When i was a young kid in the 90s I used to buy Smash Hits magazine. When Britpop happened, it led me to lots of great indie and alternative bands, and suddenly I'd grown out of the bubblegum teen pop gossip that Smash Hits specialised in. So i upgraded to buying the more advanced NME instead, where informative, well-written articles would introduce us to important musicians that would go on to become legends. There would be insightful reviews of the latest albums, and NME journalists would dedicate their time to watching gigs up and down the country and make the effort to discover exciting new artists. For about 5 or 6 years, the magazine was like a bible to me. I bought it every week. The Evening Session and the John Peel show would be the places to hear the best new music, and the NME would be the place to read about it. If one of my favorite bands had new music coming, this was the magazine that made you aware of it.
But by the 2000s they seemed more interested in dedicating time to only the most mainstream indie bands. Sales dipped. I stopped buying the magazine in about 2003. As time went by sales dropped further. The price went up, the amount of pages went down, and the magazine thought that the solution to their decline was to start featuring more mainstream pop acts. If they wanted more variety, a good idea would have been employing experts in certain fields, like electronica, hip hop and metal. Their staff could've earned their pay by actively searching for new bands and artists to promote and support, rather than just following the most lowest-common-denominator trends.
In time, the only indie bands that were popular enough to include on the front cover were all getting older. The magazine didn't think the likes of Teleman, The Hosts and Superfood were big enough to attract readers, so they kept on relying on veterans like Blur, the Manics and The Stone Roses for cover material. Brilliant bands obviously, but people were beginning to complain that the NEW Musical Express should be showcasing new acts rather than the same bands who had graced the cover in the 90s. The magazine faced a dilemma: continue their reputation as an indie rock based publication and be limited to older, more successful bands, or abandon their ethics and chase popularity by featuring new acts who were big. But by that point, the only acts enjoying mainstream success were pop singers and commercial rappers. Gradually more manufactured acts began appearing in the pages, and the NME started to look very shallow in comparison to the growing number of independent websites that championed lots of new alternative and underground music.
The magazine's Facebook page now seems to post more showbiz gossip rather than important music news. Recent "music news" stories have included a pile of clothes that supposedly resembled Michael Jackson, some gossip about Rihanna dating Drake, the latest items in Beyonce's fashion range, and Justin Bieber's latest girlfriend being insulted on Twitter. While its readers expressed dismay at the lack of credible music articles, the NME's Facebook page thought it'd be a good idea to use their time to write an "article" about three women on the Jeremy Kyle Show arguing over who took a shit in a fridge. Seriously.
Then there's the pathetic attempts at trying to stir up controversy. Noel Gallagher made a great point about the mentality of people who are prepared to pay £5 for a cup of coffee while downloading music for free and seeing no reason to pay for it. You'd think a music publication would encourage its readers to value music. You'd expect them to support not only musicians but record labels and of course the vitally important record shops. But no, not the NME. Instead they published a blog with the title "Come On Noel, If People Could Get Coffee For Free They Wouldn't Pay For That Either". Amongst the content in this ridiculous article, there's the line about "moving with the times" as if stealing music and giving the artist nothing in return is OK because paying for music should be a thing of the past. It seems that if something is new then it must be "progress" no matter how bad or damaging it is. And disagreeing with it is a "entitled, freeloading attitude". My local record shop is now reconsidering whether it should continue stocking their magazine or not.
But last week's issue (September 23) marks a new low. It's officially come to the point where the NME now has no credibility to speak of. What has disgusted and disappointed me so much? This:
It literally couldn't be more dumbed down. It's sadly symbolic of what happened to the magazine: sales dipped and it died. But not a dignified end where it could rest in peace. Instead it returned as a zombie, with a decayed appearance and no brain.
While they advertised pizzas and cheered on manufactured non-entities, that same week a superb, bizarre and innovative duo called Soccer96 released a fantastic album called 'As Above So Below'. It was great and hugely surprising to see an insight into the album on the NME's Facebook page, but this piece was pretty much the members of Soccer96 detailing the record themselves, saving the NME any hard work. Not that listening to and reviewing a new album should be hard work if you're supposed to be a music journalist. But the biggest issue here is the fact that this feature wasn't part of that week's actual magazine, and the pizza-eating habits of the woman from N-Dubz was. The term "backwards" is an understatement.
All this is just part of a bigger problem that is dragging mainstream music further into the abyss, where "poptimism" goes way too far and becomes more like "popaganda". Thankfully I don't have the sort of ignorant hate i used to have for pop music. We've heard some amazing pop songs in recent times, and these songs are to be celebrated. However most pop music in this day and age is just excess, dead wood. The vast majority of the acts releasing these songs are only contributing vocals while others write and create the music. Trying to pass these mere singers off as "artists" and put them in the same league as the multi-talented geniuses of our time is degrading and reductive. The industry people seem to be doing all they can to fill the music scene with acts that the older generation can't stand, so they think "there's nothing good out there anymore" and give up listening to and buying new music. Which means less competition for the major label pop acts, whose audience are mostly kids and teenagers. Now the greedy pop machine wants to eat up every part of alternative culture too, to make sure they've completely stamped out the threat of indie and rock returning to the charts.
I hope someone at the NME reads this and realises they've failed massively. And while you're here, here's some advice: just stop now to save yourselves (and the music scene that you're supposed to represent) more embarrassment. Change your name to Celebrity Pop Gossip Weekly and do whatever you want. Just don't call it the NME and destroy the memory of an iconic British institution. Hang your lazy heads in shame.