NME Awards 2016: What the pop papers say

This week, the NME awards were doled out; this week's print edition of the magazine tries to make sense of them.

The awards are possibly a transitional moment, covering a period where the weekly went free, and took on an editorial direction ever less about music; moving closer to the mainstream. Last year, prizes went to Royal Blood, Foo Fighters, Alex Turner and Kasabian. There was a clear sense of what an NME band sounded like.

This year's winners... well, they're a little different:

Best British Band: The Maccabees
Best International Band: Run The Jewels
Best New Artist: Rat Boy
Best British Solo Artist: Charli XCX
Best International Solo Artist: Taylor Swift
Best Live Band: Wolf Alice
Best Album: What Went Down - Foals
Best Track: Giant Peach - Wolf Alice
Best TV: This Is England '90
Best Film: Beasts Of No Nation
Best Music Film: Blur: New World Towers
Best Music Video: Cheer Up London - Slaves
Best Actor: Idris Elba
Best Actress: Vicky McClure
Best Reissue: Five Years - David Bowie
Best Book - M Train - Patti Smith
Best Festival - Glastonbury
Best Small Festival - End Of The Road
Music Moment Of The Year - The Libertines "secret" Glastonbury set
Best Fan Community - The Libertines
Worst Bad: 5 Seconds Of Summer
Villain Of The Year: Donald Trump
Hero Of The Year: Dave Grohl
Vlogger Of The Year: KSI

(Just in passing, how come actors are split into categories based on gender and solo artists aren't?)

It's the solo artists who stick out - in a month where NME's covers have run through James Bay, Kanye West and Coldplay, Charli and Taylor seem much more in keeping with where the title is heading than Wolf Alice and Foals. They feel like an echo of where the title was before, when it charged an entry fee that few were interested in paying.

This makes for difficulties for the awards, though - remember, these used to be styled the Brats and positioned themselves as an alternative to the Brits. Even before NME became the sort of magazine which would put James Bay on the cover, the distinction was blurred, but if the endeavour survives another twelve months it's likely the NME Awards/Brits relationship will become more like the BAFTAs/Oscars one - the former a lower budget version of the latter, taking place a couple of weeks before, and serving no real purpose other than letting bookies set the odds for the main events.

This year, though, we find ourselves in the awkward position of the magazine having to send a prize designed for rebellious shouty rock upstarts to Taylor Swift. Her reaction:

I got the award in the mail and I gotta be honest with you about this, when you first open up the box this feels a little aggressive.

Yeah. That's the sound of worlds colliding.

Coldplay picked up the Godlike Genius award - I know, I know - and in the accompanying interview, Chris Martin shares his favourite moment of being a popstar. This was playing Michael J Fox's Parkinson Benefit, and getting Fox to join them onstage to recreate the moment from Back To The Future when Marty plays guitar at the 1950s prom.

That's telling. The worst part of the entire Back To The Future trilogy is the point where the invention of the boisterous, brilliant cacophony of rock is taken away from Chuck Berry and reassigned to a pasty-faced white kid from the suburbs. And the peak of Chris Martin's musical career has been recreating the creation myth of a deracinated rock music.

That's Christmas ruined

From MTV:

Gwyneth Paltrow shared a video of her daughter playing the guitar, proving she's inherited dad Chris Martin's music skills.

Barack Obama to work with Coldplay

For the best part of a decade, Fox News and the people who watch it as if it was a news channel have done their best to besmirch Barack Obama's name.

Now he's doing their work for them, by working with Coldplay:

The gospel anthem, which Barack sang at the funeral of Charleston shooting victim Clementa C. Pinckney earlier this year, is an interlude on the band’s highly-anticipated seventh album.

Chris revealed: “We have a tiny clip of the President singing Amazing Grace at that church. Because of the historical significance of what he did and also that that song being about, ‘I’m lost but now I’m found’.”

A source close to the band added: “Barack Obama wouldn’t let just anyone feature his vocals on the record, especially considering what a deeply emotional moment it was for him.

“But he clearly loves Coldplay and is happy to be a part of their music history. The band were obviously thrilled.

“They needed to get permission from Obama himself and the Charleston church it was recorded in.”

Yes, Coldplay have taken a key moment in #blacklivesmatter and turned into a marketing stunt.

Even Glen Beck couldn't have seen Obama signing up for that, surely?

There's a new Coldplay album, everyone

At first, I assumed this from the BBC website was an early review of A Head Full Of Dreams:

- but then I realised that there's going to be a lot more boring songs on the album than that.

