Taylor Swift rises to the surface

You might think that Taylor Swift fans registering votes for Shake It Off as best song of 2014 in Triple J's end of year poll as 'sabotage'.

Others may think it's simply a correction.

NME awards loom on the horizon

Was it Idolator who were taking the piss out of us as a nation last week, with our seemingly non-stop rolling of music awards?

They'll still be snickering, as the NME announces where it'll be holding the prize-giving next February - presumably to allow diaries to be cleared.

Brixton Academy on February 25th, and still sponsored by that stuff you put in your hair.

Could you try and look a little more excited, please? Come on, NME, whip us into a frenzy. It's the awards. Surely you must have someone famous ready with a quote about how it's going to be the biggest ass-kickin' something or other of the year?

NME publishing director Paul Cheal said: "With the Awards night at Brixton Academy, the Big Gig at the O2 and an extensive range of Awards Shows across the country, we're confident that the Shockwaves NME Awards 2009 will be the most exciting yet.

"Voted for by fans and with more opportunities for fans to take part than ever before, the NME Awards will be the most accurate barometer of the best in new music."

Mmm. It's like a barometer, but a finely tuned one. Not like those Q Awards, which really only function to the standard of a little weather house where the man comes out if it's going to be raining and a woman comes out if it's going to be sunny.

I've never quite believed Ugly Betty when Henry somehow finds himself propelled out of the back office to be at the centre of things at Mode, but maybe it does happen.

The question is, though, doesn't this make it sound like the NME believes its readership are a better guide to the best new music is than the magazine itself?

The other question is: isn't this starting to look like a little too much fuss over a reader's poll? It's like the NME's sole raison d'etre is to hope to get through the summer with a Cool List or two before throwing itself on the mercy of the reader's poll. Michael Jackson (not that one) was rumoured to have only given What The Papers Say a berth on BBC2 because he wanted the awards; but unless the brand giving the prizes means something, where is the value of their judgement?

The past's future: 1981

So, this weekend we've been reliving the 1981 Smash Hits Readers Poll "brightest hopes", with YouTube illustrations. The chart in full:

1. Altered Images
2. Soft Cell
3. Haircut 100
4. The Fun Boy Three
5. U2
6. Heaven 17
7. Modern Romance
8. 8. Bow Wow Wow
9. 9. ABC
10. 10. Orange Juice

The past's future: 1981 - 1. Altered Images

The brightest hope for 1982, accoridng to Smash Hits readers: Altered Images. Or the Bluebells and a woman who once had sex with Ian Beale.

Clare Grogan dragged herself off her sick bed to thank the readers:

It's great. I must congratulate Smash hits readers on their good taste. It's things like this that boost your ego and make you want to keep going.

She also revealed that America was going to get a version of Gregory's Girl with the voices redubbed "but Bill Forsyth says it's alright."

Dead Pop Stars, at the 1980 Futurama Festival:



[Buy: Pinky Blue+]
More Clare Grogan YouTube loveliness

The past's future: 1981 - 2. Soft Cell

"Just edged out" from the Top Spot, Soft Cell. It's kind of wonderful that Smash Hits was such a broad church, it's readers in 1981 were excited by the knitwear-clad Haircut 100s and the Fetish-strewn Soft Cell. And now, the kids are given McFly. And it were all fields round here.

To celebrate their victory from 25 years go, here's Soft Cell joined by Jim Foetus on a Suicide cover:



[Buy: The bedsit tapes, a glorious collection of early stuff put together in a studio at Leeds Poly]

The past's future: 1981 - 3. Haircut 100

Third most-promising act of 1981, according to Smash Hits readers, was Haircut 100. The magazine was surprised they'd managed to do so well despite "only starting to break as we published the forms" and were confident enough to predict:

Expect knitting to become very fashionable during 1982

.
That future turned out to mean a lot of work soundtracking fun on the inflatables during Cheggers Plays Pop, a comic strip in Look-In, a slow slide down the dumper and a not-entirely successful resurrection of Nick Heyward on Creation during their 'rich off Oasis' years.

