Andrew Harrison (journalist)

Andrew Harrison is an English music journalist who has worked as a staff writer for NME, Select, Mixmag, The Word, and Q, and freelance for Rolling Stone, The Face, The Guardian, The Observer and Mojo. In 2008 he coined the term landfill indie, which VICE described as referring to the "procession of homogenous [guitar] bands" that dominated the UK charts in the early-2000s.

Harrison was born in Liverpool in 1967, and entered music journalism as a teenager in the mid-1980s, at first publishing live reviews in local press before becoming a staff writer for the NME in the late 1980s and for Select in the early 1990s. In the mid 2000s he joined and then edited The Word until February 2012, when he became editor of Q until April 2013, during a period when print magazines were undergoing double-digit year-on-year decline.

As of 2021, he continues to publish as a music critic, and hosts the "Bigmouth" and "Remainiacs" podcasts.

Early career: NME, Select, Mixmag
Harrison began his career covering live gigs for the Liverpool Echo and Daily Post in the mid-1980s. His break came in 1988 when a piece of his was featured in the NME. He wrote for a number of titles and was editorial director of Mixmag and Smash Hits. He wrote extensively for NME in the late 1980s and early 1990s and interviewed Madonna, U2, Stephen Fry and others while later working freelance for titles such as Rolling Stone, The Guardian, The Observer and GQ.

Harrison is credited with coining the 2008 phrase landfill indie to describe then popular bands such as Snow Patrol, McFly, Razorlight, Maxïmo Park and The Futureheads. The term was later described by the journalist and author Simon Reynolds as "one of the decade's great memes ... it captured that sense of alarming overproduction, the gross excess of supply [of music] over demand. All these bands! Where did they come from? Why did they bother? Couldn't they tell they were shit?"

During 2008 he and Nick DeCosemo co-edited the dance-music monthly Mixmag, which two years earlier had been acquired by David Hepworth's independent publishing company Development Hell from the EMAP group.

Harrison wrote and published the 2011 book Love Music, Love Food: The Rock Star Cookbook to aid the Teenage Cancer Trust. A coffee-table cook book with photographs by Patrice de Villiers, each dish was selected by rock stars such as Noel Gallagher and Matt Bellamy.

Q editorship
Harrison was hired in February 2012 as editor of Q magazine during a period when, according to the Guardian, "print music magazines continue to endure torrid times", and even free titles were failing to  compete against blogs and platforms dependent on online advertising. He replaced Paul Rees after the title's circulation was forecast to decline by 17% in the first half of 2012. As Harrison took over editorship, Q readership fell to 64,596 copies; a reduction described by The Guardian as "the worst performance of any music magazine in the period".

Direct reporting to publishing director Rimi Atwal of Q's parent Bauer Media Group, Harrison's brief was to "refocus" and revive the magazine, and to that end he took on a number of new journalists and launched their iPad edition, but decided against a rebranding. Under his tenure, the magazine failed to halt sales erosion, although Q was named "Magazine of the Year" at the 2012 "Record of the Day" awards. Nonetheless, he was forced out in April 2013.

2013 to present
He was a contributing editor at Esquire Weekly between September and December 2014. He hosts the podcasts "Bigmouth" (since 2016, with the writer and illustrator Sian Pattenden) and "Remainiacs", which is subtitled the "no-bullshit Brexit podcast".

Personal life
His father, Stan Harrison, was a butcher who owned a premises on Blessington Road, Anfield, Liverpool, where Andrew worked from 1979 until 1984, beginning on a wage of £1 per day. He did not seek to follow his father into the trade, although it did give him a live long interest in preparing food. He has three brothers, the youngest of whom, Ian, is news editor of Mojo.