The
New Musical Express (better known as
the
NME) is a
popular music magazine
in the United Kingdom which has been published weekly since March
1952. It was the first British paper to include a singles chart,
which first appeared in the 14 November 1952 edition. The
magazine's commercial heyday was during the 1970s when it became
the best-selling British music magazine. During the period 1972 to
1976 it was particularly associated with
gonzo journalism, then became closely
associated with
punk rock through the
writing of
Tony
Parsons and
Julie Burchill.
Krissi Murison was named the
magazine's eleventh editor on July 29, 2009. The magazine's first
female editor, she took over on September 1, 2009.
History
The paper's first issue was published on 7 March 1952 after the
Musical Express and Accordion Weekly was bought by London
music promoter
Maurice Kinn, and
relaunched as the
New Musical Express. It was initially
published in a non-glossy
tabloid format on
standard
newsprint. On 14 November 1952,
taking its cue from the U.S. magazine
Billboard, it created the first
UK Singles Chart. The first of
these was, in contrast to more recent charts, a top twelve sourced
by the magazine itself from sales in regional stores around the UK.
The first number one was "
Here In My
Heart" by
Al Martino.
1960s
During the 1960s the paper championed the new British groups
emerging at the time.
The Beatles and
The Rolling Stones were
frequently featured on the front cover. These and other artists
also appeared at the NME Poll Winners Concert, an awards event that
featured artists voted as most popular by the paper's readers. The
concert also featured an awards ceremony where the poll winners
would collect their awards. The NME Poll Winners Concerts took
place between 1963 and 1966. They were filmed, edited and then
transmitted on British television a few weeks after they had taken
place.
The latter part of the 1960s saw the paper chart the rise of
psychedelia and the continued
dominance of British groups of the time. During this period some
sections of pop music began to be designated as Rock. The paper
became engaged in a sometimes tense rivalry with its fellow weekly
music paper
Melody Maker,
however
NME sales were healthy with the paper selling as
many as 200,000 issues per week which made it one of the UK's
biggest sellers.
1970s
By the early 1970s
NME had lost ground to the
Melody Maker as its coverage of music had
failed to keep pace with the development of
rock music, particularly during the early years
of
psychedelia and
prog. In early 1972, with the paper on the
verge of closure by its owners
IPC (who
had bought the paper from Kinn in 1963), Alan Smith was made editor
and the paper's coverage changed radically from an uncritical and
rather reverential showbiz-oriented paper to something intended to
be smarter, hipper, more cynical and funnier than any mainstream
British music paper had previously been (an approach influenced
mainly by writers such as
Tom Wolfe and
Lester Bangs). In order to achieve
this, Smith raided the
underground
press for its best writers, such as
Charles Shaar Murray and
Nick Kent, and recruited other writers such as
Tony Tyler,
Ian
MacDonald and
Neil Norman. As a
result of its incorporation of journalists from outside the music
scene, in musicians' jargon it rapidly became known as "The Enemy"
for its often scathing reviews.
By the time Smith handed the editor's chair to
Nick Logan in mid-1973, the paper was selling
nearly 300,000 copies per week and was outstripping its other
weekly rivals,
Melody Maker,
Disc,
Record Mirror
and
Sounds.
The year 1976 saw
Punk arrive on what some
people perceived to be a stagnant music scene and
NME,
like other "specialist" publications, was slow to cover this new
phenomenon. In an attempt to boost sales, the paper advertised for
a pair of
"hip young gunslingers" to join their editorial
staff. This resulted in the recruitment of
Tony Parsons and
Julie Burchill. The pair rapidly became
champions of the Punk scene and created a new tone for the paper.
Bands who a few months previously had been criticising the
NME were now eager to be included. Around this time, one
NME staffer,
Chrissie Hynde, quit her
day job to become a full-time
punk rocker:
after being an early member of
The
Damned, she eventually started her own band,
The Pretenders.
