THE WORST NME COVER OF ALL TIME

It depends who they are and how they write. Age isn't the issue. A 20-year-old wouldn't have stuck me as a bratty young writer when I was 15 and devouring three music papers a week.

Not that I have a dog in this fight, I got old and stopped reading.

The problem isn't whether or not a writer is bratty. It's whether or not they can write well. Dull, inept writing is far more common (though less annoying) than snarky gobshites.

bratty young writers who are good = classic
bratty young writers who are also dull and inept = cringe

like, brattiness by-the-numbers is like...what even is the point of being bratty and obnoxious if you're saying things we've heard before again & again & again

Morley and Penman were on the NME by the time they were 20 (so were Burchill and Baker) and they had a lot more to offer than the recycled PR blether with hyuk-hyuk lolz sauce on the side you tend to see these days. I find it immensely dull and inept, wherever I find it.

Marcello, as someone born in 1990 I - obviously - wasn't around for Morley et al. I read read every issue of NME between 2002-2006 but couldn't pinpoint a single WOW! article in that batch from memory...what was it about the paper at that time that allowed Morley/Penman to write the kind of stuff they did? Why has that changed now? Aside from advertising/internet attention spans etc.

I can't think of a single place to pitch longform, considered music writing to in the UK, maybe outside of the Quietus. Someone please please tell me if I'm wrong.

and don't suggest noisey/thump because the noisey editor went psycho on me and now im banned from contacting either place ever again.

Rest assured, I wasn’t going to recommend the noisy/thump option.

The only reasonable answer I can find to your question is that in the seventies publishers hadn’t quite worked out what was what, so if a magazine was ticking over well enough in terms of circulation and/or reputation it could more or less do what it liked. Because, I suspect, editors at that time tended to throw anything at the wall to see what would stick, greater chances could be taken and there were greater opportunities to be had.

You could say that Q Magazine etc. in the mid-eighties onward did for long-form thinkpiece-type writing but that doesn’t explain the incredible creativity at work in, say, Melody Maker from the mid-80s to the mid-90s. But then IPC gets bought out by multinationals, the internet starts muscling in, and it all ends up becoming about demographics; giving its readers, and "more importantly," its advertisers, what they think they want.

I don't mind young writers having a small degree of "attitude" in their writing style, but over the last couple of years I've been reading "pieces" in places like NME Online and I've often come away with the feeling that the writer is just being snarky for the sake of it, without offering anything else in terms of substance regarding what it is they're writing about. By that, I mean that there's room for a degree of "edge" within a thoughtful, balanced and factually accurate critical piece, but what I feel some of these writers are offering is all snark and not a lot else. I just come away from reading some of these "pieces" feeling that they've been designed to get a negative reaction out of whoever reads them. It's a shame, because when music writing is at its best, it can be insightful and informative and make you look something from an angle you've never considered before.

I don't want to sound like a kiss-ass here, but one of my favourite examples of music criticism in recent years has to be Dorian Lynskey's review for Embryonic by The Flaming Lips as published in Q Magazine. To cut a long story short, DL found the album didn't do an awful lot for him and gave the album two stars. However, I still ended up buying the album anyway on the strength of the review. Why? Because even though DL didn't really rate the album very highly and gave his reasons for doing so, the way he described the album in his review made me think "fair enough, he concedes that the album isn't for him but the album still sounds like something that I'd very much like to hear and may even love". If he'd went the "online journo" route and wrote something that basically read as "this is complete bollocks", without giving much of a reason behind his critical stance or taking the time to describe the albums content, I probably wouldn't have checked the album out.

I think you’re right in your first paragraph; the stuff they write, or are told to write, is essentially clickbait, posted to gain the greatest number of hits possible, with no real underlying wisdom or insight (which you got from Burchill and Parsons back in the day, even at their snarliest and punkiest; you had the feeling they were fighting for something else, maybe something better – who knows?).

As far as your second paragraph is concerned; well, that’s how I try to structure Then Play Long when I come to an album that I know I don’t like – because it is the easiest thing in the world to say “this is complete bollocks, who are these morons who bought this crap?” and the hardest thing in the world to be less than complimentary or even enthusiastic about these records, but to try one’s best to listen hard and find out what was in these records, in this music, which attracted so many people, so that readers might be tempted to give them a chance even if I don’t.

Another thing that bewilders me when reading stuff on places like NME Online is when I stumble across factual inaccuracies, especially when reading about older releases. I don't hold anything against young writers being unable to fully understand the context surrounding a release that is older than they are, but some of them don't even seem to try to get as close to understanding the context as they possibly can. In the era of Google and the internet, researching a topic has never been easier, so when I do stumble across inaccuracies in a piece I generally get the impression that the writer is lazy, can't be bothered and has very little passion for what they're writing about. That's my opinion, of course, but that's how I feel about it.

I’d agree with that.

I think you’re right in your first paragraph; the stuff they write, or are told to write, is essentially clickbait, posted to gain the greatest number of hits possible, with no real underlying wisdom or insight (which you got from Burchill and Parsons back in the day, even at their snarliest and punkiest; you had the feeling they were fighting for something else, maybe something better – who knows?).