There was a useful capsule review on Twitter, though:

You guys Noel Gallagher is on the new Coldplay album. This tweet is our review.

— Norman Records (@normanrecords) November 6, 2015

Horrifying as this news is, it makes a bit of sense and you can't help wishing that maybe Coldplay and Oasis had merged back in the early days of the century, so we could have concentrated on avoiding just one lumbering beast.

Could the prospect be made any less appealing, though, than this hooking up of Gallagher with Coldplay? Oh, yes. Yes, it can:

Coldplay have explained how Guns N' Roses influenced their new track 'Adventure Of A Lifetime'.

Now, you're probably thinking what I did - "presumably like Guns N Roses they realised they'd reached the end of what their basic talents would allow, and decided to try and disguise it with overblown pomposity?" - but that's not quite it:

Martin continued: "I’d been begging Jonny [Buckland] our guitarist for years to make a riff that I like as much as 'Sweet Child O' Mine' by Guns N' Roses, then he showed me that one, and I was like, 'That's it!' So those elements all came together, and we just wanted to kind of embrace our love of joyful music and sort of let it free."

"Why don't you write something I like as much as Sweet Child O' Mine" shows a surprising level of self-awareness on Martin's part, assuming that he realises he's admitting that nothing Coldplay have yet recorded is as good as that. (To be fair, he could also ask Buckland why he doesn't do something as good as Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs for the same reason.)

So, a bright new Coldplay album out at the start of December. Start practising your "oh, this gift is just what I wanted" faces, gang.

Martin, Paltrow go their separate ways

I'm guessing, like me, you didn't sleep well last night, as the words "Coldplay break-up album" kept churning through your mind like a horrified heartbeat every time you closed your eyes.

Obviously, the news of a couple separating, especially when they have a young family is always a sad thing, but...

Conscious Uncoupling

It is with hearts full of sadness that we have decided to separate. We have been working hard for well over a year, some of it together, some of it separated, to see what might have been possible between us, and we have come to the conclusion that while we love each other very much we will remain separate. We are, however, and always will be a family, and in many ways we are closer than we have ever been. We are parents first and foremost, to two incredibly wonderful children and we ask for their and our space and privacy to be respected at this difficult time. We have always conducted our relationship privately, and we hope that as we consciously uncouple and coparent, we will be able to continue in the same manner.

Love,
Gwyneth & Chris

How can they manage to make even their divorce into a vomit-inducing festival of tweeness?

Digital Spy cut the branch from underneath themselves

DigitalSpy want us to get excited:

12 albums to get excited about in 2014:

The very next word in that headline?

Coldplay

Ooh, DigitalSpy. You're asking us to really calibrate our sense of excitement in the micrometres, aren't you?

Radio 2 repeat 6Music Coldplay experiment; get identical results

Earlier this year, 6Music presented listener with a list of songs and asked them for their favourite. Disappointingly, it ended up with Coldplay winning.

So when Radio 2 presented listeners with a list of "most-played albums" and asked them to rank them?

It's no surprises:

1 Coldplay - A Rush Of Blood To The Head
2 Keane - Hopes & Fears
3 Duran Duran - Rio
4 Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon
5 Dido - No Angel
6 The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
7 Pet Shop Boys - Actually
8 The Beatles - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
9 U2 - The Joshua Tree
10 Queen - A Night At The Opera

I know that we should take seriously no list which clears its throat by announcing that A Fit Of Vapours In The Bentley is the best anything, but just look at that. I'm no Beatles acolyte - I think you'd have spotted that - but even I know that Dido's No Angel is not a finer body of work that Sergeant Pepper's.

Interesting to see Actually, there, though. Actually.

6Music regret asking

Topping off the somewhat extended 10th birthday celebrations, 6Music asked its listeners to vote for the 100 best tunes released during its lifetime.

That was always going to be a mistake, wasn't it? Apart from anything, 6Music likes to wear the clothes of a station for whom charts and mainstream popularity are of little interest and so this sort of poll feels like one step away from offering the breakfast show to Bruno Brookes.

More importantly, by its very nature, the exercise was doomed to have the more mainstream offerings of the station coagulate at the top of the list. In fact, I believe an identical list of 100 records circulates round advertising agencies whenever they need to come up with a new tune to slap on an ad for Homebase or Vodafone.

And, there, topping it off: Clocks by Coldplay.

