In The NME Office

U2 To Headline Glastonbury – 5 Reasons It's A Good Idea

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:33:40 +0000

So U2 will be playing the 40th anniversary Glastonbury festival, on Friday June 25. We shouldn't be too surprised. Michael Eavis promised a huge name. It was hardly going to be Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong.

The only weird thing is that it's taken them this long to do it. Few artists crave the giant spectacle more than Bono – and Glastonbury, these days, is about the biggest spectacle there is. Already, the NME office is resounding to cynical carping: it'll be too slick, too earnest. Bono will treat it the Pyramid as his own personal pulpit. And so on.

But cynicism doesn't belong at Glastonbury. Here's why I reckon it'll be a spectacular show (and bear in mind Eavis has an even bigger act lined up for Saturday night, although we couldn't possibly tell you who that is yet...)

The Best Ever Songs Rejected From Albums

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:15:13 +0000

Tell a certain kind of serious-minded music fan that Fleetwood Mac's 'Rumours' isn't perfect, and he'll give you an uppercut to the jaw. And he'd be right to. I love that album more than is probably healthy. Yet even a tragic Fleetwood Mac nerd like me would admit that it could have been better.

This morning, during a rain-lashed trudge to work, 'Oh Daddy' came on my iPod – the closest thing 'Rumours' has to a filler track – and I thought, What, you included this, yet you rejected Stevie Nicks' astonishing, hymn-like ballad 'Silver Springs', a song that positively bellows: Rousing Album-Closer?

Superstars Of The Small Screen - The 10 Best TV Heroes Of The Noughties

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:39:07 +0000

In the wake of all these End Of Decade albums lists (not least ours), there are of course those who have suggested that the noughties’ musical output does not hold up next to that of previous decades. Which is an easily argued point, if a fucking boring one. So allow me to draw you to a far more indisputably positive fact about the last ten years: telly-wise, the ’00s have shat all over the ’60s, the ’70s, the ’80s and the ’90s.

“Fact,” as the man pictured below might say.

A Decade In Music – Did The Internet Save The Industry, Or Kill It?

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:03:34 +0000

If you can't remember life as a music fan in 1999, you'll have to imagine it. No iTunes. No iPods. No Spotify. No bottomless quarry of music clips on YouTube. A new album cost £16.

Fred Durst was the biggest rock star on earth, Campag Velocet were on the cover of NME, and about the most fun you could have online was clicking around a Compuserve chatroom at 3am, wishing you were dead. Or maybe that was just me.

Now look: a torrent of music, never more than a keystroke away, much of it free. Music surrounds us as never before. Meanwhile, the process of making it has been democratised.

Artists no longer need record labels. For those willing to exploit it, the web represents, in Thom Yorke's words, "the most amazing broadcasting network ever built". Lucky us, right?

10 Tracks You Have To Hear This Week - Shy Child, The Golden Filter, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:34:17 +0000

This week's playlist features the return of Roisin Murphy, a romantic helping of "proper schmindie" from Planet Earth, and some "space-baile-funk-bounce" courtesy of Buraka Som Sistema.

1. The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – Higher Than The Stars
It’s been great over the last year to watch these New York sugar-rush dreampoppers become proper word-of-mouth success, and this lead single off their new EP of the same name proves there’s plenty more sweetness yet to come, reworking as it does the heart of The Cure’s classic ‘Just Like Heaven’ with extra galloping-drum giddiness.

Albums Of The Decade - Who Did We Overlook?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:55:09 +0000

*NME's 100 Albums Of The Decade

*Vote for YOUR albums of the decade

Our Albums Of The Decade list - which you can read in full in the new issue - has already generated some fierce debate.

The selections were chosen by NME staff past and present, plus a host of bands and industry experts that included New Order, Ian Brown, Arctic Monkeys, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Dave Grohl, Alan McGee, Michael Eavis and more. The full jury is listed in this week's NME magazine.