NME's blogger sees the '90s revival happening, but it just won't work, he's convinced: "In these months of lockdown misery, Covid paranoia, dislocation and hardship, many are looking to the pre-Starsailor age for comfort. The 'Friends' are reuniting. Illegal raves are back. Early 'Resident Evil' games have been remade... The time is ripe then, you might think, for the long-awaited ‘90s revival... Yet new acts simply aren’t emulating their mockney joie de vivre, their suburban sauciness and surly swagger, their gleeful worship of ‘the chooon’... If the ‘90s seem like an unrepeatably idyllic moment in time, it’s because they were... How could we ever recapture such a world of possibility, and the musical exuberance that came with it?".

"Just last week Billie Eilish told an interviewer: 'sometimes I feel trapped by this persona that I have created'" - NME's Mark, My Words writes, and offers her advice - "History tells her that she’d best change it sharpish, or she’s liable to get lumbered with it for good". The power of an image is paramount in music, Mark says - "If Slipknot drummer Jay Weinberg suddenly developed a debilitating allergy to gimp gear and nail wigs, they wouldn’t ditch the masks in solidarity – they’d be taking forehead measurements for a new drummer".

Acts wishing to play in the UK post-Brexit must pay £240 for visas for each member and prove they have savings of around £1000... Where will that leave us? Just another medium-sized European market with its own internal favourites, little more important to conquer than Hungary or Montenegro but, for many foreign acts, impossible to even have a crack at. Once a world-leading hub and haven for pioneers and visionaries, reduced to an unwelcoming island of shrinking relevance - Mark, My Words predicts the future of the UK live music scene.

There will be four stages in corona-influenced albums, Mark, My Words argues: Insanity and bewilderment of the isolation nation; calming records about the routine, zen-like serenity of home quarantine; Coronapunk stage demanding the heads of the political class; Pub. But, what is it that we really need" - "Albums about the crisis will get tired very quickly; albums designed to help us through it, on the other hand, will remain encased in the generational amber. It’s time, already, to start singing for when we’re winning".

"Denmark has already begun putting on drive-in gigs. In Spain, they hope to introduce seated outdoor shows of up to 200 and 30-capacity indoor shows. Arena bands are considering 10-day residencies at club venues, playing multiple shows throughout the afternoon and evening to revolving maximum quarantine capacity crowds. There’s even talk of running limited capacity festivals in the not-too-distant future... Coronavirus gigs sound like ‘VIP experience’... Every gig will be one big golden circle, with added table service. So bring on music’s new normal – I’m ready for the best of times in the worst of times" - NME's Mark, My Words is looking forward to the new live music normal.

The cold sobriety of lockdown has a way of sucking the colour and joy from the jetstream of youthful abandon. Did I really waste my life in the hands of crap rock’n’roll bands? No, I refuse to be pandemoralised. If I’m forced to assess my musical life and loves thus far just because the world pressed pause, I’m going to replay the biggest hooks proudly, be they by Foals or The Farm, by REM or, yes, Razorlight - Mark, My Words brings the light into the time of greyness...

This month saw the streaming site introduced a function that allows listeners to tip specific artists they like, much as you might once have dropped a pound coin into a busker’s guitar case or compensated a starving bassist with van-based sexual favours... Should musicians depend on charity and goodwill to survive, making them ever more reliant on a platform making vast sums from their efforts alone and paying them a pittance? Now they’re posting monster multi-million-dollar profits, Spotify need to be rapidly increasing their payments until their suppliers – the musicians – can make a fair living off of significant streams - Mark, My Words takes a clear stand in his latest blog post.

"The Beatles began their career emulating and covering their classic rock’n’roll heroes but quickly set about exploring all the possibilities of sound, technology, broad-reaching historical revivalism and mad drug music that success made available to them. As a direct result, they invented pretty much every modern pop genre from EDM to metal and might’ve got the full house if they’d ever let Ringo rap... The Stones, on the other hand... popularised blues rock and, um, that’s it" - Mark, My Words argues in his latest column, wrote after Paul McCartney told Howard Stern his band was better. The other reason NME's blogger wrote about it - there aren't any good feuds anymore.

