A kung fu fighter in a disco

The NME top 50 singles (first copy of the NME I ever bought IIRC!) (Crossovers in bold)

The Mercy Seat - Nick Cave (Mute)
Everyday Ls Like Sunday - Morrissey (Hmv)
Alphabet Street - Prince (Paisleypark)
Suedehead Morrissey (Hmv)
Destroy The Heart - The House Of Love (Creation)
Big Fun - Inner City (Lo)
Freak Scene - Dinosaurjr(Blastfirst)
Crash - Theprimitives'(Lazy)
Sidewalkin' - The Jesus & Mary Chain (Blanco Y Negro)
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah - The Pogues (Pogue Mahone)
Anchorage - Michelle Shocked (Cookingvinyl)
Someday - Ce Ce Rodgers (Atlantic)
Follow The Leader - Eric B &Rakim (Mca)
Left To My Own Devices - Pet Shop Boys (Parlophone)
Don't Believe The Hype - Public Enemy (Def Jam-
Can You party - Royal House (Champion)
Reachin' - Phasell (Republic)
Weekend - Todd Terry (Sleepingbag)
You're Going To Miss Me - Turntable Orchestra (Republic)
Fast Car - Tracy Chapman (Elektra)
Teardrops - Womack & Womack (4th & Broadway)
People Have The Power - Patti Smith (Arista)
What's The Matter Here - 10,000 Maniacs (Elektra)
Beat Dis - Bomb The Bass (Rhythm King)
Distant Relatives - Megacity4 (Decoy)
Buffalo Stance - Neneh Cherry (Circa)
Goon Girl - Roxanne Shante (A&M)
Gigantic - Pixies(4ad)
Prize - Kitchens Of Distinction (One Little Indian)
Cold Metal - Lggy Pop (A&M)
Sometimes In Vain - The Parachute Men (Fire)
Theme From S' Express S'express (Rhythm King)
I'll House You - Jungle Brothers (Gee Street)
I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) - The Proclaimers (Chrysalis)
Defcon One - Pop Will Eat Ltself (Chapter22)
Heart - Pet Shop Boys (Parlophone)
Plane Crash Ep - Lnspiral Carpets (Playtime)
Rumours - Gregory Isaacs (Greensleeves)
Collision - Loop (Chapter 22)
Love And Mercy - Brian Wilson (Warners)
Kidney Bingos - Wire (Mute)
Just Got Paid - Johnny Kemp (Cbs)
Perfect - Fairground Attraction (Rca)
Nobody's Twisting Your Arm - The Wedding Present (Reception)
Christine - The House Of Love (Creation)
Voodoo Ray - A Guy Called Gerald (Deconstruction)
Map Of The World - Corn Dollies (Medium Cool)
What Is Soul - Stereo Mcs (Gee Street)
Victoria - The Fall (Beggars Banquet)
The Race - Yello (Phonogram)

The 'indiefication' of the NME starting to reach critical mass here. But notice the very strong showing for house music, pretty much totally absent from the noisenik Melody Maker 20:

The mercy seat - Nick Cave
You made me realise - My bloody valentine
Freak scene - Dinosaur Jr.
Gigantic - Pixies
Destroy the heart - The house of love
L'amourir - The young gods
Christine - The house of love
Sidewalking - Jesus and Mary chain
Feed me with your kiss - My bloody valentine
Martha's harbour - All about eve
Follow the leader - Eric B & Rakim
Alphabet street - Prince
UP home EP - AR Kane
Crash - The primitives
Teardrops - Womack & womack
Collision EP - Loop
O Patti - Scritti Politti
The race - Yellow
Revolution - Spaceman
Headhunter - Front 242

It was partly on the basis of these two polls that I started reading the NME, not MM.

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One thing I didn't expect from 80s canon lists is how popcentric they are - I am beginning to wonder when trad rockism actually crept into the music media, the assumption that certain forms (guitars, rock and so on) had gravitas and were therefore superior to dancey dancey pop.

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Both those lists are pretty indie! But maybe "indie" was less "rock" back then (I don't think so though, it was just less 'traditional rock' I suppose).

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Oh they are v indie but there's the acknowledgement of S'Express, Neneh Cherry, Todd Terry et al which is slightly unexpected for me.

