovation for a Simon & Garfunkel cover, and uses those episodes to capture how performers reinterpret familiar material and connect with audiences in real time. Her reviews and reports from festivals and tours sit alongside news pieces, giving continuity from announcement to performance. She also covers tentpole performances such as the Super Bowl halftime show, treating them as cultural events that reveal how mainstream music presents itself to mass audiences.
This combination of interviews, live reviews and performance news makes the artist’s working life a consistent focus of her desk.
Music Box sessions and Now Hear This
Beyond traditional articles, O’Connor has built her own formats inside The Independent’s music offering. In 2017 she created and launched Music Box, a recurring series of stripped-back sessions that bring artists into The Independent’s space for exclusive performances.
The series has featured a range of acts including Lewis Capaldi, Bastille, Marika Hackman, Tom Grennan, Ms Banks, Ghetts, Emeli Sandé and Caity Baser, giving equal weight to chart acts and rising names.
These sessions foreground songwriting and musicianship, with the production pared down so the focus stays on the artist and the material. She also writes the weekly music newsletter Now Hear This, a curation-led format with tens of thousands of subscribers that highlights new releases, stories to watch and under-the-radar artists.
The newsletter extends her beat into direct recommendations and analysis, making her perspective on what matters in music a regular fixture for a dedicated audience. Together, Music Box and Now Hear This show her interest in discovery and in building ongoing relationships between artists and readers.
Events, partnerships and cross-platform work
O’Connor’s role includes coordinating and covering major music events where The Independent has a presence. She has helped shape festival partnerships with Montreux Jazz Festival, Black Deer and The Great Escape, using those collaborations to generate interviews, live reports and features tied to specific lineups and themes.
Her work also connects music to wider initiatives, such as curating playlists to support Macmillan Cancer Support’s Coffee Morning fundraising events, where she selects tracks to match different atmospheres and audiences. In addition to written coverage she regularly provides expert commentary on music news and industry issues for radio, television and print, extending her analysis beyond the masthead’s own pages.
This cross-platform presence reinforces her role as a point person for informed, beat-specific insight into contemporary music and the business around it.
4 more entertainment journalists.
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Adam Bloodworth
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Adam England
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Adam White
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