Yes, exactly! This is exactly what I was getting at!

As far as your second paragraph is concerned; well, that’s how I try to structure Then Play Long when I come to an album that I know I don’t like – because it is the easiest thing in the world to say “this is complete bollocks, who are these morons who bought this crap?” and the hardest thing in the world to be less than complimentary or even enthusiastic about these records, but to try one’s best to listen hard and find out what was in these records, in this music, which attracted so many people, so that readers might be tempted to give them a chance even if I don’t.

Absolutely, I completely agree. In that instance, writing something like "this is complete bollocks, who are the morons who bought this crap?" would be such an incredible cop out to me. You're right, it is the easiest thing in the world to do and it smacks of not only not trying, but also not wanting to try. I have far more respect for a critic who has put themselves through the mill trying to find something, anything to latch onto that they could single out for praise. For me, it shows they've given the work a fair listen and made an attempt to understand the release. It also shows they take their role as a critic seriously.

Marcello, with all the respect possible and again, without wanting to sound like an incredible kiss-ass, I have read several of your Then Play Long retrospectives and enjoyed them a great deal. What I like about your retrospectives is that you naturally understand the context surrounding the releases, and actually try to put this across in writing so that it gives younger readers like myself a reasonable idea of what kind of climate those albums were released into. Also, I love the effort you put into research of every release in an effort to understand the point of view of the artist when he/she/they were making those records; whether it be the influences of the artist or even events that could have been an inspiration to the artists' work. It's far more interesting to me to read that kind of writing, because I often find it enables me to view a work from an angle I'd never considered before.

Sir, you understand the point of the work I'm doing, and I take my hat off to you.

The next few years are going to be very interesting for me, given that the NME are doing retrospectives on 1994 now. Chances are, there'll be at least one or two writers for the NME that were born that year, and it's going to be interesting to see how they write about albums that came out in their year of birth. If truth be told, regarding that particular publication, I expect the writing to be very superficial and occasionally at odds with how I remember it.

Thanks Turrican. That's good to hear.

What worries me about new writers is that they're not getting any editorial guidance as far as I can tell. I can point to one or two editors when I was starting out who kicked several bad habits out of me and when I read a lot of publications with young writers I don't sense anyone taking on that role. I see writers who have flair and passion but they're hampered either by cliches or a misguided idea of what constitutes provocative writing (outside music this is known as Charlie Brooker Wannabe Syndrome), so they're not getting any better. I wish someone would take them aside and go OK, this stuff is great but those bits are naff and jejune and you need to grow out of them quick. If you see errors or sloppy thinking on, say, NME.com then it's a failure of editorial guidance.

Of course, some writers are strong enough to get it right without help from editors and some are hopeless and should do something else but the ones in the middle feel like a wasted resource.

Agree with Turrican that what's admirable about TPL is the amount of work that obviously goes into each entry - it's never lazy received wisdom.

The best editor - aka the harshest - I've worked with so far has been Kev at V**e, mainly because he's so thorough and really, really makes you work hard at your 'jokes'.

My guess would be that NME was bringing in A LOT more money in the Penman era and that IPC would have been pretty happy to let it carry on doing its thing with minimal interference, but at this stage in its decline no editor is going to go "you know what will turn things around, more Ian Penman-esque thinkpieces". The rot set in in the 90s really and the horse has long bolted by now.

NME's big failing over the last 12 years or so hasn't been failing to live up to its 80s pomp, or to early 90s MM, but that's, in writing terms, it's failed to even keep pace with Pitchfork, despite that publication's obvious success.

Matt DC otm.

If I can go back briefly to my point about the seeming lack of outlets, really, outside of the vice network, the quietus, maybe nme, the guardian (michael hann never got back to me tho)...where is there? If I'm not looking hard enough please chastise me.

xp It does ok in terms on clicks, though, doesn't it? It's pretty much a rolling news site but a fairly successful one, i think.

DY, if you can't find any decent outlets out there, maybe you should start your own?

Yeah Matt's spot-on. There's zero likelihood of Morley/Penman-style essays returning to NME, or even much of a readership for them beyond the kind of people itt, but there's no reason why they shouldn't be nailing the simple business of reviews and interviews.

Should point out that I'm not bemoaning any of those I've mentioned!

Which is not to say that there aren't any good writers there. There are, but the quality control is very wobbly and falls to pieces when you get to the lower reaches of these big lists they've been doing. Some of the writing in the Best Albums list was genuinely shocking.

I can point to one or two editors when I was starting out who kicked several bad habits out of me and when I read a lot of publications with young writers I don't sense anyone taking on that role.

Interesting! What kind of things did you used to clash with your editors over, if you don't mind me asking?

Its very hard to say anything, let alone say anything decently, with the tiny wordcounts the writers have for those lower-reaches entries, is I think a large part of the problem. Like that Sugababes entry above, there's a glimmer of an interesting angle or idea in there, but to say it in a sentence? Impossible.