Tony Parsons' time
at NME is reflected in his 2005 novel
Stories We Could Tell,
about the misadventures of three young music paper journalists on
the night of August 16, 1977, the night
Elvis Presley died.
In 1978 Logan moved on, and his deputy Neil Spencer was made
editor. One of his earliest tasks was to oversee a redesign of the
paper by
Barney Bubbles, which
included the logo still used on the paper's masthead today (albeit
in a modified form) - this made its first appearance towards the
end of 1978. Spencer's time as editor also coincided with the
emergence of
Post-Punk acts such as
Joy Division and
Gang of Four. This development was
reflected in the writing of
Ian Penman
and
Paul Morley.
Danny Baker, who began as an NME writer around
this time, had a more straightforward and populist style.
The paper also became more openly political during the time of
Punk. Its cover would sometimes feature youth-oriented issues
rather than a musical act. The paper took an editorial stance
against political parties like the
National Front. The election of
Margaret Thatcher in 1979 saw the
paper take a broadly
socialist stance for
much of the following decade.
1980s
In 1981 the
NME released the influential
C81 cassette tape in conjunction with
Rough Trade Records, available to
readers by mail order at a low price. The tape featured a number of
then up-and-coming bands, including
Aztec
Camera,
Orange Juice,
Linx and
Scritti
Politti, as well as a number of more established artists such
as
Robert Wyatt,
Pere Ubu,
Buzzcocks
and
Ian Dury. A second tape,
C86, was released in 1986.
The
NME responded to the
Thatcher era by espousing
socialism through movements such as
Red Wedge. In the week of the
1987 election the
paper featured an interview with the leader of the
Labour Party,
Neil
Kinnock, who appeared on the paper's cover. He had appeared on
the cover once before, in April 1985.
Writers at this time included
Mat Snow,
Barney Hoskyns,
Paolo Hewitt,
Danny Kelly,
Chris Bohn (known in his later years at the paper
as
Biba Kopf),
Steven Wells and
David Quantick.
However sales were dropping, and by 1985
NME had hit a
rough patch and was in danger of closing. During this period (now
under the editorship of
Ian Pye, who
replaced Neil Spencer in 1985), they were split between those who
wanted to write about
hip hop, a genre
that was relatively new to the UK, and those who wanted to stick to
rock music. Sales were apparently lower when photos of hip hop
artists appeared on the front and this led to the paper suffering
as the lack of direction became even more apparent to readers. A
number of features entirely unrelated to music appeared on the
cover in this era, including a piece by
William Leith on computer crime and articles
by
Stuart Cosgrove on such subjects
as the politics of sport and the presence of
American troops in Britain, with
Elvis Presley appearing on the cover
not for musical reasons but as a political symbol.
The
NME was generally thought to be rudderless at this
time, with staff pulling simultaneously in a number of directions
in what came to be known as the "hip-hop wars". It was hemorrhaging
readers who were deserting
NME in favour of
Nick Logan's two creations
The Face and
Smash Hits. This was brought to a head when
the paper was about to publish a poster of the cover of the
Dead Kennedys' album
Frankenchrist. The cover was a painting
by
H.R. Giger
called
Penis Landscape, then a
subject of an obscenity lawsuit in the US. In the summer and autumn
of 1987, three senior editorial staff were sacked, including Pye,
media editor
Stuart Cosgrove and art
editor
Joe Ewart. Former Sounds editor
Alan Lewis was brought in to
rescue the paper, mirroring
Alan
Smith's revival a decade and a half before.
Some commented at this time that the
NME had become less
intellectual in its writing style and less inventive musically.
Initially,
NME writers themselves were ill at ease with
the new regime, with most signing a letter of no confidence in Alan
Lewis shortly after he took over. However, this new direction for
the
NME proved to be a commercial success and the paper
brought in new writers such as
Andrew
Collins,
Stuart Maconie,
Mary Anne Hobbs and
Steve Lamacq to give it a stronger identity and
sense of direction, although
Mark Sinker
left in 1988 after the paper refused to publish a negative review
he wrote of
U2's
Rattle
and Hum.
