Has The NME Got Good?

The patronage of Eve by a Cure-loving (for the record, behind the Smith as the 2nd worse band of the 80s for me, and I was only about seven at the time) OLD and BALD Grandad is the most patronisingly reader-chasing and insulting thing NME have ever done in my memory.

NME's crap right now. They're not taking any real risks despite (as always) proclaiming to: if they were to really devour the zeigeist, they'd swap the four page LP section with the half-page dance section.

NME's sad populism-chasing (as opposed to, say Musik and 7's populism facing) is as embarrassing as it can get for a 20 year old pop freak weaned on the UK inkies. Perhaps for some of the older readers of this forum it's different, but for me, it's a stab in the dark with a 1/2 knife.

For people really in tune with "The Kids", NME should cover: Zed Bias, DJ Dee Kline, Stanton Warriors, Life Without Buildings, Timbaland, Swizz Beats, Leaf and Strut Records, and Ty and the whole Big Dada stable in greater depth.

But that's your problem, not mine.

*ahem*

Sounds like they're just trendchasing to me. I wouldn't worry either way.

Oh, and btw the recent rap issue was laughable. Isn't this the same magazine that condemned rap for years and years for sexism and homophobia, but now is praising it to the skies because a white rapper has made it palatable? Aside from Missy, when was the last time a black artist was on the cover?

The NME should front-cover Life Without Buildings and Zed Bias, maybe. But to leap from a Stereophonics diet to that kind of stuff would be too much too soon, and minor artists need a context in which to be understood anyhow. The current trend - to cover exciting, young music and to not assume that said music has to be a) rock, b) unrelated to everything else people do - is a positive one. You still get the feeling that everything's being seen in a rock light - look, look, it's drugs, dance music is hedonistic like rock! But even so it's a step up.

Yes, it's cyclical. But the NME in the mid-80s was good, and it would be nice for the NME in the early-00s to be good too, for however long it lasts. The big danger as Nicole rightly suggests is that it will hardly last at all as people drop it immediately. (Sales of the NME notoriously drop when black artists get on the cover).

The other thing Nicole says which I totally agree with is the writing quality thing. I bought the Missy issue and while it was refreshing to read the interview there didn't seem to be much meat otherwise, Peter Robinson's entertaining singles column aside.

From a personal POV, though obviously FT is nothing to do with any of this it's satisfying to feel like I backed the 'right horse' as it were, though the pro-pop bit is only a bit of what we're about.

I think it's nice that the NME comes out weekly, and so it's got that over american music mags, but the NME (and the rest of the british media) seem only to listen when there's a loud record promoter on the other end of the phone, whereas underground buzz/excitement is enough to get a review into spin or magnet.

Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite has hit out at UK music weekly NME, branding them "pompous, disgusting and patronising".

"No, nothing shocks me anymore and that paper's just got really bad."

Of course, the NME has *always* aimed at students, ever since about 1970 when it very nearly went under after the arrival of new magazines aiming at the pop market which it had covered in the 60s, and oriented itself towards what was then laughingly called "progressive music". Since then it has reflected the narrowest and most up-its-own-arse aspect of university common-room prejudices (all those 70s ELP fans' letters sneering at The Sweet and calling Kraftwerk obscure bollocks were echoed in the anti-dance kneejerkery of some Smiths fans, the anti-intellectualism of the Roses / Mondays worshippers, the smug cawing over the worthlessness of hip-hop integrated into Oasism, and now everything about the whole Starsailor / Alfie / Turin Brakes axis), but sporadically come into its own and run free. The last couple of months have indeed seen a minor revival - the hip-hop issue *was* pathetically "let's get with the trend", but better that than pretending that dying British indie is the only way forward. And the stuff on Missy Elliot and the Miami Dance Conference *has* been refreshing; it's good to see the NME taking a pro-pop line for once. The "state of Britain's youth" issue was mildly alarmist sensation / event-seeking, but had a few good points.

However I share Tom and Marcello's fears that commercial pressures and the vestiges of indie-kid narrow-mindedness will work against these signs of life.

Anyway, enough moaning.

The NME feels very pleased with having outlasted Sounds and the Maker, but a gut feeling tells me it will no longer be with us in five years time.

Who is 'we' here? A very select group, perhaps. I have most certainly never, ever said that anyone or anything anywhere should have anything to do with 'Popstars', 'Missy Elliot' or 'the Miami Dance Conference'. I have a feeling that all of them are probably atrocious.

