Barney Hoskyns (born 5 May 1959) is a British music critic and editorial director of the online music journalism archive Rock's Backpages. Hoskyns graduated from the University of Oxford with a first class degree in English.

He began writing about music for Melody Maker and New Musical Express, quitting his job as staff writer at NME to research a book about soul music. The result was Say It One Time For The Brokenhearted (1987). He went on to write more than fifteen books on musicians and music history.