Jem Aswad, who launched Variety’s music section with former executive music editor Shirley Halperin in 2017, has held senior editorial posts at Billboard, MTV News, Spin, Time Out New York and CMJ. He also has worked at three record labels (Atlantic, Warner and Caroline) and two record stores. A lifelong music obsessive, he started out writing concert reviews for his high school newspaper and over the years has been published in Rolling Stone, New York magazine, the Village Voice, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, the Trouser Press Record Guide and other publications. He has written Variety cover stories on the Weeknd, Bruce Springsteen, SZA, Charli xcx, Megan Thee Stallion, Lil Nas X, Spotify, and others, and has won multiple Los Angeles Press Club and Southern California Press Club awards — including the LAPC’s Journalist of the Year/ Online in 2021 and 2022. He appears as a commentator regularly “Good Morning America,” “CBS Mornings,” CNN, NBC and many others, and frequently guest-lectures at Syracuse University’s Bandier (music business) Program and New York University. He is based in Variety’s New York offices.
Scoring the Moment: Inside the Sound of Heated Rivalry
When Heated Rivalry premiered to critical acclaim, it wasn’t just the storytelling that resonated – it was the music. The emotional architecture of the series, shaped by composer Peter Peter […]