Billboard’s awards editor has been writing about popular music since Gerald Ford was president. Paul began writing for Billboard as a freelancer in 1975, when he was a junior at UCLA. He was initially paid the princely sum of $1 per published inch. He graduated in 1976 with a degree in communication studies and joined the Billboard staff the following year. Paul created the popular Chartbeat column, a compendium of the week’s hottest chart news, in 1981. He won a Donaldson Award (named after Billboard co-founder William Donaldson) in 1984 for Chartbeat as the best column in the magazine. Paul wrote for Billboard through the end of 1992, when he left to write for such outlets as The Los Angeles Times, Yahoo Music and Hits. He has also written liner notes for over 100 compilations and box sets, including the long-running 'Have a Nice Day' and 'Didn’t It Blow Your Mind' series of 1970s pop and R&B classics.
Paul rejoined Billboard in 2019 with the goal of covering the awards beat with the same authority and obsessive zeal that Billboard has long brought to its charts reporting. He directs Billboard.com’s coverage of the many, many awards shows – both EGOT-level shows that receive worldwide attention and genre-specific shows that provide a much-needed spotlight on specialty genres. He also edits the weekly Awards Watch newsletter, which is distributed every Wednesday to a small army of like-minded awards obsessives.
