John Harris (critic)
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John Harris (born 1969) is a British journalist, writer, and critic. Harris was raised in Cheshire by two university lecturers and became fixated by pop music at an early age. After three years at The 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 writing style. He moved to the NME in 1993, and stayed there until the summer of 1995. This was fortuitous timing. John helped to create the pop-cultural movement that was known as 'Britpop', and his writings helped to make stars out of the likes of Suede, Blur, Elastica and 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 pop 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 pop music and non-music features published in The Guardian's G2 supplement and writes a column for their Film & Music section.
John Harris's 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 presenting a BBC4 documentary on the musical movement, The Britpop Story.
His second book is So Now Who Do We Vote For?, a look at the 2005 UK general election.
John often guests on television programmes concerned with late 80s/early 90s British pop music as well as being a regular pundit on BBC2's The Late Review. 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, he is somewhat critical of his childhood home, describing it as "possibly England's least remarkable county" (although he also says that "Hertfordshire might mount a convincing challenge"). John's disdain of Hertfordshire is possibly due to the fact that it is the location of Knebworth, which John wasn't particularly impressed by when he was sent there to report on Oasis's two Knebworth gigs in 1996.
