Sara Delgado
Sara Delgado is a freelance writer, editor, and translator whose music coverage for NME connects global pop scenes with wider culture, drawing on more than a decade of experience in culture and fashion writing.
Global pop, K-pop and Korean drama culture
At NME, her work centres on global pop, with a particular focus on Korean music and screen culture. She writes features such as a recent piece on Hearts2Hearts and the sound of a K-pop summer, treating K-pop not just as a chart phenomenon but as part of a seasonal, emotional and fandom-driven experience. She also contributes to list features like NME’s rundown of the best Korean dramas of 2024, which situates Korean television within a broader pop landscape that music fans increasingly follow alongside releases and tours. Taken together, these pieces show her interest in how Korean artists and storytellers travel across formats and geographies, and how those movements shape what younger audiences are listening to and watching.
Spotlighting emerging and alternative artists
Delgado’s music writing regularly highlights artists outside the most obvious mainstream, particularly those working at the intersections of genres and cultures. Her NME interview with Puerto Rican artist RaiNao, for instance, introduces readers to a boundary-pushing voice in alternative R&B and Latin pop, paying close attention to how the artist thinks about art, community and responsibility. The profile frames RaiNao’s work within her local scene while acknowledging the global reach of contemporary Latin music, a balance that recurs across Delgado’s coverage of artists who are building careers between languages, styles and markets. That interest in underrepresented voices is mirrored in her fashion and culture features, such as her Teen Vogue piece on designer Karoline Vitto, which focuses on carving space for curves in high fashion and reinforces her tendency to follow creators reshaping their fields from the margins.
Music, fashion and youth culture
Delgado’s broader portfolio shows how her music writing is informed by a deep engagement with youth culture, fashion and everyday life. Contributor bios for Vogue and Teen Vogue describe her as specializing in culture and fashion content across digital, print and social media, and her work there includes stories that track how style, intimacy and technology intersect for younger audiences. In Vogue, she has explored contemporary relationship dynamics through the lens of sharing vapes, treating a small social habit as a way into larger questions about connection and behaviour, a sensibility that carries over into how she approaches fandoms and scenes around music. Her Service95 explainer on the situation in Cuba further shows her ability to handle reported, context-heavy pieces, suggesting a comfort with connecting cultural moments to political and social realities that can be valuable when covering artists whose work is shaped by protest, diaspora or instability. Across outlets, she writes in accessible, plain language while keeping an eye on how aesthetics, identity and power play out in the lives of the people she covers.
Formats, tone and working style
Delgado works across formats, from Q&A interviews and narrative profiles to lists and explainers, and she brings this range into her assignments for NME. Her interviews tend to foreground the artist’s own voice and philosophy, as in the RaiNao conversation, while her list features distil broad trends in a way that is easy for readers to navigate. The Cuba explainer and her culture essays at Vogue and Teen Vogue show that she is adept at building clear, structured narratives around complex topics, which helps when she needs to situate new music or scenes within larger social currents. With bylines spanning NME, Vogue, Teen Vogue, Dazed, The Recording Academy, GLAMOUR and 5’ELEVEN, she is used to tailoring tone and depth to different audiences while maintaining a consistent interest in how culture feels and functions for the people living it. For music stories, that translates into pieces that are less about industry mechanics and more about lived experience, making her a fit for projects that need global, fan-facing coverage grounded in culture rather than pure commerce.
4 more music journalists.
Abigail Kellett
Abigail Kellett is a news reporter at the Halifax Courier who stands out for visually led coverage that shows how culture, nightlife and local life play out on the ground. She documents gigs, festivals and major live shows at venues such as The Piece Hall through curated photo sets that capture atmosphere, crowd and setting as much as performers, and she uses extensive image galleries to tap reader nostalgia for nights out in Halifax town centre. Her beat spans arts, entertainment, going out, heritage, books and literary events, along with community life, people stories, local challenges, milestones, transport, regeneration, lifestyle and food. She reports through photographs, checklist-style features, reader-driven lists and roundups of most-read stories, turning announcements, programmes, author events, festivals, shop lists and everyday characters into stories about place, shared memory and how people spend their time.
Adam Lyon
Adam Lyon is a digital audience and content editor whose news beat sits at the intersection of Ayrshire’s cultural life, business environment and public affairs. He works for the Ayr Advertiser and as Digital Audience & Content Editor for Newsquest in the west of Scotland across multiple weekly titles. He covers Ayrshire news with a strong thread of music and local culture alongside business, courts and public affairs. He reports on music when it has a clear community or national hook, treating songs as news events rather than reviews. His business work explains how local firms and retail policy shape town centres. His court coverage uses round-ups of sheriff court cases to show patterns and outcomes. He also fronts video previews and is active in a football supporters trust community.
Adam Maidment
Adam Maidment is a senior What’s On and LGBTQ+ reporter whose work links big-name gigs, new venues and cultural flashpoints to everyday fan culture and inclusion. He covers music, nightlife and the wider cultural scene for the Manchester Evening News, focusing on how concerts, openings and immersive events land with real people and communities. His beat spans live music, arenas and stadiums, new restaurant and bar openings, food reviews, exhibitions, street art and nightlife infrastructure, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ audiences and neighbourhoods. He reports on venue ambitions and problems, cultural institutions and equality issues, and franchise-led experiences, using straightforward, on-the-ground reporting and clear description. Drawing on a background in community reporting, he looks for underrepresented perspectives and uses social media, analytics and local sourcing to find stories where culture, identity and place meet.
Alison Brinkworth
Alison Brinkworth is a freelance journalist who treats music as a gateway into place, history and everyday life, often through exhibitions, performances and city-centre events. She covers music within the wider cultural and lifestyle scene, leaning toward accessible, on-the-ground stories framed by familiar artists, venues and local attractions. Her work often focuses on music exhibitions and attractions built around well-known performers, alongside theatre reviews, live events and city attractions. She brings a lifestyle, travel and human-interest sensibility, using interviews and personal stories to show how people spend their time. With over 25 years of experience across print, digital, social media and internal communications, she writes clear, factual, audience-facing articles with dates, locations and organisers, suited to listings, guides and practical recommendations.