If 6Music had planned to run a high-profile advertising campaign that said "you know our reputation for loving new music and seeking out bright new sounds? Fuck that, we're more like a permanent shuffle on your brother-in-law's Zafira stereo", it would be less damaging than this.

I listen to 6Music a lot, and it not being the sort of station where you'd hear Clocks by Coldplay is a major part of the attraction.

In fact, the Last.FM listing of tracks played on the station appears to back this up. Admittedly, Last.FM doesn't track every single track played, and hasn't been gathering data across the whole of 6Music's life, but Clocks doesn't show up in the 500 most popular tracks. (Older songs - DeeLite's Groove Is In The Heart, and the Wu-Tang's Gravel Pit, for example, do make the 500 so age is no disadvantage.) Coldplay do turn up, around the mid 300-teens, with Viva La Vida.

So we're left with the strange situation that the supposed "best" song of the station's lifetime gets played less often than, say, Ladykillers by Lush, or Every Day Should Be A Holiday by The Dandy Warhols.

So what's going on?

A pair of embarrassed Tweets from 6Music last night offers an explanation:

Hi everybody, The Greatest Hits was always likely to provoke an emotional response to the music we all care about.

— BBC Radio 6 Music (@BBC6Music) February 1, 2013

Some bands will always have bigger voting power due to their popularity but the range of artists in the list shows our breadth of music

— BBC Radio 6 Music (@BBC6Music) February 1, 2013

In other words, the chart was hijacked by a big band with a large fanbase. Whoever saw that coming, eh?

This week just gets better...

Coldplay are going on a three year hiatus.

The closing closing ceremony: make it stop

So, that's London 2012, then, ending a little earlier than expected to make room for a Coldplay concert.

The first part was well-executed, and managed to remain coherent. Speaking personally, it didn't do much for me.fter a two-week party, why did we get dumped in a post-apocalypse? They were even scorching the ground at one point, which is pretty grisly image to throw into the closing party for an event that's brought the world together. Pity Seb Coe didn't exercise the wisdom of Arsites on that particular idea.

So, in my mind, fireplay and juggling is right up there with clowns and balloon animals, but you couldn't argue that it wasn't epic; couldn't deny they filled the space.

But Coldplay? Oh. How many songs in was it before you realised that they weren't going to go away?

Even Emeli Sande - overworked at the Olympics closing - didn't stink the place up quite like Coldplay did. You know there's something gone wrong when the man at the heart of an event floating on a sea of goodwill unseen in London since VE night is still having to beg the audience to "make some noise".

"At least it's not Jessie J doing two songs" pinged Twitter, bravely, but that's the problem. Nobody would mind Coldplay turning up to do a couple of songs*, and then Jessie J doing a couple of songs, and then someone else. But an entire Coldplay gig?

Sure, logistically there's an obvious advantage in having one band run across the whole event. But for the same reason if you're organising a reception for dozens of people, you want to make sure you've got a choice of flavours. Keep everyone happy. And offer a bit of texture for the evening. Motorhead, maybe. Julie Fowlis. You could make your own list.

Because what happened was the focus on the Paralympics and the Paralympians started to ebb away as the event felt more and more like an event about Coldplay. Even the appearance of Rihanna and Jay-Z smacked of 'look at Chris Martin's famous friends' rather than a dash of variety.

The past fortnight didn't feel like it should have ended with an extended promo for just one band. And that would have been true whatever band it was.

*- well, we'd have bitched throughout the two songs, but you know what I mean.

Coldplay is a cup until it is struck

When I saw this on the BBC News website:

... I could see that it would be a popular idea, if a little overly violent.

It turns out that isn't quite the plan. Instead, it's just one of their songs being used as part of the closing event for the 2012 Festival:

Musicians across the UK will perform Coldplay's anthemic hit Viva La Vida as part of the London 2012 Festival finale.

The band have agreed to the track being played at 2pm on Sunday 9 September during the "Bandstand Marathon".

Uh-oh. Someone at the BBC is going to be in trouble after mis-spelling "anaemic" so badly.

Oh. Apparently they did mean "anthemic".

Isn't it a bit of a dismal song - from a thematic point of view - on which to bring a festival to a close?

Gordon in the morning: Footballing metaphors

According to this morning's Bizarre, Chris Martin feels that Coldplay are the Manchester United of pop:

“I was talking to my dad about Manchester United — the most popular football team in the world — and when they show up at West Ham they get booed.

“I was thinking, ‘Well, it’s the same for us’.”