Plus! I was responding to previous threads about the NME which broadly seemed to be concluding - well the NME is crap because all it covers is indie music, where are the hip-hop and dance and indeed pop features? Or that was the - biased - impression I was left with. Clearly there are dissenters, prominently DJ Martian who is no doubt as unhappy with Missy Elliott coverage as he is with more Terris, and the Pinefox, whose vision for the NME, if he has one, eludes me.

Plus plus! It was rhetorical - I could have said "some of you" but it would have got less people involved in the thread I judged.

Editor: Steady 'Steady' Mike Chief Feature Writer: Stevie 'Edna' T Think Pieces: Tom 'It's Elusive' Ewing Roving Reporter: Tim 'Reality' Hopkins Letters Editor: David 'Incredible' Moore

Once every five years, Steady M takes pity on me and commissions a major retrospective on Harriet Wheeler. I dig out the last retrospective and add 200 words based on HW's activities, as known to me, over the previous five years. I struggle to reach 200. No-one notices that I am repeating previous retrospective.

Next week its Destiny's Child - another useless front cover.

Destiny's Child - and the NYC issue for that matter - pretty much confirm my original qn, i.e. the NME is on the right track currently. Themed issues = good. Putting the people making exciting pop records on the cover = good. The records Destiny's Child are making at the moment are terrific - there shouldn't even be a question about them being on the NME front cover.

We didn't know where to put ourselves.

However the NME should at least have a 1 page feature of Ulver.

and a significant album review - in the old MM circa late 80s- a band released a significant and exceptional album then they would be rewarded with a large review (column inches) regardless of size profile.

I will be surprised if the NME review the Ulver album - as the NME are ignorant bastards when it comes to non US/British bands.

For the curious Ulver - Perdition City

Ulver - Perdition City - is released April 23th on Jester Records through Shellshock/Pinnancle in the UK.

There are also a number of important points on the NME current music coverage - that I want to expand on. Later.

x0x0

start a twitter war abt swellsy w/luke haines to promote my book y/n

if there was an a-hole that needed murking up, it's that fool.

y

he has 8,000+ followers, but most of those followers have +/- 90 followers and seem to be suffering frontal lobe damage so i'd say n

that's several thousand more than i'd've guessed and i enjoy much of his work

his professional baddie shtick is so lame tho

its hilarious that he's so anti-music-press when he is the archetypal only-the-music-press-cares-about-him artist.

I'll take him on with my 14 followers (4 of them porn bots).

4 Non Bots

Shenanigans

https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/former-nme-editor-reveals-shenanigans-12145655?x

assumed this would be McDickless but c'mon, you could have used a trigger warning

lover Swells so much I attempted to special-order his novel from bookshops in Australia for years

thanks autocorrect

I must have stopped reading NME before Swells got good, because he wasn't when I was reading it.

I can't stand Luke Haines anymore. His bitter bullshit was clouding my Twitter feed for far too long. I'm not even sure he's serious, but I think he is based on how badly he reacts to any criticism he receives. I once saw him cry his eyes out to some website's editor because a writer panned his third or fourth greatest hits collection; they actually took down the review, too.

more like luke heinous amirite

Think I've said this twice before on here and I wasn't going to again, but fuck it - Swells (and Johnny Cigarettes) put me off all music journalism for a long time, I just found many things he wrote to be unnecessarily nasty, not usually in a constructive way, it just seemed vindictive without providing any greater insight. I appreciate that he sometimes stood up for good causes (like with Shaun Ryder and homophobia above) but feel like his canonisation is at least partly based upon the old 'hip young gunslinger' fantasy which is of interest to nobody except music journalists (by this I mean the idea that quality is judged on how angry and passionate you are rather than whether you actually have anything to say) (I may be wrong about this - if so please show me something genuinely good he wrote about music)
In any case, I felt the NME of the mid to late 90s had an overwhelming air of contempt for both musicians and their listeners and rang hollow for anything it was supposedly championing - it wasn't anywhere near as bad as the Conor McNicholas days, but as vapid as his NME was, it was Swells who stopped me buying the paper, not him.

Had stopped reading NME by then tbh. Only familiar with early social realist Swells

The actual final cover:

.@stefflondon is Britain's hottest new rapper – meet her in this week's free NME magazine

Out Friday. Get your copy 👉 https://t.co/VfiZ6vWj1K pic.twitter.com/YKJoxGsnd8

— NME (@NME) March 8, 2018

lol, ok, good for them, not the worst way to go out: final cover star a birmingham-hackney girl who speaks fluent dutch

is that Geri's dress?