Initially many of the bands on the C86 tape
were championed as well as the rise of Goth rock bands but new bands such as Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses were coming out of Manchester
. One scene over these years was
Acid House which spawned
Madchester which helped give the paper a new
lease of life. By the end of the decade,
Danny Kelly had replaced Alan Lewis
as editor.
1990s
Blur vs. Oasis issue 12 August
1995.
The start of 1990 saw the paper in the thick of the Madchester
scene, and covering the new British indie bands and
shoegazers.
By the end
of 1990, the Madchester scene was dying off, acid house was
suffering from being the subject of a vigorous campaign to outlaw
it by the John Major government, and
NME had started to report on new bands coming from the US,
mainly from Seattle
.
These bands would form a new movement called
Grunge and by far the most popular bands were
Nirvana and
Pearl Jam. The
NME took to Grunge very
slowly ("Sounds" was the first British music paper to write about
grunge with John Robb being the first person to interview Nirvana.
Melody Maker was more enthusiastic early on, largely
through the efforts of
Everett True,
who had previously written for
NME under the name "The
Legend!"). For the most part,
NME only became interested
in grunge after
Nevermind became
popular. Although it still supported new British bands, the paper
was dominated by American bands, as was the music scene in
general.
Although the period from 1991 to 1993 was dominated by American
bands like Nirvana, this did not mean that British bands were being
ignored. The
NME still covered the Indie scene and was
involved with a war of words with a new band called
Manic Street Preachers who were
criticising the
NME for what they saw as an elitist view
of bands they would champion. This came to a head in 1991 when
during an interview with
Steve Lamacq,
Richey Edwards would confirm
the band's position by carving "4real" into his arm with a razor
blade.
By 1992, the Madchester scene had died and along with The Manics,
some new British bands were beginning to appear.
Suede were quickly hailed by the paper as an
alternative to the heavy Grunge sound and hailed as the start of a
new British music scene. Grunge however was still the dominant
force, but the rise of new British bands would become something the
paper would focus more and more upon.
In 1992, the
NME also had a very public dispute with its
former hero
Morrissey due to allegations
of him using racist lyrics and imagery.
This erupted after a
concert at Finsbury
Park
where Morrissey was seen to drape himself in a
Union Flag. The series of articles
which followed in the next edition of
NME soured
Morrissey's relationship with the paper and this led to Morrissey
not speaking to the paper again for over a decade. When Morrissey
did eventually speak to the NME in 2003 he made it clear that he
was content with speaking to the paper again as the three writers
concerned had long since left.
Later in 1992,
Steve
Sutherland, previously assistant editor of
Melody Maker, was brought in as the
NME's editor to replace
Danny Kelly.
Andrew Collins,
Stuart Maconie,
Steve
Lamacq and
Mary Anne Hobbs all
left the
NME in protest, and moved to
Select; Collins, Maconie and Lamacq
would all also write for
Q,
while Lamacq would eventually join
Melody Maker in 1997.
Kelly, Collins, Maconie, Lamacq and Hobbs would all subsequently
become prominent broadcasters with
BBC Radio
1 as it reinvented itself under
Matthew Bannister.
In April 1994 Nirvana frontman
Kurt
Cobain was found dead, a story which affected not only his fans
and readers of the
NME, but would see a massive change in
British music. Grunge was about to be replaced by
Britpop, a new form of music influenced by British
music of the 1960s and British culture. The phrase was coined by
NME after the band
Blur
released their album
Parklife in
the same month of Cobain's death. Britpop began to fill the musical
and cultural void left after Cobain's death, and Blur's success,
along with the rise of a new group from Manchester called
Oasis saw Britpop explode for the rest of 1994.
By the end of the year Blur and Oasis were the two biggest bands in
the UK and sales of the
NME were increasing thanks to the
Britpop effect.