Surely it's not, though? Manchester United get booed by the crowd at the West Ham because they're playing in front of a crowd that, for a large part, actively support a different team. If Coldplay turned up to somehow try and beat, say, Kasabian in a competition, you'd expect the Kasabian supporters too boo the other side.

I don't really follow football, but even I wouldn't expect opposition supporters to cheer Manchester United just because they're more popular than the team that they follow.

The Manchester United comparison is apt, though: they, too, have a massive following which comprises mainly of people with no emotional connection but who, thinking they should support someone, have simply picked the winning team.

Gordon in the morning: Coldplay bangle fandango

The phrase "very Spinal Tap" is lobbed around when talking about bands far too easily, but the Coldplay wristband story does have an undeniably Tapesqueishness* to it.

Everyone going to see Coldplay on tour gets given a flashing wristband. Only, as Gordon reports:

The gadget — which lights up during their live shows — is costing the band a fortune.
[...]
Chris Martin said: “Most of the money we’re earning on the tour is put into the wristbands.

“We have to figure out how to keep it going without going broke because it’s a crucial part of the concert.”

I suspect Martin is perhaps overstating his potential ruin here - based on a quick look round the internet, it'd be unlikely that these things would cost £2 a pop, at the most, so it'd be more a nibble at margin rather than a shortcut to the poorhouse. Unless they've cut a really bad deal with a supplier.

At the same time, Chris Martin reveals what he doesn't like his audience doing:

Chris also reveals he is OK with fans recording the gigs on their iPhones — but he can’t accept his audience texting.

He said: “The only thing I fear is texting. If they are texting they are not enjoying the music.”

If the audience is bored to the point of sending 'please rescue me' texts, that's not really the audience's fault, is it?

* - oddly, the spellcheck rejects Tapesqueishness.

Gordon in the morning: Coldplay appear to have hit puberty

Having a bunch of tits in a Coldplay video is more-or-less impossible to avoid, as Coldplay will be in it.

Having actual breasts though? That sounds a bit desperate. But if the idea was to make Gordon tumescent, job done:

COLDPLAY will have seen more boobs than Hugh Hefner by the end of this week.

The band came up with a winning idea for the video for their next single, Charlie Brown — a warehouse party featuring a load of topless girls.

Management placed an advert offering to pay extras £100 for the job — with an extra 100 quid for any girls willing to whip their shirts off and jiggle about.

A further £100 was also laid on the table for anyone up for getting sprayed. Although it didn't specify what with.

So far, so tiresomely sexist. Is there any way that multimillionaires paying a few quid to women to get their tits out could be made an even bigger cringe?

The advert also asked for an army of "edgy Hoxtonian types aged from 18 to 35".

Edgy Hoxtonian types. Yes, that would do it.

Gordon in the morning: We all live in the space-age

You'd have thought that George Michael would be getting the best possible care, but perhaps not, if we're to believe Gordon:

Space-age kit protects star

Space-age? What, they've lobbed him in equipment from the late 1950s?

It turns out he means "modern".

Justwait until Gordon sees TV dinners - crazy times, all on one plastic tray.

In other news, Chris Martin has been doing the aw-shucks-lil'ol-me routine again:

Chris said: "I'd just be terrible [as a solo artist]. I don't think I could even get a gig in Butlins — and I've been to Butlins. I think me and my keyboard would be outside Woolworths most days, getting shouted at."

Woolworths? When did you last do any shopping, Chris?

The terrible thing is, Chris says this hoping we'll all look at the new Coldplay album and go "don't be silly", but instead most people whose ears function will be thinking "Woolworths? You'd be lucky not to be forced round the back of a Bejam."

Chris Martin overestimates himself again

Chris Martin reckons he knows his place:

Frontman Chris Martin told the crowd during the band's [Mencap Little Noise Sessions at St John-At-Hackney church] set: "We had to settle on being shit Radiohead. We're called that sometimes, you know."

Oh, Chris, the only time you're called a shit Radiohead is when people are being kind. Obviously, not very kind, then they'd say you're an underskilled Elbow; but generally, the idea of comparing Coldplay to Radiohead is a bit like looking at a calculator and assuming it's some sort of broken iPad.

Coldplay hold off Spotify

Are you looking for Mylittle Pono on Spotify?

You are? Seriously? Really?

Let's pretend you are.

You won't find it there, as Coldplay are keeping it off:

British band Coldplay is withholding its latest album, "Mylo Xyloto," from all-you-can-listen streaming services such as Spotify and Rhapsody — making it the biggest band yet to express reservations about a system that pays artists a fraction of a penny every time someone listens to a song.

