“We’ve been stuck in the silence”
EDITORIAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF George Garner george.garner@futurenet.com DIGITAL EDITOR Andre Paine andre.paine@futurenet.com FEATURES EDITOR Ben Homewood ben.homewood@futurenet.com CONTENT EDITOR/PRODUCER Miranda Bardsley miranda.bardsley@futurenet.com ART EDITOR Steve Newman steve.newman@futurenet.com CHARTS & DATA Isabelle Nesmon isabelle.nesmon@futurenet.com
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Welcome to
Music Week...
For Peter’s sake
Well, you only went and did it again. Not only did you all sell out the Music Week Awards months in advance, you also made it a night to remember. So before I say anything else, let me deliver one final thank you to everyone that came out: ta very much! And, likewise, huge congratulations to all of the winners – turn to page 24 for our gallery, and head to musicweek.com to read interviews with them – and to everyone who was nominated. The work represented across the board was incredible, and the competition fierce. Our ceremony was, of course, all capped off by Girls Aloud arriving onstage to salute someone they declared as the “ultimate pop mastermind”: their manager and long-term supporter Peter Loraine. Nor were they alone in paying tribute to him, with the Fascination Management founder also receiving a powerful video tribute from a host of artists he has worked with over the years. Spice Girls, Take That, Goldfrapp, Kylie Minogue, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Will Young, Jessie Ware, Jake Shears, S Club 7, Bananarama, All Saints and Steps all took part, with executives like Sir Lucian Grainge, David Joseph, Selina Webb, Hillary Shaw and Nicky Smith all joining in, too. It was a beautiful moment. A pop polymath in the truest sense, Loraine’s was – pun intended – a fascinating career to unpack both on the night and in our interview with him for our recent digital cover story. His 30-year journey has taken him from Bananarama fanzine creator to award-winning editor of Top Of The Pops Magazine, marketing guru at Polydor, label head at Fascination Records and even founding his own management company. As so many of his artists have gone out of their way to tell Music Week over the years, Loraine has achieved all of this while also being the antithesis of what Girls Aloud’s Nicola Roberts told us is the “man in the suit” many pop acts encounter. “I was buying Cheryl a hoover on my way to work because she was having a breakdown about the state of their flat,” Loraine reflected of his time at Polydor. Over the years, Strat winners have given us a moment of pause to reflect on how one career has left an indelible mark on UK music, and the lessons we can take away from them. Take the longview of Loraine’s career and you quickly realise that, while always evolving, for 30 years, he has been in service of one thing: pop music. When others denigrated pop acts as cheesy or disposable, he was an indefatigable defender of their honour. I say all of this, because it strikes me as being increasingly rare. After all, we live in a time when there is so much pressure in the music industry for executives, managers and more to be all things to all people all the time. A career like Peter Loraine’s is a reminder that sometimes it’s far better to stay – or, more accurately, slay – in your lane. Oh, and that all artists should be given hoovers at the start of their careers.
George Garner, Editor-In-Chief
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