1995 saw the NME cover many of these
new bands and saw many of these bands play the NME Stage
at that year's Glastonbury Festival
where the paper had been sponsoring the second
stage at the festival since 1993. This would be their last
year sponsoring the stage, subsequently the stage would be known as
the 'Other Stage'.
August 1995 saw Blur and Oasis plan to release singles on the same
day in a mass of media publicity. Steve Sutherland leapt on this
and stuck the story on the front page of the paper. This saw
Sutherland come in for criticism for playing up the duel between
the bands. Blur won the 'race' for the top of the charts, and the
resulting fallout from the publicity led to the paper enjoying
increased sales during the 1990s as Britpop became the dominant
musical genre. After this peak the paper saw a slow decline as
Britpop burned itself fairly rapidly out over the next few years.
This left the paper directionless again, and attempts to embrace
the rise of
DJ culture in the late 1990s only led
to the paper being criticised for not supporting rock or indie
music. The paper did attempt to return to its highly politicized
1980s incarnation by running a front cover story in March 1998
condemning
Tony Blair, who had previously
associated himself with Britpop bands such as
Oasis, and this received a certain level of
attention in the wider media, but was generally not seen as
coherent or well-argued.
Sutherland did attempt to cover newer bands but one cover feature
on
Godspeed You!
Black Emperor in 1999
saw the paper dip to a sales low, and Sutherland later stated in
his weekly editorial that he regretted putting them on the cover.
For many this was seen as an affront to the principles of the paper
and sales reached a low point at the turn of the millennium.
2000s
From the issue of March 21, 1998 onwards, the paper has no longer
been printed on newsprint, and more recently it has shifted to
tabloid size: it has full, glossy, colour covers.
In 2000 Steve Sutherland left to become Brand Director of the
NME, replaced as editor by 26 year-old
Melody Maker writer
Ben Knowles. The same year saw the closure of
the
Melody Maker (which
officially merged with the
NME) and many speculated the
NME would be next as the weekly music magazine market was
shrinking - the monthly magazine
Select which had thrived especially
during Britpop was closed down within a week of
Melody
Maker. In the early 2000s the
NME also attempted
somewhat to broaden its coverage again, running cover stories on
hip-hop acts such as
Jay-Z and
Missy Elliott, electronic music pioneer
Aphex Twin,
Popstars winners
Hear'say and R&B groups like
Destiny's Child, but as in the 1980s these
proved unpopular with much of the paper's readership, and were soon
dropped.
In 2002
Conor McNicholas was
appointed as editor. With a new wave of photographers including
Dean Chalkley,
Andrew Kendall,
James
Looker &
Pieter Van Hattem
and a high turnover of young writers, the paper slowly began to
increase in sales. The
NME reasserted its position as an
influence in new music and helping to break bands including
The Strokes,
The
Vines,
The Libertines and
The White Stripes alongside less
successful bands such as
The Von
Bondies and
The Cooper
Temple Clause; this the paper heralded as "The New Rock
Revolution". It focused on new British bands such as
Franz Ferdinand,
Bloc Party and the
Kaiser Chiefs who emerged as "indie music"
continued to grow in commercial success. Later,
Arctic Monkeys became the standard bearers of
the post-
Libertines crop of indie bands,
being both successfully championed by the
NME and
receiving widespread commercial and critical success.
In December 2005 accusations were made that the
NME end of
year poll had been edited for commercial and political reasons.
These criticisms were rebutted by McNicholas, who claimed that
webzine Londonist.com had got hold of an early draft of the
poll.
After the 2008 NME Award nominations, Caroline Sullivan of
The Guardian criticised the
magazine's lack of diversity, saying:
In May 2008 the magazine received a re-design, with the magazine
being aimed at an older readership with a less poppy, more
authoritative tone. The first issue of the re-design featured a
free seven-inch
Coldplay vinyl single.
Circulation of the magazine has fallen continuously since 2003. In
the first half of 2009, the magazine's circulation was 40,948, 44%
down on a 2003 figure of 72,442.