But what remains, of course, is the knitwear:




[Buy: A mightily-expanded Pelican West]

The past's future: 1981 - 4. The Fun Boy Three

When Smash Hits readers described them as "promising", did any of them think that future might be getting wheeled on as trophy collaborators by the daughter of a light comedian? The magazine used their ennoblement to call for "another single". Jerry Dammers, meanwhile, sobbed slightly and wondered if anyone would ever listen to him again.

Their Top of the Pops performance of The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum marked some sort of high water mark for mainstream TV directors using technology in a desperate bid to inject teatime-friendly life into something a little difficult and downbeat - although you can see the same effect on ITV News these days:



[Buy: 1997's Fun Boy Three best of]

The chart rundown will conclude later today

The past's future: 1981 - 5. U2

You can tell that Smash Hits were distinctly unimpressed with that bunch of mulletted punks turning up in the Brightest Hope again:

U2 occupy exactly the same position as they did last year; isn't it about time they came up with a really hot single and fulfilled some of that potential?

Yeah. Isn't it just? Sadly, though, it wasn't to be, and now Paul Hewson - who fronted the band - is something large in property and stocks.

U2 were actually quite good back then - but already slightly conceited - as their Pinkpop appearance shows:



[Buy: Achtung, Bono by Half Man Half Biscuit]

The past's future: 1981 - 6. Heaven 17

Smash Hits were sure that H17 would thrive as

"their Human League connections can't have done them any harm at all."

Although, in retrospect, they probably did - cast by their spin-off status into a perpetual battle they could never win.

The band were together for the Billy MacKenzie Memorial in March, from which this Temptation is sourced:



[Buy: Last year's remasterage of Penthouse and Pavement]

The past's future: 1981 - 7. Modern Romance

Even Smash hits couldn't quite muster up any enthusiasm for their reader's decision to predict a glorious future for this bunch of David Hamilton-friendly smoothies, managing just a "funky outfit" to describe them.

Here, take Ay Ay Ay Moosey - note the sort-of-rappy but at the front, a clanging attempt to inject something modern into a song which could otherwise have been playing when Glen Miller crashed into the sea:



[Buy - or don't: The Platinum Collection. I'm not sure they ever actually achieved platinum status. Platignum, perhaps.]

The countdown will continue across the weekend

The past's future: 1981 - 8. Bow Wow Wow

Smash Hits points out that Bow Wow Wow actally been 1980's 10th most promising act, pointing out tartly that going up one place is

not much recompense for the all the fuss that's been made about them over the last year.

Still, they did better than the blokes' subsequent incarnation as Chiefs Of Relief; Annabelle Lwin is still recording, although nowadays with a Buddhist sensibility rather than the original Ants and the Sex Pistols manager.

C30 C60 C90 Go is on YouTube, but unembeddable, so here's the video for Louis Quatroze instead:



[Buy: Aphrodisiac, which somehow manages to not include Sexy Eiffel Towers

The past's future: 1981 9 - ABC

Continuing our countup of Smash Hit's Brightest Hopes for 1982, Martin Fry's then-still-bright-eyed ABC. Described by SH as "scintilating", nobody knew the future held a brief period channelling the ghosts of the Archies before returning to hoofage on the 80s revival circuit.

A slightly blocky recording of a festive reworking of The Look Of Love:



[Buy: This year's ABC compilation Never More Than Now

The past's future: 1981 10 - Orange Juice

This weekend, we're revisiting the Smash Hits Reader's Poll 1981 "Most Promising New Act for 1982" results, counting down from 10 to 1. We're still debating if we should skip over number 5.

What's really interesting is that, with probably just one or two exceptions, the ten bands chosen by Smash Hits readers to shine in 1982 all feature band members who are still doing quite nicely for themselves in 2007, which might be a warming thought as to the wisdom of crowds (or Smash Hits readers, at least) or perhaps unsettling that bands tipped 25 years ago are still hanging around now.

So, without further ado: Number 10 - Orange Juice. This is Simply Thrilled Honey, from the 1986 Dada With Juice video. Which they're doing in an Orange Juice factory:



[Buy The Glasgow School, 23-track Orange Juice best-of]