What the pop papers say: Bumper Christmas and New Year edition

So, we’ve abandoned you and allowed a huge pile of magazines to build up on the doormat over Christmas. We’ve sorted out the invitations to join health clubs and the local freesheets, and split the pop papers into two distinct piles - the UK and the American. First up, the UK stuff.

When the BPI and the RIAA bleat around Easter time about another poor quarter for music sales, you might want to take out a clipping from the just-before-Xmas Music Week. There, retailers were already bemoaning how shite sales are going to be in the first three months of 2003. The reason was nothing to do with internet downloads, CD burners or men with suitcases flogging homemade editions of The Man Who in Camden High Street. Nope, the reason why the people whose job it is to stand in dimly lit shops putting price stickers on product are preparing themselves for a crap start to the year is simply because the new releases are all rubbish. Not that that’ll stop the BPI using the sales dip as a reason for them being given the powers to enter homes and smash computers at will, of course.

Though his leaving of his slot was more dignified than Jimmy ‘It wasn’t my idea - they’ve killed me - run, flee, hide yourself’ Young’s, Steve Lamacq’s farewell in the Guardian Friday Review was curious. (Incidentally, expect much knocking of the organisation that kept him employed for four decades, long after most commercial stations would have shoved the carriage clock and B&Q certificate into his hands, when Sir Jimmy Young starts a Sunday Express column this weekend - curiously making him room-mates with that other singer-turned-dj-turned-embittered-hack, Boy George). Lamacq basically said “it’s the end of an era, it’s time to move on”, nodding-dog like to the suggestion that the Evening Session was inextricably linked with Britpop and that as such, it made sense to axe it. Let’s just be thankful Peel never said “Mmm, the show is so linked to Prog Rock/Punk/etc., it’d make more sense to can it than do anything to try to shift the perception of it.” We have no idea what the horsetrading behind the scenes was - is Lammo being freed up to step into the gap if JP gets given a Jimmyyounging? Was Lowe offered the slot as part of a deal to get him to do stuff for BBC Three? - but we look forward to finding out over the next twelve months.

Elsewhere in The Guardian over the holiday, Julie Burchill defended the concept of creating popstars using Reality TV. As ever, her arguments were poor and only really half-thoughts. She suggested that the likes of Popstars - with their constant sing-offs - relied heavily on the ability to sing over personality (really? Since the concept of queuing for hours to sing two lines in front of Waterman and - god help us - Halliwell is unlikely to attract anyone especially talented, the final rounds are all populated by people who have a fairly equal level of ability, albeit low. So what else is there for people to vote on but personality? The papers hardly describe it as a battle between, say, trouble with the high notes Gates and able to hold a note Young; it’s the stuttering one versus the quiet one versus the loser and so on. To pretend that the votes on Popstars, Idol and Fame Academy isn’t based on personality is as dumb as suggesting that the evictions on Big Brother are all decided by the audience choosing who’s best at feeding the chickens and making supper in the house) and that the cult of music personality had left us lumbered with Robbie Williams and Madonna, Elton and the rest. But isn’t the clinging to the old guard down more to the way that new talent is being throttled out by the short-lived Hear’Says and Girls At Our Best or whatever they were called in the end?

For New Year, G2 filled space with minimal effort (“offered a timely feature”) by getting stars to reveal their New Year’s Resolutions. Strangely, the first celeb was Mira from ladytron (“to start eating fish”); Delcan ‘scary Lena Zavaroni for 2003’ Galbraith promised to clean his room (foreswearing the amphetamines might have been more timely - before its too late; John Peel holds out hopes of completing an autobiography - let’s hope the bosses at radio one aren’t planning on giving him some time to devote to the project; Jah Wobble isn’t going to “collect any more wounded birds.” We think he means hangers-on rather than actual sick pigeons and one-legged turkeys - talking of which, Gary Numan wants to stop walking with his feet facing inwards. David Holmes resolves to stop playing Grand Theft Auto - so stealing his Playstation would be an act of kindness instead of a criminal offence. And One True Voice pledge to have a number one album. Which is funnily enough one of my resolutions, along with entering politics and developing a successful cosmetics line, that I’m not going to keep either.

An insight into the brightness that lays behind the Popstars Organisation on the shelves of a WH Smith near you. You’ll find a magazine with the vapid Girls Aloud on the front, claiming to be “The only official Popstars: The Rivals magazine.” Next to it, a magazine based on the even more vapid One True Voice claims to be, yup, “The only official Popstars: The Rivals magazine.” They may both be official, but there’s no way they can both be the only one.

