Has The NME Got Good?

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.