'Lost playlists' and Chipwrapper in the Guardian's Music sections

 by Martin Belam, 15 August 2008

I've had a couple of mentions in the Guardian's music section recently.

You may have spotted in my Delicious links that Steven Wells described blogging list-making music fans as "the antithesis of rock'n'roll" on the Guardian Music blog, citing "Lifetime of lost playlists" as a prime example.

There was also a mention for Chipwrapper at the weekend, in Johnny Dee's piece about the history of the "Now That's What I Call Music" albums - 'NOW that's what I call a pop fact!'. In the course of listing (music lists again eh?) a series of facts about the compilation albums, he pulled out some random puntastic newspaper headlines which he 'culled' from chipwrapper.co.uk.

  • Now that's what I call a storm (Guardian)
  • Now that's what I call a mobile desktop (Telegraph)
  • Now that's what I call a nursing home (Independent)
  • Now that's what I call torture (New Statesman)
  • Now that's what I call a role model (Independent)
  • Now that's what I call a driver's car (Independent)
  • Now that's what I call a Hollywood fat cat (Independent)

As far as I am aware, and indeed, in a slightly recursive search, as far as Chipwrapper is concerned, it is the first time that Chipwrapper has made the national press.

1 Comment

I read the Swells piece after seeing it in your Delicious links. Until then I hadn't realised he was still writing about music. I thought he went off to write books for teenagers or something.

I didn't read much of his stuff in his NME days because his taste is so godawful but I occasionally read those articles where they sent him to do a hatchet job on Shed Seven or someone similar.

Those pieces were mildly amusing but basically lazy and this one didn't seem much different: gather round as Swells tells you the correct way to enjoy music. Yawn. I guess you can take the boy out of the NME...

I liked this bit though: "...the least rock'n'roll creatures on the planet - balding white suburbanites with mortgages, unhappy marriages, huge stomachs..."

Now, I don't know where Swells lives or his marital status but, judging from his byline pic, biology isn't on his side in this one.

Keep up to date on my new blog