“I want a man” says Meg Matthews. Rather than getting out on the dating scene, or using one of those Internet dating services the broadsheets keep banging on about, Meg’s approach is to take her clothes off and appear on the cover of Elle. Now, while this might work, surely if the desperation for a man is so bad as to try this approach, plumping for a women’s title is the wrong thing to do? Loaded may have had more eligible - well, single - men, surely? Whatever, Meg manages to make naked about as sexy as [insert whatever your oldest aunt wore on Christmas day here] - on her feet she appears to be wearing the remains of that guy’s Saskwatch suit, and she looks dirty. Not in an Aguilera Dirrty way, even, more “Good god, woman, you don’t need a man; you need a buff-puff and a bottle of Oil of Ulay.” This is the approach she thinks will get her a man? You think it buggers belief that she used to be in charge of PR at Creation Records. Then you remember what happened to Creation Records.

The Popbitch explosion rumbles on in the wake of the Beckham rumour, with a splendid piece in the Christmas Private Eye on the hypocrisy of the UK press in their coverage of the story. Especially delicious was the kicking administered to the pisspoor Mirror and the Mail for their ability to be outraged while simultaneously lifting housestyle and stories from the site.

Celebrity guff of a different kind in the Xmas New Statesman, where once again Alex James filed the diary column from what seemed to be somewhere close to the Groucho club ceiling. You start to make sense of why Graham Coxon isn’t entirely upset at his being eased out of Blur when you read the sorts of thoughts that are currently bouncing in the head of Mr. James. Two columns about going to buy a needless expensive dog demonstrating that (i) he’s rich, and can afford to buy pedigree pooches but (ii) that he’s still able to look down his nose at people whose houses stink of dog wee. And there’s this: “Christmas is about consumerism and stuffing. We’ve come a long way from the baby Jesus.” Thanks for that, Alex. You’ll find the rest of the Sixth Form Debating Society in the Great Hall, throwing trifle at each other.

Great news for the start of the year, though, as a Sunday morning dash to pick up the papers finds that our local newsagent has found shelf space for Careless Talk Costs Lives which, thanks to a distribution deal, should now be at all Good Newsagents rather than merely being that thing you can’t find in HMV anymore. It takes the chance to restate its ideals, although it chooses to do this by knocking X-Ray and NME. We certainly don’t think Everett True is wrong, but there’s something a little off-putting about a magazine editorial which attempts to win over its readers by flattering their vanity (“you can cope with a lot more words than X-Ray seems to think you can”) rather than challenging their minds.

Anyway, that’s a minor quibble, as otherwise the issue is excellent. Erase Errata are interviewed, although it seems that True is still stuck in the vinyl versus CD war, praising them for releasing a single that won’t play in an Imac - true thinks this is subversive; actually, Mariah Carey’s Charmbracelet wouldn’t play in an Imac, either, and required anyone who tried to take their machine to a repair shop, which must mean that Mariah is the most subversive artist in the world; Miss AMP takes her bra off and gets into bed with Cat Power. Nick Cave doesn’t feel validated without his art; but he’s called to account for the video he made for Bring It On - “I asked the director what sort of video MTV is showing these days, and he said ‘It’s usually a lot of black girls shaking their asses at the camera’, so that’s what we made” - its funny how an audience who are happy to lap up Cave singing about murdering women react so quickly to condemn a spot of background bump-and-grind, isn’t it? John Robb seems to think The Manufacturers of Popstars have fucked up because singles aren’t selling very many any more; ignoring the scary fact that singles sales may have fallen, but its across the board. As the number of copies being flogged by the Gates of this world drop, it’s not as if The Good Artists sales are poking through the surface, is it? A pyrrhic victory if the death of Popstars is the death of pop.

Coxon himself pops up. “I’ve learned that with Blur, either those three are completely mad, or I’m completely mad, and I just don’t know who is mad.” Graham, love, read Alex’s Christmas Staggers diary. It’ll clear things up nicely for you. Godspeed You Black Emperor are challenged as to why they deserve to be in CTCL - that’s a nice change from the arrogant Traditional Music Press, isn’t it? - but it gets better further in, when they talk about making records in the context of the “collapse of those ugly buildings” and the struggle of how they (we) are implicated in the system every day: “It would be nice if none of this was an issue; would be nice to stress a little less often about the blood in our wallets.”

The reviews spark a squeal of recognition: there’s a razorcuts retrospective out.

A picture of Kurt, and a page blank save for the phrase: “Private thoughts should remain private.” You know what they mean, but... isn’t all the best music - the stuff that really counts - private thoughts being made public?

At the end, the magazine goes out more or less the way it comes in, struggling with the word Indie - positing that, hey, Virgina Woolf was indie, you know. Trying to make it a term that means something, a badge to be proud of. It’s a little as if the 1980s homos had chosen to try and reclaim Chutney Stabber rather than Queer, isn’t it?

In the past few months, we’ve suggested that the Face has totally lost its way and doesn’t know what it’s doing. It may have finally found a role as, following on the heels of the Pink edition, Craig Nicholls is given the chance to strip off and - covered in a print of Jesus - spread himself over the cover. Clearly, the Face has reinvented itself as a hybrid of Select and Sky. We look forward to seeing the yeah yeah yeahs cover sometime before easter.

