Lucy Harbron is a writer - and also more than that

With vast experience in journalism across various corners of culture and social commentary, Lucy Harbron is a writer - but also an editor, a social media manager, a researcher, and an all-round creative.

After a childhood spent writing short stories, she launched her editorial career at 15 with Kiloran, a magazine founded to platform under-represented artists in the North East. Soon the contributor pool grew to an international collective, delivering six issues all curated, commissioned, edited and designed by Lucy.

After completing an English degree and gaining work as a content writer for E-Commerce brands, her love for music, film and art filtered into her writing. Gaining journalistic by-lines in NME, Clash, Dazed, i-D and beyond, she’s been featured in several of the world’s most renowned culture publications.

The experience also led her to in house roles. As the Editor-In-Chief of Gigwise, she not only commissioned and edited the work of a vast contributor pool, but also designed print magazines and organised its distribution throughout the UK’s best independent venues and record stores. At Far Out Magazine, her roles as New Music Lead and a Staff Writer on the film and music desks captured her passion but also her skills across news, features, interviews and beyond.

Beyond all of that, Lucy writes short stories, poems and her debut novel is currently on submission.

"Your piece was beautiful. And humbling. It made me happy."

Patti Smith

Recent Articles

Introducing Truman Sinclair: An artist still excited by the scene

It’s easy to get jaded in the music industry.

The dropout rate across the industry is high for that reason. People in their 20s join major labels full of enthusiasm, believing they can make a difference, only to burn out and move on within a few years. Journalists end up stuck in stale conversations with artists worn down by media training and expectation, leaving nobody truly fulfilled. People begin with big dreams, only to be beaten down by the realities of the modern industry, eventually los...

Joan Jett on the vital importance of political art: "I hate to see what's coming"

Joan Jett. Joan fucking Jett. Is there any one name as powerfully associated with rock? Even saying it captures the feeling. It’s punchy, it’s fun, it’s fiery, it’s literally everything rock and roll is, and everything Jett herself is. Still is.

In this day and age, though, rock fans have had to become accustomed to being let down. So often, the icons who were once beacons for rebellion and liberation, who built a legacy off outspoken activism, have fallen into nothing but apathy. Case in point...

Geese's marketing is nothing new and not the problem

As soon as The Beatles were signed, Freda Kelly, an employee of Brian Epstein, assumed the job of running the band’s official fan club. Today, most major fan accounts, especially the ones with ‘HQ’ at the end of their username, are run the same way – in-house, paid for.

Record labels used to send models to radio stations to drop off new releases. The Rolling Stones had practically invented the concept of merch. Paul McCartney announced his debut by sliding a self-written questionnaire to the pr...

'Broken English': Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard on Marianne Faithfull

The process of making Broken English with Marianne Faithfull was nothing short of “divinity”, as Jane Pollard put it, coming together in a miraculous and perfect way, but in that very specific miraculous and perfect way of being a complete accident, by chance.

Specifically, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard are fascinated by musicians and capturing their portraits, such that you’d be forgiven for thinking that their office was a record label, as music history books are everywhere, punk memorabilia...

Imogen and the Knife on the freedom of "last hurrah" artistry

Editor’s Note: For 2026, Far Out didn’t just want to recommend ones to watch; we wanted to stick with them. Selecting five artists set for greatness, spotlighting Pem, ELLiS-D, Jeanie and the White Boys, Camille Schmidt and Imogen and the Knife, our Class of 2026 spans genres and countries to back the best of the rising stars. In a series of repeat conversations pairing each act with a writer, we’ll be checking in with them throughout the year, tracking the highs, lows, trials and triumphs of th...

How David Byrne's Night became the hottest ticket in London

As the depths of January set in, often called the most depressing time of the year, one bright spot has consistently lifted the mood for London music fans. David Byrne’s Night is returning, and it has become something to look forward to. What began as a Talking Heads cover night featuring some of London’s most exciting acts has now levelled up, turning tribute performances into one of the most in-demand events in the city.

The second that Scottish musician Lola Stephen learned that Talking Head...

Is Marty Supreme the inner voice of Timothée Chalamet's ambition?

It’s only after leaving the cinema, having seen Marty Supreme, that everything from the last year makes sense. For months, or even since February 2025, when Timothée Chalamet got on stage and drew a clear and outright path for greatness, perhaps we’ve been seeing Marty Mauser all along.

“I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I wanna be one of the greats,” Chalamet said with his whole chest at the 2025 SAG awards. Having just beaten out season-sweeper Adrien Brody for a win no one real...

How corrupt promoters exploit the grass roots music scene

Back in July, a video came up on my algorithm. On stage stood Lola Wild, a London-based artist, and she was going off on the corrupt nature of promotion companies preying on up-and-comers.

“He basically gets emerging artists and exploits them,” she’s saying into the mic, putting on blast the very people who booked her for the gig. In the comments, over 800 people, including new artists you know and love, were going off too – Wild’s story isn’t a shocking one at all, it seems that every single o...

Swim Deep reminisce on memories at Shoreditch's Old Blue Last

In my eyes, talking to Swim Deep about The Old Blue Last has the same energy as Martin Scorsese trying to interview Bob Dylan for the Rolling Thunder Revue documentary, where the artist is blurry-eyed eyed trying to rack his brain for long-lost memories of good times that are those to the good times themselves. On the other hand, it’s like talking to historians with a specialism in the place.

