Across half a century NME has been the standard bearer of rock reporting in the UK. As bands, scenes and ill-advised haircuts come and go, NME has predicted, probed and provoked, supporting the mavericks who would go on to become the new mainstream, and fingering the phonies whose attempts to crack the audience just didn't make it. Generations have trusted NME to be fast and fair, catching and weighing the shifts in music. Today, people still turn to NME for the authoritative word on new music. Only, thanks to websites and better paper stock, it no longer leaves their hands in such an inky mess.
In 1952 the unassuming Musical Express and Accordian Weekly was bought - for cash, in a backstreet transaction - by Maurice Kinn, who relaunched the publication as the New Musical Express (it's fair to say the coverage of accordian music in the magazine has suffered ever since).
That year, the magazine invented the British Pop Charts, printing the first ever best selling singles chart in the UK. Since rock music was still waiting to be invented, NME concentrated its attention on the popular music scene of the time - smart men in nice suits playing jazz, and slightly less smart men playing skiffle. Then came a man known only by his first name, Elvis.
London, famously, spent much of the 1960s swinging, and NME swung with the best of them. As The Beatles and The Rolling Stones set about making the world their own, NME was the only place to keep track of the new rock music.
The NME Poll Winners Shows - live televised concerts celebrating the reader's favourites and comprising almost entirely of teenage girls screaming at rock legends including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks - became a cornerstone of the music calendar. As rock got weirder, NME followed into the wilder reaches of psychedelia.
The early ’70s were a grim place for music, as rock became overblown, turgid and more than a little paranoid. NME suffered, too, but just as the paper seemed destined to collapse, editor Nick Logan came in and shook it back into life, recreating the title as opinionated, biting, witty and making it essential reading again.
The only thing missing from the mix was music energetic enough to match the new journalism, but luckily that was delivered a few years later when punk arrived in a screech of spiky hair, black jackets and spittle. Initially, the paper's history made it seem to be part of what punk was attacking, but NME knew what it was doing (after all, writer Nick Kent was briefly a member of the Sex Pistols) and it soon became as vital as safety-pins and knowing at least one chord.
Amongst the celebrated journalists passing through the magazine's offices during the decade were Bob Geldof and Chrissie Hynde, which may, on its own, account for that reputation for being opinionated.
The ’80s were a confusing time for rock music, as the punk fall-out split into two very different camps: the make-up and blouses of the new romantics and the slogans and seriousness of the growing indie scene. NME kept a foot in both camps, adding an alt-rock-tracking indie chart to its pages, and becoming as well-regarded for releasing music as writing about it: either in the form of cover-mounted freebies featuring the likes of Paul Weller and The Jesus And Mary Chain, or through proper records like C81 and C86, two now-legendary indie scene compilation albums which gave a leg-up to then-largely unknown acts including Aztec Camera and Primal Scream.
By the time The Smiths formed in Manchester, NME had cemented its position as the must-read for the self-respecting (some might say self-absorbed) music fan - indeed, the young Morrissey had been a regular presence in the letters page before he ever got a mention in the reviews section.
The rise of hip-hop threw writers into something of a spin as editorial turf wars were fought between dance enthusiasts and guitar fans, but just as it looked like the magazine might split into two separate blocs The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and the Madchester scene gave everyone something they could agree on: guitars, but aimed squarely at the dancefloor.
As the ecstasy-fueled buzz of Madchester started to fade, attention focused on the other side to the US. While some of the competition became so grunge-fixated they might as well have published in check-shirted covers, NME offered a cooler take on the scene, also finding space to encourage UK bands as they struggled to find something as compelling as the loud nihlism of Kurt and Co. It was NME’s cover after Kurt’s death that remains the most iconic, tragic image of this hero.
NME was well placed when Britain got its act together, chronicling the rise of the Blur- and Oasis- led Britpop movement. From 1996, it was able to cover their doings in far more detail, as NME spawned NME.COM, taking a once-a-week magazine into a round-the-clock news service.
And the glamour and excitement of the 1960s awards shows was reborn in the form of The Brats (as opposed, of course, to the UK back-slapping celebration of established artists, The Brits) complete with an annual, nationwide live tour of the brightest new acts in the land. Since then, the NME Awards Tour has been a starting block for bands including Stereophonics, Coldplay and the Arctic Monkeys.
NME has continued to shape-shift, absorbing part-sister/part-rival publication Melody Maker in 2000; launching a series of spin-off specials, NME Originals, drawing on its unrivalled archive of interviews and reviews; sponsorship of stages at major music festivals such as Glastonbury, Reading-Leeds and T In The Park.
NME Radio and TV coverage of the NME Awards and a weekly NME Chart Show on MTV were further steps from being "just" a magazine, while retaining its nose for the uncovering and promoting the best new music.
Club NME nights came next - first in London, then around Britain and now in the US in Los Angeles and New York. Meanwhile Russia and Ireland both got local versions of the old school ink-and-paper magazine. While all this was going on, the paper itself continued to find new music to get excited about - Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs, The Libertines.
While a shelf-full of competitors have fallen, NME continues to thrive, because at its heart - whether coming at you through pixels, paper, or laser-fired mind waves - it's always been about the music. Except for accordian music, obviously.
