Music

The magazine that launched the likes of Mark Frith, Kate Thornton and Emma “CIA? CID? Same thing” Jones to ‘stardom’ is finally to close. I never bought a copy of Smash Hits myself, but I’d frequently browse through my sister’s copies when we were growing up. It was a bit pants, wasn’t it, with its stupid made-up words and SAW obsession?

Still, it feels like the end of an era. I imagine this is how my parents’ generation felt when The Eagle closed, whether they read it or not.

Cue make-over scenes from Clueless: Avril Lavigne wants to be a supermodel. The former Christian folk singer turned manufactured biker-rock star, who said that mothers liked her because she didn’t dress like Britney, now wants to sell out and become a model. Quelle surprise. If you change your image once in order to achieve popularity and your popularity starts to wane, isn’t it the most natural thing in the world to change your image again, even if it runs contrary to everything you used to espouse? Still, maybe if her last album hadn’t sucked, things would be different.

We love the ads for Sky that feature Dog and Duck. It’s mainly because Sarah’s a bit like Duck (she even has charts marked “Pickles” and “Trumpets”) and I’m a bit like Dog (I put on puppet shows occasionally…); but I think the whole world be nicer if all adverts contained dogs and ducks, anyway.

The music to the ads brings back memories of children’s programmes that weren’t designed purely to make money. An innocent age, I know. In case you’re too young to remember that time, you’re probably too young to remember The Herbs, which is where the music for the ads come from.

You can download the music as a WAV file from Dave the Wave’s Herbs page.

Just in case you thought the Arctic Monkeys weren’t getting enough hype already, the US has joined in with a review of the Monkeys’ new album by Slate’s chief stalker… sorry, reviewer. If you don’t make it as far as the end, suffice it to say she thinks their new album is “perfect”.

Do they have some kind of hypnosis ray? Has the world gone mad?

They’re the Divine Comedy but without a sense of humour. Just realised that. Everyone else probably knew that already, didn’t they?