Tim Riley (born 1960)^[1] is a music journalist who reviews pop and classical music for NPR,^[2] and has written for The New York Times,^[3] truthdig, the Huffington Post, the Washington Post, Slate and Salon.

His first book was Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary (Knopf/Vintage 1988), a critique of the Beatles' music, which The New York Times said brought "new insight to the act we've known for all these years".^[1]

His television appearances include Morning Joe,^[4] PBS NewsHour,^[5] CBS Morning and Evening News, MTV, and the History Channel.

Since 2009, he has taught digital journalism at Emerson College in Boston.^[6] Brown University sponsored Riley as its critic-in-residence in 2008.^[6] Riley gave a keynote address at Beatles 2000, the first international academic conference in Jyväskylä, Finland.^[7] Since then, he has given lectures on censorship in the arts and rock history.^[6] His subsequent projects include the music metaportal Riley Rock Index^[8] and a biography of John Lennon (Hyperion, 2011),^[9][10] which was included in Kirkus Reviews' list of the Best Nonfiction of 2011.^[11]

• Tell Me Why: A Beatles Commentary (1988), ISBN 978-0394550619
• Hard Rain: A Dylan Commentary (1992), ISBN 978-0394578897
• Madonna Illustrated (1992), ISBN 978-1562829834
• Fever: How Rock 'n' Roll Transformed Gender in America (2004), ISBN 978-0312286118
• Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music - The Definitive Life (2011), ISBN 978-1401324520
• What Goes On: The Beatles, Their Music, and Their Time (Walter Everett and Tim Riley, 2019), ISBN 978-0190949877