Like Punk Never Happened - Brian McCloskey's Smash Hits archive

Derek Philpott's book of hilarious letters to pop stars and their genuine replies is now available from Plane Groovy and Amazon !

I wrote the lyric for Ghost Machine, a song on the upcoming album Siliconchipsuperstar by Circuit3; it has an early-eighties snythpop vib...

I wrote the lyric for Ghost Machine, a song on the upcoming album Siliconchipsuperstar by Circuit3; it has an early-eighties snythpop vibe...

Click the photo to see me drawing the winners of the No More Heroes contest !

I have to confess that I didn’t have a particularly big record collection growing up. My parents couldn’t afford a lot of pocket money, so...

Strange Tales From A Music Paper was the comic strip that ran in Smash Hits 1980 - 1981. The strip's creator, Mark Casto, believed tha...

Last night we attended a screening of Soul Boys Of The Western World in Hollywood; it's a great documentary about Spandau Ballet in pa...

Click the photo to see Debbie 'n' me on the Ricki Lake show!

(click on the images to see the full issues)

If you ever made or received a mixtape, you will love this wonderful short play.

Back in October 1984, Morrissey did a feature with British music magazine Smash Hits where he reviewed some popular singles at the time. It ...

The one we've all been waiting for: Morrissey reviews the new singles!

In 2009, Smash Hits superfan Brian McCloskey, an 80’s kid who had hung on to his copies of Smash Hits since youth, decided to rescue his col...

One Thursday afternoon in June of 1979, shortly after my tenth birthday, my Mum and I went to Coleraine with some aunts and cousins. In Ga...

It has nothing to do with Smash Hits or music from the 1980s, but if you want to know a bit more about the person responsible for this arc...

Smash Hits magazine was run from 52-55 Carnaby Street in the 1980s.... [Video interview with Mark Ellen, chatting about the Smash Hits off...

As you may know, Linda Duff, who wrote the Get Smart column, died last week. If Smash Hits was the internet before there was an internet, Li...

Donna Summer was on the cover of the very first issue of Smash Hits I ever bought, in June 1979: (click on the image to see the full issue)

In 1981 he was invited to work for Smash Hits, after the editor, David Hepworth, saw photographs Watson had shot for Madness.

Tom Hibbert interviews Morrissey, January 1985.

At Smash Hits in the mid-80s, he helped invent a cartoon fantasy world in which everyone interviewed seemed to exhibit the same slapstick ch...

Dave Rimmer's classic account of New Pop, Like Punk Never Happened , has been republished by Faber. It is available from Amazon and Ama...

In June 1979, a 10-year-old from Derry, Ireland, Brian McCloskey, visited some family in Northern Ireland. There, he and his mother went to ...

Brian McCloskey's Smash Hits archive seems to be keeping its promise to add a new edition of the magazine every fortnight, "on the ...

"People keep writing to me via the blog to tell me they've wasted days on a 1981 copy of Smash Hits," McCloskey says. "Th...