Our Christmas joy was often interrupted by the clammy hand of panic at our chest as we’d cry out “What if they’ve not held the double Christmas NME for us?” As it turns out, we needn’t have bothered. It had Coldplay on the cover and, as such, was hugely unlikely to sell out anyway.

Mehg White gets not just the hnour of the seasonal made-up CD, but is allowed 11 rather than the usual ten tracks. And one of them is the Readers Digest Christmas Album, which surely is pushing the rules a little bit much even for the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, surely? She also chooses a track by the Chipmunks, for which she really must be sent to a re-education camp.

In the Coldplay piece, Chris Martin coyly refers to “my friend” when he’s clearly talking about Gwyneth Paltrow. This sickeningly cutesy way of behaving makes me want to punch him gently, and i shall, unless he can prove that he always does it - does he talk to his mum on the phone and say “Nah, I’m just laying about with my friend”? If he gets invited to someone’s house, does he say “Can i bring My Friend?” Does he call out “Yess... oh, My Friend” when he squirts some of his underweight spunk into her? Its not like its a secret, and, for some reason, you’re one of the most famous people on the planet, Martin. Stop fucking pretending you’re Hugh Grant in Notting Hill, for fucks sake.

What’s that? Is that noise reindeer on the roof? Nope, its NME slapping itself on the back for its part in the - ahem - new rock revolution. So, that’s what we’re actually meant to call it, is it? Blimey. Another obsession in the issue is made clear, because the paper just can’t get past the idea that The Libertines used to be rent boys. Any opportunity to mention the fact, and it’ll be mentioned. Jesus, let it go, will you?

Hadn’t Noel gallagher stopped doing press a while back? Clearly not, as here he comes to talk to the paper; let’s hold our breath, shall we? Apparently Knebworth’s audience “was all kids” and manchester was “freezing.” There is, however, a small surprise - the oasis equipe were at a Morrissey gig in Australia singing along to There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.

That Christmas soulmates thing is also surprising - Pink spits rather than swallows but, splendidly, pretends not to have heard of Fischerspooner; Craig Vines is unable to make a simple choice between any two items; Ryan Adams doesn’t know what a badger is; Kelly Osbourne is allowed to choose Peaches instead of “Kelly or Pink”; Chris Martin is a cunt and refuses to play; the nme seems to think we have any interest in Liam Lynch (2002’s Joe Dolce).

A 1993 Melody Maker piece by - ding! - Everett True where he brought Kim Deal and Kurt Cobain together is given another trot out - surely Ev wouldn’t have made any money from this, seeing as he’s been so quick to condemn the cobain corpse cash-in elsewhere.

And, being Christmas, the writers get to compile their chart of best albums of the year. So, what has the new rock revolution - a creation of Kings Reach Tower - thrown up as an album to define the year? Erm, a Rush of Blood To The Head by Coldplay. The backslapping antics returns as they nominate their own 1Love as the compilation of the year; single (always, year in, year out, a more interesting choice of record than the album of the year) goes to there goes the fear by the Doves. They think that tenacious d’s Tribute video was the best promo made in 2002 as well. The ability of the individually bright young things at the nme to be distracted by the trivial and shiny never fails to surprise us.

After the bumper, the first edition of 2003 is as thin as a leftovers coldcut supper at Geri’s house. Thom Yorke squints out of the cover of what is boldly trailed as a Predictions issue.

Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster make an eleven track CD, too - maybe Meg has changed the world? - choosing Bowie (Moonage daydream) and The Fall.

So, what are the predictions for ‘03? They do it in an A to Z style - more Australians, Blues, Casual (i.e. scruffy bastards); Duran Duran back; Electroclash (apparently the non-arrival of it as a British force last year hasn’t dampened their belief that the Genre That Everyone politely ignored will be a global phenom this year); F is somehow for Electric Six; Goth (another revival? What is it, Buffy?); Has-beens; Jack Black (the nme apparently gives a shit about the Tenacious D movie - be warned); Knoxville; Lesbians (oh, come on, is tatu really going to travel much beyond Ladbroke Grove without running into the ground?); murder powder (crushed-up E - god, even the new drugs are just rubbish reworkings of the old drugs); No more albums (or singles) - the Internet will kill music (although, just quickly, peter robinson - you point out that what most people go online for is the stuff that you can’t find, the outtakes and obscurities; so rather than cherry-pick for the legal download stuff, it’d be in the labels interests to make as many tracks in as many versions available as possible); Oscar (as in “for Eminem” - even though he hasn’t bothered the Golden Globe nominations at all); Protest; Queen (apparently they live on through, um, the Darkness); Radiohead - back! back! back!; Supergroups (erm... Miss Kittin working with Aguilera? We somehow think not...); The Thrills; UK versus US; Vendetta (still doing the You Cock thing?); War (hey, George says that’s not inevitable, you know), um, Xtreme Drinks; Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Zzzz; the people nme hope will give it a rest this year. They nominate Anastacia and Nickelback. For that alone, we’re signing up for another twelve months with them.