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dubdobdee.livejournal.com

no time now to RESTATE FOR THE MILLION BILLIONTH TIME when and how the RACE against ROCKISM began (when=1982), but the lex's claim here does suggest he hasn't been following the SAGA of the HIPHOP WARS closely enough

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Lex, comparing the 1988 P&J with the 2005 P&J, how can a top ten consisting of The Travelling Wilburys and Midnight Oil (and Tracey Chapman and Public Enemy for that matter) be one that focuses less on "gravitas" and "proper music" than the 2005 top 10, which contained a reality TV show winner singing a Max Martin track, the theme song from a Will Smith romcom, a woman in her mid 30s doing a cheerleading chant, and DJ Paul being a dog, one you do not trust?

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Erm that is not what I was saying at all.

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You were saying that rockism (ie, values, importance, Proper Musics, etc etc etc) was a lot more prealent in modern day critic polls than 80s ones. How do THE FACTZ fit into this?

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I didn't say anything about modern day polls! I was just surprised that 80s polls were less rockist than I'd assumed.

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"I am beginning to wonder when trad rockism actually crept into the music media"

So rockism must have crept into the music media at some point between 1988 and 2006 then! All I'm saying is I can't think of a more rockist band than Public Enemy.

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Yes but equally it might have gone away again. I didn't have 2000s polls in mind as a comparison! I don't really know as I have never followed any section of the music press closely and to an extent I don't really care.

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Singles polls aren't the place to judge this anyway, even the dullest Ryan-Adams-Wilco-and-Coldplay pumping music critic will vote for "Just good old fashioned pop music" in his singles list. Because singles aren't as "important".

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The Pazz and Jops are disproof of this to some extent! In his essay for this year Christgau mentions that one reason new wave warhorses like U2 etc didnt do so well is that they accidentally said "Put 5 singles" not "Put 10 singles" on the ballot, and the people who didn't really care about singles didnt bother to change it from 5 to 10 when the mistake was pointed out.

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koganbot

This isn't the place where I'm going to go into my spiel about why the word "rockism" is a barrier to thought and why people shouldn't use it; I'll just say that basically what we've got are society-wide impulses and tensions that already existed for at least 100 years (if not 300), so you don't have something creeping into the media but rather just something that gets expressed in the media - but what gets expressed isn't an attitude ("rockism") that some people have, but rather tensions that pretty much everyone has. E.g., your phrase "trad rockism" is itself unstable, since rock is not at all comfortable with the idea of "trad," given that in rock's hero story the music is birthed in originality and rebelliousness and wildness. But these are praise words ("wildness" etc.) that people will affix to all sorts of different music, different people choosing different musics. As for the P&J votes, the most valid choices from the point of the view of the Hero Story are Public Enemy and Eric B. & Rakim and Salt N' Pepa; black people w/ beatboxes more acceptable actually than Hollywood sleaze metal. The big surprise for me at the time was the high showing of "Child"; my guess it was a "guilty pleasure" vote for a lot of people who wouldn't otherwise touch hair metal with a ten-foot pole. Check in vain year in year out in Pazz & Jop for Def Leppard (whose "Pour Some Sugar On Me" was the teen favorite of the year, and is better than "Sweet Child O' Mine"), Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Whitesnake, Slaughter, Poison, Kiss, Warrant, etc., who were as much the teenpop of the '80s as New Edition and New Kids were. In fact, "Sweet Child" is something of a Pazz & Jop anomaly, and you don't anything like it again until, um, "Since U Been Gone."

But then a vote can mean different things for different people. Amongst the hair-metal fans themselves, Whitesnake and GN'R could embody all those great rock values of importance and resistance; for a mainstream pop fan, Whitney Houston might not be dancey dancey pop so much as she's soul traditionalism and legitimate vocalizing (or might be all three). Some of the praise I hear for Paris Hilton today (doesn't care what you think of her, is willing to let people hate her) are exact matches for what was bestowed on the Rolling Stones in 1963. And there's nothing wrong with that.

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jeff-worrell.livejournal.com

The more important point here is that alongside their poll results MM ran a piece that pretty much invented the "Best Year Ever" meme - declaring 1988 the Greatest Year For Music of All Time (or words to that effect).

With the benefit of hindsight, this is probably the moment MM blew it. Part of the reason is undoubtedly down to pinning its colours to a Nu Rock mast. But frankly, where do you go after wild overstatements like that?

(That said, during 1988 the NME had continued to be as rubbish as it had been in '86 and '87 - the Rattle And Hum affair was probably the nadir. Even the rockists at MM were happy to trash this record on a weekly basis.)

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