How pop magazine Smash Hits shaped my destiny - Emma Newlands

An online archive is a treasure trove of pop ephemera from my past

McFly at the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party, 2004. The magazine was once the bible of pop. Picture: Jo Hale/Getty Images

I distinctly remember the first time I bought Smash Hits magazine, tempted as a ten-year-old to part ways with my pocket money in exchange for a copy with Rick Astley on the cover that leapt out to me from the newsagent’s shelf.

I did not realise at the time that this was the beginning of many joyful years of reading the late, great pop magazine, and set me off on the path to become a journalist - because what job could be better than helping craft something this amazing? What’s more, Rick is perhaps now even more famous than he was back then – so I like to think Smash Hits had a key role in shaping both of our destinies.

The publication’s brightly coloured pages offered much that was appealing, not least a crucial understanding of how simultaneously ridiculous and superficial but deep and meaningful pop is, and I pored over every word of each hallowed edition to get a better understanding of music and the people making it.

My favourite sections included the subversive, ridiculous genius of the Black Type letters page, but most of all the engaging, entertaining interviews, featuring a broad church of everything from rock group The Sisters of Mercy to the much poppier end of the scale, including Yazz, Take That, Bros, and the prolific artist production line of the Stock, Aitken, and Waterman pop factory. The many interviews with The Pet Shop Boys were among my favourites, a fact no doubt helped by the fact that singer Neil Tennant had been a senior staffer at the magazine.

While the magazine itself folded in the mid 2000s, its legacy lives on, with key staffers Sylvia Patterson, Mark Frith, and Mark Ellen, to name but a few, deservedly going on to have long journalistic careers.

And while for a long time I regretted binning my treasured pile of Smash Hits back issues, each one having undergone several re-readings, as we were moving house, I am very pleased to see that several years’ worth are now available to peruse online. That will enable an enjoyable trip down the glossy pages of memory lane for me, and possibly for Rick too – “never gonna say goodbye” indeed.

Emma Newlands is a business journalist at The Scotsman