Record Mirror
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Record Mirror was a British weekly music newspaper.
It competed with New Musical Express, Disc & Music Echo, Sounds, and Melody Maker, but had the smallest circulation of the UK consumer music weeklies and was considered to be the least important of the genre. The first ever UK album chart was published in Record Mirror in 1956, and in the 1980s it was the only music paper to carry the official UK singles and album charts.
In an effort to boost sales it changed to a Smash Hits-style glossy magazine format in 1982, but ceased publication in April 1991, with sister publication Sounds closing in the same week (of the above mentioned publications only NME survives today.)
Record Mirror was continued as a four-page supplement in Music Week. The RM dance charts were later incorporated into Music Week itself.
Contents |
[edit] Features
Articles and features in a typical edition of Record Mirror were as follows:
- News - including release info and tours.
- Index - New bands and competitions
- Great Pop Things - comic strip by Colin B. Morton and Chuck Death
- Lip - gossip with Nancy Culp or Lisa Tilson
- Dance pages - with Cool Cuts Top 20 chart
- Independents - reviews and new acts plus chart rundown for indie singles and album
- 33 - Album reviews
- 45 - Singles reviews
- Alan Jones' Chartfile
- The "Natural Blonde" column by Paula Yates
- In 1984, when British tabloid newspapers started running bingo competitions, Record Mirror became the first (and possibly only) music paper to experiment with something similar. Free cards were attached to the front of the magazine, inside which would be printed a number of song titles from that week's Top 40. The winner would have to match the chart positions of those records with the numbers inside the card. The competition was short-lived and had no discernible effect on sales.
[edit] Babble
Late 1980s star-spotting gossip pages also feature a number of comedy articles such as:
- Phil's World Of Wigs - Each week a picture of Phil Collins with new novelty haircuts
- The Stone Roses New Line Up - Each week a new photo of a gurning celeb would be added to The Stone Roses 1989 line up (for example various muppets, Harry Enfield as Loadsamoney and Benny Hill).
- Spot The Imposter - photoquiz with a misplaced face in the crowd
[edit] DJ Directory
Also known as BPM in earlier editions and edited by James Hamilton
- Beats and Pieces - dance gossip
- Hot Vinyl - Track listings of new records
- Remixes
- Pop Dance Chart
- Hi-NRG Chart
- The Club Chart (also known as the Disco chart)
[edit] Charts
As well as the above listed charts:
- Vintage Chart
- USA Billboard Single
- USA Billboard Albums
- USA Billboard Black Singles
- Music Video
- UK Top 100 Singles
- UK Top 100 Albums (from 1989 Top 75 Albums and Compilations)
- Twelve Inch Top 20
- Compact Disc Top 20
- This Week's Chart and Chart File - chart facts by Alan Jones
- Reggae (dropped in 1987)