NME's blogger really appreciates 'The New Abnormal', the album, not the world's settings: "The Strokes’ comeback couldn’t have been better timed. I can’t be the only one for whom it’s provided a welcome distraction from all the hypocritical government briefings and fighting in supermarkets... From the record, title-down, you might even conclude that they saw all this coming".

"The likes of Biffy Clyro, Haim, Lady Gaga and Kehlani have postponed their album releases, presumably because they won’t be able to tour in support of them as planned... ‘It doesn’t seem appropriate,’ goes the standard delay line, but nothing could be more appropriate right now than giving music fans a brilliant, time-guzzling distraction from the world" - NME's blogger Mark, My Words writes longing for new music - "We’re losing a year of our lives, but we don’t have to lose a year of our music too".

"Once it's established that a patio big enough to hold a laptop podium is all that most modern acts need to deliver their unexpurgated festival set to iPhone, a livestreamed Glastonbury is entirely possible" - Mark, My Words predicts the future of online concerts. It looks bright, at least to the NME columnist, who wants major acts to "blow their cancelled tour budget on 360-degree cameras and stage virtual gigs that’ll be almost impossible to distinguish from the real thing – only with much, much better wine".

Of course there's light at the end of corona-tunnel, and Mark, My Words sees it: "Personally, I’m not dreading the lockdown. I’m lucky that I can do most of my job from the comfort of my own bed mess. I’ve got a novel to finish, a million records to listen to, a virulent online poker habit to feed and Dry Januarys backdated to 2005 to catch up on. I’m actually looking forward to the convenience of watching major bands livestreaming their gigs rather than trudging to an ice cavern in North London to watch them from half a mile away with a 12 quid Coke".

"If public gatherings are limited to the size of the average cheese rolling contest and all big shows are banned – suddenly the nation will have to flock to their local pubs and independent venues for their monster weekenders, exposing themselves to a whole new strain of underground brilliance" - Mark, My Words sees a light at the end of the corona-tunnel. Actually, two lights: "With an unexpected year off touring and every album-then-tour cycle in the world broken, we’ll see every single major act confined to their home studios meaning a culture-wide torrent of high profile new albums".

Last week the mighty chamber indie collective Magnetic Fields announced that their new album, ‘Quickies’, will consist of 28 songs; the longest of which clocks in at 2.35 and the shortest runs to just 17 seconds. It’s a new paradigm I’d love to see alternative music embrace again" - Mark, My Words argues in favor of short songs in rock.

"It looks as if the days of the pop fan death cult are about to come to an end" - Mark, My Words writes in his column after attending a private Circa Waves gig for super-streamers. What happened? - "The gig, it turned out, was put on for those couple of hundred fans who had streamed the bands’ songs most on Deezer. But it could also finally mark the end of the hardship of the superfan. If this becomes common practice, all of your superfanning can be done from the comfort of your own Styles-den... Now you can gain priority access to your favourite band’s gigs by sitting up all night in your home-made altar to Lewis Capaldi and streaming your way to the front".

Funny and clever as always, NME's Mark Beaumont delves into questions of fashion and identity in his latest Mark, My Words post: "Metallers' image has been assimilated deep into the mainstream. They’ve undergone painful surgeries at the hands of their drunkest mates in order to declare their extreme tastes and lifestyle to the world, yet if you wander into a record shop (remember them?) in 2020 with piercings through your pancreas and Cannibal Corpse lyrics tattooed across your eyelids, you’re more likely to be recommended a Post Malone, Billie Eilish or Lil’ Jaily record than anything that might even slightly melt your face. The ultimate signs of personal non-conformism have become the New Normal. Luckily, there is an answer – if the mainstream has stolen your identity, why not steal theirs?".

A report in 2015 revealed that the UK had lost 35 per cent of its live music venues in the previous eight years because, on its own, the venue is but a solitary minnow squaring up against a school of sharks... But when their isolated individual voices combined with the help of the Music Venues Trust, they were saved - NME's columnist Mark Beaumont writes, defeatistically, about UK's exit from the EU, and how UK's clubs were saved on the very principle of unity.

