Greil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a broader framework of culture and politics.

Marcus has been a rock critic and columnist for Rolling Stone (where he was the first reviews editor) and other publications, including Creem, the Village Voice, Artforum and Pitchfork. His book Mystery Train (published in 1975 and in its sixth revised and updated edition in 2015) is notable for placing rock and roll in the context of American cultural archetypes, from Moby-Dick to The Great Gatsby to Stagger Lee. In his book The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs, Marcus selected ten songs recorded between 1956 and 2008 and shows how each, embodies the story of rock ‘n’ roll—a new language and a new form of expression.