I try and maintain a "Hate the playa, not the game" attitude here. Am sure I wrote some shocking stuff when I was at NME, but I know I always wanted to be writing better. With two notable exceptions (Mulv and Kitty), though, there was little interest on the part of the editorial team to offer help and advice really.

hahahaha i mean 'Hate the game not the playa' obvs

a lot of the photos in that countdown on their website don't even match the songs. i mean if they can't even get that right then.. sheesh.

no effort to link to any audio/youtube either, their online presentation is very half-arsed at times

So many music sites have that half-arsed approach. If you're going to do a huge list make some playlists, get the right pictures, embed some videos, provide links to buy the records, add links to background reading.

xp iirc it was mostly to do with avoiding cliches and phrases that only music journalists use, eg "sophomore release". Also, corny last lines, which have become a pet hate of mine. I'm still grateful. Not that I'm never guilty of bad habits but to have good editors keep me in line early on was invaluable. Even now that every writer gets feedback via comment threads, it's never the kind of pinpoint critique you get from an editor.

Me and my other half spent a good hour last night in the pub with this NME list in the print edition and we were astonished at how bad it was. I think you can say interesting things about a song in an economy of language, but it didn't feel like there was any effort to in a lot of the entries, just lots of context-setting and vague efforts to say "this is fun."

The longer entries were even worse though. I couldn't believe the write-up for "Wonderwall", which claimed it wasn't the best Oasis song (despite being their top entry in the list) and it wasn't even the best version of the song (Ryan Adams!) but they had included it for its cultural significance.

iirc it was mostly to do with avoiding cliches and phrases that only music journalists use, eg "sophomore release".

Ha! It's weird that you should say that in particular, because I really loathe the term "sophomore release" for some reason. Don't get me wrong, I understand how and why that particular term originated, and I couldn't really fault an American music journalist using the term, but I keep seeing the term time and again in reviews by young British kids and I'm thinking "why are you using that term?"

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's a ridiculous term or attempting in any way to be 'anti-American' (I'm not); it's more that, if one works for a British publication, surely the largest portion of the audience would be British, and I wouldn't really expect the "average" Brit to know much about American high school terminology. I could easily imagine a fair amount of Brits looking at the term and thinking "what's a sophomore?"

I'm guessing that there's a fair few young British journalists who have seen the phrase crop up in a Pitchfork review, or a US-based music blog and thought "ah, so that's what the pro critics call a second album"

the appeal of 'sophomore album' lies in finding a new way of saying 'second album' when you've used that phrase already several times in a piece. but yeah, it's lame.

eh you're probably not wrong but I've been seeing it in UK-based music writing for longer than Pitchfork or blogs have existed. the reason it thrives is probably less craven Ameriphilia and more because there aren't that many synonyms for 'second'

xp obv :D

great minds... fools seldom...

eh you're probably not wrong but I've been seeing it in UK-based music writing for longer than Pitchfork or blogs have existed. the reason it thrives is probably less craven Ameriphilia and more because there aren't that many synonyms for 'second'

― wilful brony (DJ Mencap), Thursday, February 6, 2014 4:27 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Surely there's a fair few ways of getting around this, though? Like, instead of directly referring to it as the "second album", mention it as being "the follow-up to their debut", or "one album on from their debut"... I mean, of course it depends on the artist/album/context etc.

graduated from debutsville

yeah, but the key is, 'sophomore album' is only two words, and thus infinitely preferable to "the follow-up to their debut" when dealing with the tyranny of the word count and making text fit on to the page. in fact, i prefer sophomore to "the follow-up to their debut", which is hella clunky.

I agree, it is clunky! But I wasn't saying use those exact words, more that referring to the album in relation to their debut could possibly be a way of getting around directly referring to it as a "second album". I had thought that word-count might be problematic, but I suppose it depends what you do with the rest of the words, right? What is the average word count for a printed album review? I mean, for both "event" releases and smaller releases?

Never understood why people give a shit about "sophomore album". No one is trying to be pretentious with it. It's not a cliché, it's purely functional

Word count is ALWAYS problematic

At MOJO, its 140 for a downpager, 450 for a boxout, 1000 or thereabouts for a lead. And especially at the lower-end of the spectrum, every single word counts.

xp agreed lex. i find people's issues with it to be more pretentious, tbh.

Cue those of my editors who read this thread going YES WE KNOW ;_;

Xp

Don't get me wrong folks, I'll be the first person to admit that I don't know how professional music journalism actually works, hence why I'm asking so many questions about it! All I really know is what I'd personally like to read and what I don't.

I appreciate being able to explain the process, tbh!

One of the best things I learned was that it's often better to use the simplest terms than naff synonyms, in the same way that in interviews "says" is often better than "ponders", "avers", etc. "Second album" is better than "sophomore album", "guitarist" is better than "axeman", "guitar-wrangler", "fretboard wizard", etc. Worry about making the rest of the writing interesting, not jazzing up functional phrases that work just fine.