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Simon Frith is a former rock critic and a sociologist who specializes in popular music culture. He read PPE at Oxford and did a doctorate in Sociology at UC Berkeley. He is the author of many books, including The Sociology of Rock (the first), Sound Effects (Panteon, 1981), Art into Pop (Methuen, 1987) written with Howard Horne), Music for Pleasure (Cambridge University Press, 1988), and Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. He also co-edited other key anthologies in the interdisciplinary field of popular music studies including: On Record: Rock, Pop & the Written Word and The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock. Most recently, Frith has edited a four-volume set entitled: Popular Music: Critical Concepts in Media & Cultural Studies. He has chaired the judges of the Mercury Music Prize since it began in 1992. His popular music criticism has appeared in a range of popular presses including the Village Voice and The Sunday Times. He taught in the Sociology Department at the University of Warwick and the English Studies Department at Strathclyde University. In 1999 he went to the University of Stirling as Professor of Film and Media. On January 1 2006 he took up the Tovey Chair of Music at Edinburgh University. He is also the brother of guitarist Fred Frith and psychologist Chris Frith.

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