Biography

Alexis Petridis is a British journalist, head rock and pop critic for the UK newspaper The Guardian, as well as a regular contributor to the magazine GQ. In addition to his music writing for the paper, he has written a weekly column in the fashion section of The Guardian's Weekend section, as well as contributing to its "Lost in Showbiz" column.

Petridis was born in the north of England before moving to Buckinghamshire. After studying at Dr Challoner's Grammar School in Amersham, he began his writing career at the University of Cambridge writing for the student newspaper Varsity. He was the final editor of the now defunct music magazine Select.

He has won the "Record Reviews Writer of the Year" category at the Record of the Day awards eight times, every year from 2005 to 2012, as well as winning "Artist and Music Features: Writer of the year" in 2006 and "Best Music Writer" (as voted by students) in 2012.

Alexis Petridis was the ghostwriter of Elton John's autobiography Me.
- IMDb mini biography by: Bazza the Beast

A music journalist who writes for The Guardian newspaper.

While punk raged, the Brits were handing out statuettes to Cliff Richard and Shirley Bassey. At the height of acid house, they were rewarding Phil Collins, Fairground Attraction and Cliff Richard again. It's not merely being facetious to suggest that ultimately it doesn't matter who wins at the Brits. There is something weirdly transient about the awards: you would be hard pushed to find anyone who can remember who won what last year, let alone a decade ago. It's like a musical equivalent of Ski Sunday. No one watches it to see who wins, they tune in only in the hope of seeing something go disastrously wrong. When it doesn't - and it hasn't for over a decade - the Carnival of Mayhem immediately evaporates from the collective memory. (Commenting on the Brit Awards in 2007)

We now see the Eighties through this slightly rosy lens of nostalgia and nostalgia is a form of curation. You cut out the bits you don't like. You cut out all the crap bits. You have Madonna and Prince, who are interesting. Everything else that you got, or you were going to get, on Radio One or Top of the Pops (1964), was just crap. I mean, it was just absolute rubbish.

[reviewing a concert by Martin Creed] This show is provocative only in that it seems less like a gig than an experiment to see how charmless and pleased with himself a man can appear before the audience storm the stage and physically attack him.