John Harris (critic)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
-
For other people named John Harris, see John Harris (disambiguation).
John Harris (born 1969) is a British journalist. Harris was raised in Cheshire by two university lecturers. After three years at Queen's College, Oxford, he began his professional writing career with Melody Maker in 1991, but he didn't stay long and has since expressed his distaste for its more intellectual style. He moved to the NME in 1993, and stayed there until the summer of 1995. This was fortuitous timing. John was around for the birth of what became known as 'Britpop', and wrote reams about most of its key players: Suede, Blur, Elastica, Oasis.
After a spell with Q, he became Editor of Select magazine in 1996, before deciding to return—two weeks before his 30th birthday—to the life of a freelance writer.
Since then, he has written about music for Q, Mojo and Rolling Stone, and contributed articles on a variety of subjects to The Independent, the New Statesman and, less frequently, The Times. He has regular non-music features in The Guardian's G2 supplement and writes a column for their Film & Music section.
John Harris's acclaimed first book, The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock, was published by Fourth Estate in May 2003. This led to his hosting a BBC4 documentary on the musical movement, The Britpop Story.
His second is So Now Who Do We Vote For?, a look at the 2005 UK general election.
John usually guests on television programmes concerned with late 80s/early 90s British music. He lives in Hay on Wye on the Wales/Herefordshire border and occasionally makes guest appearances on BBC Radio Wales. Although born and raised in Cheshire, John doesn't think much of his childhood home, describing the county as "possibly England's least remarkable county" (although he also says that "Hertfordshire might put a convincing challenge").
