Sounds (magazine)

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Sounds was a British music magazine, published weekly from October 10, 1970 – April 6, 1991. It was well known initially for giving away posters in the centre of the paper (initially black and white, but colour from late 1971) and later for covering Heavy Metal (especially the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM)) and Oi! music in its late 1970s-early 1980s heyday. Sounds was the first and best music paper in its coverage of punk and in the late eighties was maintaining its reputation for getting there first when John Robb covered Manchester and Keith Cameron wrote about Nirvana before anyone else. Sounds was the first UK music paper to put Nirvana on the cover.

One of the trinity of British music weeklies along with New Musical Express (NME) and Melody Maker, it finally folded in 1991 after the parent company United Newspapers, sold all their music titles to Emap Metro and closed Sounds. Ironically its circulation was beginning to rise again significantly in the last few months of its life.

A legacy of Sounds was the creation of the Heavy Metal/Rock magazine Kerrang!, which was originally issued as a supplement before being spun-off as a separate publication, which continues to this day.

Contributors included Keith Altham, Garry Bushell, Geoff Barton, John Gill, Tommy Udo, Barbara Charone, Caroline Coon, Andrew Courtney, Antonella Gambotto, Jerry Gilbert, Vivien Goldman, Jonh (sic) Ingham, Alan Moore (aka "Curt Vile"), Jon Newey, John Robb, John Peel, Edwin Pouncey (aka "Savage Pencil"), Penny Reel, Cathi Unsworth, Jon Ronson, Robin Gibson, Jon Savage, Peter Silverton, Sylvie Simmons, Mary Anne Hobbs, Mat Snow, James Brown, Steve Lamaq, Keith Cameron, Leo Finlay, Ann Scanlon, Sandy Robertson, Dave McCulloch, Jane Suck (nee Jackman), Phil Sutcliffe along with photographers Penny Valentine, Steve Gullick, Leo Regan, Steve Double and Gus Stewart.