What's happened to The Face?

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As Piscesboy mentioned in the End of Year List thread, something's happened to The Face magazine and it ain't nuthin' nice.

― JoB (JoB), Tuesday, 17 December 2002 00:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Ever since about four issues ago, it has gone from pop culture leader to unfunny, close-to-mainstream predictability. What's happened? I used to buy it regardless, now I definitely won't anymore.

― JoB (JoB), Tuesday, 17 December 2002 00:15 (twenty-two years ago)

phew. thought it was just me.
let's look at that list again -
they would ne'er dream in usual
years of putting, say, songs that are 2 years
old in a singles end of year poll. yeah
alright they were 'new' singles but no -
'someday' by the strokes, 'dead leaves..'
by the stripes and 'hate to say...' by the vines
are all in the end of year poll for
another reason. see if we can guess what it is.
the 'hidden place' vid of the year boob is just
an unforgiveable mistake for a mag so OTM as the face.

this is the very first
issue in the 10 years i've been reading it, in which there
is no room whatsoever, for new (january) film, book
singles and lp reviews. the whole issue is
one long 'barometer' section, and if you take the bit that
everybody else ripped, and make it look like
it's all you have...well you are in a world of shit.

i knew we were in trouble when multiple barometers started to appear
about a year ago. maybe it's on it's last legs ?

― piscesboy, Tuesday, 17 December 2002 00:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Is a shame, I have an unbroken run of over five years of them up to sometime last year and it was almost always the best of the bunch for, well, everything. I thought I was just getting old and I haven't even bought one for 6 months, but from what you say, maybe it just went crap.

― Chewshabadoo (Chewshabadoo), Tuesday, 17 December 2002 01:26 (twenty-two years ago)

this mixing up The Vines and The Hives isn't actually funny anymore, if it indeed ever was

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Tuesday, 17 December 2002 01:29 (twenty-two years ago)

didn't do that on purpose

― piscesboy, Tuesday, 17 December 2002 11:56 (twenty-two years ago)

The Face got a new editor a few months ago, a bloke called Neil Stephenson.He's the guy who originally set up popbitch. I have it on good authority that he's a nice bloke, but he's made The Face shit beyond all compare.

― Jason J, Tuesday, 17 December 2002 12:06 (twenty-two years ago)

I hope the read this... Any (anonymous) Face writers want to spill the beans?

― JoB (JoB), Tuesday, 17 December 2002 12:35 (twenty-two years ago)

three months pass...

today seems an appropriate time to say
'yep it's still rubbish' - they didn't do an april
fools thing this year did they ? last year's
(young people, all clubbed out intend to
head for hols abroad with their parents instead of
going to ibiza according to top travel agents)
was fantastic.

― piscesboy, Tuesday, 1 April 2003 12:17 (twenty-two years ago)

three months pass...

hey it's cool again now it's all going to be alright !
they had a kind of 'best of the face' supplement 2 mnths back,
the last 2 issues have been a maj. improvement. and there's been an overhaul, glam spanking new re-fit/design etc.
they ditched some of the recent rubbish ideas
(like making the barometer dominate the front
half)and the look is real nice.
also great is that there's this cute mini-catalogue bit at the back like a trendy argos.

the letters pages seem to concur(roughly speaking).
what do we think ?

― piscesboy, Saturday, 19 July 2003 14:34 (twenty-two years ago)

i love the photography in the face. also the fashion commentary/coverage is excellent.

― disco stu (disco stu), Saturday, 19 July 2003 15:54 (twenty-two years ago)

that face w. the supplement was totally unreadable (k-classic)

― Cozen (Cozen), Saturday, 19 July 2003 16:45 (twenty-two years ago)

I've read a couple issues thanks to Carey and the only thing I liked about it was that there was a LOT of pictures of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. After buying an issue of MOJO assuming a Mick Rock article about them would be RIFE with pics and only getting a total of four over the entire mag, seeing their spread in the Face made me very happy.

Everything else was all stupid and stuff.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Saturday, 19 July 2003 16:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Have they gotten rid of the really bad singles/album reviewer? The last few times I've looked at those columns I've felt like there's some elaborate practical joke at work which I've yet to be let in on.

Generally speaking I've always loved The Face and thought criticisms of its over-fashionability missed the point quite a bit (what's wrong with being fashionable if it means you're right more often?)

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Saturday, 19 July 2003 23:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Which has aged more gracefully, The Face or Jason Donovan? (Thinking of the whole legal spat back in 1990...)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 20 July 2003 00:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Jason's quite respectable these days (he's in a drama called MDA and isn't half bad)

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Sunday, 20 July 2003 00:10 (twenty-two years ago)

five months pass...

How's it doing now?

― Ian SPACK (Ian SPACK), Friday, 26 December 2003 16:46 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm glad they scrapped that awful review section they had briefly. The "download this" page they now run is quite useful if brief - on the other hand it's a bit like gabba.net without the actual downloads.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Saturday, 27 December 2003 00:58 (twenty-one years ago)

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