Record Mirror was a British weekly music newspaper, published between 1954 and 1991. The paper became respected by both mainstream pop music fans and serious record collectors. It was the most progressive of the four competing music weeklies of its day, the others being Melody Maker, New Musical Express (NME) and Disc magazine.
Launched two years after the NME, Record Mirror never attained the circulation figures of its higher-profile rival, but during the 1960s and early 1970s it did achieve a respectable circulation based upon its reputation. The first ever UK album chart was published in Record Mirror in 1956, and during the 1980s it was the only consumer music paper to carry the official UK singles and UK albums charts used by the BBC for Radio 1 and Top of the Pops, as well as the equivalent US Billboard charts.
The title ceased publication in April 1991 when owners United Newspapers closed or sold off most of their consumer magazines, including their two music titles Record Mirror and Sounds, in order to concentrate on their newspaper business. In 2010 Giovanni di Stefano bought the rights to the name Record Mirror and relaunched it as an online music gossip website in 2011, bearing little relation to its previous incarnation.
Famous quotes containing the words record and/or mirror:
“Society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels are the literature. Novels are the journal or record of manners; and the new importance of these books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more worthily.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I have had no other treasure in this world than to see you once perfect and complete, as much in virtue, honesty and wisdom, as in all free and honest learning, and so leave you after my death like a mirror representing my person—your father—if not as excellent in fact as I would wish, certainly so in desire.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)