Overall a great thoroughly great read as it is missed dearly, the overall content was great, the interviews and i love the editors take on the publication with a huge amount of wit.

I must contribute to this! Smash Hits is probably the best pop magazine around, but in its heyday, between about 1980 and 1990, it was an extraordinary thing, really. It was witheringly witty (i.e., getting Morrissey to slate the singles "Alphaville should have been drowned at birth..."), and as bizarre as anything the surrealists came up with (editions would be themed around things like fish or space travel with ridiculous references to such popping up throughout). They clearly took the mick when printing songwords to things like instrumental acid-house tracks. They insisted on referring to Cliff Richard as "Sir Cliff" long before he was knighted, a quirk they extended to everyone in the pop world eventually. My favourite was "Sir Samuel Saucepot of Fox". However, what really made it was you always sensed they really did love the music they wrote about. There was an affection and irreverence about it which was wonderful. Lots of running jokes and they were critical when necessary - they single-handedly ruined Chesney Hawkes' career, deeming him "c***". To give an idea of how erudite it really was...Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant was assistant editor at one stage. For the Smash Hits of say, 1986, I give it 19 stars out of 10. But it panders too much to the record companies now (understandably) and looks a bit too much like a website, so for now I give it 8 out of 10. Still, though, someone should write a book about its influence on the UK press - I'm serious!

Smash Hits magazine is cool and comes with cool free stuff.