Q magazine closes...

I had a similar experience and timeline with bowing out, but I’m not prepared to coldbloodedly say “Good.”

 

I rarely ever bought it anymore (last one I picked up was about 6 months ago) but for a decade Q was easily my favourite music magazine. I think the quality started to nosedive around 2005 or so, or at least that’s when I stopped reading it every month... too many lists and boring editorial choices. The last few issues I bought were to pass the time on long flights and I wasn’t impressed with the content compared to the likes of Mojo and Uncut. Still, a shame to see it disappear completely as I once was a big fan of that mag.

 

`Q` was crazy expensive for it`s later target audience of teens and twenties, they would get their fix elsewhere on the net and the phone, also giving every album review a score of 4 out of 5 (are you listening MOJO?), did not help it maintain any critical credibility.....people just moved on.

 

There was a period in the mid-90's to mid-aughts where I was obligated to pick up any music mag with U2 on the cover. Q provided quite a number of those.

Visits to Borders or Barnes & Noble were required to start with a perusal of the music magazines, often for that very purpose. They weren't cheap here in the US.​

I haven't read an issue in ages--music forums like this and other online music reviews have, unfortunately, made print magazines obsolete. Still sad to know they're a thing of the past now.

 

Fair enough - people have lost their jobs and all.

I take back the 'Good'.

 

I bought Q from issue 3 onwards through the '90s, and from time to time after that, and found out about so much music, that would otherwise have passed me by, from reading their comprehensive review section.

Then the free CDs added to the discoveries. The first time I heard Muse was on a Q CD.

But then came the era of lists - endless, pointless, lazy lists. Every month, another list, advertized on the front cover as if they were worth something.

I'll always have fond memories of waiting for then pouring over a new issue in the early days but the disappearance of what it became is no loss to me.

 

Another reader who gave up on it years ago, but in the 90s I loved keeping up with it.

 

Nothing to do with the pandemic, it’s been on it’s last legs for years.....

 

Most star rated reviews now are ludicrous. If you believe star ratings, no one releases a bad album nor plays a bad gig anymore!

RIP Q. Read it from 1989 to 2003 and then got fed up with the zeitgeist chasing. It plummetted downhill with the likes of Shania Twain on the front cover, and when I briefly tried it again in 2007 i stopped after the issue where it was Lily Allen topless on the front cover. Urgh.

Still, when it was good it was great. The Tom Hibbert "who the hell does X think he/she is?" were always great.

 

Probably better put than my cynical contribution.

 

They made it into a lifestyle magazine that was the deaths knell. Bought it in the eighties, great glamorous music magazine then!!!!

 

If there is a more miserable and inappropriate post than this one on this thread I will be very surprised.
Celebrating people losing their jobs is just downright nasty.

 

Yeah, I remember the ‘Who the hell...’ with Richard Branson was hilarious. The interview took place when he was drunk at some industry party.

 

Oh man that’s sad. Q introduced me to sooo many bands...too many to list for sure. Always appreciated when they had the free CDs on the front to try new artists. I loved my monthly trip to a little place called Little Professor where I could pick up Q, Select, NME and occasionally Melody Maker. Then drive home and spend hours reading them all cover to cover, making notes on what CDs to look for the next time I made a trip to the music stores.

 

The Cilla Black one was fantastic, she was absolutely fuming when she read the magazine.
RIP Tom Hibbert.

 

The Roger Waters one was hilarious as well. Though unintentionally so!

 

So sad, not that I have read it for about 17 years, but from almost the start til 2003 I bought and kept them religiously. After that, I kind of outgrew it and didn't like the direction it went in but it was part of my musical development. In the 70s I read Look-in, moving onto Smash Hits when I hit my teens and Q from my 20s onwards. All three now gone. In its' heyday it was indispensable for me.

 

Never underestimate the negative effect of the success of Loaded on the rest of British magazine publishing in the 90s. So many mags thought they had to go "lad" as well, just to survive. Even Melody Maker briefly turned itself into a bizarre mix of Loaded and Smash Hits.

 

I always liked the secret message they put on the spine which always related to whoever was on the cover.

I remember when The Beatles were featured to promote their Anthology series the message said 'Our lawyers are watching'.

When Madonna was featured in 1994 the message said 'Bill Oddie, Bill Oddie, put your hands all over my body'.

 

I bought it from the first issue in 1986 to around year 2000 Without missing a copy. Like many have said they moved away from the sort of artists I wanted to read about and towards a younger market which I can understand. But I wasn’t interested in reading interviews with people that I would never buy music by so I moved on.

it’s a sad day for the people who work for the magazine but it’s not a magazine I have bought for years. I’d pick up the odd copy if they featured something of great interest but last time that happened for my taste must have been 7-8 years ago.

 

I can’t remember the last time I bought any print magazine.

 

A big box of old Q magazines followed me to seven different homes up until the age of 30 — at which point I trashed them because magazines had become just more... stuff that I was lugging around. But I loved them and learned so much from them in the late 80s and early 90s. Q was an essential purchase for me for about a decade.

 

the Zeitgeist chasing was in some ways a charm - Q would feature blatant, commercialized pop acts (Shania Twain) yet a few pages away there'd be a write up on an obscure band with little to no commercial intentions or appeal.

Q served a midway point between the commercialized excess of Rolling Stone and the "indier than thou" condescending tone of Pitchfork.

For this alone, Q will be missed.

 

McCartney was featured on the first issue cover.

 

Heck I even bought their thin Covid lockdown issue in May.