NME.COM
In 1996 under the stewardship of
NME editor Steve
Sutherland and then
NME publisher Robert Tame, the
NME started its website
NME.COM.
Its first editor was Brendan Fitzgerald. Later Anthony Thornton
redesigned the site, focusing on music news. In November 1999 the
site hosted the UK's first webcast of
Suede,
'Live In Japan'. In 2001 the site gave away a free mp3 of
The Strokes debut single "
Last Nite" a week before its release. The site
rallied around
The Libertines after
their debut single "
What A Waster"
dropped from playlists due to its profanity - giving away the
single as a free mp3 download.
The website was awarded Online Magazine Of The Year in 1999 and
2001; Anthony Thornton was awarded Website Editor Of The Year on
three occasions - 2001 and 2002 (British Society Of Magazine
Editors) and 2002 (Periodical Publishers Association).
In 2004,
Ben Perreau joined NME.COM as
the website's third editor. He relaunched and redeveloped the title
in September 2005 and the focus was migrated towards video, audio
and the wider music community. It was awarded 'Best Music Website'
at the
Record Of The Day awards in
October 2005. In 2006 NME.COM celebrated with a party at London's
KOKO featuring Leicester band
Kasabian and
was subsequently awarded the BT Digital Music Award for Best Music
Magazine and the first 'Chairman's Award' from the Association of
Online Publishers awarded by the Chairman,
Simon Waldman in recognition of its pioneering
role in its ten year history.
In 2007 NME.COM was launched in the USA with additional staff and
plans to launch its Breaking Bands contest and the
NME Awards across the Atlantic.
The site now provides news, photos, video, blogs, reviews, gig
listings and videos as well as featuring downloads, merchandising
and message boards.
The Website over the last year has shifted it focus to also include
tabloid gossip alongside its traditional music news, with regular
news articles entitled "Daily Ligger" and "Tabloid Hell".
In 2007 NME.com had a free download from
The
Verve, the first songs The Verve released since they got back
together.
In October 2007 David Moynihan joined as the website's fourth
editor. In 2008 the site won the BT Digital Music Award for Best
Music Magazine, plus the Association of Online Publishers' Best
Editorial Team Award, the British Society of Magazine Editors
Website Editor of the Year and the Record Of The Day Award for Best
Music Website. In June 2009 NME.COM won PPA Interactive Consumer
Magazine of the Year (Periodical Publishers Association).
According to the latest traffic figures,
NME.COM now has 3.5 million monthly unique users
(ABCe, June 2008), making it one of the largest magazine websites
in the UK.
NME covers
NME Awards
NME Awards is an awards show held every year to celebrate the best
new music of the past year. The nominations and eventual winners
are voted for by the readers of the magazine.
NME Tours
Logo of the 2006 NME Awards
Tour.
NME sponsors a tour of the United Kingdom by up-and-coming bands
each year.
NME Originals
In 2002 the
NME started publishing a series of themed
magazines reprinting vintage articles, interviews and reviews from
the NME archives. The magazine special editions were called
NME Originals, with some
featuring articles from other music titles owned by IPC, including
Melody Maker,
Rave and
Uncut magazines. Notable issues so far
have featured
Radiohead,
The Beatles,
Punk rock,
Gothic rock,
Britpop,
The Rolling
Stones,
Mod,
Nirvana, and the solo years of
The Beatles. The series has had several editors,
the most prominent of whom have been Steve Sutherland and
Chris Hunt. The most recent issue of NME
Originals was published in 2005.
See also
References
- [1] "New NME editor named" Jul 29, 2009
- [2] "Girl power rules as NME gets first female
editor" By Rob Sharp, Thursday July 30 2009
- [3]
- "Highlights from the Britpop year", BBC
News, August 15 2005
- "NME defends album of year poll", The
Guardian, December 2 2005
- Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - music: Where are
the women?
- Paul Gorman. In Their Own Write: Adventures in the Music
Press (Sanctuary, 2001;ISBN 1-86074-341-2)
External links
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