Simon Reynolds Audiobooks

A Melody Maker alumnus maps the post-punk years in Rip It up and Start Again

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Who is Simon Reynolds?

Simon Reynolds, born in 1963, is an English music journalist and author who began at Melody Maker in the mid-1980s and went on to become one of the most respected names in music writing. After the Melody Maker years he worked freelance, publishing a series of books on music and popular culture that have become reference points in the field.

His byline traces the geography of serious music journalism on both sides of the Atlantic: Spin, Rolling Stone, The New York Times and The Village Voice in America; The Guardian and The Wire at home; Pitchfork online. Few critics have written about pop culture at such length, or taken it so seriously for so long.

Simon Reynolds in audiobooks

Music writing has an obvious advantage in audio: the listener is already halfway there. Rip It up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 is Reynolds’s account of the post-punk years, and it works beautifully as a listen – a critic’s deep knowledge shaped into narrative rather than a pile of reviews. For UK listeners of a certain vintage it is a memory palace; for younger ones, a map to an entire musical inheritance, best explored with the records queued up alongside. Either way, the authority Reynolds earned across decades at the sharp end of music journalism is audible in every chapter.