The AP's Ryan Nakashima believes this is a blow to Spotify, which almost certainly overstates the value of yet another Coldplay album to people who have subscribed a site with more music than they know what to do with.

It's probably true that Coldplay won't miss the streaming royalties for now; it'd be interesting if the streaming services decided to refuse to allow hold-out albums to come to the service later, and to see if that shifted the balance when deciding if to be on or off at launch.

Gordon in the morning: Coldplay under the influence

Coldplay held a press conference yesterday to launch their new album Fido Dido, and Gordon went along. That it was in Madrid might have added to the allure.

One of the big surprises was that Brian Eno tried hypnotising the band during the recording sessions:

Bass player Guy Berryman admitted yesterday that the band have reached a stage where they are open to outrageous ideas from the talented team around them to tap into new writing veins.

I'd have thought that was an admission they've more or less run out of steam, isn't it? "What can we do? How about if we dress up in wetsuits and stare at photos of kittens to see if that creates an idea?"

"Brian suggested we try playing together when we were hypnotised. One of his friends came down and we tried it out. Nothing came of it but at least we tried it."

I'm suprised none of the hypnosis tracks are on the record, because when I listen to it, I do find I feel sleepy, sleepy, very sleepy.

Meanwhile, Chris Martin was fuming at the idea that people think Coldplay little more than a reworking of other people's ideas:

He also hammered any suggestion that the band would ever copy other people's music.

He said: "It's fine not to like our band, but making up shit about us is not on. There's a difference between criticism and accusation. People who accuse us of stuff like that are *****, quite frankly."

I'm guessing that's going to be "cunts" - partly because it's clearly such a shocking word Gordon couldn't bring himself to even print the first letter, and partly because having been lazily homophobic and misusing disability language over the last couple of days, he's probably going for the clumsy sexist insult to get the treble.

Still, it's interesting that Chris gets so angry about people who accuse them of copying other bands. So much as to call them *****.

One of the biggest *****s would be, erm, Chris Martin who told Rolling Stone in 2005:

"We’re definitely good, but I don’t think you can say we’re that original,” he notes. “I regard us as being incredibly good plagiarists.”

He might also want to have a word with his bandmate Jonny Buckland, who admitted ripping off Kraftwerk:

"We've never so directly stolen off anyone before. We've never paid for our plagiarism."

What a *****.

Mind you, at the same time, Martin also chimed in with this:

"Fix You came directly from Elbow's Grace Under Pressure."

Hold up there, Chris: don't you know that there's a difference between admiration and plagiarism?

Chris Martin should try being quiet

Yesterday, Chris Martin was making hilarious jokes about being gay.

Today, he's misusing mental health terms:

He said: "It's definitely a schizophrenic album, it keeps changing sounds. That's why we called it such a strange thing, 'Mylo Xyloto'. Because we felt like so many people have already made up their minds about us, both good and bad, that we can sort of start again from scratch and try and reflect all the music we listen to and we love."

Let's keep this simple, Chris: even if "schizophrenic" did mean split personality, it'd still be shitty to use it to describe your record; that you're simultaneously misusing the word, and using it offensively really does hit the double.

Gordon in the morning: Ha ha, it's funny to call people gay

Gordon Smart has something of a scoop today, although he fails to recognise it. He was at the Q Awards yesterday:

CHRIS MARTIN has confessed Take That made him question his sexuality as a youngster.

The Coldplay star said his favourite bands growing up were "U2 and five handsome, strapping men from Stoke and Manchester".

With his tongue firmly in his cheek, he added: "I'm not afraid to admit it, they made me ask the question 'Am I gay?'"

It seems massively unlikely that Martin really did have U2 and Take That as his favourite bands growing up, and was just flattering people who happened to be in the room. It's also clear that he was trying to make something he might have thought was a joke.

But really, Chris? "I liked men making music - ha ha, it was like I was gay"? You can see the sort of audience that type of joke plays to, with Gordon slapping his leg and honking while stressing that it's okay - his tongue is in his cheek. He's not REALLY GAY.

It did get worse, though:

And drummer Larry Mullen JR didn't miss the open goal.

He had the crowd in stitches, joking: "Chris Martin, I have the answer for you — you are gay."

Yep. It's 2011, and Larry Mullen - one of the richest men in the world - thinks being gay is a punchline. And a room full of Gallaghers and Barlows honked their delight at such a witty retort.

Well done, Q. That's quite a party you threw there.