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Smash HitsThe face of the music press in the 1980’s

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The thing that set Smash Hits apart from all the other magazines was that it gave you the lyrics so you could sing along to your favourite songs. We'd read it in class before the teacher would turn up, flipping to our favourite songs and singing. In my Bros days, I would have had Smash Hits posters of the Goss brothers on my wall. Today the market is saturated with gossip and music magazines, and with the internet, there's just more on offer for the kids. They don't have such simple pleasures as we did.

Sara Cox: Radio 1 DJ

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It was perfectly suited to the 1980s: pop was great fun, but had an edge to it because it was coming out of that post-punk era. A lot of us were too young to be punks, but we arrived in the world with a lot of attitude. Smash Hits reflected that really well. I loved the photos: they were always getting bands to do brilliantly cheesy things, like when they had me dressed up as a fairy for the Christmas issue (although that wasn't so far from the way I dressed anyway). The emphasis was on fun, and they weren't out to do the dirty on anyone. If you were going to be in the magazine, it was because they loved you.

Clare Grogan Singer, Altered Images

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It was all about seeing groups as the readers saw them, and having a sense of humour. We had a breezy kind of confidence - a bit satirical. When Chesney Hawkes launched, he appeared on the cover with a saucepan on his head, which was always a byword for people who were a bit desperate, though we didn't tell him that. I knew things were changing when I heard that Eternal, the girl group, took a year out to have media training, which makes life for a magazine like Smash Hits very difficult. They would never have worn saucepans on their heads.

Mark Frith Smash Hits editor, 1994-95

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I remember me and Ronnie [Rogers, co-songwriter and Decker's former partner] on the cover: he had no trousers on, and the cover line was "Who wears the trousers in T'Pau?" We were always talked into things like that. We could have been a grown-up rock band, but our management and PR girl - Mariella Frostrup – guided us elsewhere. It made us too lightweight; we always ended up on Saturday morning TV. But Smash Hits did its job really well, appealing to the teenybop market.

Carol Decker Singer, T'Pau

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