The annual NME Student Guide is out, providing a guide to the sixty most studenty towns in the UK, and also revealing the top 50 student anthems, as voted for by 200 student DJs. The chart is dominated by newer talent - with Arctic Monkeys' 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor', The Killers' 'Mr Brightside' and Kaiser Chiefs' 'I Predict A Riot' filling the top three, though all time student night classics like The Smiths' 'This Charming Man', Joy Division's 'Love Will Tear Us Apart', Pulp's 'Common People' and, of course, Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' all in the top 20.
Commenting on the poll, NME Student Guide editor Dan Silver told CMU: "It's no surprise that the Arctic Monkeys have taken the top spot - 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor' is a worthy winner always guaranteed to pack any students' union bar with revellers. It's great to see some old classics can still work their magic too: The Smiths, Nirvana and Oasis will no doubt form the soundtrack for many a university night out!"
The annual Student Guide is free with this week's NME. Quite how they picked the sixty towns and cities to focus on I'm not sure (though the big ones are, of course, pretty obvious), though some in the music community in Stoke On Trent are feeling a bit left out, having been ignored by the guide, despite the city having two colleges and a population of 230,000 - not to mention nearby Keele University.
One local promoter told CMU: "Now Stoke-on-Trent is not the centre of the universe, I know, but with 230,000 people and two big universities along with several sixth form colleges it's a pretty big student city. And with several live music venues - including one which has its own CLUB NME every Saturday - you'd think we might merit a mention somewhere in their booklet! Even Guildford, Bedford, Canterbury, Bolton and Oldham get a mention before us. We're not big enough for a page on our own and we're not near enough to a bigger city to be mentioned as nearby, so we get wiped off the map!".
Still, I'm sure new students arriving in Stoke will survive without any guide at hand. Although, if I remember rightly, Stoke On Trent's a bloody difficult place to navigate, so perhaps they won't. Perhaps NME could fly Robbie in to offer some directions.