NME's Mark Beaumont doesn't agree one bit with Coldplay who decided to stop touring until they find an environment-friendly way to do so. Not touring would make more harm than good: "If musicians are dedicated to working towards carbon neutrality, it’s vital that that message gets shouted from the biggest, most amplified and most eye-catching […]

"No real fan waits patiently in the pissing rain outside a stage door for some hog-wild aftershow to finish in order to make their soggy tour programme worth twenty quid more than they paid for it. To a real fan, an autograph’s monetary value is irrelevant; it’s priceless to them because it represents a small […]

"When it comes to making records promiscuity has become a talent-killer. That’s why Kanye was right to ban anyone working on his album from having pre-marital sex during the recording period of ‘Jesus Is King’ – not for ridiculously pious religious reasons but to stop the music being smug, bland and self-satisfied" - Mark, My […]

NME's Mark Beaumont's new blog entry is about fake social media accounts of pop stars, the latest victim being pop-reggae star Shaggy - "Why not grab at the chance to become a virtual superstar? Initially the internet offered these unsung heroes – with their slightly misspelt surnames and their many, many handle numbers – a […]

"For someone who claims to be a rock star, he’s missing a major point of the job. Rock’n’roll was about subverting traditional engrained ideas, of not doing and believing what you’re told, of questioning the world and everything in it. Every radical musician from Lennon to Frank Turner has questioned religion in song and to […]

"It’s been around ten years since a new underground scene really broke through... So, with the South London scene already dubbed gristle rock, let’s continue with crank wave – Fontaines, Squid, Idles, Do Nothing, Life, Famous, insert your own band here; smart, modern guitar bands with a singer who sounds like someone having a psychotic episode […]

Lucien Greaves, co-founder of The Satanic Temple, recently listed his favourite devilish songs for NME - Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, Iron Maiden... - and of course Mark Beaumont had to react: "The devil’s music is far more insidious... It’s the pleasing four-note trumpet fanfare you hear when paying ten quid for an ‘exclusive’ in-game plough, […]

Dave Grohl played a concert in London with Rick Astley, an unusual pairing, but Mark, My Words thinks there should be more of it: "Simon had Garfunkel. Bowie had Iggy. The Beatles had Ringo... Primal Scream had Kate Moss, Oasis had Paul Weller, I’m pretty sure Radiohead had Stephen Hawking... Dave Grohl’s Astley bromance feels […]

"The rap, grime and future R&B (Nao, slowthai, Little Simz, Dave) represented the most incisive rising British talent, the guitar rock (Idles, Fontaines D.C., Black Midi) was suitably disjointed, angular and innovative, the poised and/or melodramatic art-pop (Anna Calvi, Cate le Bon) bore not the faintest trace of Paloma or Florence, the bigger names (The […]

Funny and to the point, NME's Mark Beaumont in his latest column wants the 1980s revival to end: "The ‘80s revival has lasted far longer than the original decade itself. And that wasn’t even worth the ten years it hung about... It’s a source of unending frustration to those of us that lived through the […]

"You sample a song, you get it cleared. The music industry has always been a wild west of rip-off artists, snake oil salesmen and manipulative profiteers but the plagiarism lawyers have beaten some sort of gentlemanly practices into it over the decades. Talent borrows, genius steals, previous genius sends legal letter outlining their cut. There’s […]

"Breakthrough acts like Idles or Fontaines D.C. are the result of actual human DJs, writers and tastemakers coming to a rare consensus around a particular band, but their impact is limited now, their chances of cracking the increasingly irrelevant singles chart virtually nil. All thanks to The Algorithm... The result is a musical culture practically […]

"Don’t you care about the bands that will struggle to tour Europe?” - that's the question journalists should have asked The Who's Roger Daltrey who said "as if we didn’t tour Europe before the fucking EU!”, after being asked about Brexit. "Because clearly Roger hasn’t given a second thought to the bands, roadies, tour managers […]