“I’ve watched Swim Deep play here,” keys player James Balmont says, “before I was in the band”, which g...

Baxter Dury on the mission and mindset of 'Allbarone'

Teachers at school like to tell us that the walls are blue because the author meant something by that. Baxter Dury has spent eight albums pretending that’s true. On his ninth, he decided to stop.

“You know, when we talk about songwriting and stuff, and they go, well, this and that, and what does it mean? I go, I don’t fucking know,” Dury admits at the very end of our conversation, “I sort of grab at stuff, and some of it’s real and some of it’s not. I mash it all up, and as long as no one gets...

Sabrina Carpenter and the dichotomy of pop's depth

A dichotomy exists in pop music that too many people still can’t figure out. Simultaneously, the best pop music makers and their fans understand that at once, it’s not that deep and it is. “Hating pop music doesn’t make you deep” reads the infamous t-shirt worn by Dua Lipa and Addison Rae. That rings true, and it isn’t negated, when Sabrina Carpenter admits that her new album is “just fun”.

In recent years, that battle that surrounds the understanding of pop has been played out clearest in the...

'A Dawning': The collaboration of Ólafur Arnalds and Talos

I’m sitting behind Ólafur Arnalds at his studio, in Reykjavik, Iceland, watching him self-soothe; one hand holding up his head, the other fidgeting with his clothing. A gentle introduction is playing with a chorus of light violins and electronic details distorting it, and I watch the composer take a deep breath in, steadying himself, as his friend, Eoin French, or Talos, the late Irish artist, begins to sing. It is beautiful, it is heartbreaking, it is the most poignant moment of my career so fa...

How the modern Hotel Chelsea preserves its own legacy

When the taxi began indicating to turn onto West 23rd street, I took a deep breath that, despite my best intentions, would do absolutely nothing to steel my nerves or regulate my excitement. I’d been fizzing all day, all the prior day too, when I’d got on an early flight for this moment. I was turning 27, and I was doing it at The Chelsea Hotel. I could not be cool about that.

This is a very personal way to start a journalistic article, but it has to be. As the taxi turned the corner, my right...

Lola Kirke on the power of getting personal in art

On my way to meet Lola Kirke in Soho, I really only had one question: how does this feel? Within the span of just a few months, the musician, actor and now writer has put out Wild West Village, a book of deeply intimate essays about her life, and is about to release Trailblazer, an album that is undeniably her most personal to date. It’s a lot to be sharing in a short time, and so my first, and really the only question I’d written down, is, “How does it feel? I imagine it feels revealing?”

“I t...

Why Sam Fender's music is vitally North-East specific

On the final track of Sam Fender’s third album, People Watching, his voice is joined by a big band. Singing a love song for his grandparents, turning ‘Remember My Name’ into a memorial of their memory and their legacy as working-class people who built a beautiful life despite monetary hardship, Fender’s voice becomes truly cinematic amongst the horns behind him. But it is vital to note who the band is—Easington Colliery Band, a miner’s band from the north-east.

What to many would just sound lik...

How intermissions at the cinema could tackle loneliness

“You could literally meet the love of your life during The Brutalist intermission,” a user on X wrote. A funny little comment, yes. Inspiration for the perfect cinephile meet-cute, also yes. But there is something about that 15-minute-long interval cut into the middle of Brady Corbet’s 215-minute-long epic that feels revelatory, not just as an experiment in cinema but a break packed with possibility.

Obviously, the break feels somewhat like a requirement. “I personally have a hard time sitting...

'Nosferatu' as an allegory for sexual assault

In the opening scene of Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, Ellen Hutter, then just a young girl, calls out into the void. Lonely and sad, she asks for “a guardian angel, a spirit of comfort”. The voice that answers draws her outside, where she’s heard lying on the grass, gasping and groaning. Suddenly, a clawed hand is around her. In the first flash of the horrifying Nosferatu, he’s straddling the young girl, attacking her, as her body spasms and seizures under his affect.

The discomfort of this opening...

Why are concert films everywhere right now?

Cinemas around the world are currently abuzz with a very different type of atmosphere. With audiences encouraged to ditch their seats and take to the aisle to dance, concert films are making a storming comeback: notably, Beyoncé has announced a Renaissance tour film, while Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour movie is turning cinema audiences into something more akin gig crowds.
Concert films aren’t new: one of the most popular films at the moment is the A24 re-release of Talking Heads’ 1984 Stop Making...

Artists are calling out the gross corporate greed of Ticketmaster

At present, you’d be hard-pressed to find a music fan with any positive thoughts about Ticketmaster. While from two very different musical camps, The Cure’s Robert Smith and his goth army seem ready to join the Swifties in a battle against the ticketing giant as another fan base burned by pricing.
As tickets went on sale for the band’s US tour, prices were nearly doubled thanks to hefty service fees, facility charges and a processing fee. Despite purposefully setting their prices at an accessibl...
Load More

Find her work in...

The Standard | NME | The I | Clash | Glamour | Dazed | VICE | i-D | Far Out | Behind The Blinds | WhyNow

Ask her to...

Writer artist bios | Write articles | Create content | Research anything | Edit scripts | Interview artists | Moderate panel talks | Present videos or events | Curate playlists | Discover artists

Where she's best...

Storytelling | Long-form interviews | The intersection between art, culture and social commentary