Paul gets the finger
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| A special prize |
Paul McCartney picked up his special “Songwriters’ Songwriter” Award in London yesterday at the NME (New Musical Express) Awards. The shape of the prize has stirred up some controversy among the fans.
The NME used to be a very popular and important music news paper in Great Britain in the sixties, and the Beatles played at the NME Poll Winners Awards shows in 1963, ’64, ’65 and ’66, as well as picking up a few prizes at the award ceremonies.
These days, the paper edition of NME has seen a dramatic fall in circulations, and now typically sells less than 20.000 copies (plus around 1300 digital copies) of each issue, according to the Guardian. Still, they maintain a strong internet presence, their website with news and reviews is visited by an average of 3 million people per week.
In his speech, McCartney remembered that the first photo he ever saw of Elvis Presley was in the NME. He also told a story that the Beatles used to try to plant false stories in the NME, and one time they succeeded in this was when they invented a story about George Harrison being Billy Fury‘s cousin, which he wasn’t.
The NME has been terrible for years now…Ever since the end of the Britpop era (Blur, Oasis, Suede etc)it has declined rapidly. The website is also very bad: just lots of pointless top 10 lists and trivia.
I think the final nail in the coffin for the NME was putting Simon Cowell on the cover. How can a paper that claims to be musically credible have pop music's answer to the antichrist on its cover?!
Still, well done, Macca!