Tim Riley (music critic)
American music critic
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tim Riley (born 1960)[1] is a music journalist who reviews pop and classical music for NPR,[2] and contributes regularly to the Los Angeles Review of Books. His byline has also appeared in The New York Times,[3] truthdig, the Huffington Post, the Washington Post, Slate and Salon. Since 2023 he has published the free bi-weekly riley rock report on substack.com. He was recently featured for an hour on Jack Coyne's Track Star, March 2026.
1960 (age 65–66)
- Music critic
- historian
- biographer
Tim Riley | |
|---|---|
| Born | Tim Riley 1960 (age 65–66) |
| Occupations |
|
Career
His first book was Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary (Knopf/Vintage 1988), a critique of the Beatles' music, which The New York Times said brought "new insight to the act we've known for all these years".[1]
His television appearances include Morning Joe,[4] and PBS NewsHour.[5]
Since 2009, he has taught digital journalism at Emerson College in Boston.[6] Brown University sponsored Riley as its critic-in-residence in 2008.[6] Riley gave a keynote address at Beatles 2000, the first international academic conference in Jyväskylä, Finland.[7] Since then, he has given lectures on censorship in the arts and rock history.[6] His subsequent projects include the music metaportal Riley Rock Index[8] and a biography of John Lennon (Hyperion, 2011),[9][10] which was included in Kirkus Reviews' list of the Best Nonfiction of 2011.[11]
Books
- Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary (1988), ISBN 978-0394550619
- Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary (1992), ISBN 978-0394578897
- Madonna Illustrated (1992), ISBN 978-1562829834
- Fever: How Rock 'n' Roll Transformed Gender in America (2004), ISBN 978-0312286118
- Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - The Definitive Life (2011), ISBN 978-1401324520
- What Goes On: The Beatles, Their Music, and Their Time (Walter Everett and Tim Riley, 2019), ISBN 978-0190949877