Ratliff is the son of an English mother and an American father, growing up in London and in Rockland County, New York.
From 1996 to 2016, he wrote about pop music and jazz for ''The New York Times''. He is the author of four books: ''Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty'' (2016), ''The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music'' (2008), ''Jazz: A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Recordings'' (2002), and a critical biography of John Coltrane (''The Story of a Sound,'' 2007), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His articles have appeared in ''The New York Review of Books'', ''Granta'', ''Rolling Stone'', ''Spin'', ''The Village Voice'', ''Slate'' and ''Lingua Franca''. In 2005, he received the Helen Dance-Robert Palmer Award for "Excellence in Newspaper, Magazine or Online Writing" from the Jazz Journalists Association. From 2012 to 2016, he was a regular host of ''The New York Times'' popcast.
