The All-New STYLUS.

I loved this interview with Yamantanka Eye.

THIS SUCKS.

Daniel, email me and we'll talk.

Also, whatever you do, Nick Southall please keep writing. Your shit is half the reason Stylus is/was great.

RIP

Yeah, <3 Nick.

Give us more love, people. We deserve it. LOL @ our haikus.

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/pop_playground/the-final-ever-stylus-annual-haiku-marathon.htm

Maybe I deserved to be included in that "favorite teenpop poster" poll after all, since my final piece for Stylus (on the Jukebox) is about Lindsay Lohan.

These final features are just making me miss Stylus more. :(

But they are great.

I have no idea where I'll write about music next, but I do know no matter what I do I'll never have an opportunity as good as Stylus was. This is a widely-shared sentiment among Stylus staff, but there was/is simply nowhere else that gives you the freedom to write that Stylus did, and I probably would have been content writing there forever. I guess four years will have to be enough. Todd Burns is a hell of a guy, and honestly as much as I, too, had the "why not just hand off EiC to someone else?" reaction too for a second, I can't imagine the site without him.

And Alfred's right, we hated our readers commenters. Ha ha.

It's actually kind of bizarre to find out that so many people liked us, but better late than never.

this is why comments boxes on sites like that can be do misleading. there were pieces on stylus i thought of commenting on, and occasionally i did, but too many of the other commenters were complete dicks, so i couldn't be bothered, and i imagine others felt the same way (and I mean, they weren't even dicks in an entertaining way--there was just a lot of childish nonsense, from what i recall).

"can be so misleading," I mean.

I never commented because I figured guys like Morbius and Naive Teen Idol needed no encouragement.

I don't know if I phrased that exactly right.

Well, I'll be: Ian's posting on ILM. Hi!

If Miller turns up Ladbrokes owe me £10k.

Daniel, email me and we'll talk.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn

Email sent. Thanks.

I chatted with Derek last night. Told him about this thread. Don't think he'll be swinging by to check in.

The provinces aren't shedding many tears:
http://community.livejournal.com/poptimists/465777.html

Presumably Stylus failed as a website by not making "Obligatory Breakdown Song" album of the year

Presumably Stylus failed as a website by not making "Obligatory Breakdown Song" album of the year

-- Dom Passantino, Tuesday, October 30, 2007 11:42 AM

This is probably true.

woah, I totally forgot about Swyggart's UK Top 40 column back in the day. totally deserves a shoutout.

As someone who is in no way associated with Stylus, or the film section thereof, I would like to add that Stylus also had an excellent film section.

-From someone who is definitely not a film writer on Stylus.

Ahem.

Patrick, there's been some talk about the Top 10 Films of the Millennium here.

the comments section was a bad idea imo

How the hell...?

David Poland, Catch Me If You Can: the pieces weren't that hard to put together.

the comments section was a bad idea imo

-- omar little, Tuesday, 30 October 2007 17:36 (5 minutes ago) Link

Nah, most of us were pretty self-loathing

Wow.

P Mac stunned like a muh

Well, I thought the comments section was pretty great, but then I would, wouldn't I (I posted as grandbanks). Stylus really was great. Tried not to be a dick too often, but this isn't about me. Thanks for all of the hard work, and for keeping those comments sections rolling. Made for a lot of shit, but every once in a while really fucking worked. The site (and writing) was definitely better than the comments.

I couldn't keep up: were you the same as pabanks?

Nope, just grandbanks, though people got my name wrong a bunch.

Loved you guys! Sad to see it end.

oh god it's fucking alext being his usual pass-agg snarksome self on that poptimist thread. fuck that.

Stylus was one of my favorite magazines. While its passing saddens me, my immediate feeling is one of gratitude. More than any other magazine, Stylus was an indispensable companion of acumen and wit in a world where the chaff was increasingly mistaken for the wheat. My favorite contributors were Thomas Inskeep, Mallory O’Donnell and, of course, the Singles Jukebox cabal (easily the best singles reviewers around). Every happiness to you all!

Yeah, I really wish the Singles Jukebox could live on somewhere else.

Me too, but I think WBS had burnt out on it just as much as Todd had with the main site. Not only was he in charge of finding and uploading 20 songs a week, he was then saddled with the unenviable task of begging people to submit blurbs about them. Bear in mind, I greatly preferred the 2007 system where we weren't assigned songs and could write about whatever we liked, but that left Will pulling teeth when nobody could be bothered to say anything about Daughtry.

Makes sense, but I'm really going to miss that the most I think. It was great for me to keep on newer singles from older albums I might have ignored.

Will definitely miss reading the singles jukebox, but I have to admit, I found it really difficult to write for (I signed up in the summer and came through with maybe 4-5 reviews). The turnaround time was just too quick. If you didn't claim your songs early on by sending in your review, you wouldn't make it in. I can see the advantage of this from a publication's perspective and from a reader's perspective, but trying to shape snap judgments into some kind of coherent review I was comfortable with was incredibly difficult. I'm fussy and slow at this stuff, so maybe it's just me, but I reached a point fairly early into the process where I thought, no way can I keep up with this. I don't know how some of the regulars did it--unemployment?

Still, I'd be happier if it was still around. In terms of my new song playlists, I bet half of my titles were discovered thru the jukebox. I don't know where I'm gonna pick up on some of this stuff.

I had some trouble with that, too, Scott. Mostly what I'd do was download everything that hadn't gone up yet on Sunday, listen to them on the way to work on Monday morning, and send a batch or two during the rest of the week (usually no more than 6 songs total). Sometimes I'd get off that schedule, though, and end up not being able to submit anything at all that week. And Mondays were usually shot for me, too, since I didn't have enough time to listen over the weekend.

It became easier when Will started creating a publication schedule, so I knew that if I wanted to review a particular song I had to have it in by a particular day. Before that, you're right, a song would often go up before you knew it.

Esteban Buttez offered to write for the Singles Jukebox and got turned down!!

SO MUCH FOR THAT THEORY!!

Shut the fuck up already.

i thought he had his own board where he could be unfunny?

I wasn't aware of this and I'm sad to hear the news. Stylus was a welcome reminder that people are still capable of caring for and writing about music without regard for its potential appeal, and/or the writers' misplaced sense of involvement therein. It is a beautiful thing to consider for how long Todd and his compatriots maintained such fanatical altruism; even more so if you understand how little they benefited, and how much they sacrificed.

I lost a lung while reviewing a Fat Joe album. So much sacrifice.

Burns owes me about $16,780, which I expect to reclaim in two days in the form of Jaegermeister shots.

Alex, you're confused - I was talking about the people that ran the site, not the thundering nobodies from which they accepted copy.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a64/bartleyride/9ea8cc38.gif

Alfred, isn't Jager a bit crass for you?

I've written for other sites, so I can't exactly say I have no dog in this fight, but at least mine are currently muzzled, and -- here it comes -- I will really, genuinely miss Stylus and its often insightful and generally talented writers.

Thank you Liz C. for reviewing my band.

<3