Swells wrote an article about punk in that appeared in an early 90s issue of UK comicbook Crisis, unfortunately doesn't seem to be online but I remember finding it incredibly exhilarating, maybe even "formative" when I read it as a teenager (in the late 90s after buying the comic second-hand) though tbf as far as I recall most of the article wasn't about music per se, more about the idea that anyone could create art regardless of technical skill or background (I remember that when I read Mark Fisher's K Punk blog a few years later I thought they seemed to be coming from a similar place in some ways)

I only commented to Haines that if he ever got bored with his sour Toby Young in a indie-hat persona he might find something better to do with his time to slag off ppl who are no longer able to defend themselves. And he called me a halfwit and blocked me!

I found the cult of Swells irritating too - for the same sense of unearnedness mentioned above. Perhaps I came to him to late but it was rage and bile as motor as far as I could make out, in place of insight.

I only commented to Haines that if he ever got bored with his sour Toby Young in a indie-hat persona he might find something better to do with his time to slag off ppl who are no longer able to defend themselves. And he called me a halfwit and blocked me!

his skin appears to be thinner than his hair

Haines is just a Poundland MES isn't he? Without the wit, or tunes. And imagine MES searching for himself on Twitter.

he was called smith

The Auteurs were great. They had lots of tunes. He's a sad, bitter dude past his prime, though. His Twitter is a broken record of negativity.

Yeah he was one of the people along with Graham Linehan who i followed was quickly horrified by then unfollowed. Twitter is such a bad look for some semi-celebs.

He's responsible for my favourite tweet of all time

Rag n Bone man sounds like Jimmy Nail.

— luke haines❌ (@LukeHaines_News) June 25, 2017

i agree with matt johnson re his band.

Swells rarely had much insight about music, but he was very funny. Turning in an entire feature about a band you freely say are bad but had a great time with is an excellent use of the music press. With 900 pieces a week across the inkies, it's fine to show kids that you can just write an entertaining piece, not attempt to tell them what they should buy. Here's a joke, here's some invective, here's some human interest, go freelance a career.

didn't he once use the immortal phrase "the fetid stench of human cock-meat" in a Green Day review or something. I'd stopped reading him at that point tbh, but laughed when I read it quoted somewhere years later. G search doesn't doesn't yield anything so I might be just making this up.

He rarely had much insight about music but he had a lot about the people who wrote about music and about the music industry itself. As (very funny) meta-commentary he was great.

I loved these Swells remembrances bitd

http://thequietus.com/articles/02000-steven-wells-a-tribute

sad that his final piece -- "in extremis: steven wells says goodbye" for the philadelphia weekly -- doesn't seem to be on the internet any more

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/mar/09/he-tried-to-get-out-of-the-car-at-80mph-the-stories-behind-nmes-greatest-covers

Don't think I knew that Penny Reel was AKA Paul Simon before!

he's not, he's pete simons :)

this is either forgetfulness on viv's part or the long-stewed beef of some ancient feud

Grauniad?

i blame Alba

for some reason the swells phrase which sticks with me comes from a mid-90s interview where he takes issue with some feeble waif of a frontman (possibly rick witter) and asks if he'd not prefer to be stalking the stage 'encased in 250lbs of rock-hard raw beef'

just realised that i have academic access to rock's back pages and thus i can confirm that swells did indeed use that exact phrase in conversation with rick witter in an article published on 9 may 1998, meaning it's been rattling around my brain for almost exactly 20 years :(

"When I am dead and opened, you shall find Calais engraved on my heart" — Queen Mary

^^it's like this but world-historical

also we have to open your head

i can't remember this morning's commute but i can remember something an nme hack yelled at the singer from shed seven three decades ago

i feel like my head is already open tbh

irl lolled at rock's back pages revelation

A classic from the the Steve Sutherland era

Oof. Here's the original NME review of Baduizm. Yikes. pic.twitter.com/RXCXw6LSwY

— Caspar Salmon (@CasparSalmon) July 5, 2018

Music magazine NME's switch to all digital format led to a 72% collapse in reader engagement:
https://www.mediaite.com/print/heres-what-magazines-lose-when-they-go-digital-only/

Online readers of NME only spend an average of about three minutes a month with the publication, per the study, while print readers spent an average of about a half-hour a week with the magazine.

[...]

NME was founded in 1952. The publication was acquired earlier this year by the Singapore-based company BandLab Technologies and was previously owned by Time Inc., which made the decision to end the print product.

Well, there it isn't.

Longtime NME media editor and features writer Gavin Martin has died at the age of 60.