Rock's Backpages is an online archive of music journalism

Music journalism

Music journalism is criticism and reportage about music. It began in the eighteenth century as comment on what is now thought of as 'classical music'. This aspect of music journalism, today often referred to as music criticism , comprises the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of...

, sourced from freelance contributions to the music and mainstream press from the 1950s to the present day. The articles are full text and searchable, and all are reproduced with the permission of the copyright holders. The database was founded in 2000 by British music journalist Barney Hoskyns

Barney Hoskyns

Barney Hoskyns is a British music critic and editor of the online music journalism archive Rock's Backpages.Hoskyns graduated from Oxford with a First Class degree in English. He began writing about music for Melody Maker and New Musical Express, quitting his job as staff writer at NME to research...

. In January 2010 its database contained over 17,000 articles including interviews, features and reviews, which covered a popular music

Popular music

Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...

 from blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

 and soul

Soul music

Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...

 up to the present date.

The articles are sourced from magazines such as Creem

Creem

Creem , "America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine," was a monthly rock 'n' roll publication first published in March 1969 by Barry Kramer and founding editor Tony Reay. It suspended production in 1989 but received a short-lived renaissance in the early 1990s as a glossy tabloid...

, Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

, New Musical Express, Melody Maker

Melody Maker

Melody Maker, published in the United Kingdom, was, according to its publisher IPC Media, the world's oldest weekly music newspaper. It was founded in 1926 as a magazine targeted at musicians; in 2000 it was merged into "long-standing rival" New Musical Express.-1950s–1960s:Originally the Melody...

, Crawdaddy!

Crawdaddy!

Crawdaddy! was the first U.S. magazine of rock and roll music criticism. Created in 1966 by college student Paul Williams in response to the increasing sophistication and cultural influence of popular music, Crawdaddy! was self-described as "the first magazine to take rock and roll...

and Mojo. The database contains contributions from over 300 journalists, primarily from the US and UK, including classic journalists such as Dave Marsh

Dave Marsh

Dave Marsh is an American music critic, author, editor and radio talk show host. He was a formative editor of Creem magazine, has written for various publications such as Newsday, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone, and has published numerous books about music and musicians, mostly focused on...

, Nick Kent

Nick Kent

Nick Kent is a British rock critic and musician.-Career:Along with writers including Paul Morley, Charles Shaar Murray and Danny Baker, Nick Kent is seen as one of the most important and influential UK music journalists of the 1970s. He wrote for the British music publication New Musical Express,...

, Charles Shaar Murray

Charles Shaar Murray

Charles Shaar Murray is an English music journalist. His first experience in journalism came 1970 when he was asked to contribute to the satirical magazine Oz...

, Nick Tosches

Nick Tosches

Nick Tosches is an American journalist, novelist, biographer, and poet of Albanian and Italian descent.- Life :After different odd-jobs, Tosches started writing with poetry and rock-'n'-roll magazines, including Creem, Fusion, and Rolling Stone.Tosches' second book, a biography of Jerry Lee Lewis...

, Mick Farren

Mick Farren

Michael Anthony 'Mick' Farren is an English journalist, author and singer associated with counterculture and the UK Underground.-Music:...

, Al Aronowitz

Al Aronowitz

Alfred Gilbert Aronowitz was an American rock journalist best known for introducing Bob Dylan and The Beatles in 1964.Aronowitz was born in Bordentown, New Jersey...

 and the late Ian MacDonald

Ian MacDonald

Ian MacCormick was a British music critic and author, best known for Revolution in the Head, his forensic history of The Beatles which borrowed techniques from art historians, and The New Shostakovich, a controversial study of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich...

.

The library requires subscription and is popular with both consumers and institutional subscribers including academic institutions and media organisations.

External links

• Rock's Backpages
• Rock's Backpages Writers' Blogs
• Rock's Backpages at No. 14 in The Observer
  The Observer
  The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
  
  'Top 25 Music Websites' (19 March 2006)
• review of Rock's Backpages in the Library Journal
  Library Journal
  Library Journal is a trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey . It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional practice...
  
  (15 April 2006)
• review of Rock's Backpages in Paste Magazine (29 September 2006)
• review of Rock's Backpages in the Daily Telegraph (17 June 2006)
• review of Rock's Backpages in Entertainment Weekly
  Entertainment Weekly
  Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
  
  (16 November 2001)
• review of Rock's Backpages in The Guardian
  The Guardian
  The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
  
  (1 November 2001)