Andrew Harrison (journalist)

Harrison began his career covering live gigs for the Liverpool Echo and Daily Post in the mid-1980s.[4] His career break came in 1988 when a piece of his was featured in the NME.[4] He wrote for a number of titles and was editorial director of Mixmag and Smash Hits.[5] 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.[6]

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.[7][8][9] 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?"[10][11]

During 2008 he and Nick DeCosemo co-edited[12] the dance-music monthly Mixmag, which two years earlier had been acquired from David Hepworth's independent publishing company Development Hell by the EMAP group.[13][14]

Harrison wrote and published the 2011 book Love Music, Love Food: The Rock Star Cookbook to aid the Teenage Cancer Trust.[15] 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.[16]

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.[5] 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".[5][17]

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.[18] Nonetheless, he was forced out in April 2013.[5]

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)[19][20] and "Remainiacs",[21][22] which is subtitled the "no-bullshit Brexit podcast".[23]