Hit machine runs out of steam

ANOTHER one bites the dust. Next Monday the very last issue of Smash Hits will be published. After 28 years, the title will now go to that inky afterlife where it will join other pop magazines we have known, loved or read at least once on an otherwise boring rainy afternoon.

But the demise of Smash Hits is different from that of Number One and Record Mirror, or even such once mighty and weighty weekly mainstays as Melody Maker and Sounds. Smash Hits was the big one, a magazine which could flog half-a-million copies with ease thanks to its mix of tongue-in- cheek attitude, pop song lyrics, smart-alec reviews, out- landish interviewing style and eccentric lexicon.

It hit a sales high of a million copies when Kylie and Jason were on the cover in 1989, but Hits also featured some unpredictable cover stars down the years. Looking through the back pages, you're as likely to spot Phil Lynott, Terry Hall and Robert Smith on the cover as Madonna, Take That or Bros.

Only Smash Hits could have published a front cover pairing Morrissey with Pete Burns (the caption ran "the very odd couple"). One could not imagine that particular meeting of the minds today or, indeed, any magazine clearing its front page for the souvenir snap.

As is obvious from the nostalgia which its closure has attracted, the magazine's glory days were in the 1980s and early 1990s, a time when it was witty, catty and wise. A reader would be as likely to come across a fabulous piss-take of Paul Weller (a regular target of the Hits mafia) as the words to the latest Top 10 tune from Jim Diamond, the sublime and the ridiculous side by side on the same double-page spread.

Smash Hits covered every aspect and angle of the pop beat with a scurrilous disregard for pomp and reputation. The writers happily scythed pop stars with lofty notions down to size at every opportunity and asked the most ridiculous questions just because they could. There was a sense of fun and mischief to the whole enterprise, which made readers feel part of a big, happy gang. You couldn't imagine such a scenario these days ,and this could well be why Smash Hits is saying farewell.

Towards the end of the 1990s, the magazine went on a strict diet of boybands and pop tarts and thus began its downfall. But these were the acts invading the pop charts, so Smash Hits had to cover them. While they could smile, pose and act "mad" at the drop of a Kangol hat, weeks of media grooming meant they were about as spontaneous, interesting and animated as an over-ripe tangerine.

By the time the brand extensions such as tours and TV shows arrived, Smash Hits had become just another magazine, without the dashing humour and idiosyncratic quirks which once made it great.

There are probably as many reasons for the magazine's passing as there were questions in its much feared Biscuit Tin. Some observers blame it on the now widespread and abundant availability of music coverage everywhere. There's also the slump in fortunes of the boybands who were the mag's bread and low-fat butter of late. You could probably also point a finger at the internet, text messages and George Galloway going into the Celebrity Big Brother house.

But Smash Hits also failed because the magazine didn't keep its eye on the bigger pop picture. Narrowcasting is all well and good, until that niche gets narrower and narrower. Smash Hits should have been about so much more than the latest rancid byproduct of a reality TV show.

Think of the fun the magazine would have had in its heyday with the assorted Arctic Monkeys, Strokes and White Stripes currently in vogue. While their readers had no problem viewing these acts in the same light as Blue or Girls Aloud, the magazine didn't follow suit. Hopefully, those who'll now take up the pop mag mantle will not make the same mistake.