Lucy O'Brien

Lucy O'Brien (born 13 September 1961) is a British author and journalist whose work focuses on women in music. Early musical and writing career O'Brien was born in Catford, London and grew up in Southampton. In 1979, whilst attending a convent school in Southampton, she formed a punk band aptly named "the Catholic Girls". She left the band in 1980 to attend University in Leeds, and The Catholic Girls continued for a while under the name Almost Cruelty before splitting up. At university she played with a number of bands before giving up performing to write instead. She became music editor of the University of Leeds magazine, Leeds Student, and after graduating in 1983, she submitted gig articles to the music paper the New Musical Express (NME), which then published Charles Shaar Murray and Nick Kent. She has since written about the "intimidating" office culture at NME in the 1980s, and the extent to which female music journalists were ostracised and not taken seriously by the paper. Her best-known contribution to the paper may be the notorious "Youth Suicide" cover article. Forming an alliance with fellow soul and socialism heads Stuart Cosgrove and Paolo Hewitt, O'Brien became part of a leftist faction at NME which was eventually discharged by incoming editor Alan Lewis – an IPC troubleshooter instructed to de-politicise the magazine and boost sales.